Alecto's Ophelia

Just because it's there

Sometimes I just tickle the hell out of myself. OK, for any of you who haven't been following this blog in it's blow by blow details of whatever rant I'm off on at the moment, I am what we call an Application Programmer these days. Or an Analyst, depending on who's neediest in the moment. Or both if you're onto me. I'm one of those weird as hell hybrids who can write code, work with architecture, design and maintain a database and work out what the data means just by sticking my hand in it (metaphorically, of course, would that I could...) and swishing my fingers around a bit. Cielo will know exactly what the heck I'm getting on about.

What I am not is an accountant. Yes, I had my requisite four semesters of the swill in business school but that was nearly twenty-five years ago and I would just as soon have vomited tacks as paid attention except it affected my GPA and I'm all about the scores, right? I think this next bit falls into the category of 'what you resist persists'. What I really likkkkkeeeee is the design and development. I like the analysis as well. I like to paint a picture, write about it, sing about it, maybe make up a little dance while I'm at it. Really, you'd like it in my workspace, I'm a lot of fun. What I'm not so keen on is the accounting part of it. Like, OK, that thing doesn't balance and I should create a journal entry to reclassify it where?

I scratched that last bit out because it hurts my eyes to read about it.

I'm talking to one of my controllers today and she can't find some account or other and I swear it's been loading from her system to one of mine for months and my system is in balance therefore hers must be too but it's not. "Stop right there" I command the accountant. "Stop saying these things to me. I thought that you and I discussed the fact that I am your techie geek and refuse to discuss the reclassing of anything." And she whines a bit... and I mention the unalterable fact that I cannot see into her source system, that only she can see into her source system and that I don't EVER WANT TO SEE THAT DIRTINESS.

Then I say "Perhaps it's a plug. You know a plug to that nasty little piece of work called the Balance Sheet." My controller chokes visibly (yes, you can really project this kind of visual across the phone lines) into the phone and says in a very small whispering voice...."nonononononono"

Meanwhile I am ten feet from the room that holds a dozen auditors and I am bouncing up and down in my chair chortling gleefully into the phone... "it's a plug! it's a plug! it's a plug!"

Later I am chatting with my husband the accountant (yes I DID) and he tells me it's my own damn fault. Introduce humor and glee to an otherwise dehydrated accountant and you're only going to encourage them to call you more.

How I torture myself at work

How I torture myself at work: Food blogs.

I grew up with a very poor relationship with food. I think I've posted about the frozen block of processed white fish (LADEN with small bones ground right up in the mix) that was placed in a Pyrex dish, covered in thick slabs of Velveeta and placed under the broiler until flames appeared; said block o'fish still very much frozen in the middle and served up with a side of frozen mixed vegetables cooked until a single color and consistency had been achieved and there may also have been a potato baked at 400 degrees for three or four hours. Add that to general adolescent neurosis and you've got an eighty pound sixteen year old. I was five foot six. I don't mean to blame this eating disorder on my mother's cooking or the fact that my father simply did not cook (at least she fed us). What I'm really getting at is the fact that food meant only one thing for a very long time: fuel for the body, to be consumed or not depending on the current level of Alecto Angst.

My mother can cook, by the way. She could always cook. That wasn't the point but boy was I irritated as all get out when I worked that one out.

My love affair with food began when I was eighteen and working in a restaurant that happened to produce some mighty fine fare; I discovered the culinary branch of the arts. During the last twenty-five years I've had an on again off again relationship with my own kitchen. I've moved through the phases of 'I cook but please don't tell anyone' to 'you're the house-husband, therefore you cook the meals' to 'food? what food?' and finally to my current state of bliss.

So where was I? How I torture myself at work: Food blogs. During the month of NaNoWriMo I wrote a book between gaps in database calculations and restructures. And during the month of NaBloWriMo I wrote blog entries while waiting for load files to parse. Since I have been unable to bring myself to open my novel or write a post before 7 PM and my blog buddies post at all hours of the day or night I have been reduced to scanning the food blogs. OK, that was entirely irresponsible. Not only have I not been 'reduced', I'm simply failing to acknowledge my most recent OCD obsession. The food blog.

Since taking off twenty pounds last year and not spending a whole lot of time at the gym (I don't have a membership, I wouldn't go, who am I kidding?) or down on my elliptical or outside walking with Cletus (it's dark out there! wah!) I'm quite cautious about what I put in my mouth during the day and continue to seriously regulate my caloric consumption to nothing but low fat, low sodium food that can remember where it came from. In other words, if it won't do my body a whole lot of good, it's not going in my mouth.

