paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- searching for change in the sofa The past couple of days, I�ve been searching for self-confidence the way people scrounge around in sofa cushions and old purses at the sound of the ice cream truck. Yesterday I just could not do anything right, yet the day was a success. And at the end of it, I won a minor battle in my struggle for happiness. Tuesday night I left the soaker hose on all night. And by Wednesday morning, we had a small little creek forging its way across the basement and down the floor drain. Quinn was quite alarmed and so I began my day feeling completely stupid. And on big meeting day when I was going to get out in front of design group as assistant director and facilitate a bunch of people with more degrees than me and more salary than me and carve out a future for my little initiative at big bureaucracy. It is a big leap to go from executive staff assistant, making the coffee and answering the phone, to assistant director. And I was nervous that others would think the whole prospect did not make sense. I read an article in The Sun that did not sit well with me at all. It made me cringe in an all-day-way. Then I left the house and dropped Quinn off at work so I could have the car and noticed that my shirt had that weird musty dry-clean/smelly shoes sort of smell. It was about 100 and it was all over. When I got to the meeting location, I had to park two blocks away and haul a giant box of handouts. Working up a sweat, and because the big bureaucracy is out of money, it was hot in the room. So I did not get to cool down. But then, her directorship showed up at my meeting and gave me a wonderful introduction to the group. About how I left my other job where I did amazing things because I believed in what we were trying to do. How I was willing to start at the bottom. So, she stopped just short of saying, �her meteoric rise to the Plexiglas ceiling is no whim.� And this made me happy. I found enough change in the sofa, you might say, to get the ice cream sandwich. I picked Quinn up at work and we were going to go to the public house for big salads and beers as a celebration. And on the way, I had one minor driving miscalculation. Our traffic is much worse than anyone would imagine traffic in this mid-size city to be. And sometimes just to miscalculate can make a tight situation. I was turning left and a bus was turning right. But the bus got wedged between lanes of traffic and could not complete the turn, and I was out in the intersection. I did not want to put myself on the end of the bus, because I thought it might be lodged there a while. So I had to move into the lane on the right from the very middle of the road with cars zipping and honking all around me. I felt like a hayseed. People are caddie in this city and tend to do everything conceivable to avoid being seen as a hayseed. Showing disapproval is important, so I got the honks. In my heart of heats, I know the hayseed would have pulled up behind the bus, and caused some big traffic backup. I made up for it by getting a really close parking spot to the public house in the tightest, tiniest parking lot. Yet, I continued this inability to do anything �right.� Today my boss came in sat down in front of my desk. I have great news, she said, the best news all year. I thought, since I was there hard at work, that maybe she had brought in funding for something�. No, she and her husband had a bobcat stroll up their gravel drive. They watched it with binoculars. It probably feels like the directorships are friends because they have shot a few rabbits and tossed them in various ditches out by the main road. I do believe bobcats dine on rabbits. She and her husband have a palatial county estate about 60 miles north of the city. They are proud of the coyote, the wild turkeys and now their bobcat friend. Mother�s lesbian friends are coming in to town. And we are all getting together for a cookout. Mother and her husband Major Sensible together with four lesbians. Do we all get together because Mother likes to assemble all of the lesbians she knows for a big, ostentatious meal and too much wine? Is it a way of showing support to the four of us, because we all know that she cannot handle it in a factual, upfront way. Why talk directly about something when it is so much more satisfying to maneuver around it. When a giant cow is in the middle of the road, you don�t drive up to it and ask it to move. It is a cow. Cows don�t speak our language. You maneuver around the cow, making as many observations as possible, and not letting on to anyone that you felt in the slightest way, inconvenienced. The lesbian foursome has several cows in the road, cows our hosts know nothing about. One is ancient, one is old and the other is past. The ancient cow has been in the road since 1990. I came into town for Major Sensible�s fortieth birthday party from Boston, where I was living at the time. It was a surprise party and a surprise trip. One of Mother�s friends, who once worked as an intern in Mother�s office, was at this party. We talked a bit during the evening and I think I developed a one-evening crush on her, in that sort of innocent I'm 19 way. And when she offered to give me a ride in her car which she got from her Aunt, I'm afraid that I flirted with her. Although I had had a bit too much to drink -- it might be that the next day I wished I had flirted with her. What I remember most was that I arrived late at the next event and that a couple people noticed, so we must have gotten to chatting. Then much later, I called this friend of Mother�s because she had a partner and they had a social relationship with mother and Major Sensible, just a bit shocking because Mother and Major Sensible are conservative Republicans and do things �right.� So I surprised this friend of Mothers by asking her how she shared the news with Mother. And she hadn�t. It would devastate Mother, she said, and Mother would have no support system in Major Sensible to handle it. In fact, no one knew about she and her partner. Except somehow I knew. Basically, I called her up and upset her, which still sort of haunts me along with any flirting I might have done in the car a few years back. A few years after that Quinn and I tried to be friends with the two of them, but it never worked out. We did a couple things and that was it. We could never really figure it out, but I think it has something to with the cows, with the former intern�s feeling that my Mother was sort of a mentor to her, with a perception that Quinn and I were more out than the two of them. Anyway, Saturday night is the big cookout. And the occasion is looming down on me not unlike my 15-year high school reunion. Quinn and I will go and laugh and joke and chat our way around those cows in the road, never letting on that they are there�. And at the end, we will say that we had more fun than we thought we would. We will remember just how nice and how funny the friends are and how important the cows are, too. Tomorrow is Friday. Her directorship will be in, surprise of surprises. And I planned a long lunch with the former work friend� oh well. I�ve been working really, really hard lately. I�m going to keep searching for that self confidence�.. 11:03 p.m. - 2002-06-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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