10:30

Amy came around the corner, her sweetly tapping footsteps announcing her approach seconds before she got to my doorway.

"Your 10:30 is here," she chimed as she swung her head around the door frame, flashing a smile half hidden by her mousy brown hair, and disappeared just as quickly, tapping back to her desk.

I pushed myself up in my brown pleather chair, reaching my hands toward the drop panel ceiling, trying to get some blood flowing back from where it had pooled in my fingertips and my butt to my brain. I stood and stretched out my legs and used my toes to slide my heels out from under my desk. Slipping them on as I walked out the door, I turned the corner to see my 10:30.

He was short, I noticed right away, and there were hints of tattoos peeping out from under the short sleeves of his slightly ragged navy blue polo. His baggy khaki pants only mostly covered his muddy boots. As I reached out to shake his hand, I noticed the wallet chain swinging from his pocket.

"Tom? I'm Sarah. Nice to meet you. Come on back."

He followed me up the hall and into my office where I gestured towards the seat he should take and shut the door. I introduced our company to him, our policies and beliefs and schedules, while he sat like a child hunched over on the small black office chair, the one no one wanted, nodding politely as I spoke.

"So now that you know about us, tell me about yourself."

"Well, what do you mean? What do you want to know?"

That's never a good sign, when someone hasn't rehearsed the easiest of all interview questions, the gimme. I explain I just want to know a little more about him, the stuff he didn't put on his resume. He speaks for about two minutes, in a gruff, low voice, never quite meeting my line of sight. He tells me about growing up in Illinois, how he met his wife while he was in the Navy, and she was from here, how they hadn't left even though he hadn't been able to find a job after getting laid off. He stopped short there, as if he was reluctant to go any further. I know why, I know how job searches are going lately.

I proceed with my interrogation, questions ranging from the leading and easy to the head-scratchers and sweat-inducers. He does fine for the most part, but he stumbles a few too many times, and I don't see us hiring him.

As I escort him to the door with promises to call soon, I already know that call will not be a pleasant one for either of us. I keep a smile on my face though-- no need to kill his hope now, although it seems as if he already knows too.

"Well, I hope you keep me in mind for this position. I know I'm not the most qualified, but I'm willing to learn."

I assure him I will and wave goodbye. If only it were that easy; I'd hire everyone.

like paper in the wind

Life has been all about change lately. Changing titles, changing offices, changing friends, changing seasons.

In the past, whenever I made a big life-changing decision, like when I transferred colleges, or when I broke up with the first long-time boyfriend, or when I moved to London, I would also change something dramatically about my appearance. When I transferred schools I started dressing differently, switching my colorful cardigans for black and red and vintage. I broke up with my long hair too when I ditched the boy, cutting off ten inches and then dying it from red to black. For London I had grown my hair out again and stopped wearing heels. (I still don't understand how women can wear heels on wet cobblestone streets without sliding and falling every other step.)

This time around, I suppose because there's so much change happening at once, I haven't altered myself physically in any way. I want to keep my hair long-- my husband likes it, and it gives me something to pull when I'm stressed out. My clothes and shoes are basically the same as they have been, although I suppose I've slowly but surely been sneaking in more pencil skirts and higher heels.

I don't like change. Change is a big part of my work and the industry I'm in, but in my personal life I don't like it. It's not that I'm stuck or that I'm afraid. I just really like the way things are, and I like to be in control. That's what it really is, right there, that I don't feel like I'm in control of my own life on days like today.

That's all life really is though, a series of changes, of small and larger occurrences in our life that lead us to change ourselves, alter our thought pattern, move away, stop talking to or start talking to someone, all these seemingly tiny decisions that one by one add up to a lifetime of changes.

For instance, if I had decided to let my orthodontist do what he wanted to my lower jaw and break and reset it (I have an overbite, but geez) my junior year of high school, I would have never gone to Europe on my senior trip that summer which means I would have never started dating my first boyfriend. If I hadn't been dating that first boyfriend when I went to college a year later, I would have chosen a different school perhaps, and then a year after that I never would have thought of transferring. We chose the new school together, where I eventually met the new boyfriend, who became the husband. There are lots of tiny choices in there too that affected the whole progression.

It's a butterfly effect, in a way, but it's all generated by me, by my choices, not just some random occurence, not really. I don't know that I believe in randomness, in haphazard chance, but I don't know that I believe in fate either.

I do know that the more things change in my life, the more I cling to the things that matter most to me, the things that I want to be the most unchanging, like my relationship with my husband and my family, and my internal voice. I don't want anything, random or planned, big or small, to alter those.

dreaming awake

The Beatles are crooning into my ear right now. Rubber Soul, "My Life." I don't really like the Beatles. Blasphemy?