So what happens when I see Tammy's frozen grapefruit concoction at four in the afternoon when the blood sugar is just beginning to plummet? I'll tell you what happens, it sets off a chain of events and denial that has me sniveling into NoMan's shirt at 10 PM the same night begging for a Krispy Kreme New York Cheesecake filled donut. But you know what's even worse? On her side bar she's got this photograph of a very unusual Sheppard's Pie that I've been dying to make but haven't quite gotten around to. Or I start following food links and I'm suddenly in pasta heaven and that Fra Diavolo sauce could be whipped up in no time at all and ladled generously over some over stuffed tortellini.

Mostly this is handled by coming home and making dinner. Other times I contemplate whipping up a batch of butterscotch brownies just before midnight but stop myself because I'm not sure there's quite enough cream cheese in the house. Other times I wonder if licking the screen at four in the afternoon is more likely to get me sent to HR or put me into a diabetic coma?

Lastly, my apologies to RW. Pay no attention to the food talk now.

Schroedinger's Goodwill. Maybe.

Here I go uncovering my underbelly again. By that I mean I'm about to expose more of the warped, twisted mind of Alecto on the go. Where to start? Sometime in high school my mother gave me a book called Schroedinger's Cat. I can't even remember what the book was about, probably some piece of science fiction knowing my mother and the topic. In any event, because of the book I learned the rudimentary concepts surrounding the theory of Schroedinger's cat and later on learned a little bit more. Lets just say I know enough to be dangerous in some circles and sound extremely retarded in others.

The basic premise is this: The cat is in the box. You can't see in the box. Some poison gas may or may not have been leaked into the box. The cat may or may not be dead. As a matter of fact, there is a 50% chance going either way. Therefore... (drum roll or heady silence, take your pick) the cat is both dead  AND alive. In theory. See what I mean about being either dangerous or extremely retarded?

Now lets compare this with a particular accounting term called Goodwill. Actually, Goodwill is a real account on the Balance Sheet which is where I get in trouble in the first place. I'm OK with the P&L (Profit and Loss Statement) because it's pretty straight forward and follows a set of rules I subscribe to heartily whether you're measuring beans, money or how much cabbage the deer did NOT eat this season. It goes thusly: Revenue - Expense = Profit. Or: Revenue good, Expenses bad (which always reminds me of Four legs good, Two legs baaaaaaad and I just can't help myself). In other words, it's a very simple equation and as a programmer/analyst I absolutely get it.

And then there is the Balance Sheet. (noooooooooooooooooooo, not that, anything but that) Assets = Liabilities + Equity. I'm OK there. Right there. That's as far as I'm OK, after that it just becomes one big hairy string of plug accounts. What is a plug account, you ask? Oh, do let me tell you. Nothing we'd say to an auditor, that's for sure. A plug account is an account we use to put some numbers that we can't figure where else to put. them. 'scuse the grammar. Nothing to worry about, everybody does it. Right. And then we have Goodwill.

Goodwill bothered me a bit in college but since I figured I'd never have to look at another accounting text again nor come in contact with any such accounting type people (MARRIED ONE), I'd just be nice and let it go. After all, how, exactly, does one measure goodwill.  If I sell a shop is it the amount of business I expect to see given the nature of said established business? That would almost make sense, except it'd be fluffy as all get out and I don't much care for fluffy. I'd rather measure your receivables and a bunch of other things first. But I digress, that is not what Goodwill is for.

Goodwill is an offset. Goodwill is the difference, on the Balance Sheet (because all things must Balance, so sayeth NoMans the bean counter), between the price paid for a company (or thing) and the actual book value of the company (or thing). So, if my company purchases (which they do on a fairly frequent basis) a smaller company for ten dollars but the company is valued at 8 dollars then the offset is 2 dollars and that is PLUGGED to Goodwill.

Sigh. See what I mean? I know that we need to put that 2 dollars somewhere and I can even extrapolate, from the original definition of Goodwill, how we get there, but I just can't buy it in this day and age. It is no longer a truth and the fact that we still call it Goodwill often sends me into cataclysmic seizures (I TOLD you I was exposing my underbelly again).

I'm much, much, much happier with Schroedinger's cat being, at the very same time, in both states of dead and of alive. That part just tickles my tummy. The other part? Not so much.

The Blog Year in Review

One year on Typepad and I haven't jumped ship. I started a blog at the beginning of March, 2006 on one of those, erm, sites that shall remained unmentioned (msn, cough) at the prompting of RW who said he wanted to read what I wrote, and so I did and I made it very, very public. You know, with my whole name and everything. And then last December I googled my name and came up with a video of Jeffrey and I singing the Lumberjack song and decided I needed to get a grip. And I came here.

Until I came here I did not belong to a blog community. I didn't even know what a blog community was. I've learned a lot in the last twelve months. I don't much care to hide my identity (not that I go to great lengths) but I do understand it. I learned what it means to be 'dooced' this year, to lose one's job over one's blog. I don't have any intention of losing my job over my blog but that's a good part of the reason for making sure a google search doesn't turn up much. I also learned that a lot of moms put a lot of pictures of their kids on the internet with a lot of information and that this is a scary thing for me. I don't have an opinion on what others do, I just know I fall somewhere in the middle of the road and that I don't ever post anything about Cletus without letting her know I did it. Little Girl doesn't quite get it yet, but she will and at some point she might object and then I'm going to have to quit it.

