Why I Don't Mind Bringing Home the Bacon

I have been working since I was 16.  Half my life has been spent going to a job, coming home from a job, getting fired from a job (my first ... oopsie!), looking for a new job and simultaneously loving and cursing said job.  

The one thing that has always made going to work worthwhile were the coworkers.  The actual work has been interesting at times, but not half as entertaining as the people I work with.  When I look at my collection of friends, a lot of them have come from previous employers and I wouldn't trade any of them for the world.  No matter how hard they try and get rid of me.  I can find the fun peeps anywhere, even at this job

Today I was scouting recipes, instead of calculating the host of acronyms I should have been calculating, and I came across a spring vegetable soup recipe with goat cheese croutons that I had just started to print out when I got distracted by a rubber band that went whizzing by my head.  This wasn't just any rubber band.  This was industrial strength--large, wide and with enough force to literally blow a section of my hair up off my head.

"Sorry!"  J & L shouted.  So Ems, looking for distraction as much as I was, and I sauntered over and pulled up two feet of the remaining desk space in J's cube.  We promptly started discussing the following:

• Ins and outs of fanny pack wearing and how much you'd have to get paid to wear one for a year.  The price tag was a reasonable $10,000. 
• The baby shower extravaganza this weekend where we were promised no games.  And by "no games" they meant melting chocolate bars into diapers and passing them around to see who could guess what kind of candy bars were inside.  Related question:  Was the peanut filled candy bar really necessary?  
• The unanimous decision that the best part of the shower was when this chick's husband thought that the string he cut for the game "guess the size of new mommy's belly by cutting a string and then measuring it to see how close you are!" was really to see how big her boobs had gotten.  I love having guys at baby showers.  (And future husband?  If you're reading?  First of all, hi.  You're super cute.  And if we ever have kids ... do you want kids by the way?  Anyway, if we have them, you're coming to the shower.  It's going to be held in a box at a baseball game and there will be NO games except for the one being played on the field.)
  
• J announced to the group that my bracelet was "the fucking ugliest bracelet he had ever seen in his entire life." (It so isn't.)  
• The multitude of broken bones we've all had.  (I so won).

We all eventually sauntered back to our desks and I waited to smile until I sat down.  There is no way these guys are going to know that I actually LIKE them.  I fully maintain my cover that I merely TOLERATE them.  But then K sent out an e-mail that read:  

Subject:  Buds

"I really like jawing with you guys.  I consider you good friends.  But if you want to think of me as a casual acquaintance, that's okay too."

And NO way in hell I'll ever admit that brought a tear to my eye, but it so did.