This afternoon my mom and I did our monthly wedding planning meeting. We sat down and hashed out a reasonably firm guest list, and then revisited the whole issue of where to hold the reception. This decision is a bit complicated by some of the ideas my mom’s had for the entertainment. I’m not so sure a sword fight should be indoors in a room full of people wearing nice clothes – regardless of whether it might be appropriate to the period of the wedding or not. But some of the other ideas will still work…and now that we have some good numbers, it looks like we can finally decide on a place to hold this little shindig.

There are times when I think that I’m not getting into this wedding thing as much as I should. Perhaps it’s just that I’m comparing my reaction to the wedding itself to that of my friends and sisters who’ve gotten married. My older sister dithered over the color of the napkins. I’ve friends who seriously pondered ice sculptures, developed nervous tics over flower arrangements, and agonized over getting just the right cake server. I dunno – as a full-blooded female, aren’t I supposed to be getting giddy with anticipation by now? Shouldn’t I be poring through bridal magazines and pondering china patterns and pricing extravagant wedding gowns? The mere thought of attending one of those bridal faires makes me shudder. I went to enough of those with friends and sisters, thank you. No more. Please, no more.

Getting married to Richard will be the single best decision I’ll make in my life – I have no doubts at all on that. It’s just the wedding that seems to be the issue. But do I really have to care about whether all the candles match, and really, who ever saves most of the favors you get from weddings anyway? Is this yet another one of those areas where I’m lacking in the whole ‘girly’ thing again?

If I actually think about it logically though, I know that it’s because of what we’re actually doing with this theme. The very nature of the theme means that all the ‘normal’ wedding things – foofy wedding dresses, bridesmaid gowns that my friends will never forgive me for, trying to match cumberbunds to the color of the balloons – none of that applies. I haven’t a clue yet as to what color the bridesmaids will be wearing, but the very nature of this theme means that I can get away with having everyone in different colors (although I’m sure my bridesmaids are horribly disappointed that they won’t be wearing the Madonna dress). I’ve got ideas – bits and pieces of random thoughts scribbled down on paper between my mom and me – but nothing concrete. And it doesn’t help that right now my brain is focused much more on the overwhelming volume of decisions that still have to be made for this house that has begin to spring up on what was once a lot of weed-infested dirt. My saving grace for this so far has been that my mom has jumped into this theme whole-heartedly. By picking this theme, I ended up inadvertantly giving her a research project, and there’s nothing she likes better than that. So between the two of us – especially after the brunt of the house stuff is finally taken care of and I can actually *think* about wedding stuff – it will all turn out just fine.

That is, of course, if we can find enough big white candles, and we can figure out where to rent candalabras, and if I can find a seamstress to sew my gown, and if we can get spats that look like leather boots for the groomsmen and…and…sigh.

Sitting in traffic yesterday morning, I saw a man flossing his teeth. It struck me as more than a bit odd, until I pondered the fact that he probably is stuck in this same traffic every morning. I suppose at least he’s doing something productive with the time.

I was in traffic because I had to drive down to my company’s corporate office yesterday. I got up early, thinking I was budgeting enough time to get there, but I hadn’t counted on the accident that backed up traffic for nearly an hour right before the bridge. Luckily the only thing I missed was the presentation on what it’s like to be a consultant at my company. Somehow, I have a sneaky feeling I already know what that’s like…

I spent exactly the same amount of time on the road to get there as I did in interviews with three of the directors. The man who organized this called last week and gave me an impossible choice – either show up at this recruiting day for the interviews, or gosh, they might just find someone else and then well, they’d have to let me interview, but the unspoken part was that it would be moot by then. We’re in the middle of the hardest and most crucial part of development on this project, but I left for a day, for this. It’s not as if I had much of a choice – it just couldn’t have come at a worse time. At least what it meant was that I did well enough in the initial phone interview that they wanted to see me again.

I think it went well, although it’s always hard to guess when you’re intimately involved in the situation. My manager called and left a message saying that the feedback she’d received was that I did really well. Of course there’s the nice factor that could be in play here – they know that I’m one of her group, so they said it to be nice, but I think I’d rather pretend, at least for now, that it’s true. I realized while I was down there that I’m once again trying to make a big leap in my career path without going through the proper channels…but why should I stop what’s seemed to be a relative successful trend so far, right? And if these interviews amount to naught, at least some good came out of my taking the day to drive down there.