I like it though, a lot.

I don't make friends easily. Mostly I like to say I don't like people but that's not true at all, I actually love and adore most people; other people scare the crap out of me and there are very, very few people I actively dislike. What I don't like is the messiness and complication of relationship. That's just because I don't have any skin and well, that's my problem. I find it easier to be with people here. I find it easier the same way I love to chat with my mom via email during the day. It's easier for me to step back and think and nobody can see me scrunching up my face and trying not to show the world every bleeding feeling and thought I've got. I don't like that so much. Some mornings I dread looking at what I posted the night before but pretty much, it's been all right.

In any event, I like it here a lot.  I like my blog community and I really like that I have this space.

One other thought for the night. I started a new career entirely by accident within weeks of starting my first blog. I started on this path because my good friend Jeffrey dragged me in by the ear and said, "it's time to go back to work, Heather."  I did not want to go. I wanted to take a whole bunch of time off, write a book, be with my kids, think about my life and work out what's next. Instead I went into this company to work what I thought might be four to five days per month and would give me darn near close to what I was making in salary at the last start up and well, I stayed.

I stayed because I was deeply intrigued by this particular corporate culture and attracted to databases like some junkie cat strung out on dried up catnip from a dwindling stash. I stayed sometimes because I wanted to leave so badly I just would not let myself quit. I stayed because each time I took stock I found I was changing, even if it meant just relearning some lost humility. And today I got something back I haven't had since 1998 at the Software factory at my first review after I'd spent a year turning myself inside out to be the best darn trainer/writer they'd ever seen.

Today I got a 6% raise. In some worlds that is completely meaningless. In my world, in my past, it might have been marginally meaningless. In this world of reinvention and belt tightening it means two things:

1. I did a bang up job in a field where I went back to just about square one and completely reinvented myself.
2. I have inherent value in a place where nothing is given for anything less than, well, a really bang up job.

I got to go back to the beginning. I didn't even really know it when I started. I got a second chance at that feeling I had, and maybe a good many of us have had, when we are new and young and green and there is nowhere to go but up.

God, it was a good year. Thanks for being here. 

I can haz Gestalt Now Plezzzzzzz!!!!

There's smoke leaking out my pores. It seeps, dribbles and pools on the floor at my feet. I put my head on the keyboard and think about Ridgewalker doing this at I_Corp when his brain was sizzling. RW, did it sooth you? I just get keyprints in my face. I used to go out and have a smoke but since I don't do that anymore maybe I should just go outside and have a non-smoke? It bears consideration, this walking away from the problem.

I know there's a word for the kind of learner I am, I think it might be experiential but that's not quite enough of an explanation. I learn when my whole body and mind are immersed in something and most of the time I don't feel like I'm learning, I feel like I'm failing. It took a lot of years to learn to trust this process because who among us likes to fail?

In any event, the majority of my problems are solved in a moment of gestalt. I might have to walk away from something and feel completely, um, like a waste of oxygen, and then come back and suddenly the answer is right there in front of me.

So I've been working with a database script called ESSCMD (for want of something better to call it) for a long time. Like maybe ten years. Granted, I didn't really get proficient until the last eighteen months but that's what I've been working with. When I upgraded Essbase to the 21st century I discovered that ESSCMD, while it existed, didn't work the way I expected so I bit the bullet and opened up the new and improved (about five years ago, I just missed the boat) Maxl script editor and went to town.

And I cannot make a simple database extract work. This is something I can do with five, count 'em, five words in an ESSCMD script and I cannot do this in Maxl. I'm not asking you to understand what I mean by words like ESSCMD and Maxl or script or anything else like that.

Just that right now I. cannot. make. this. work. and. it's. killing. me.

Please, please, the Essbase gods, what the hell is the end of this sequence? I have tried EVERYTHING. OK, obviously, not everything since it fails at $ which suggests the root of the datafile name.  aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

export database 'PSG'.'PSG' input data to data_file xxxxx;

Walking in somebody else's fire

I learned a new trick today but I'm not sure it's all I expected. I decided recently that I spend too much time multi-tasking and therefore run too close to the edge in my life in general. Well, work mostly. I'm OK with the home version of multi-tasking for the most part.

I do many things at once because if I don't, well then I'm often bored. If I'm bored I find interesting things to get into and that's not always so good. And then I do many things at once because there are suddenly so many things to do all at one time. Today was day two of the close which is an accounting term meaning the linear progression of expected events involved in 'closing' the books for a given time period. We close them every month. Today was day two of the close but really day one because day one never happens as scheduled, not in the eighteen months I've been assisting in this particular close process. Makes me scratch my head and wonder why day one isn't one day ahead? Then maybe we wouldn't be so unhappy?

