Farm Living is the Life for Me

If you don’t have the song from Green Acres running through your head, please turn back now.  Your kind are not welcome here 😉

I spend my days in a cube farm.  I wish it were a real farm, but alas, it’s not.  Instead of cultivating veggies, I spend my day toiling nuts.  Again I wish these were peanuts or macadamias but I’m working with real nuts in the form of the general public.  It’ll be a long time before I spill the beans on what I “do”.  Be assured when I no longer do what I do, I tell all sorts of dirty little secrets.  Until then you are taunted with vague innuendos.

My office is one of the most unhealthy places I’ve ever been.  it’s a fat farm of sorts.  Instead of going to get thin, it’s where you go to get fat.  and not just kinda fat, my office has so many unhealthy people, the  ambulances have a frequent flier program.  When we moved into our new office, a coworker of mine (who is a visitor here) said she was slightly offended that instead of encouraging us to get healthy, they just bought bigger chairs for the lunchroom.  and these chairs aren’t just bigger, for most of us, these are considered a love seat.

I worry about a lot of my coworkers.  They never leave the building.  They walk only from their desk to the copier and back.  They make one trip a day to the ice machine so they have enough ice to keep their gallon of diet pepsi cold for the day.   In the 3 years I have been in this office, 2 women I have worked closely with have had strokes.  Of course these women both race for the door on their break to smoke as much as they can in 15 minutes before sitting back down to stress themselves out with more than they should.

While I am surrounded by a lot of unhealthy behavior, I have a lot of people around me who take extra measures to counter the cube farm chubbies.  I have a stash of Lean Cuisine in my freezer as my back-up lunch.  last week, when I ran out of everything else, I rode up in the elevator with the fella who sits next to me.  He looked at my box lunch and at morning break brought me an orange.  He said you don’t have anything fresh today.  Oh, I have a bunch of bananas I stashed in my desk, thanks tho.  No really… You need something fresh.  and leaves me with the orange.  It was tasty.  I am quite grateful that I am surrounded by such wonderful people.

I have another co-worker who, while we have never actually been formally introduced, we rib each other and joke in the isles.  Of late, we have been leaving each other smiles and notes on each other’s desk.  We work opposite schedules.  I get in early and leave a post it and he leaves a note after I leave for the day that I’ll find in the morning.  I look forward to seeing what I’ll walk into each morning.

Another thing I love each day is the handsome man who walks around and gives me a morning hug or a scratch on the back if I’m too busy to stop and say hello.  He smells divine, not too much cologne, just enough that I know he’s walked by.  That of course is counter weighted by the woman who sits around the corner from me who smells kinda off.  She’s so nice, but one of those who’s unhealthily over weight.  I worry about that she’ll be the next one rolled out on a gurney.

I’ve been working a lot of over time lately.  The more I work, the greater effort I make to be healthy.  I make sure I get my 8 hours a night.  I’ve been bad this week because it has been POURING during lunch, so I’ve only been on a few walks.  I feel the cube crazies creeping in when I don’t get my walk.  The fresh air is a magic cure for the cooties I pick up every day.  I’m able to shake off the craziness of the morning and fuels me to deal with the afternoon.

Thanks for listening to my work rant.  I make such a point in MY life to surround myself with carefully selected people that is is hard to spend so much of my time with people who are just mice on a wheel who don’t care where they are or where they are going.  and a special  thanks to those who noted that I wasn’t here much this week.  I was busy “working” 😉  If this is a bit jumbled or rambling, I apologize, that’s just what my head is like right now.

What do you do to stay healthy when there are so many bad choices within such easy reach?  and How do you stay sane in your office?