Bettie Bookish

Will you GO to LUNCH!*

Overheard in my office today:

"Pomegranate juice is for closers."

*Will you GO to LUNCH!

So it's like that

Me: I had this terrible dream that I was working for a really awful hippie restaurant. And it was a scam, too, because the owner made us all buy these big broom skirts and satin shirts she was importing from Asia.

HSH: Oh, honey. That's the only kind of restaurant that would ever hire you.

A little diversification

For about a year, I was writing a column for a couple of different outlets called Shopsy. It was about shopping, which I actually hate doing. All the more reason for me to love shopping blogs.

It's no longer running anywhere because the pulp-based publishers decided that the column should be devoted exclusively to local products available in local brick-and-mortar shops, in order to better serve the local community by being really, really local and other stuff, like local.

Also, that made it easier for them to sell ads to local shops, which was the real reason for the mandate.

Whatever.

But because I really did like writing it, I've decided to keep it going as a blog.

So, go ahead. Get a little Shopsy.

The kids

Tomorrow, Bee will start kindergarten. Actually it's a 4yo, Montessori-brand kindergarten. She has picked out her best dress and packed her backpack. She is ready.

Also tomorrow, I will be going to my third day of work at the school Bee and Posey attend.

Q. Have you always really liked working with kids?

A. Um, not really.

Q. Are you just doing this for the tuition break?

A. Initially, yes.

Q. Do you really love it like crazy and wish it paid something even close to a living wage?

A. Absolutely.

For the past couple days, I've been helping in the childcare department, working mostly with kids in the 1st-3rd grade level. I will be perfectly honest and tell you that that age group is not my favorite. Today, for example, I had to put the kybosh (?) on a game that involved digging in the dirt and then taking backrub breaks. Younger kids wouldn't have done it, and older kids would have been sneakier about touching each other.

I am the wife of a teacher, so I have absorbed by osmosis a sense of what it is like to work with kids. My HSH tells me that I do not have The Teacher Voice. Apparently, that's the voice that can call everyone in a room to attention AND MAKE THEM DO WHAT YOU SAY.

Seriously - I don't even have an adult voice. It's a challenge.

What thrills and kills me is the way you can see the adult versions of these kids, even now when they're only 6 and 7.

I see my husband in a smart, sensitive kid who gets things on a level his peers don't yet. But he comes up with a game based on a movie they all love (and he gives himself a role with authority), so he gets along with everyone.

I see my sister-in-law, Lila in a little girl who is meticulous and supersmart and genial. Today, as all the kids were digging in a wide indention on the playground, she was taking two shovels, and using one as a mallet to help her chisel away at the earth. I told her she looked like an archaeologist, and she launched into a long description of her "ancient finds."

Her brother has been diagnosed with Aspergers, and is already feeling the social repercussions.

Another boy on the playground has leukemia, and a port that "kinda freaked out" a couple members of the summer daycare staff when it came time to apply sunscreen.

And another girl is Muslim and Eastern European, so that she and her siblings have names that the other kids think are unusual. Today was their last day of summer daycare before tomorrow's first day of school. I asked her if she was excited about school.

"No. I hate school. Jenny and Sophie hate me and aren't friends with me. No one is friends with me. I hate school."

I wish there were a way to tell her, "Yes. I know. It sucks. But it will get better.  Sure, you'll have to go through the next 10 years of school, during which you'll probably  be marginalized and pushed aside because you're amazingly smart, and you wear a hijab. But on the other side, you'll find things are a little better. Not perfect. Never perfect. But better."

I could not tell her that. So instead, we played a noncompetitive game of tetherball. It's not a bad way to go.

Vocation, schmocation

No, I am not up here making cider and knitting shawls from babysoft a!paca fleece, as my friend Beppe has asserted. And we are all safe and sound. Mostly I've been working a lot, trying to cobble together half a living from several different sources.

Also, apparently the last post I wrote was tagged as a draft, so it never got online.

I'll make it up to you, baby. I promise.

In the meantime, here are a few of the things I've been doing instead of blogging:

Writing Web site copy for businesses that sell things like industr!al e!ectrical systems or manufactur3d homes.

Watching "House."

Writing marketing case studies.

Being an !thaca Mom.

Registering for school.

Experiencing highly stressful teen problems.

Taking my academic adviser's advice and thinking about why I'm majoring in marketing, and what I might want to study were I to attend graduate school.

Realizing that I would have ZERO interest in studying marketing or anything like it in graduate school.

Finding this program.

Thinking I need to exercise more.

Vowing not to sit down every night and snack until I fall into a sleepy, salt-and-chocolate-induced coma.

Breaking that vow. Because, salt? Chocolate? Are you kidding me?

Thinking about blogging without actually, you know, doing it.

Impolite noises

After lunch today, my Hot Shot Husband was driving me back to work, and our Little Bee was sitting in the backseat.

"We're not sitting at the dinner table," she observed, "so I can make this noise: Schkrunnnnq*."

*Sound of toddler making weird nasal, throaty slurpy noise that would, indeed, be disruptive at the dinner table.

She's a smart one, my girl.

And she probably updates her blog at least once a day.

But then, she doesn't have a real grownup-type job.

I do.

And I'll admit that it has been difficult for me these past couple weeks to keep everything neatly in its row and marching along. Some things have fallen by the wayside as I have recalled just how exhausting a real grownup-type job can be. (Hint: Pretty exhausting.)

There were more than two days in a row this week when I found myself too tired to wash my hair.

And now, after a couple months of waiting and basically giving up any hope of progress, I have gotten a call from the college to which I applied, and I am scheduled for an interview on Thursday.