I managed to finally drop off my defective laptops (replacement #1 and replacement #2) so that the support guy could try to diagnose it face to face instead of over the phone. Several phone conversations later, he let me know that it’s fixed. Finally. Five hours round trip in the car was worth that at least.

And because I managed to get home in early afternoon while it was still light enough to see, I swung by the lot on the way, and….

We have trenches! Yes! Holes in the ground marking out where our house. It’s finally started! I sat in my nice warm car and watched several obscure machines, piloted by flannel shirted, bearded men, digging holes. They’ve finally broken ground! I sat there and excitedly tried to describe what I was seeing to Richard over the phone, but between my extreme lack of knowledge of what the heck these machines actually were, and the static of my oh-so-wonderful (NOT!) cell phone, but I’m not sure quite how good a job I did. It looks small now that it’s marked out. I remember this from watching other things being built, so at least I’m prepared for it, and I know that once the walls are in place, everything will be just fine. Last night, we came back to take pictures, and to drag my mom out to see the trenches, and the mysterious piles of wood, and of course, the adorable little baby bulldozer (that would be the Bobcat, by the way), in the yard. And now that it’s all laid out on the ground, one thing has become quite clear.

We are going to have one *huge* backyard. The builder says it’ll take five months. Now that it’s finally started, I can barely wait.

t was late at night, the fog so thick that she could barely see, huddled forward over the steering wheel, trying to peer an extra few feet into the murk in front of her, only able to see shapes when they were nearly upon her, like the shadowy figures that suddenly appeared, one at a time, around her car, keeping pace, even though it didn’t occur to her exhausted brain til minutes later that they had to have been running awfully fast to keep up with her, and then they got closer and she saw the gleam of reddened eyes and the steel in their hands, and suddenly wide awake from shock and horror she sped up, despite her inability to see through the fog, but still they kept up, til one reached out one hand (paw?) and grasped the door handle and -*****blink*****

It was late at night, the fog like pea soup in front of the car, lights casting uneven pools of visibility before her vehicle as she inched her way home. She was tired, so tired, and it was nearly impossible to see anything at all, so she drove slowly – but still, when the shape ran into the road in front of her, she didn’t see it until it was directly upon her, and then the heavy thunk as she hit it, and it fell to the road, to one side, and she slammed on her brakes, heart pounding, eyes straining to see outside the window til finally she turned off the engine and stepped outside of her car to see if the thing she had hit was badly hurt, and as she approached it where it lay in the middle of the road, it rolled toward her and got to its feet in one fluid motion, and she could see that despite the blood dripping from one side of its head, it was otherwise unharmed, but it was also angry, and it snarled, and then –

*****blink*****

It was late at night, the fog so thick that she could barely see in front of her car, and then there were lights ahead, strange lights, and she slowed down even further because she thought at first that perhaps there had been an accident, because the lights were flashing and there were other colors besides yellow and white – blue and red – so she thought at first it was a police car, but then as she drew closer she realized that it was most certainly not a police car but something far more bizarre – a strange craft hovering just above the road and emitting a low hum that seemed to permeate her car and nestled in the base of her spine, and she pondered several options including getting out, and then perhaps trying to drive around it, and then maybe turning around and backtracking down the road and taking the highway like she probably should have instead of the back roads that were quicker to get home but less well traveled, but it was as she was pondering that she realized that she couldn’t turn the wheel; couldn’t move; and then there was something moving toward the car through the mist and she couldn’t even –

****blink****

It was late at night, the fog settled on the road in front of her as if a cloud has become suddenly too tired and felt the need to take a quick nap. She drove, not paying much attention to the distance, just driving, tired, sleepy, wanting to get home, hunched over the steering wheel watching for anything ahead of her because this fog was really too thick to see, and it wasn’t until she had been driving for quite some time when it occurred to her that it had been too long and she should have seen the lights of her town by now, and there were no other cars on the road, and so she started to pay attention more, straining to see the sides of the road, looking for street signs, looking for *anything* at all, but to her growing horror there was nothing, and as she watched the odometer click away the miles without seeing any sign of anything familiar she realized that she was –

****blink****

It was late at night and she had been out with her mom, staying up too late so they were both tired and giddy and when she left the house the fog which had only been a sparse mist earlier that evening was so thick it was nearly impossible to see. She drove slowly, tensed over the steering wheel, ignoring the blackness behind her because that always unnerved her when driving in the fog, trying her best to stay awake because she was tired, so very tired, and then finally the lights of town ahead of her, and she turned into her own driveway and she was –

