I’ve written before about Dave and Kelly’s Belorussian coworker, Sergei. Sergei's got a problem and that problem’s name is pastry. (I’ve got the same problem, so I feel his pain.) The pastry monkey on Sergei’s back leads him to do things like go out during his lunch hour and come back loaded down with pastry to distribute amongst his coworkers. When Kelly told me that, I joked that having Sergei around is like having her very own Pastry Fairy.
I don’t even work with these folks, but I do email Kelly regularly while she’s at work to arrange our evening gym workout rendezvous. Today she forwarded an email that Sergei sent out:
Check the food cube for fresh strudels, coffee cakes and muffins.
Serge.
The “food cube” (a.k.a. “magic cube”) is actually an empty cubicle between Sergei and Kelly where food appears with (to Kelly) distressing regularity. Today Sergei filled the food cube to the brim with pastry, so much pastry that Dave brought home a bag of treats that he was instructed to destroy or remove from my presence. (I issued that order around a mouthful of chocolate danish, of course.)
Kelly’s comment with her forwarded email: “Haha!”
When I got Kelly’s email, I had just returned from the dentist’s office where I endured the world’s bloodiest dental cleaning. I mean, at one point, the hygienist reached for one of the tools on her tray and I caught sight of her gloved hand which was covered--drenched--in blood from my gums. Gum blood. Jan, the hygienist, scraped and scraped away at the tartar that I’ve been so carefully cultivating for years and years. When she was finished, she loaded me down with a array of tartar-busting implements (a toothbrush for my teeth, a toothbrush for my gums, a round toothbrush for brushing around my implant, a small poky wire brush, and a pointy rubber gum torturer) each of which has its own special instructions for my new tooth and gum care regime (hold at a forty-five degree angle, get up and under the gum cuff around each tooth, get behind this tooth and between these two teeth with this but don’t force it between those other two teeth, brush, floss, use this after flossing with mouthwash, and on and on) and then she sent me home. Of course, I stopped on the way home to buy a Rice Krispy treat--and a couple of granola bars, and some caramel ice cream and bananas to make an ice cream sundae. That was lunch. I figured it was the least I could do for the bacteria in my mouth after they had endured the invasion into their territory and the annihilation of their families.
I wrote back, informing Kelly of my dismay at missing the Pastry Fairy’s visit and of the latest turn of dental events and the subsequent sugar binge, to which she replied:
See – if you worked here you wouldn’t have to buy your own sugar. You’d have a giant Russian pastry fairy!
A sedentary job and a love of carbs and sugar do not a petite man make.
Sergei is a large guy---which means that he’s about American-sized, I think.
The conversation went downhill from there. I wrote Kelly (“I’m The Pastry Fairy and I approved this message”), saying:
A giant Russian pastry fairy? If I woke up to find Sergei dressed like Gay Spiderman (only in pink) putting pastry in my food cube (what is that? is “food cube” office speak for "pie hole"?) I'd think I'd died and gone to heaven.To get Dave in on the act I wrote to him, too:
He really is The Pastry Fairy! I think he needs a costume. Like Gay Spiderman's but with tights. But pink. And...powdered sugar for fairy dust.Dave’s suggestion?
I think the Pastry Fairy costume must also include a tutu. And a wand, of course. And can we mix some sort of sugary glitter into the fairy dust?Only The Brain would think to suggest that Dave invite Sergei to the gym to work out with us. Dave responded:
I don't know. I think working out is toxic to Pastry Fairies. Also, what would happen if he accidentally ran into Gay Spiderman? There might be some some kind of fairy/anti-fairy explosion.Oh, hello? Gay Spiderman is also a fairy, and I believe that a meeting of the fairies would have more of an additive effect of wondrous fairy proportions. The gym would be all lit up with glittery lights like a disco circa 1976.
I live for that day.
But Not This Day
This morning, I am sitting with Leah’s dog Sam. Sam is a very good dog generally, but he has his moments. For example, Sam doesn’t really understand that the first time the alarm goes off in the morning is actually just the start of a long, long process that necessarily includes the alarm going off every nine minutes for at least fifty-four minutes.
No, if dogs had alarms, Sam would be the kind of dog that would jump out of bed the very first time the alarm went off. This is how Sam sees the world. The world is something to be greeted and peed on with exuberance. To Sam, greeting the world doesn’t even require massive doses of coffee. He exists in an exhilarated greeting-the-world state all the time. That is Sam and that is why we love Sam. But this mindset leads Sam to do things like check my hands with his cold, wet nose at five forty-five in the morning in an effort to make sure that I am aware that there is the very existence of the possibility of the alarm going off at six forty-five. Sam's excited little wet nose checking continued until the alarm did actually go off, at which point I think Sam expected me to jump out of bed, put my shoes on, and be dragged around the neighborhood to watch while he peed on everything he pees on twice a day. Sam's got places to go and things to pee on. He can't be sitting 'round waiting for no alarms to go off.
So: Ugh. I did get up about five minutes after the alarm went off because, though Sam stopped nudging me when he saw that I was awake, he then just stood there smiling and wagging his tail but becoming increasingly more concerned that I might be ill because I was just laying there. So I got up.
I let Sam out into the yard to pee then I let Sam back into the house. I gave Sam his breakfast (a complicated mixture of white rice, a slice of a giant log of some meat product for dogs that has a disturbingly appetizing smell even at six forty-five in the morning, and a skosh of dry dog food). While he ate, I explained to him that I needed at least (at least) two cups of coffee before I could be dragged around the neighborhood to watch him pee on things.
He took it well.
We’re back from our walk now, and I’m on coffee number three.
Ugh.
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