How many roads must a girl walk down
Before it’s a role she need not fake?
How many lives must she dip her toes into
Before her soul’s not at stake?
How many glasses of cabernet must she drink
Before it’s time to summon a shrink?

The answer, my friend, is lost between the bytes,
The answer has snipped off like precisely-geometried-multi-hued kites.

If they take away my cyst, how will I explain the insatiable sugar cravings, pendulum moods and an abdomen with attitude problems? Say what? It’s not the cyst, it’s me? That’s too absurd. Might as well contemplate embracing religion instead.

Or worse – if they rob me of my cyst, what if I crave nothing, feel nothing and sleep uninterrupted on a lifeless uterus? What if I feel a sudden gush of happiness and collapse as my system coredumps because it fails to understand it?

I’ve often felt there are days when the cyst is more than a part of me – it is me. Of course, I didn’t know that it existed till Nibbles was a wee embryo. But it was the explanation I’d been waiting for, a pattern midst the chaos that lent substance – 6.5 cm spread of sebaceous dermoid substance – to the madness. And now they want to take it away and leave me crippled like a fish without a bicycle.

*hunts feverishly for stash of Toblerone hidden by Big Byte*

She rubbed her crusty eyelids, fumbled till she smacked the smirking frog on the toothbrush holder and saw the tiny toddler brush peeking between Big Byte’s motorized machine and her mangled, yellowing bristles. It wasn’t until the omniprescent tapworks began to distort her vision that she realized those blasted hormones were at it again.

NP: *yelling at shabby figure in mirror* “The fuckin’ sun’s not even out dammit!”,
Mirror NP: *strangely awake* “The sun never quite steps out, ya know. It’s just the relative position of the earth that counts”
NP: “wtf?”
Mirror NP: “Ok Miss Half Empty, it’s like the darkness. It’s always there, interrupted by a warm glow every day”
NP: “Not so in winter. Can’t remember the last time I saw our toasty friend”
Mirror NP: “Can’t remember the last time you stepped out.”
NP: *spits fluoridated froth emphatically back at the sink*
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As Nibbles hovered around her, blissfully blowing strawberry-pink bubbles, she decided that she was done croaking “Please Forgive Me” a la Bryan Adams (did I just type that in public?) and grated a generous block of ginger into the simmering water to tame the itch. Little did she know that she’d forgotten to stock up milk, which would result in an immediate meltdown at the prospect of having to brave the day in a chai-less daze.

It’s a good thing Nibbles responded to the drama with a crash – pink, Vitamin D milk all over the floor that she struggled to mop up before he lapped it up. She wagged a well-chewed finger at him menacingly and he puffed his cheeks as he pointed a drool-coated finger right back at her. Then they did the sticky kitchen dance and celebrated with biscuits for breakfast. After all, they decided, no point crying over…

Remember the blood
from rusting razors
dripping on cracked porcelain.

Remember the vagina
that spat the placenta
that fed the child, your child.

Remember the feeling
to feel to remember
to remember to feel. Was it real?

Red trees in the courtyard shedding their leaves,
Blue sentiments of a nation electing its first black president,
White rings of cow’s milk drying on the mantle top.

While everyone does the chameleon jig, I’ll drag my risk-averse middle class ass to my cube because it’s so much easier whining into my half-empty glass. After all,

The falling leaves warn of harsh winter days.
New leaders need to resusciate a nation long dead.
Nothing can replace the warmth of a nursing child.

I’d be lying if I said family always comes first. On days like today, I’ve totally ignored all wants and most needs of my boys in an effort to do justice to my work. It was almost like my first day back from my maternity leave, where I got so engrossed in a nasty production issue that I’d forgotten Nibbles was away from me for the first time. Heck, I went on to have a memory glitch that made me forget that Nibbles even existed. By lunchtime, the mommyness rushed back like a sneeze, in an unappetizing mix of nausea, shock and guilt.