Normally, during the close, I am supporting multiple systems. Today I supported just two, the primary and only one of the secondaries and mostly I made the secondary suck up his own shit and work it out. He's good that way. Today I focused only on this one thing and it nearly drove me out of my mind.

Here's why. I experienced all of it. All of the lunacy and nebulous back and forth and disconnects and temper tantrums and hissy fits. All of these things. By two in the afternoon I was close to smashing my head into the keyboard over it all. I'm just the nexus, the keeper of the pieces parts, I don't actually do this stuff, I make sure people have what they need to handle their own pieces parts. I just had no idea how bad the chaos gets. At the end of the day, after finding much humor through out I wondered why these people were willing to do these jobs but mostly I just felt compassion.

Compassion. Maybe there's something here after all. Sometimes it's awfully hard to experience the world without necessarily making it your own problem. Sometimes it's awfully hard to be compassionate when it's suddenly personal. I'm glad I did this today but maybe tomorrow I'll rebuild a couple databases (Kmoo, think engines) just to keep my mind off other's pain when it gets too close.

Alecto's Excutive Summary - For Russ

"Let's face it, I'm tired!"

NaNo finished last night. I even managed to, um, wrap it up, more or less. It ends with Kate driving back into the driveway at the end of a twelve year day only the car doesn't smell like feet anymore and she stands in the driveway looking into the forest... and you'll just have to wait until I publish the book(bwahahahha) Book? What book? There's no book.  I'll go back and look in a week.

My friend Russ over at R a d h o l e did what I would call an executive summary on himself. Russ is pretty cool and I love going to his site, he often makes my day. So Russ was asking who and where I was and I realized that while I'd been introduced to Russ through Amy's NaBloWriMo site in October he might not actually have a clue who I was so instead of answering in email I'll put it here:

Alecto's Executive Summary (hold the snarkiness until it's over)

I am a forty-three year old professional mother of three. That sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? That's because I have a very schizophrenic relationship with my self the creative programming junkie and myself the mother. Myself the creative programming junkie is very important to me. Myself the mother is a given. Sorry, ladies, but that's a fact. I've had to work harder to be taken seriously in the work environment than I have in motherhood. Sad, but true. And whether you share my values or not, understand that to me, the me that is outside of mother is just as important as the me who delivered those squishy bundles 21, 16 and 7 years ago. Yeah, I have a 21 year old son. How cool is that? I also have a 16 year old daughter and that's cool too right up until it's not. The 7 year old saves my sanity.

In writing the story of Kate during November I had to come nose to nose with some very painful pieces of my past. So here it is. I am a corporate fast track executive washout. I made it seven years in a technology corporation on the fast track to SVP of a major profit center and then who knows what else when I fell so hard from grace that I could not bear to go back in for another round. It's not that I did bad, it's that I lost my stomach for it. That embarrasses me more than I can tell you. If I was a man I would be shamed into oblivion for not picking up and going on. As a woman I have been given a buy and this is what shames me more than anything. I hang my head but know the truth.

So where was I? 43 year old mother of three, divorced twice, married three times, I might be the bravest person I know. Or most stupid, jury's still out. I receive no alimony and no child support from the father of my first two. The father of my third is a bit better and I got smarter. I am hard core mother, that's a fact. I am an application programmer and business analyst. I look at numbers and tell you, more from my gut than not, what a particular market is doing. For me it's in paper and printing at the moment but I'm pretty good at it. I work with databases and system architecture. I am the person you call when it all goes to hell. I don't have the answers but I'm the one who will work it out because I believe the buck stops in my lap, even when it doesn't. This is a not an attribute.

I care more about the food my children eat than the state of my databases. This causes daily angst as I try to wrap up in time to get home and feed them something organic and appropriate before they need to go to bed. The S on my chest is for Sucker and I'm finally OK with that.

I like to write, a lot. I recently wrote a 50,000 word book in 27 days. I am nuts.

I paint, mostly in watercolors but when I was younger in acrylics all over my bedroom walls. My mother was very good to me. I grew up with horses, sort of. From the time I was twelve years old I leased a pony or a horse so I could ride. I did the family laundry and a whole lot of other things to support this habit. It was never for free. I was very good, good enough to do things but I didn't care, so I hacked instead and was happier that way. I had a farm with horses during my first marriage. The horses have all gone back to my mother in Ohio, I'm OK with that.

I would like to have chickens in my backyard again. I might just do that. Even though it's going to piss off my neighbors so bad I won't be able to stand it.

I read a lot, almost anything except chick lit and romance, can't stomach the stuff. I like Mark Helprin and Stephen King. My favorite book is Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. It's about magic, and cloudbanks the structural integrity of bridges and New York City before and after the turn of the century.

