Yeah. This was a repeated nightmare for me every time I went to sleep at night and had a temp gig the next day. I thought I was going to be throttled by my boss. I was the PA from hell and all I could say was "Fuck!"

Dear Ether,

“Errrrm, can you repeat that for me again?”  I think I must have said that at least 15 times a day when I answered the phone. I was working as a temp for a very important VP for a marketing firm in London.  I had enough trouble pronouncing HIS surname (and was too afraid to ask him for the 100^th time to correct me) and felt like I should be wearing the tallest dunce cap in the building.

I began temping while I was writing my dissertation for my Master’s.  I didn’t need to travel into Uni any longer so I was able to work during the day and write at night.  PA work paid the best and because of my typing speed and my “lovely disposition” I was the perfect candidate for the gig.  The only problem was I stank at it.

I couldn’t make coffee (instant included) for the life of me.  My hand trembled so much when I presented the java to the folks in meetings there was more of the stuff on the saucers than there was in their cups.  And tea!  Forget it!  I would always turn crimson with an apology saying that we Yanks were rubbish at making the stuff and beware of the hemlock that was to come.  I couldn’t figure out the phone systems and would disconnect people—like the CEO.  I couldn’t even get tasks like photocopying right.  The damned thing would always jam when I tried to use it and it would take me 20 minutes to make one Xerox which I’m sure made my boss wonder where the hell I’d been.  Oh, and forget ever booking a meeting room correctly.  Ha!  If you wanted Room A, you’d always get Room B at the wrong time and in the year 2013.  And as I wrote above, not only could I never understand anyone on the phone, I was so flustered to get their name correct, I often forgot to take down their details.  I was the temp from hell.  Every Friday I would, with a huge lump in my throat, go into the office of whomever I was working for, and ask them to sign my timesheet.  I knew I didn’t deserve the cash—except that I had shown up on time and sat there for 8 hours.  I caused far more calamity than I did calm.

One time a gentleman called and I asked his name.  Forgive my spelling (I’ll do my best) but he said, “Rude Wank.”  I couldn’t believe it.  There was silence on the phone.  How was I going to tell my boss that a guy named Rude Wank needed to chat with him? I was so worried that I got the name wrong AGAIN and was going to go in there and make a fool of myself that I was almost inclined to forget about the message, but Mr. Wank said it was urgent.  This was the piest de la resistance.  I knew that fucking this up would be my utter downfall.  I walked into his office, and bless him, the poor bloke never gave me a hideous glare (though he was pleased to hear that I didn’t intend on making a career out of being a PA) and being the immature idiot that I was, entered like a bumbling schmuck.  “Uhh…yeah..I….ummm…just got…errr….this call….oh man……Rude Wank…..he said it was urgent.”  “Who called?” he asked.  Fuck me….I knew that was it.  I was going to back out of the room like he was Elizabeth the 1^st and I was a fucking servant and then run like the wind.  “Uh, Rude.  Rude WANK.”  “Blimey.  Okay.  That’s an interesting…well anyway. Thank you.”  It turned out that was a common Dutch name and I’d actually gotten the bloody name right, but jesus, pit stains were never heavier than that day.

The more skills you claimed to have, the more dosh you got.  So, of course I claimed to have many more abilities than I indeed had training in (hey, rent needed to be paid) so I claimed I was a master at Powerpoint, and excelled in, well, Excel!  BIG mistake.  I was called in for a PA gig where my main job was to work with dreaded Excel spreadsheets.  I thought I was computer savvy and could hack it.  Oh my god.  Have you ever tried Excel without testing yourself on it first?  That software is the DEVIL!  I ended up going to IT, begging for mercy about 6 times during the day, buying a lovely woman lunch, and having her do my work for me.  I called my agency that afternoon and told them I was coming down with a cold and couldn’t complete the rest of the week.