-home

We went to see a play Friday night – the second in the season for the local theater company from which we purchased season tickets. The first play was Chess, which we really enjoyed. This one, however, was a different story. They did Oliver. Or perhaps I should say, they *tried* to do Oliver. My dad, with his musical background, was wincing at the fact that not only was the violin accompanist horribly off beat and all over the score, but they hadn’t even bothered to tune the piano – and it was obvious. I started to cringe as soon as the little boy playing the main character started to sing, and it didn’t get much better. Richard summed it up rather nicely afterwards. “Self direction and self-choreography usually doesn’t work”.

The good thing, I suppose, is that at the very least, a bad play certainly gives you something to talk about. We headed out to dinner afterwards with my parents (since they’ve got tickets for seats right next to us), where we alternated between joking about how truly bad that production really was, rolling our eyes at the current state of the election, and breaking into helpless giggles about a certain Snickers commercial that’s been running these past few weeks.

We went to a Bed and Breakfast this weekend down in Monterey – a trip that was eagerly anticipated, and proved to be definitely worth the wait. The inn was more beautiful than the pictures gave credit, and we both desperately needed the chance to relax and just spend some time with each other, whether in companionable silence while reading beside the open windows, strolling through Cannery Row hand in hand, or chatting with a tableful of strangers at breakfast. We fell asleep to the sound of seals barking, and woke up to a beautiful clear, sunny day. On the way back home, we stopped off at Richard’s parents’ place so that they could see Spiff (and experience the Seatbelts of Doom in the backseat). It was a weekend of fun and relaxation, and a chance to learn some new things:

• Richard and his father will try anything if you dip it in BBQ sauce and then dare them (cinnamon rolls and pecan pie, for example).
• Artichoke plants look sort of like ferns, and brussel sprouts don’t.
• There are people out there who will eat deep-fried artichokes. I am basing this on the fact that we saw several signs advertising them at little produce stands along the way.
• Feather beds are much more comfortable than I’d expected.
• They ran out of imagination when naming the cities on Highway 1, shortly before Monterey. We passed through Seaside, Seascape, and Marina, for example.
• We can live for two days without access to our computers, but that’s the first thing we headed for when we got home.
• If the Charlie’s Angels movie was accurately based on the TV show (which I never did see), then the TV show was incredibly stupid. The movie was wonderful – delightfully campy and fun – but the I shudder to think of how inane that TV show must really have been.

And lastly, and most important, for anyone who has seen that particular Snickers commercial mentioned above, all you have to do to incite hysterical giggles is to put some small object on their shoulder, and then in a cartoony sort of voice, babble out “I invented pants!”

I have been frustrated at the lack of time I have had in the past four to five months for exercise. I would dearly love to start up Tae Kwon Do again (okay I’m hopelessly uncoordinated and look like a crippled moose when I do front kicks, but at least it’s a fun workout). However, my schedule just hasn’t made that likely, and with the wedding less than a year away, I really have been getting more and more antsy to try to at least to *something* to get myself back into shape. And I know myself well enough that if I didn’t get something that I liked, I wouldn’t do it. So after work on Friday, Richard and I headed to the new Galleria mall in Roseville to look at treadmills.

We tried out probably half a dozen of them in the department store while the clerk waited patiently. They’re fancy little contraptions with blinking lights and pulse monitors, some with hand weights, some with ski poles. We poked and prodded and pressed buttons, but eventually decided on a model to bring home.

Then the fun began. We went downstairs to pick it up. The guy brought out a box on a dolly. We took one look at the box, he took one look at Richard’s car, and we all three immediately realized that there was no way in the world that thing was going to fit. So back upstairs to see about delivery. No can do. Can we order it? Nope – can’t do that either. I was just about to sigh and jot down the model number and see if maybe we could find it online when the clerk who’d been helping us called his wife to tell her he’d be a bit late, and then volunteered to follow us home with the box in his truck.