My office door is closed, my eyes are half-closed, and my ears are stopped up with the sound of Pandora coming from my iPhone. I am closed today, lights off, on internal vacation, zoned out and turned way down. I can't deal today, I can't handle any more.

I do love Pandora. I have four stations, titled Tom Petty, Aimee Mann, Al Green, and Itzhak Perlman. For some reason I'm getting more Aimee and Itzhak type music this morning. I suppose my iPhone is so fancy and high tech it can read my mood and knows that I want to be lulled into calmness and peace this morning rather than jazzed up or rocked awake.

My boss just sent a very rude email to our lawyer calling the contract he made for us unprofessional and embarrassing. I feel my blood pressure rising.

Closing my eyes, drifting off now to a green field with violins and dandelions and a warm breeze...

Emily just came in. She was teasing me about my violin music but then told me a story of a kindergardener she saw once, a little African-American boy with thick glasses and a bowtie, who played a piece from Shindler's List on his violin so beautifully that she cried right there in the school auditorium. I invite her to my field for a little while, and we dance, but then we're pulled back to reality by another email, this time from the annoying marketing director, the ultimate yes-woman, kiss-ass, who is, what else, kissing the boss's ass.

Ear buds back in, Michael Jackson won't stop til he gets enough.

Calculating the time difference between India and the central time zone, trying to plan meetings for when the boss is away. If it's 9 a.m. here it's 7 p.m. there... so that means he could have meetings up until noon our time... right? Who cares, the Cranberries are playing.

I've used up two hours like this today. The new executive assistant still doesn't have her computer set up, a day and two hours into her tenure here. I informed purchasing that she needed one three days ago. Tech is ready and waiting to set her up. But she's chatting with the receptionist, I can hear them echoing in the high-ceilinged ceramic-tiled foyer, so she's fine.

Tom Petty is telling me it's time to move on, time to get going. If only it were that easy.

Grateful Thursday

1) It's been a tough week, a week of soul searching. I'm trying really hard to feel grateful about that. Work is so stressful lately. Is that what I want? Am I ok working this hard for the next few years in order to probably just work even harder for a few more so that I finally have financial freedom? Or would I be happier poor and stress-free? I suppose I am grateful to have that choice, even if I don't know how to make it.
2) My grandfather died three years ago this week. I am grateful to have had him in my life even if I do wish I could have had him a while longer.
3) The sun. I miss the sun. It's been raining for two weeks straight.
4) Shoes. I saw these terribly cute gray slouchy boots in the window of a shoe store today, and I'm definitely going back for them on Saturday. Do I need slouchy gray boots? Not exactly, but I'm sure I'll find a use for them.
5) Perspective. I'm listening to my husband yell and get angry at a football game on the tv, and I feel grateful that I've never been one to get so caught up and frazzled over something that in reality has no affect on my life whatsoever. I just sit here and listen to him yell and shake my head. Usually after an hour or so he'll calm down, although when he was younger he'd let it ruin his whole weekend. So I suppose I'm grateful for maturity as well.

who am I this year?

I need help. I have a problem, and so far none of my friends or my husband have been able to offer a solution. They have tried, offered advice, creatively tried to solve my quandary, texting and calling even at late night hours with answers thought up in their dreams or brainstormed over a snack. But so far, no one has been able to put an end to my worries, and the deadline approaches rapidly.

What should I be for Halloween?

My husband and I agree that Halloween is the best holiday ever invented. We met on Halloween, him in pleather pants and eyeliner, me in tall boots and spikey hair. On what other day of the year can you let your imagination run wild and be whomever you want to be, even if that person is a wild thing, a criminal, completely outside the norm of society, all without any consequences or repercussions from your foray into the jungle of the unknown?

Last year we were Amish. Yes, Amish, as in a long dress, no makeup, and a head covering and apron for me, and black pants, suspenders, and fake beard for my husband. People gasped when they saw us. Walking around town that night, going from bar to bar, we got the most varied reactions, from hysterical laughter to blank stares. One girl looked up at us from her bench, cigarette between her purple-gloved fingers, her mouth open in awe and confusion as we passed, finally screaming "Oh, you're Amish!" as we turned the corner out of sight.
The year before that we were Bonnie and Clyde. I love a fake gun, especially a fake Tommy gun, which is odd for someone who'd rather all guns be outlawed (somehow). I was sexy and dark in my black pencil skirt, high heels and beret while my husband was bad-boy handsome in his pinstriped suit with a narrow tie and fadora. We spent the night fake-shooting each other and talking about escaping the "coppers" with our loot.
But this year, this year I just don't know. Two of my friends are going as Mario and Luigi (which is funnier because one is a girl). Another couple will be Jeff (I think that's his name) and the dog from Blue's Clues. Husband and I like to match but I suppose we don't have to.

