zeldafitz

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Bury My Heart...Under My Desk

It's 7:00 a.m. and I'm at my desk, where I was at 7:00 p.m. last night. Impressed? Why not?

It's dark and rainy. And dark. I put my hand on Daisy's soft hair, as she lay in her crib this morning, and kissed Nick goodbye in the family room. Just in case I bit the dust in the rain on the Beltway on my way into work--they could always say, "My mother said goodbye to me before..." Pass me a hanky.

This has probably been the weirdest seven months of my life. Glad you came along! My job these past seven months has been like having finals week, senior year of college, six times in seven months. Seriously, that same clammy, caffeinated, artificial, buzzy nervous feeling ALL THE TIME. Coupled with a semi-permanent case of nausea. And it's not too easy to talk about, as I have found, BECAUSE if you say, "I'm busy," or "I've been working REALLY hard," people don't like it. You know why? Because they feel threatened by it BECAUSE it seems like you are implying that THEY don't work hard. Which is OK because NO ONE works hard. Trust me. But I do. Or, I have been. There, I'll leave it at that because I don't want you to feel threatened and defensive too.

It's been a rushed time of carefully encapsulated pleasures and disappointments. Cape Cod and Minnesota were the highlights, as were the dinner parties and the visitors and the parks and all of our wonderful friends. But it was far too "calibrated" for my spontaneous self. Out of necessity.

Then MZA lost his job, but we remained cool, then our beloved nanny quit. Last Friday. With no notice. And that sent me reeling. Because that constituted too many balls of uncertainty in the air.

At the same time, I was going on this relentless round of interviews, back and forth. Call backs and phone interviews and TESTS, for God's sake. I was just contacted by another place and they sent me two grueling tests that I am just looking at like, wha'? I told the woman I couldn't come in this week for an interview because I AM SO FUCKING BUSY (maybe she felt threatened?) and so she scheduled it for next week. AND THEN sent me these two tests that have to be completed by tomorrow. She said I could finish them "in a few hours." I'm thinking, lady, I don't have a "few hours" to call my own right now. I just don't. And the other thing that is giving me pause is that when she was setting it up with me she gave me the Downtown DC address of the office and she said, "Are you familiar with the Downtown DC grid?"

Yes, I am familiar with the "Downtown DC grid," in the sense that there is no logical "grid" in DC BECAUSE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A CURLICUED FRENCHMAN who believed in circles and diagonal lines.

So that question torqued me. Being as how it's the city of my birth and all. I should have said, "I've been throwing up in alleys in the 'Downtown DC grid' since before you were born, sister!" Do you think that would have gone over well? God help me if she Googles my name and finds these furtive ruminations...

The other hitch was that in the instructions on the "test," it says to re-write something to make it more compelling, "Be aggressive." Uh-oh. That gave me pause. And I'm not trying to be negative or anything, but usually when I am given pause by something, there is a damn good reason. Listen to your heart!

And remember to: NOTICE WHEN YOU'RE HAPPY!!!!!