I live in a part of the country that is unbelievably privileged. I worked very fucking hard to get here. I am a high school drop out. I was raped on the floor of my living room at 17. The evidence of my case was hosed by the over zealous detectives, he is still out there. My parents emotionally abandoned me at 17 and then completely at 18. I cleaned houses to put myself through college. It was not so easy. I had a baby and a husband too, that part was OK. I am privileged but I have a really, really hard time acknowledging that. I am angry and that embarrasses me. 

I love music. I don't listen to nearly enough since I split with husband number two, who has a real knack for picking up the esoteric and eclectic. Lately I listen to almost nothing but what's over on Madeline's site or what's on WFUV, which is basically public radio.

OK, that's not exactly an executive summary, is it? I'm babbling. But there you go, that's me, precariously balanced and doing my damn best to have it all.

(p.s. I'm also a happy person. Because I want to be and that is all.)

(p.p.s. I just wrote 1,100 words like it was nothing. Damn. Look what happened? Maybe I can do this after all)

No one died and the car is fine.

NaNo Stats: so far tonight I am at 16,387 and have 1,950 to go before I can hang it up for the night. Yup, Alecto is behind (I'm OK with that, I'll catch up). However, I do need to note that Ridgewalker is at 25,000 the last time I looked! How cool is that? The man is on fire.  I can't wait to read the final results (even if he did kill me off early) There will be a short excerpt after I tell about Cletus and Psycho-mommy today.

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Today I put Cletus Marie behind the wheel of a 2003 Mazda6, 5 speed transmission on a deserted gravel parking lot in the woods. She has only once ever been behind the wheel of a moving vehicle; it was an aging automatic and nearly seatless minivan my mother uses to transport bulldogs and such to dog shows and she drove it around the circle of the paddock one time before my mother recalled her two previous experiences with adolescent drivers and made her stop so that she could get out and vomit between her legs.

I set Cletus up, I did. I had her depress the clutch, put it in first, start the engine and then take her foot off the clutch.  I didn't tell her anything else and the car did what you'd expect it to, it bucked and stalled. What a look that child gave me, but she understood. When she started again she took off at a reasonable speed and without a hitch. It was stunning. As we neared the turn I suggested she depress the clutch as an aid until she understood the turn and she made that corner like butter. Around and around the gravel circle we went until I suggested she might want to introduce herself to second gear. What a look that child gave me!

Eventually Cletus managed to upshift and downshift between first and second, come to a complete stop without stalling and avoid the grassy areas in the parking area.  She got the thing into reverse and backed up the entire length of the parking lot in a straight line. She came nowhere near hitting anything at any point during her thirty minutes behind the wheel .  My blood pressure remained absolutely stable. It was almost as if she'd medicated my tea before we left the house. She did take one corner on two wheels and I started calling her Mario but she appeared to be in control of the vehicle at all times.  Baby smiled. A lot.

I had her drive up toward the main road and onto pavement which she pronounced nifty.  She came to a stop without stalling, noted that the car was damn near out of gas, turned off the engine, leaving it in first, set the parking brake and handed me the keys.  I drove her home.

When we pulled onto our circle I asked if she'd like to take it around once. She did want to and so I pulled into our driveway, turned the car around. I'm not ready to have my light post knocked over again. Not yet, at any rate.

Before she even got behind the wheel she had attended three driver's education classes, passed the test for her permit, watched her brother completely wreck multiple vehicles and be taken to court once for rear-ending a man in traffic while he played with his contacts. She grew up with a father who makes most road rage look tame. We live in a town that puts so much emphasis on drunk driving and drug use that they have one day in school every year where they stage mock deaths and selected students don death masks, remain silent for the day and attend their own funerals. Before she got behind the wheel she got the accountability lecture from her mother which was prefaced with "The only appropriate response to what I'm about to tell you, other than questions, is 'OK'. Do you understand me completely?"

So when she sat poised at the edge of the driveway in first gear, ready to turn onto our circle the statement "there will be children and other vehicles around every blind corner and hill' landed squarely between her eyes". She was terrified and drove brilliantly between 15 and 25 miles per hour. She did not stall on a hill (we haven't even covered that little doozy yet), she did not drive over any curbs, she did not hit any mailboxes and no cars or pedestrians appeared. Until we got to the bottom of the hill and she stopped at the first of two stop signs. She stalled the car.

A youngish blond woman in a black SUV with it's own zip code pulled up behind us and honked. She honked her horn in a residential neighborhood and Psycho-mommy Got. Out. Of. The. Car.

Getting out of your vehicle when you have been honked at is probably one of the most overtly aggressive acts you will ever witness in this part of the country. In some cases, you can reasonably assume it will be accompanied by a fire arm or a baseball bat. I should have stopped there. I did not. I proceeded to shut my door, come around the passenger side and yell at the top of my voice.  I'm sure she didn't hear a word I yelled behind those bullet proof glass windows but she read the body language. The body language said, I am coming straight through your window and I am going to eat your heart while it still beats and you watch. I'm quite certain that's what she heard. She also heard, go around idiot, student driver and so she did. Very, very slowly and carefully. Two more vehicles came down the hill and we motioned from within the car for them to go around. They did.