Holy crap. What am I thinking?

Meanwhile, I think I may know what I want to be when I grow up.

Don't stop. Believing.

Aaaaand, we still haven't closed on the house. BUT the last thing I heard yesterday afternoon was that the massive shift of paperwork from lender to title company was well underway, and closure is expected this morning as soon as the title company has The Package in hand. Heh. Real estate is filthy. So keep wishing, chanting, crossing and whatever else it is you do. As a reward, as soon as the house closes, I will treat you to a long rambling post about the part of my childhood spent in that house. (Hint: It was the craziest saddest funniest part!) But in case my mother is reading my blog from the Great Beyond, don't worry - I'll make you look good. So, um, you don't have to do anything, um, supernatural-like to further delay this transaction. Athough, I have to hand it to you, the hurricane is a nice, poetic touch. Brava. (Edited to add: As of 1:26 p.m., The Package has not arrived yet. Tick tock. My options as I see them: - Start drinking now. - Start sleeping now. - Eat a plate of nachos the size and weight of my own head. - With a nice stiff drink. - And a nap. Sweet Jeebus. I know it seems awfully shallow to spend so much angst on a real estate deal. But, friends, you should understand that I need this sale to happen three weeks ago just to snatch subsistence from the bloodthirsty jaws of utter financial ruin.) BLOWING UP THE BUILDING WITH THE F-BOMB Once upon a time, and for a very long time, I had a real job. I was expected to show up more-or-less in the morning hours, and I stayed until a respectable quitting time. Sometimes, I stayed far past a respectable quitting time. I stayed until that time when you are so tired and taxed that you take a break to cry in the ladies' room. And you're not the only one in there. I wore grown-up shoes and grown-up clothes and I got my hair cut on a regular basis. There were some things I liked about it. The money. The rare occasions when a good idea actually came to fruition. The good friends I met. There was so much more that I hated about it. The money, which was abysmal. After I left, I discovered my pay - as a member of low-middle management - was less than the pay received by several people in positions I had held 5+ years earlier. And I was a real producer, too. I wasn't just skating by, cashing my checks and drinking free coffee in the break room. I also hated the fact that, more often than not, the mediocre ideas were the ones that came to fruition. Mediocrity was lauded and celebrated and felt up under the skirt, over the knickers. That's not a metaphor. But mostly, I hated the emotional terrorism. Have you ever worked (or, I guess, lived) with someone who wears you down like a sandblaster of negativity and criticism to the point where all your features are as vague as the Sphynx and all you can manage in that person's presence is a little defensive twitching? The most insideous talent possessed by people like that is that, after thumping you consistently enough on the forehead, they can stop. They can save their energy. They don't have to criticize your every move any more, because they've trained you to criticize yourself on their behalf. They can go about their days confident in the knowledge that, back at the office, everyone is simmering with a loathing that they can't help but turn on themselves. "I finished these TPS reports, but I'll bet it still won't be good enough for that fucking prick Oscar Goldman. God I hate that guy. I can just hear him now, 'Why are these reports so short? You should have put in more T and less P and S. And I thought we talked about you not wearing track suits to work any more...' I hate him. Why does he always do this to me? I should quit." See how remarkably efficient that method is? Oscar is off kissing ass at Rotary, while all his employees are cutting themselves at the knees. That's why it's emotional terrorism. The actual short-lived but unexpected assaults give way to the constant threat of further assault. And it is that threat which paralyses some people and prevents them from moving on. (I don't have first-hand knowledge of this, but I understand that this is also an effective and monstrous parenting technique, as well as a way to ensure miserable romantic relationships.) Maybe you've never been there. Maybe you've always been in a position where you could stand up for yourself, or stand up for someone else, or quit in the middle of your workday with a big ole smile. I haven't been that lucky. I had to get cancer before I could quit. And now, I am attempting to get another real job. And I keep wondering how I can protect myself from that terrorized environment. It's not like it's advertised. Like any good abuser, the person who leads like that comes on initially with a welcoming hand and an expansive heart. You might even get a little praise. It's only after you're enmeshed that the emotional terrorist convinces you that the praise wasn't quite earned, and that hand doesn't seem nearly so welcoming when you see the back of it arcing in your direction. I suppose you just have to be ready to walk out. Or at the very least, you have to be able to kick the terrorists out of your head and refuse to abuse yourself on their behalf.

Don't jinx anything

Now, don't get excited. Please. Don't act like anything big has happened. Please.

It's just that we have made an offer on a house. We have made an offer on a house in New York. We have made an offer on a house in a New York hamlet.

Although we have word that the owner "seems positive," we haven't been accepted yet. He's using the old "my wife is on her way to Sweden" delay tactic. If I had a nickel....

We will probably hear back sometime over the weekend.

I have butterflies in my stomach - both the "oooooh, I hope, I hope, I hope.." variety and the "holy crap, what the hell are we doing...." variety. Kind of like having children.

In other news, I spent two days this week putting on big girl clothes and attending a two-day conference where I made - get this - actual business contacts. Look at me! Ain't I the stuff?

I am hoping that this will lead to greater opportunities to speak to groups about how people in hospitals should be treated really well - above and beyond the basic medical care stuff. Like, you should be nice to them.

I know - it's shocking.

And I have been invited to speak to two different groups loosely affiliated to churches.

People are asking me what I charge. I don't have an answer.

Anyone out there do speaking engagements? Anyone out there who can tell me what to charge in the beginning?

Anyone out there know when I became the kind of person who is asked to speak? I am so much more comfortable being told to shut up.