Send The Chairs And Lamps All Scattering

And I'm brain-dead, I keep smiling.
- The Beta Band

October is proving to be the most recalcitrant month of the year, proceeding the way an impossible two-year old kid would, running around in wild zigzags and foiling all your attempts at capturing him. I can't recall missing as many hours of sleep in such a concentrated period, and the last time I let the stress score one over me was – well, in college. Now, my days are frighteningly predictable – I can hear the deadlines snarling away at me even before I get to my cubicle in the morning, way before I snap open my Inbox to check for new messages, updates, new assignments. Perhaps a message from some hotshot lawyer telling me that a rich, distant relative has died and named me the sole beneficiary of his sprawling estate, how about that, such a lucky lucky girl I've turned out to be!! Such good fortune, oh my god, can you belie--

Forget it, I don't have any rich, distant relatives anyway. And hotshot lawyers can't be expected to bear good news. And I want to have a donut right now, a Boston Kreme from Dunkin Donuts, all warm and yielding and sweet.

Wow, that was incoherent, even by my standards! Good job, Peachy. Oh yeah.

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Well, a number of folks have pointed out to me that this blog hasn't seen a new post in quite some time, and you're going to have to excuse me for that. I am not kidding when I say that this month is insane, this month should be bound up in a straitjacket and herded into the nearest sanatorium, it is a threat to society!

Look, work-related deadlines normally don't get to me this much, but work isn't the only thing I've been fretting about; since October reared its ugly head into the scene, I've been hounded by a slew of requirements for the Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC): the Orienteering make-up exams, the Red Cross Basic First Aid training, and the 15-kilometer run, among others. While I have all three cleanly out of the way, I still have Thursday's Interview to go through before I can properly qualify for the Induction Climb, which we're already planning obsessively for.

I'm getting the inaccurate, apocalyptic feeling that all this madness will never end. But it'll be over in a while. I have to trust that if I intend to remain functional. HOLY SHIT MY RIGHT HAND FELL OFF! Just kidding.

Hiya, Thing.

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So around two weeks ago, during a particularly oppressive week in the office, I stood up from my seat in my cubicle and tottered over to the washroom, hoping to rest my eyes for a minute or two. I hadn't gotten much sleep in the previous night, and by the time 2:00 rolled in, I was all set to fall into a coma, lovely and all-engulfing.

You're probably recoiling and thinking, Sleep in the bathroom?? Eeeww. But wait!! Because, look here, you haven't yet seen our office's washroom. It is a beauty, a real piece of work - or at least it is, as far as office bathrooms go. It's almost always kept immaculate, and the cleaning lady sees to it every night and makes sure it's spotless. And the tiles are all in this charming, dark shade of red, and the chrome bathroom fixtures wink at you when you flick open the light, and the toilet bowl always flushes in this agreeable, comely way. It's a peach of a bathroom, I swear to god.

Flush it all away, go!

Anyway, the plan was to sit in the corner with my knees drawn up to my chest and my back resting against the wall while napping for a few minutes. I'd done it before and pulled the stunt off without a hitch, so I was pretty confident about the whole enterprise; anyway, all I really needed was to close my eyes for just a few minutes. God, that feels so good, don't you just love catnaps, hmmm? Delicious, absolutely deliciousdsdgfl;ansd;f;askd;kwfkwdadlfkandfasdfddfjurwrwo--

--and the next thing I knew, somebody was bent over me, shaking me awake. "Peachy? Peach?"

I cracked open my eyes, blinked for a few moments, then shot up from the floor. "Huh-- um, ah, wow, oh my god, I'm so sorry, shit, I totally fell asleep, oh god, oh shit--"

"Um, okay ka lang?" It took me a second or two before I finally recognized Tin, one of the girls from the IT department. She had in one hand a set of keys, and she was looking at me curiously.

"Ah, yeah, I am. God, I'm so sorry, were you waiting a long time?" I stammered out.

"Mga 30 minutes. Tulog na tulog ka ah." She said, smiling.

It didn't take long before the entire office learned about it, and since then, I've been the butt of jokes, the sitting duck looking right at the end of a rifle barrel. Later, I learned that while I'd been knocked out on the bathroom floor for at least half an hour, folks had been trying without success to open the door, knocking on it fiercely to make sure that nobody was inside. And since they got no response, the only recourse left was to ask for the spare key from the Boss, and when they opened the door, voila! Peachy prostrate on the floor, drool curving down her chin. Quite a fetching sight, really.

People here haven't shown any signs of letting the incident pass, so when I'm making my way to the bathroom, they start grinning and saying stuff like, "Oy, huwag kang matulog, ha?" Or "Naku, baka inaantok ka nanaman." Or something like that. One of the guys even told me that they've reserved an award for me, which I should be receiving in one of the office's future parties. The Sleeping Beauty Award. I mean, WOW, I am touched, all this concern is just warming the cockles of my heart, you know? I have never felt more loved in my entire life, no shit.

Honestly, the situations I get myself into.
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