When the coast was clear, Cletus put the car in gear, stalled it two more times, and then took off grinding the gears only a little. She stalled at the next stop sign, made it up the hill and pulled into our driveway narrowly missing our neighbor's mailbox. She parked to the left of the truck as instructed. At an angle.

Over all Cletus and I did very well today. No one died and the car is fine.

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To give Joe credit, he exercised his rights to the letter. He eliminated all three of the designated trainers in his group post haste and according to the guidelines.  He then packed the personal contents of his office and exited to the parking lot. During the one hundred and eighteen minutes that he remained in the building he managed to exude a stench of malice and rancor so thick it grayed the air. Surviving trainers, writers, developers, support staff and managers fashioned gas masks and eye covers out of a discarded roll of cheesecloth fortuitously located in a supply closet. Multiple personnel rushed for the centrally located bathrooms and voided conspicuously and often publicly. Facilities were contacted by multiple mid-tier managers with requests that the attic fan be turned on and left on until further notice. Directors and Senior Directors huddled in corner offices and the VPs barricaded themselves in their suites. By end of day the air had cleared and ten percent of the staff had vanished into the ether.  Parking spaces became available within twenty yards of the building. Kate came out of her office, red eyed and guilty, and walked the halls in search of the living.

Wading knee deep through my own mire

I just now worked out how to post cool stuff in my side bar. So I'm a geek by necessity, OK? And it only just got necessary. Right now I am listening to Angus Stone sing Joni Mitchell's The River.  I am listening to this via Madeline's site on another page.  I have to confess that a good deal of my music is coming from Madeline's play lists. She does change them fairly frequently but I could (and am) listen to this set over and over again. In any event, Madeline gave me a You Make Me Smile Award and I figured if I hadn't posted Lewis's Blogger Reflection award or the Nano logo then THIS ought to get me motivated because it did indeed make me smile. It made my whole body smile. I needed to do that; haven't done nearly enough of it lately and everybody pays when the sun hides.

I had jury duty today and I have to tell you, it rocked me to my core. I am 43 years old and I have never served other than one time, five years ago, I sat in the big room all day and then was released at 3:30 without once ever having had my name called.

When I was young and horribly broke and barely feeding my family by cleaning houses I used to live in mortal terror of being called. Having to sit on a jury and miss a week or two or more would have been an unmitigated disaster. So to avoid this, I didn't vote.  I simply did not register. I did this out of fear and for that I am horribly ashamed, but it's the truth. When I got older I did register and I did vote but then I never got called, or I was moving out of range, it was always something. And then five years ago, I sat all day and nothing. I remember rushing back to the office because my boss, the Lizard Lady, was on a two month rampage and my being absent for any reason was grounds for having my lips ripped off. Yes, all of them. All I thought about, all day long was what would happen if my name was called. I was terrified.

Today I arrived with two books and a camera free cell phone and settled into my seat to wait it out never even imagining I'd do anything other than sit there all day wishing for some Advil because my neck hurts when I read like that for too long. I did do a lot of watching.  Writing the way I have been for the past six weeks has opened my eyes.  I find myself looking at things and people much more closely than I ever did. I found myself fascinated with the skin on the face of the woman sitting to my right and probably made her mighty uncomfortable with my persistent staring. And then I got all fixed on a fuzzy pale purple sock in an old worn leather clog just behind me and to the left and then the really big black man with the most intense eyes I've ever looked at directly - he looked right back into mine and he smiled so I could keep looking for awhile.

I think I took in maybe 40% of that room and that's saying a lot.  I don't think most of us process more than 10% of what's in our immediate periphery, it's just too much.

There were three groups called, one right after the other. The first filled out a survey, the second went to Norwalk for a criminal trial and the third filled out another survey. I was in the forth group and my name was number five on the list. I started to pay attention. All of us were asked to stand up. Here comes my part, right? when I give my excuse as to why I can't serve. Most of us, there must have been fifty, had excuses. In the end, sixteen of us were lead upstairs for Voir Dire.  I have never been through Voir Dire, I only understand the process in theory and from the movies. We were sequestered in the jury room and left to our own devices while each would be interviewed separately.  The first woman to go was gone for more than an hour. During that hour people started to wake up to what was occurring and the possibility of sitting on a jury for the entire month of December. During that hour I frantically rearranged my entire life for the month of December and committed myself to doing what so many of us do our very best not to ever have to do. 

And then I looked at some of the people in the room and I thought, I surely would not want a number of you deciding my fate! This might be awful! This might be a travesty, this might be exactly what our legal system looks like and while it's not the best it's far from the worst. As the judge who spoke in the morning said, 'it's you deciding, not the people with the most money and not the people with the most tanks and guns, you.' Not great but a lot better than some of the more prevalent alternatives.

