Interdepartmental Romance

I get migraines. The brain of a migraineur is extremely sensitive to any differences in routine, and even small changes can trigger an attack. For instance, getting up an hour later than usual might trigger a migraine for some. Yesterday at work, an attractive patient asked me out. He wrote "lunch?" on one of his business cards and pushed it over the lip of my desk. I politely declined, and then blushed profusely for half an hour after he left. Usually, the kind of men who try to pick up on me are unwashed, plainly drunk, and trying to get a free ride on Amtrak. I was pretty tickled to garner interest from someone who was both physically attractive and obviously employed-- I am not accustomed. Too tickled I guess, for I got a migraine later that day. This incident points to a grim future. Can I look forward to becoming physically ill when good looking professionals look at me for longer than 30 seconds?

I'm not actually looking to change my current romance situation, but sometimes during the work day I daydream about an interdepartmental romance, like my coworker has. She put in her work order to have a nest of bees removed from the building and 3 years later there's a rock on her finger from the man who showed up to poison them. Daydreaming this way helps pass a time that is mostly spent talking about clearance forms, printing out clearance forms, searching for clearance forms, talking about clearance forms, and boiling the clearance forms into a lumpy, nutritionally void porridge which we then eat.

Key Largo

My Grandma Nina died in the summer of 2005. We all gathered at AJ Nicoletti Funeral Parlor on a white hot August day in the Sacramento Valley, and were milling around hopelessly whilst awaiting an official cue from the funeral director. Though muddled by grief, I was dimly aware of soft music playing. It was mainly indistinct, inoffensively bland piano, but somehow an instrumental version of that Bertie Higgins song "Key Largo" got into the rotation. I caught the attention of my cousin, thinking this was a funny oversight, and we had some laughter over the cheeziness of the lyrics (which I of course knew). What a stupid song-- a song I'd heard years before, sitting in my grandparents' kitchen while they read the paper, drank weak coffee, and listened to AM 1320, KCTC, Your Music and Memories Station. Then I started to cry.

This song came up on the side bar when I was browsing youtube for similarly stupid songs. Now I'm remembering my Grandma and playing back the funeral and the days surrounding it in my head like a movie. I get a certain sense of relief knowing that I can attach my grief forever to this song, and not The Pina Colada Song, which could have just as easily played in the funeral parlor without much notice.