He wouldn’t let us fill up his tank with gas. He helped us drag this extremely heavy box into the house. He drove nearly two hours out of his way to help two strangers who could have probably just as easily broken down and rented a U-haul for a day to get this home. We didn’t ask – he just offered. Before he left we at least managed to get his name so we could call his manager. We realize that they probably frown on their employees doing this sort of thing, so we’re not going to mention exactly what he did. We just want his manager to know how much we appreciated his service. If he gets a pat on the back and recognition from his employers as to how awesome he truly is, then that’s the least we can do.

So now we have a treadmill. We set it up last night, peering at directions in tiny print while we attached the legs and arms, all with the oh-so-useful assistance of several curious cats. Most of them were happily distracted, however, by the presence of the huge box in which the treadmill came. I was good and used it this morning, and loved it. I’m hoping that this will last.

On a side note, the box is still sitting in the middle of the living room. The cats are having too much fun with it and we really aren’t intending to have people over any time soon, and I always feel so guilty about taking something away from them that they really enjoy……and so just one more of the many reasons why I’m hopelessly in love with Richard is because he doesn’t mind if the box sits there for a few days, and not only that, he is perfectly happy to help me build them a boxy sort of maze with it later, when we move into the new house and have more space to put it.

But then, with a guy like this how many more reasons do I need?

I received this in email from the woman who was my Cadette and Senior Girl Scout troop leader back when I was in high school. As per her (and her father’s) request, I’m distributing this outward, posting this in lieu of an entry, just because it’s something to think about. I too have read the book of which he speaks, and found it disturbing, not for the plot itself, but for how truly plausible it could be.

The email read as follows:

The fallout from Tuesday’s elections has frustrated and depressed me terribly as it is so evident that few people understand why we even have the system we do. It has bothered my father, also. He was motivated to write the following which I think is awfully good and contains information which should be in the hearts of all in the country. He has given me permission to distribute it widely, knowing (as I hope) you will do the same. It’s important!
– Robin Pulliam

Are we adrift?

Carl Pulliam
November 10, 2000

More than sixty years ago when I was growing up, I read a science fiction novel about a huge spaceship that set out to colonize another world. It was large enough to house a complete eco-system capable of providing everything necessary for the survival of the colonists on their long journey to their new world. However, before they reached their destination the captain and his crew died.

The story begins generations later as the colony drifts aimlessly through space. The memory of the pilot remains only in legend and the purpose of the journey forgotten. The descendants of the original colonist now worship the “pilot” as a god and entry into the now sacred cockpit of the space craft is taboo. The technical and scientific books and manuals the original crew brought aboard are no longer understood and are now considered sacred texts in this society in their worship of the “pilot” and a secondary god, “the navigator”. Memory of this society that had forgotten its roots came back to me this week as I listened to discussions about the Electoral College. Much of our population today seems to have forgotten why we have the system we do, and they show little understanding of how the system functions. The founders of our country were leery of government power and went about designing a system in which it would be difficult for one person, group, or faction to gain an inordinate amount power — the result was the three branches of government with their checks and balances.

The founders were also fearful of mob rule as developed in France in the same decade. Therefore, they devised a representative type of government rather than a democracy in its fullest sense. And they designed the government to be essentially a union of sovereign states. If they had intended a national government to be supreme, they might have named the country Columbia instead of the United States of America. And they wouldn’t have called it a federal system. To avoid the tyranny of the majority, representation by population was limited to one house of the legislature. The Senate consists of two senators from each state, and for more than a century senators were selected by the legislatures of their respective states — not by direct vote of the people. Even with direct election, the senate represents states, big and small, on an equal basis.

As an additional measure to avoid the large states from dominating smaller one, the electoral college system was devised. But even after adopting the Constitution, the founders still did not believe they had done enough to limit the powers of the federal government, so the Bill of Rights was passed by the first congress and submitted to the states for ratification. Contrary to their name, these first ten amendments were designed primarily to limit the power of the central government. They did this by using often the phrase “Congress shall pass no law”, and lastly reserving all duties not specifically given to the federal government to the states or to the people thereof.

The federal government has expanded its role far beyond what the founders envisioned. And the courts have found “rights” in the Constitution that cannot literally be found there. One frequently in the news is abortion. While I favor abortion rights (at least in the early term), I can see nothing in the Constitution that either grants the right or denies it. Even in the absence of Roe v. Wade, I suspect abortion would be legal in most states. The Roe v. Wade decision does damage to the constitution and the rule of law. The Supreme Court justices overreached their authority in interpreting the constitution according to their own personal opinions — in effect legislating on a matter that should have been left to the states. Not only did the court act on this matter that should have been left to the states, it blurred the separation of power between it and the legislative branch of government.