When the lawyer lady came to get me I was ready and clear and then she led me into the court room and asked me to sit in the witness seat. The attorney for the plaintiff and the plaintiff sat at one table and the representative from the medical establishment sat at the other table. The lady lawyer for the medical establishment started.

She began by reintroducing herself. She validated that I had not raised my hands when the substantial list of witnesses and attorneys was read. She asked me what I did for work and I told her. She asked me what I would do to manage my job if I was selected. We talked about what that would look like and the fact that I'd be doing my work at night and on weekends but we both agreed not until 2 AM for sure. She asked me if I wanted to serve on this jury and I found myself saying yes and then I walked right into my own landmine and talked about why I wanted to serve.

I said that I thought too many educated people found ways to get out of serving.  I said that the medical malpractice fiasco was out of hand.  I said that people awarded substantial funds to victims without extrapolating where the money comes from and that it is we who pay the price.  I said that my father in law had been an anesthesiologist who had retired because his malpractice insurance was too high. I said that I did not believe in compensatory awards for anything other than replacement value of a broken item, be it head, heart or fence post. I said that I did not believe much in pain and suffering have a price tag and that we were entirely too litigious in this country and entirely unaccountable. The medical woman knew my father in law. She said, 'he started that association.  I said, 'yes, he did'. I said that my ob/gyn stopped delivering babies because of all this and that she eventually left the state and I lost her as did hundreds of other women.

I looked at the face of the plaintiff and wondered what had happened that this man came to be sitting in this Voir Dire process and I said that doctors needed to be accountable too and that in this age of HMOs and patient mills that sometimes I don't think they are accountable. I thought about the cost of my Ct Scan that told me nothing and the doctor who neglected to call me back and tell me that. I thought all these things and then my stomach started to hurt and I got very flushed. And then the lawyer lady said 'I see that you really want to be here but can you see that this is not the right place for you?' I said that I could see that and she gave me a slip of paper that had the word 'excused' circled and I walked out of the building.

And now I don't know what I think.  I think that I dodged a pretty hairy bullet.  I think that I said some things passionately that I have never said in public. I think that it was the right place for me but because of my history with and knowledge of the insurance industry and my near and dear association with several very good doctors I am never going to serve on a civil case, probably not ever and now I just feel awful. I'm not even relieved.

Transcendental Blues

In the darkest hour of the longest night
If it was in my power I'd step into the light
Candles on the alter, penny in your shoe
Walk upon the water --- transcendental blues

- Steve Earle - Transcendental Blues

I've been listening to one of my Big Furry Guys (Mr. Earle, the king of the Big Furry Guys, for whom I took my very pregnant body - I was actually due that day - to see with Emmylou and Nancy G in the nosebleed seats at the old Palace Theater in Stamford, prior to any kind of renovation, and have never forgotten it) all day, on and off, interspersed with David Gray and Natalie Merchant and now I've moved onto Mark Knopfler's All the Roadrunning singing Beyond My Wildest Dreams.  It's been that kind of Sunday, my favorite kind, in which much was created, baked and consumed and much laid aside for the coming week.

I don't think the world is going to end as we know it in my lifetime.  I'm not even sure it will occur in my children's lives.  I think it will continue to occur gradually until we are lulled into such complacency that we have entirely forgotten ourselves and can so be consumed by a greater and perhaps more worthy beast. I'm not even sure I mind all that much. I don't really know. I do mind starving to death. I do mind poisoning myself. I do mind being asleep. I do very, very much mind that some of my friends are feeling it today. I also mind that I can't quite wrap my mind around the people I don't know, who aren't my friends, who also suffer terribly. I mind a lot of things. I can process a bit of it.

I read an article yesterday about the human race splitting into two separate species in the next 100,000 years. And we were meant to be alarmed. How can any of us truly be alarmed by something 100,000 years in the future?  We aren't wired to process information that isn't immediate. The article discussed the future of The Beautiful and Bright and the Ugly Caretakers. Huh. As if this isn't happening all around us all the time?  And as if the Hapsburgs weren't any indication of what occurs when the gene pool implodes on itself. Huh. And I remember the film Gattica that was released in a time when I stored literally gallons of breast milk in the freezer and sniffed fragrant (I can't really refer to infants as dirty under any circumstances) infant clothing in the privacy of my office to bring on the let down reflex that would catapult my last girl's meals gushing from my corporate breasts into sterilized receptacles and put on ice for another day. I did this twice a day every day and I cried every time I did it because all I really wanted was to be at home in my rocking chair with my last girl at my breast. The day I stopped crying was the day my milk dried up.  I made it six months and for any of you who nursed your children that's a serious feat, to continue to produce while separated from your infant 10 - 16 hours per day.  It broke my heart and I never did get over it.  I just moved on and found other ways to merge the me who is on fire in the world and the me who needs to pull my children in as close as I can get them. It is all about the need to be.