I never forgot again. But yes, there are days like today, when I didn’t realize that Big Byte fell asleep hungry and Nibbles exhausted himself to sleep on my boob while I ran meaningless scripts. It’s not like anything I was doing held a fraction of importance compared to making sure they were doing ok after I abandoned them for my weekly escape cubicle sentence. I should’ve jumped straight down that chute when I trashed the remnants of their day – an empty box of Yo Baby yogurt stuffed with bottles of Miller Lite.

It’s weird how the very same wild hair, torn jeans and faded T that made me feel like a maverick *sic* pre-Nibbles makes me feel downright frumpy and aunty-like these days. In fact, the same do that made me look 16 pre-Nibbles, makes me look at least a decade older that I am now (and no, I don’t look 26).

In a rare break from inertia, I figured it’s best I do something about it. My pledge to not let pyjamas become a second skin has decidedly been chucked. But today, my fat ass found itself planted on a revolving salon chair (what was that satellite music video?) because Big Byte could not take another refrain of how “I haaate my hair!”.

I don’t deal well with folks in the service industry. I can’t talk to waiters, kaamwalis or any human who is providing me a service without turning red and apologetic for not doing the task myself. So I’m not too surprised that I surrendered my mangled mane to the excited hands of a hairstylist with nothing more than a sheepish nod to do as he pleased. Should I have been afraid , considering how bald he was? I suppose it’s not as bad as a dentist with horrible teeth.

A few snips and heavy duty blowdrying later, I looked like a classic after picture. Big Byte and Nibbles chimed all the appropriate oohs, and I was beginning to remember what it felt like to be sexy. That was, of course, until I let the cruel chlorinated jersey city showers rain down my tresses till I was left with a curly mop that looks like a poodle’s butt. Won’t be a shocker then if somebody is a tad bitchy tomorrow. Woof!

As my ex-boss would say, the shit has officially hit the fan.

Responding to Priya’s post regarding resentment towards Wall Street bankers; let me start off by saying that I do not applaud the demise of entire firms on the Street. I have friends at Lehman with mortgages and kids, and know too well that it could’ve been me.

Like any production issue in the corporate IT world, we need a goat. Who’s to blame? Accountability is a toughie. It’s not like all the toxic paper built up overnight. Being part of the Street ecosystem, albeit on the fungal ranks, I do feel the need to swallow my share of the blame. Yeah, yeah, enough with the hysterical laughing already – a lowly CoHo, an IT CoHo, thinks she can take credit (cheap pun intended) for any for this.

After all, when I pocketed a fat bonus for what could only be considered mediocre code at a software firm, I tried to justify it by saying that my project helped improve performance so that the traders could get more trades in faster and hence rake in more $$$ faster. I wasn’t aware of the nature of those trades, but perhaps I should’ve been (blissful ignorance and all).

It doesn’t mean that I’m going to step forward and say, “Sorry, you can take back X portion of my bonus because we screwed up”. Besides the fact that I’m not that magnanimous, I have no clue how to calculate X. And I’m not sure exactly whom to return the money to. Uncle Sam? Uncle Hank?

Ironically enough, for all the people that rejoice in the fact the laid-off Streeters will know what it feels like to be one of them, they too will know how it feels to be part of a high risk game, thanks to the bailout. Again, not a juvenilie stick-my-tongue-right-back-at-you moment.

Honestly, I don’t really know what’s going on and my crystal ball’s looking mighty foggy of late. No points for stating the obvious, eh? Instead of being responsible, educating myself and doing something about it, I’m just going to sit back and toss the problem at the country’s taxpayers because something’s gotta be done before everybody gets fucked. Oh, what’s that? Everybody’s already fucked, you say? Ah, then, time to stock up on cheap vodka and nutella. It’s a long, cold winter ahead.
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This spring, we were trying to recruit women from top universities into Dream Company and a common response was, “No thanks; you guys are evil”. This was before the crisis. It was also my response fresh out of school, at my anti-capitalist best. Of course, it’s a toss between evil corporations and doing research funded by the military so…So for the first time in a long time, this makes sense to me:

A long long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died

So, bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my chevy to the levee
But the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

It seems selfish, foolish even, to think of quitting a coveted job in Dream Company when the shitty economy seems doomed for the long haul.

Why can’t I have that blasted cake and lick the icing off it too?