And the biggest danger of all is interpreting the constitution to fit the mood of the day. This in effect would mean having no Constitution, and no guaranteed rights at all. Like the people in the drifting space ship, I fear much of our population has also lost the knowledge of what our government was intended to be and how it functions. Majority rule without protection for minorities, regions and individuals can lead to tyranny and persecution. Our government is designed to protect individuals and their property and to avoid the concentration of power in any one of the three branches. This separation is what makes it difficult to get things done. And this can be a blessing. It’s been said that the best government is the government that governs least.

Mussolini made the trains run on time in Italy, but stifled by fascism and communism in countries with central planning was the freedom and ingenuity of the people. Freedom, the rule of law, and the security of the individual in his person and property are what have released the ingenuity of the American people and made our country great, giving us the highest standard of living the world has ever seen. We may jeopardize all this by not knowing or remembering how and why we got here. Let’s not drift aimlessly through time and space.

I feel as if I’m poised on a cliff again. I’m standing at the very beginning of things. There is a knot in my stomach and my hands are shaking. I’m more nervous than I can remember being in a very long time. You wouldn’t think a simple phone call would do this to me, but well…it is. This afternoon I have an informal interview for this management position I’ve applied for. It’s hard to concentrate on the work I should be doing when my brain is turning round and round, trying to come up with any questions that this woman might end up asking me. And all the while praying to whatever deity may be listening that just once, this will be the afternoon that I don’t get a line of people at my desk with urgent questions; that I do not end up having to continually put this woman on hold because work gets in the way. And most important of all, that no one overhears and begins to suspect that I am actively trying to leave. There is a layer of guilt at the bottom of all of this about that – that I’m trying to leave a project in which I play too high-profile a role.

It’s just an interview. I’m not going anywhere, and chances are that nothing will come of this and then no one need ever know what I was trying to do. If I keep telling myself that, maybe I’ll be able to calm down.

I try to keep my mind on other things. Like the fact that despite the promised design freeze, and the development end date looming in less than two weeks, we are still being hit with requests to do more work. Like that fact that I’m now the proud owner of new, improved house plans, and a handful of city permits, and this time the start date is official. Monday they’ll mark it out. Tuesday they’ll begin trenching. I can only assume that involves digging. I’m hesitant to get too excited until they actually start, as rain is predicted for next week, and it would be just my luck for the house to be postponed yet again.

They’ve sent me another replacement for my laptop, so perhaps this one will work perfectly and I will not have to rely on the hardware support people at my company any more to figure out how to get around the lack of network connection, and refusal of my computer to recognize server names. I don’t know yet if it does – it’s still sitting in its box on my dining room table, waiting for me to have enough time to take it out and do a hard drive swap again. At least they helped me figure out how to get my email – a good thing too, since, just as I suspected, the woman with whom I’ll be interviewing replied to my work email, despite the plea to contact me elsewhere. But no matter. Such a slight needs no forgiveness – I saw the email the evening she sent it, and the important thing is that she wants to interview me.

The election, of course, is the best distraction of all. Since Tuesday afternoon, I’ve been hitting refresh on my browser every few hours to see what the vote count is now. I never paid so much attention to an election before. But the thought of another Republican in the White House sends chills down my spine. Oh, it won’t be so bad…if you’re white, male, and straight, but that man’s father tried and nearly succeeded in getting Roe vs. Wade appealed, and Bush himself is strongly against many of the issues that are near and dear to my heart. We are teetering on the edge of a leadership that could potentially result in setbacks for rights fought so hard for. Granted, Bush may have more of a personality than, but one should never elect a president based on personality. It’s the issues that matter…and those issues are currently hanging in the balance as the nation waits for the final tally. If I let myself, I can get all worked up about the situation, so I watch the gap between the two contenders dwindle more and more, and, like most of the rest of this country, just wish that it would finally be over.

Just a bit more time. In less than an hour she will call and I will have to do my best to not get nervous and giggle, to answer intelligently, to field questions from coworkers without letting them interrupt. And then all there is left to do is wait.

A few months ago, a small horde of us descended upon San Francisco, and after a rather fattening and laugh-saturated lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, we went to see Stomp. I loved it. A bunch of folks dancing and slapping and stomping and banging and making music on all sorts of bizarre things like kitchen sinks and newspapers, trash bags and license plates. It was marvelous. Kinda fun to try to imagine what sort of things might have inspired the creator to come up with some of his or her compositions.

