Cemented in my brain

Nothing's better than wisdom imparted to you by your dad in front of the kitchen sink.

"Washing dishes by hand is like changing a baby's diaper," says the father of eight, swiftly scrubbing a discarded bowl of cheesy tuna casserole. "Pretty soon you'll be able to change a diaper with one hand and eat a sandwich in the other."

I think that stopped me from wanting children in the future. Or wanting sandwiches, for that matter.

I started one of my jobs yesterday. My boss told me to come in at 10 a.m. so we could figure out my work schedule. Okay. I come in and my boss is on the phone, so another coworker ushers me into the conference room. "So I hear you're working all day Thursdays and Fridays!" she says. Really? I'm glad I had a say in that. The three of us sit in the conference room for a bit, tying bows for a display project. After we're done, my boss shows me my desk and assigns me to write 10 press releases. Then the other coworker adds two more projects. REALLY?! Because I thought I just came in to discuss my work schedule!

So what I expected to be a 30-minute meeting turned into a seven-hour affair. You want to know what I did all day? I wrote press releases on cement. CEMENT. I think I do okay with frilly, descriptive writing, but testing me with cement is cruel and unusual. I thought my brain was going to implode. Each press release was to be three descriptive paragraphs about the product. What do you write - that cement product C is a little bit harder than cement product B? Oh, my Lord.

Today was a bit better. I got moved upstairs to the loft, which I like because it's my own funky little space. My boss told me to make myself at home, so I took off my heels, laid down in this extremely comfy chair, placed my head on one armrest and my knees on the other, steadied my red marking pen in one hand and a stack of cement list prices in the other and promptly almost fell asleep. I decided that maybe the ginormous chair wasn't such a good idea after all, so I moved closer to my caffeine-laden Coke Zero instead.

Maybe I'm not cut out for ... work. Or maybe - what I suspect is closer to the truth - I just really, REALLY want a paid position. And maybe I also want to stretch my brain to depths further than punchy adjectives describing freaking cement.