It’s hotter than seven hells in my office today and I’ve been sweating like a cart-horse. Building maintenance has been working sporadically on the HVAC system since April and we occasionally have days of stifling heat or joint-creaking cold. Last Friday, I had blue fingernails. Today, I have sweat actually trickling down my body at the joints (rather like the Tin Woodman after Dorothy got done with the oilcan), and my head feels all prickly.
I mention this because the streams of sweat led me to a very embarrassing situation just a moment ago. Nothing so commonplace as pitting-out my shirt or leaving ass-prints on the office chair, though I have pled guilty to both offenses in the past. No, today combines the natural grodiness of excessive perspiration with my long and colorful relationship with inkpens. My preferred writing utensil at the office is the “Sanford uni-ball Onyx fine-tip†rollerball pen, which writes smoothly with a fine yet strong line. The magic of a Sanford Uni-Ball pen is that the ink is a much thinner liquid than the ink in, say, a “BIC-stick†pen which is a gooey, oily consistency. Anyway, Uni-Ball ink is runny and will leak when exposed to a wicking surface like a Kleenex, or when exposed to considerable moisture, like if you drop it into a mug of tea (not that I’ve ever spoiled a lovely, fragrant mug of Lapsang by klutzing out and javelin-pitching a Uni-Ball point-first into it…)
Do you see where this is going?
Being the colossal dork that I am, I had shoved a pen behind my ear to keep it handy, and it was pressed into contact with my sweaty head and began to leak enthusiastically. I didn’t notice, since my head felt kind of prickly anyway, and when I felt a trickle running down my neck, I didn’t think anything of it, but swiped at it with my hand, only to find the flat of my hand, from wrist to fingertips dyed blue. I went to the ladies’ restroom and found the entire right side of my neck also blue, and ditto a punkish blue streak on the side of my hair. 15 minutes of good, quality time in the loo with that stinky, industrial-strength hand soap, lukewarm water, and soggy paper towels, and I have managed to reduce the hue on my neck to a faint shadow, soak my shirt down to mid-boob in front and shoulderblade in back, and rub my ear raw. The blue streak in my hair is going to have to wait until I get home, however. This soap would completely wreck my hair, and I don’t know that I could stand to spend the rest of the day looking even more like a drowned rat than I currently do.
Did I mention that I work as a receptionist in a busy municipal office, and sit behind an open counter in the front of the public lobby, and have to actually talk to citizens all day and give a good impression of competence and professionalism? And here I am looking like a low-budget Mystique, minus cool scales and plus office-casual clothing. If I didn’t bike to work, I might have gone home to clean up, but it’s a 20 minute bike ride one way, and I would only get back even sweatier.
The weekend can’t get here soon enough, and this is a short week, being mercifully free of Monday attendance this week.
[…] Oddly, the day before that I dyed my head blue. […]