I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep in the past few days. Ended up staying up way past midnight every night this weekend. Last night’s jaunt into wee-hours-of-the-night territory taught me that those folks from Stomp have left out one incredible site of inspiration. Perhaps they should incorporate it into their next tour. Really. There’s nothing quite so inspiring as sitting in a hospital, listening to the melodic harmony of the buzz of the portable x-ray machine intermingled with the occasional cough or snort from one of the other residents of the emergency room, the incessant beep of the whatever-they-were-monitoring boxes, and through it all, the underlying and steady hiss of the device they’d hooked Richard up to so he could breathe normally again. In between trying to figure out exactly on which part of the body they were operating on the woman in the bed across the room from us (she had blue nail polish on her toes. At least I hope it was nail polish. I do not even want to begin contemplating why else her toes were that color), and shortly before I started to doze off on the edge of his bed, I started bopping along to the rhythm til we were both giggling. Anything to make the time pass quicker.

Earlier yesterday evening, he came up to me as we were cleaning house and asked me if I was ready to try something new. He’d been short of breath for most of the day, and it was getting worse. I knew this was going to happen eventually but I guess I still wasn’t quite prepared for it. I drove him to the hospital and managed to muddle through about half the questions they asked in order to fill out their paperwork before I had to break down and go snag his Palm Pilot so I could get the rest of the info. At least now I know what sort of little spiffy facts I need to keep in a memo in my Palm, so I’m all set for next time. It was an odd little introduction to the darker side of asthma. There was someone else there with a bad asthma attack – a little boy carried in by his mother, the rest of the family in tow. I overheard his mom asking the nurse if they could remove the nasal tube because he’s much more used to the mask. I peeked in as we walked out. He seemed far too young to be ‘used’ to anything quite like that. I can’t imagine being that little boy’s mother.

At least the other two reasons why I didn’t get much sleep this weekend were a little more sedate. We went to see Pay It Forward Saturday night, after spending the day at the mall, getting an early start on Christmas shopping. Don’t worry – I’m not really all this with it; it’s just that my little sis is coming down for Thanksgiving, but not for Christmas, so we’re doing the exchanges between the whole family and her family then. That means I’ve got one month less to get their presents than I do anyone else….and it also means that of course we didn’t actually get anything for *them* while we were out. But it was a start. And the movie was good – a little bit of a tear-jerker at the end. Yes occasionally I’m just a sentimental sap. Give me an emotional movie – oh heck, even one of those sappy commercials they like to show around the holidays – and I’m sniffling into a Kleenex by the end.

Friday night’s reason was another one of those hours and hours sort of affairs, but at least this one was a bit more on the good side of excitement instead of the ‘let’s go see what the inside of the emergency room looks like’ type. We traded in Richard’s Geo Metro (the beer can on wheels, as he once so affectionately termed it) for a much nicer car. By the time we were filling out the financial paperwork, it was after 11pm, and both of us and the financial guy were trying desperately to pretend that we weren’t yawning our faces in two. But in the end, it was all good – Richard’s car has a new green coat, with four doors, all of which can be opened from the inside as well as the outside; air conditioning; windows that roll down; and best of all, it all comes without the miffed mouse sound that’s been singing merrily in his old Metro these past few months. And I’ll have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by the entire evening. We went to three different car dealerships and not one of the salesmen we talked to tried to push us into buying a car. I’m not sure if we were just incredibly lucky, or if this is a sign that perchance car salespeople are starting to catch a clue, but whatever the reason, it made what ended up a much longer evening than expected a little nicer than expected too.

And now, a bit of ER-inspired music as you go.

Beep beep snork sssssss creak. Wheeze hack. achoo!

Can’t you just see the crowd going wild when they dance to *that*?

My family names things. The microwave has a name. My mom’s stone goose has a name. The computer has a name, as does the vacuum cleaner, and of course all cars in our family have names. The name itself is important, since once the appliance / vehicle gets the name, that’s the way it stays. Replacing the item in question does not garner new naming status – it merely means that the item itself has gotten a ‘new coat’. My sisters and I, not one to flaunt such a tradition (I come from an eccentric family, in case you hadn’t already figured that out), have carried on the practice by naming not only our own stone geese, but our cars as well. My older sister drives Stuart. My younger sister has Gwendolyn. My parents have Agamemnon and Russell, and I have Lucy – named after a caramel colored tabby kitten I once fostered. It was as good a name as any, and considering that the kitten was, despite her small stature, afraid of nothing and no one (she was adopted by a family with a golden retriever, whom she very quickly trained to be afraid of her), it seemed an apt name for a car as well.