So I'm asking you, my creative and worldly readers and friends, help me! I only have a month left to get costumes together-- I need an idea, quick!

rain rain go away

Actually, although monsoon season apparently started here last weekend and has yet to let up, I am enjoying the rain today.

Rainy Sunday, a full belly, Bub by my side, husband snoring softly on his couch, and David Attenborough nature documentaries on tv... doesn't get much better than that.

Emily is fine now. I called our boss yesterday and told him to call her. I felt like a tattle-tale, but I couldn't stand to see her give up her job, running away with her tail between her legs, just because she was afraid of having an uncomfortable conversation with him. I think she was put out with me at first, but we're back to normal, and I think she's going to be moving into the marketing department, which is where she belonged from the beginning. And they're going to work out a spring schedule so she can go back to school at the same time. The best of all worlds.

I'm writing interview questions for an executive assistant candidate I'll be interviewing tomorrow. I wouldn't want to answer these:
What do you perceive as the worst part in your present/last job?
Tell me about a time when you had to stretch the truth for your boss? How did that make you feel?
If your boss called you with an idea or a request at 11 pm at night, how would you feel and what would you do?

But those are the qualities we need. I need someone who can get in his face and make him do what he's supposed to do. I'm too laid back, and frankly too busy with my own work, for that anymore.

My parents were here this weekend, came up to watch the football game at theirs and my alma mater. We won, thank goodness. They left me half a caramel cake they brought for a cookout they had with friends, and it's calling my name even though my stomach is swirling with tuna salad and broccoli cheese soup. I'll give it another hour. Maybe I'll just have cake for dinner.

I take that back about today not getting much better. I think cake for dinner would definitely make it better.

My eyes are starting to droop too. I was trying to take advantage of my husband's nap and get some work done without getting that "ugh, you're working on Sunday instead of paying attention to me" stare from him, but David's voice and the pitter-pattering of rain are working their magical wonder and putting me to sleep. Nap time.

build up to let down

This should be a grateful Thursday post. And while I do have things for which to be thankful, at the moment I've just recovered from a slight panic attack, so I'm mostly just grateful to have stopped crying.

Apparently the Bobs, (aka Norma in my case) liked me. She informed me and the rest of my company today that she will be coaching me and grooming me to be the general manager of the company for the future. My boss, the owner, will always be the head of the company, but he will maintain a creative position, the idea man if you will, the face, while I will run the actual business.

I saw it coming, like a deer bounding toward my car from a field beside the road, unable to stop it, too caught off guard in the suddenness of it all to even swerve or blow my horn. As the meeting went on and we laid out our new corporate structure, everyone taking their place in their appropriate boxes, I was taken aback again when Emily announced she would be taking a sales position. I never saw her as a salesperson. Sure, she has the personality for it, but not necessarily the stamina, and she'd be so much happier in marketing or PR. Up to now she had been doing training.

I calmed the panic I felt rising in my throat in the meeting. Sure, in five years we'll be a corporation with a couple hundred employees, if all goes to plan, but there's no reason I can't handle that. Do I want to handle that? Well, if I don't, all I have to say is no. So I'm ok with that. Amazed that they trust me and expect so much greatness from me, flattered, and emboldened.

I could tell Emily wasn't ok, though. She put on a good face, but something was off. I started to worry she was resenting the position they gave me and feeling left out or passed over, but we both know she doesn't have the detail-minded brain needed for a job like the one they gave me. I thought maybe she had just had a fight with her boyfriend (she recently revealed to me that she had been hooking up with one of our tech guys and it had gotten serious), but he seemed fine.

We left the office happy, joking about her puppies, wondering where she should move when her lease is up next month. No hints.

While simmering some blackeyed peas and mixing up the cornbread for dinner, I heard the distinctive cricket-like noise my computer makes when a new email comes through, and I glanced at it to see an email from Emily to me.

She quit.

She said she was telling me first because I was her friend, but also because I'm now head of HR as well. She wants to go back to school, and she's not happy in sales. I've been arguing my points all night-- why leave a good, well paying job where you like the people? You won't find better, especially not now. The semester's already started, so what will you do til January? Why move home and not stay here? What about the boyfriend? Why leave us in a lurch, knowing we need all the help we can get right now, and only give us two weeks-- not hardly enough time to replace you?

