Author Archives: Cathy

IF SUPERVISING AN OFFICE WAS LIKE BEING A PARENT

·You would have to assure your employees that every time you got up to leave your desk you would be right back. Really.

·Employees would follow you into the bathroom, asking you “pertinent” questions that simply could not wait 5 minutes.

·You would be responsible for providing employee meals, making sure they are nutritionally balanced and that they ate it all. Or no dessert.

·Paper cuts would entail a 15-minute comfort period, and a cute character bandage for the injured party as well as the co-worker with a sympathy “owie”. Worker’s compensation would require a kiss on the injured area and/or a cookie.

·When your partner comes into the office after being out all day or on a business trip, all of the employees cheer, ignoring you and the last directive you issued.

·Out of office meetings must not delay employees’ lunch hour (this is a union rule).

·Employees would require daily reminders to keep their office supplies off of the floor (“Because if someone steps on that stapler and breaks it you’re not getting another one.”).

·Office parties would inevitably end in crying jags and cake on the ceiling.

·You would be required to take your vacations with your employees and go someplace that interests them.

·Only after your employees are gone for the day can you get any work accomplished.

ANGELINA JOLIE AND GENETICS

I was plucking my eyebrows one recent evening and thought, “I bet Angelina Jolie isn’t home on a Saturday night doing such exciting personal grooming.” (Though, with three children now, perhaps she is.) And for some reason, my science geek brain did a sudden leap to genetics.

Why is it that Angelina and I share darn close to one hundred percent of basic genetic material, and yet she looks like, well, Angelina Jolie, and I look like me? She has dark hair. I have dark hair. She has lips. I have lips. Okay, not THOSE lips. She has a killer body. I have…I have lips.

Legs, arms, the whole inventory is there.

And yet it’s not.

We humans share 98-99% of our genetic material with chimpanzees and there is no doubt which of us are humans and which of us are apes (certain individuals to be excepted). You’d think that something as close as 99% would have more physical resemblance. Ninety-nine percent of a pie is pretty damned close to a whole pie. (This may be one of many reasons why I don’t look like Angelina—I think in terms of food a lot.)

But think about it. There are six billion people on this planet. With the exception of identical twins, no two people have exactly the same genetic make up. And think about all the folks who have died. How much are the odds altered when you count all the dead genetic material and still don’t find an exact match? What are the odds of two totally unrelated people having the exact genetic material, sitting on their chromosomes in the exact same way, and producing two identical copies? The statistical perturbation is mind numbing.

I’m sure somewhere out there is a geneticist and/or a statistician champing at the bit to give me an answer. Please hold all comments until the end of the program. I know there is more to our genetic make up than the 46 chromosomes we have. And I do not envy the people trying to untangle the mysteries of it all. Thanks, I’ll stick to writing. But when I see the incredible amount of diversity there is in this world, and how the flip-flop of a single gene or molecule can give us such variety, I am awed.

But as much as I admire physical and intellectual excellence, it’s probably a good thing we aren’t all Angelina Jolies. Or Albert Einsteins. Or Cathy Pegaus, for that matter.

The chimps already have a hard time telling us apart.

I appreciate how lucky I am that I can stay home and work on my writing (when I’m not surfing the ‘Net or I.M.-ing friends) rather than have to go out into the real world and find a job. So my life should be fairly easy, or so you’d think. But alas, things go as awry for domestic goddesses such as myself as they do for anyone. I won’t go into details because what may be a snafu-filled day for me would probably make a more organized person sneer with contempt. I admit I have my wimpy days.

So for me, I know it’s been a rough week when the hype about a disposable razor lives up to its claims of smooth skin without irritation and brings a tear to my eye.

What’s yours?