She is nearly seven. I can still feel her in my breasts; they constrict and ache when she cries with a particular tone or is away too long.  My oldest will turn 21 in two weeks. I have not seen him in two months nor had an intimate conversation in over six months. My breasts still ache for him too. I have not forgotten but I have let go. It is very hard and I try not to think too much or I would come apart and fly off into the ether and then what good would I be to anybody? But you know what, I love you, Mikie, I love you so much I can't catch my breath some days. And I believe in you. I believe that you will find your way and in doing so find your way home, where ever home happens to become.  I believe that deep inside, you know how much I love you too. I cut my arm off and my heart out because it was the only thing I could think to do. And I love you. Always.

So, having revealed all that, maybe Sundays will make a little more sense. Maybe I'll stop being the confusing enigma that is not one thing nor the other and pisses off just about everyone but me at one point or another.

I go to work every day because that is me.  That is me being who I am on fire, every single day. My friend The Consultant asks periodically, Alecto, do you like your job?  He asks this because he thinks my business partners are lunatics.  He's right, they are.  And I tell him every time, Consultant of Mine, I love my job and I do my damn best to tolerate them that has the need of me.  A large part of who I am is defined by the creativity that causes these databases to whir and chirp and push out their own product all day long.

I have Sundays because I need to be here as well. I need it all. Some days I think it might kill me and other days, like today, I think I have mastered the alchemy of what has become my life. Here is cheese bread and pumpkin pie plus the leftovers because I always end up with too much. I have moved on to using spelt instead of wheat and I'm still not sure what I really think of it.  It's a bit drier but it rises better, although you can't tell here by the bread because there are two pounds of cheese in these loaves.  They are asiago and goat gouda, both local and both packed with protein. Cletus and I both have food issues. We need to get the most possible bang for our calories to remain healthy. We need to get so used to this kind of gathering and eating that we no longer have the idea of a food issue. The pie comes from a little sugar pumpkin and he didn't take much to cook up and pie at all. He is, however, taking forever to cook because there is so much of him.

Here is the inside of my refrigerator.  Talk about intimate! On the lower shelf are four meals for the coming week. There are duck breasts marinating in a red wine, garlic, shallot, ginger concoction that will be finished in a plum glaze in less than 20 minutes when it's time to cook them.  There are chicken thighs and legs in a chipotle marinade (yes, I make all my own), a flank steak in balsamic and garlic, and finally veal chops in a white wine and lemon reduction with fingerling potatoes, yellow squash and plum tomatoes. This will get us through the week. Remember, Alecto DOES NOT cook on Fridays. There is a cream of tomato soup on the stove with a red wine infusion to go with the cheese bread and the spelt sour dough (I nurture the starter four days a week,  refrigerate two and wake up and utilize one). I'll let you know how I feel about the spelt in another week or so.

NoMans is making pickles. NoMans has been going through some cathartic stuff this week relating to his childhood and what did and did not happen and the fact that, as the youngest of four, his parents and siblings might just have gotten tired and it might not have been all about him after all.  One of the things I love most about him is that this cathartic stuff shows up in pickle making. He takes his ache and makes something beautiful out of it and he feels good in the process. I'll tell you though, I laughed my ass off when he figured out the pickling process was an actual process as opposed to an event and will take 5 - 6 weeks to complete in this climate. And also, I wished for CG's mother's punch bowl but the other yellow bowl will do just fine.

And finally, if you look up above those frou frou cherry veneer cabinets you will see to the left of my new butcher block, an actual wooden bread bowl.  I let go last week in Vermont. I bought the hand milled bowl and then had a long chat with a baker (who talked me into playing with spelt and made the most incredible sour dough raisin bread I've ever tasted and had the coolest mother f'ing long white beard I've ever seen) about the need to generate yeast in the kitchen and the fact that it would, simply, feel better.  He wasn't kidding.  It felt incredible.  It felt alive. My grandchildren, if they are so inclined, can use it. It doesn't mean I don't love the old yellow bowl. I do love the old yellow bowl and it is still mine.

And lastly, here is my beautiful first girl, my reason for being, my reason for breathing life into anything I can get my hands on. She might not be unschooled but she's remarkably creative and free. Her hair changes color weekly and she consumes books at an alarming rate. She paints and draws things I can barely process, she sings in two choirs, has been immersed in Latin for the last two years (chick seems to dig it, go figure)and is wearing her Thing One Disney T in the warm fuzzy memory of turning sixteen in the park of dreams with her best friend, her sister and her two step-brothers. She sits under one of my goofy wool blankets (I knit like a hyperactive fiend) and keeps her macbook close at all times. She too listens to The Big Furry Guy and smiles her secret smile. 

I cried when I wrote this tonight. And it was good. Thanks for listening.

- kisses and good night - Alecto