But, because none of these polite gents ever complained, I kept getting work!!!!! I couldn’t believe it.  But then D-day happened.  I was sent to a very high-end advertising agency.  I was to be there 2 days.  My job was to help the guy type, type, type.  I was given a hand over for all the typing(ironically with a girl with a missing digit) and she was lovely, but I smelled bad news immediately.  The guy was head of the joint, mean as hell and I was shitting my pants.  The irony of this temp job was that I actually could do it!  Typing was my forte.  But he was scary and mean.  Nothing I did was good enough.  Mr. X was a rotund man with a face that was beet red and he looked liked he was going to keel over from a heart-attack any minute.  His office had a large easel with a beautiful oversized coffee table book of designs that probably cost a fortune.  He also had a very precarious stack of art books that were at least as tall as me (I’m 5’6).  Shaking in my boots, he asked me to come in and put the books away.  They “bothered” him.  Easy right?  I was so scared with him being in the room watching me with his swollen, beady eyes. I took 2 books from the pile, but the balance must have altered and they came crashing down.  FUCK!   There had been a tea and coffee cart there from a previous meeting.  They hit that and it caused the beverages to become like a waterfall in the air landing on his precious book on the easel.  Did I mention his desk looked like Armageddon had come?  His computer was knocked off, his keyboard dangled on its side.  The red laser of his mouse kept flickering for mercy as it swung back and forth like a pendulum.  His tea was all over his desk calendar and paperwork and his trousers were soaked.  This all happened within 1 minute.  I didn’t know what to do.  I kept repeating the words “sorry” and “oh my god,” but he was silent.  And I knew like deadly Vesuvius, silence was going to turn into a violent eruption…and it did.  He screamed bloody murder.  After verbally abusing me for a good two minutes at the top of his lungs, two gentleman from offices next to his came to escort me out.  They told me to go home.  I tried explaining to my agency.  They quietly listened (it really wasn’t my fault!) and told me they’d be in touch.  I never heard from them again.  Truthfully, I could have sought out other recruitment offices to hire me (they are a dime a dozen in London).  But I was SO done with being a PA.  It was hard, not rewarding and I really was horrible at it.

It’s funny.  I’m excellent at very difficult tasks.  Writing under hideous deadlines.  Making a shoot work in impossible situations.  Working with PR’s to get that one of a kind Gucci dress that Vogue wants but I sweet talk them into lending to me.  And if you need to get an interview with a celeb that won’t talk—they are butter in my hands.  But, send me to fax something and I am dumb as rocks.

As I got more advanced in my career, I ended up with a lovely assistant and also girls who I oversaw who answered to me.  I made sure to be beyond kind, patient and to never forget my years as a PA.  That and being a waitress I reckon, are two of the hardest jobs out there (well, besides hard labor).  Being someone else’s brain/Blackberry.  Whoa.  So this is an ode to all of you assistant’s out in the ether.  The ones with the pictures on cork boards and plants on your desks to give something to call your own.  I hear you.  I really do.  And to bosses out there—be more forgiving.  The job may seem easy because they are sweating bullets to make it appear seamless.  But it is an unbelievable undertaking.  Give a holiday bonus.  Give them a gift here and there.  And just say well done every so often.  And if you ever get a temp who stinks like me, pay em’ off for the week and send them home.  You’re better off.  Unless you like having stained trousers, fucked up E-mails and reservations a Cicconi’s in Los Angeles instead of London (LOL!).

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365

Roses represent life and death. They adorn coffins and newborn's bedrooms. Snag a finger on a thorn and you bleed, but make it to the top and you get to the heart of the flower and benefit from its growth. But a rose without a scent? Why that's like a violin without strings! I think this world has become so mass-produced that it is even taking the most natural things away from nature.

Dear Ether, 

I went into a florist and saw the most delightful array of roses.  Crimson reds with blackened borders.  Blush pinks that looked the same shade as ballerina’s tutus.  Yellow the color of custard. White’s purer than the fluffiest cloud.  I touched their delicate petals and their texture was fragile but strong enough to withstand just enough pressure to let my fingertips glide along their ridges.  Long green stems with glistening, emerald colored leaves were placed amongst yellowed thorns.  

And, sticking my nose into this magnificent array of beauty—-I smelled nothing.  I expected to be hit with glistening florals, sparkly citrus and mind-blowing musks.  But all I smelled was an icy-wet odor of stale refrigeration and wet grass.  What a horrible illusion these beautiful sirens were!  

I remember my summers in England and Los Angeles.  The wild roses blossoming madly on the sides of roads or in people’s gardens.  The tea roses omitting their sweet smell as they basked in the sun.  The giants heads of other varieties blowing in the wind and the breeze capturing their heavenly headiness and just closing my eyes and taking it all in. 

I remember my mother bought me my first fragrance when I was a little girl.  It was very cheap—and simply called “Tea Rose” by a no name perfume company.  I LOVED it.  It captured everything that I thought a rose should be in a little bottle. I used to dab it on my wrist every night before bed and let it lull me to sleep dreaming of a madman’s trellis filled with roses and me standing under it’s canopy sniffing its fantastical fumes.  