Lucy started white – ten years old, hatchback, with a rear-view mirror that stretched across the entire front window. I can’t remember now why it was that I thought this was a good idea, but back then I decided that I really should learn to drive a manual transmission, and going on the assumption that the best way to learn is to do, I figured that meant I ought to *buy* a five-speed as well. I bought her first coat from a young couple owned by two ferrets who found my shoes infinitely fascinating as I sat on their couch and signed the paperwork. That coat didn’t last long – one month later, having never gotten entirely comfortable with the whole clutch and gear-shifting thing, I rear-ended a woman who slammed on her brakes in front of me to make a turn. I couldn’t stop in time, and Lucy went crunch. So much for the car.

Next, Lucy became red – and this time an automatic. After the experience with the little hatchback, it was clear to me that I really wasn’t meant to drive a stick shift. The little Nissan Sentra was exactly what I was looking for – basic model with air conditioning (sort of mandatory in the California summer heat). I replaced the factory radio with one with a tape deck and my habit of cranking up the volume and singing along at the top of my lungs started with that car. I also got my first speeding ticket in that coat. I watched in my rear view mirror as the police car who’d passed me going the opposite way as I drove much too fast down the back country road, suddenly lurched into a u-turn and came back toward me. Heart pounding, I prayed he wasn’t coming after me, no he wasn’t, and then the lights started to flash and I was sunk. There are a lot of idiots on the road, you know. All you have to do to learn that is go to traffic school. These are not hard questions they ask, folks. This is your basic, common sense stuff. I left with a cleared record, the knowledge that back country roads are not a good place to speed, and a healthy fear of my fellow driver, because it seems that on the freeway, brains are apparently a luxury, and not a requirement.

When I got the Sentra, I decided that I needed to learn how to take care of it. I signed up for a basic auto maintenance class at the local adult school and spent one night a week for the next eight weeks in grubby coveralls, poking around inside engines, snarling at wheel bolts and impossible-to-reach oil filters, learning all about spark plugs and alternators and transmissions. Okay, so I’ve never actually broken down and changed the oil filter or any hoses or fluids since that class, but I figure at least I know *how*, just in case. Although I regret that I’ve forgotten far more than I remember from that class. The terms are familiar, but if you asked me to discuss how the engine works, I’d end up staring blankly at you in response.

Last year about this time, still reeling from a suddenly much-higher salary and the knowledge that I could actually afford to buy what I wanted instead of just something to get by, I sold the little Sentra and upgraded. This time, it’s no basic model. This time Lucy has all the bells and whistles – power everything, cruise control, keyless entry (I looooove keyless entry!). I also upgraded away from compact car status – although in crowded parking lots I do sometimes try to pretend that she’s still small enough to wedge into the spaces. I bought the Maxima based solely on color. Well, alright, that wasn’t the only factor, but I’d initially intended to purchase an Altima (okay, so in case you didn’t figure it out, I’m sort of biased to Nissans), and when I saw the dismal color selection (why the car manufacturers think that six different shades of white and beige are a choice is a mystery to me), I said what the heck, and went up a level in order to get a color I’d actually want to drive around in.

Through it all, there’s been one consistent factor. The color changed, as has the make, model, accessories, and transmission type, but I have always adored Lucy because she’s mine, all mine. I can forget to bring stuff in from the backseat. I can put different Fish on the back window (Darwin-fish and cat-fish….and I’m still searching for the alien-fish). I can program all the radio channels to stations that I like and crank them up when I’m driving. Back when I was in college, living in a college town, I didn’t need a car – I had a bike, and that plus the rather extensive bus system meant I could pretty much get anywhere I needed. Of course, I didn’t have a car back then – probably a good thing, in retrospect. Better to not know what I was missing.