She hasn't told our boss yet. She knows he'll try to guilt her into staying.

She's the other half of my brain, my best friend, and my confidant in the office. I don't know what to do without her there. Halfway through my first email back to her, I started hyperventaliting and crying. It's silly, but with all the huge changes happening at work otherwise, that was the very last straw. I had to lay down on the couch and let my husband rub my back for a minute.

I'm ok now. We've sent back and forth several emails now, and I think I've talked her back from the ledge. She's going home for the weekend to chill out and think about everything. I've at least got her admitting that she needs to work for the next few months to allow us time to replace her and to make some money for school. And I remembered that this is just work. If it doesn't work out, for one reason or another, it doesn't, and I'll move on. She'll still be my friend.

What happens, happens, and it happens for a reason. It always works out in the end.

leaving Las Vegas

I don't think I've ever been so glad to be home in my life.

It was a good time, and I think the trade show went really well. But my coworkers are party-ers (whereas I am an old lady who likes to be in bed with her husband and her dog by 10:30), so several 2 a.m. nights in a row, plus that 5 a.m. night thrown in there, were just too much for me. I'm going to have to sleep a week straight to make up for it all.

I glad to have my life back, but I'll be very grateful when my digestive system stops sabotaging me as well. Buffets, buffets, and more buffets... my boss was paying, so I felt like I couldn't just eat one measly, cheap salad and call it a day. I gorged myself more than I should've (although still not as much as he would've liked). He declared this morning that he had gained ten pounds and would be starving himself, so I feel lucky to have gotten away with only one or two. That stationary bike and I have a daily appointment this week, however.

I've got a week's worth of work to catch up on, plus the Bob's from Office Space are visiting my workplace this week (meaning we have an outside efficiency consultant coming in), so I don't know that I'll be back to regular blogging this week just yet. One thing at a time-- sleep, digest, then blog.

Funny how one little five day trip can require two or three weeks of recovery. But that probably only applies to people like me, who are stuck in their routines and love it.

Off to Vegas

I leave my house at 3:40 a.m. in the morning, meaning I'll be getting up at 3. That's insane. Ridiculous. Why do they even schedule flights that early?

My plan was to go to bed thirty minutes ago, but of course the night got away from me. I'll be in bed by 10 though, for sure. I hope.

I'll return on Sunday, late afternoon. Have a good week everyone.

pieces

My childhood is slipping away from me. Michael Jackson died-- for a child of the 1980s, this is like losing an old friend, one that inspired and intrigued and educated. But it's distant. I never saw him in person so there's no true grief there, no grief for losing him as a real person, just for the small hole I feel in my own life, the loss of a bit of my history, completely separate from the media blitz.

My first childhood pet, Maxie, died when I was 17. She was an extremely intelligent miniature schnauzer, gray with black around her eyes, wise beyond her species. She was supposed to be my older brother's dog, but she chose me instead. I remember my father burying her in the backyard. It was a new house, still smelled of paint-- my parents were downsizing since I was off to college soon. Early spring, still frosty outside at night, and it was cold that day. The ground must have been hard. My mother was cooking spaghetti, but she was burning something because I remember watching him out the back door, near the kitchen, plugging my nose between wiping my eyes. He wouldn't let me help, and I know it's because he didn't want me to see him cry. Neither of my brothers were there. She was 14 and had had a stroke.

Our second family dog, Sam, a black lab the vet nicknamed "Racetrack" because of her love of running circles when let loose, is on her last leg. She's also 14. The gray around her muzzle still forms a smile when I visit, but she's slower and slower in making it to my side.

Of course my great-grandmother is gone, and my grandfather, and my grandmother hardly knows me anymore. There are no more family Christmases. This and this alone now makes me want children.

Family is critical. Without it, how do we know who we are? Or who we aren't?

We select our own family as we get older, but we lose the one into which we were born, slowly but surely, piece by piece, no choice in the matter.

I don't want to be sad tonight. In fact, I'm not sad. There's no point in being sad about inevitabilities.

What I do feel is hungry. I snacked all day while watching college football and never had a proper meal. I'm a proper meal kind of girl. And I'm already exhausted by this upcoming trip though I haven't packed yet. I have to work for a few hours tomorrow while my husband is at home restaining a new table for our foyer. We're making this house a home, making a life here. We're putting our mark on it, on this life, so that someone somewhere will know we were here, that someone was here that cared, even after all we remember and all we know is gone.