And, you sure as hell bet that when I went to Borough Market in London for the first time, I bought rose flavored ice cream.  And my first purchase from Colombia Road market in Shoreditch—a dozen long-stem red roses that were so perfectly formed they looked like tea cups!  

My first fragrance from Jo Malone (on of my favorite perfumers) was Red Roses Cologne and for my senior prom I wore real baby blossoms woven through my bun to match my dress.  

So, when I went into this florist, seeing my old, dear friends, with no smell, I was so sad to see that they had been created in a hybrid hothouse, mass-produced for their looks.  Did no one care about scent anymore?  I asked the florist, and she said that garden roses didn’t last as long, were much more fragile and didn’t come in the varieties that the mass produced ones did.  She said refrigeration and picking them too quickly stole their aroma.  She told me that very upscale boutique florists had magnificent smelling collections and that they could be special ordered—but for a hefty price. 

The next day I went to a local garden center and perused their rose section.  Ahhh, what wonderful names they have come up with.  If you’ve ever visited the rose garden in June in Greenwich Park in England I’d recommend it.  It smells magnificent and they too, have fabulous names for their varieties.  I decided on a stunning sterling silver rose bush.  The owner promised that over time it would produce fragrant, sweet smelling roses that would have full heads and would be a glamorous shade of silvery-purple.  

As my plant was being loaded into my car I felt like I was adding another rose into the world that gave the air some scent—some beauty.  That, especially in Los Angeles, where everything is so concrete and polluted, I wanted to stick my nose in something natural and beautiful again.  I wanted to close my eyes and have my senses overwhelm me. 

Every rose has it’s thorn, but then again, sometimes it’s worth getting nicked to feel something and reap the reward of its beauty than to not have any experience at all.  

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365

A braid is made of a sequence of ties and twists--sort of like life. The hairstyle has lasted generation after generation, just like our families and their stories. Funny how something so seemingly simple as hair can be so very complicated.

Dear Ether, 

I have incredibly long chestnut brown hair.  It hits my shoulders and is styled in a simple blunt cut with a few layers in the front (a few hairdressers have begged me to snip more but I’m one tough cookie in that chair). It’s not dyed and I’ve been told it has a lovely reddish hue.  I’m not a slave to any particular product. I use what I’ve been given for free.  My hair is in healthy condition and falls in very lustrous waves when I brush it (though I usually wear it in a loose bun because I can’t be bothered to tame my mane).  

Why write about my hair? Well, I just saw my great-grandmother’s chopped off braid that my mother has gently kept and cherished for almost 90 years.  What shocked me was that a woman, whose lineage I share but never met, had the exact color and radiant locks that I do now when shears took that braid from the nape of her neck almost a century ago.  Everyone else in my family has black hair.  She and I are the only ones who have the reddish chestnut shade (so I’m told).  It was mind-blowing to look at an actual piece of what makes who I am and that was passed down from my gene pool.  My mom said that her grandmother, when she finally chopped the braid off, cried for hours and when her husband came home, turned over a table, and left the house fuming!  I asked my mom why she cut it off and she said she felt that she was too told to have such long hair.  

So, when is there a “cut-off” for having long hair?  When I was in high school I saw the film “Sliding-Doors” with Gwyneth Paltrow and HAD to have her boyish style.  I went for it, and I looked damned good.  But, I found short hair to be a nuisance and more maintenance and after 2 long years, grew it out.  I’ve had long tresses ever since.  I want to hold on to my length for as long as possible.  I love the way it looks, but it also gives me a certain air of youth.  I know that people would disagree and say that hair length has no age. But the hairdressers I’ve worked with have said that it does come to a certain point where you just get a bit too old to have long hair like mine.  Sometimes I do see older ladies with gray hair who have uber long braids swaying back and forth against their waists (usually tied with a scrunchie…hmmmm….) and that’s fine….but I will admit, an older grandmother type with a sleek, short, layered coif looks a helluva lot better than one with wiry granny coils. 

For now, I will enjoy the extra ten minutes it takes to shampoo and condition.  To do a hot oil treatment once a week to combat split ends and dry spells.  Because eventually I won’t be able to have my Rapunzel-do, and I wanna enjoy it while it lasts. The day will come when I take a final inhale, braid my hair, tie it with a band, snip it off and delicately wrap it for the next generation.  If hers holds up, maybe mine will have the honor of sitting next to that of my great-grandmother.  And who knows, long after I’m gone, a little girl with chestnut hair will unwrap our parcel and touch her own head and realize that she comes from souls who once existed that have given her the radiant locks she twirls every day.  And through our braids, our stories will be told and memories will be “brushed” through too.    

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365