I feel like I’m on a roller coaster. One moment I’m restless, fidgeting, unable to sit still, too full of energy and wanting desperately for something, anything to happen. The next moment it is as if I have run into a solid wall of exhaustion and I can barely think, let alone focus on anything. It flip-flops back and forth these days and I’m never quite sure when I’ll be wired, or when I’ll be tired. The only constant is that I feel a bit like a hamster on a wheel except there is no way to get off this darn thing. My tightrope is stretched far too tight and I’ve never been all that good at balancing on one foot.

The house is postponed. It was supposed to start this week, and our builder has everything waiting. He had the foundation guy all lined up, the lumber orders all set, but now he and I are basically sitting on our hands waiting for the engineer to get back to us. Something about a beam that apparently no one makes anymore. I should probably know more, but I’m not exactly sure that I would care too much right now, not with everything else going on. All I know is that he can’t start building and so we have to keep waiting and waiting. I hate waiting.

Work has reached a crisis level as well, but that and the house are not the main reasons why I am teetering on the edge of decision lately. I have made no secret of the fact that I want out of consulting, desperately, passionately want. The hours are killing me. It makes no difference that I enjoy the work and I like this project. All I know is that I’ve been itching to leave. This time last year I was actively working on switching to another department within my company when they dangled this project in front of me. I worked on the demo for this customer, and it’s within driving distance. I was weak. I snapped up the bait.

Another carrot is dangling before me now. There is the possibility of advancement, of leaving this position I hold, of finally getting a job where I’d have a real office much closer to home. There’d be travel, but it’d be minimal, maybe one or two days per week, and only to corporate offices, not flitting around the country or the globe on a moments’ notice like now. And it would be, in a way, an extension of what I’ve begun in this project.

Of course it comes at the worst possible time and I really don’t think I have a chance in hell of getting it because there are others out there who are far more qualified, but I’ve been encouraged by a number of people in my company – managers who insist that I would be good at this position and that I would be a fool not to at least try.

I agonized over a resume these past few days. How do I stretch my varied experiences into something resembling what the woman said they were looking for – how to wordsmith and wiggle and make myself sound far better than perhaps I honestly think I am. I was never cut out to be a salesperson, and yet here I am, trying to sell myself. It has been years since I wrote a resume. I barely remember how.

To add a wrinkle to the whole situation, my replacement laptop – the one for which I need yet another replacement now – will not only not connect to any network, but will also not allow me to access my email. In all my wildest worst case scenarios, the woman to whom my resume was sent will blithely ignore my small PS at the bottom of the letter indicating that my email access was nil and void, and send replies back to that account, then dismiss me because I cannot respond. If I think rationally, I realize that that isn’t likely the case – that she probably is taking time to read through all the resumes she has received, that she might have even dismissed mine outright and perhaps I’ll never hear another word, but that’s small comfort when I haven’t any way to actually verify whether this is true or not.

The ironic thing is that I’m still trying to figure out if I really want this position that I’m applying for. I would never have considered myself management material, yet here I am managing one of the biggest implementations for my company’s software and doing not a half-bad job at it either. Of course, I never would have imagined myself working with computers, period, since my degree (much good it has done me) was in Nutrition. I had lofty dreams at one time of becoming a professor, of teaching in a university and publishing research articles, of writing freelance for public companies. I floundered in graduate school once I realized – too early in the game – that I didn’t really want what I thought I had wanted and yet still felt as if I was stuck. When the chance to take that radical shift in careers came up, I was at a point in my life where I felt I had no other option but to take it. Leaving graduate school turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, but it could just have easily been a disaster.

My fear is that I’m looking at this new position in the same light; merely as a means to an end. I’d be a manager, having proven my worth in that position in a number of ways, although none in quite the same sense as this job would entail. But is the job appealing to me because of actuality, or simply, once again, as a way out? I am not harboring any hope of getting it. There was a part of me that thought perhaps I shouldn’t even mention the job here, because I fully expect that weeks later, I shall be posting an entry about how I didn’t get it. But sometimes there is this need to get it all out – to not just vent to someone in voice, but vent in writing, to somehow make it all clearer what I’m trying to work through, and so perhaps writing about all of this is simply more cathartic for me.

The main thing about this job is that I have to try. Those who’ve been encouraging me are right – I’d be a fool not to, no matter how slim the chances. So I’m spinning madly, standing before two doors, waiting to see if one will open, not quite sure what is behind it, only knowing that whatever it is, it might be better than what I’ve got now, it might be exactly what I’m looking for.

And then again. It might not.