It turns out I'm unstoppable at Bookworm Adventures.
The last twenty percent or so of this most recent absence is, I'm relieved to report, not my fault. It's Stefka's. She sent me an email that included the following: Nothing much to report otherwise. I guess I'm the only person in the department who hasn't passed at least one of the required field exams at this point. The beauty of my relationship with [MA] is that he doesn't quite know how to deal/communicate with me so we just have these "struggle sessions" when he laughs nervously and I practice self-criticism Great Leap Forward-style and then everything goes back to "normal", i.e. I don't see him for weeks and I don't do shit.
All my study - and yours, if applicable - of Chinese history is validated by that one paragraph, because that is the most perfect description of a meeting with MA that I can imagine. The only thing wrong with it is that I did not write it. Which fact threw me into a deep depression, rendering me incapable of composing a post, etc.1
The other four weeks six weeks, however, are my bad.
What have I done instead? Work, for one thing. I was in a couple of days the week between Christmas and New Year's, even though the office was closed. But only in early January did we finally enter the last of the accursed surveys, or at least catch up with all the ones we've received. The current count is 4453 of the one, and 621 of the other. I personally handled over a third of those, and no amount of stat-tracking in a carefully shifting rainbow of markers could disguise how little fun it was. On the other hand, in the course of copying over 50,000 checkmarks from the paper forms to the database, I noticed that if you zone out and look at the rows and columns, they begin to look a little bit like… weaving patterns. So I could theoretically assign some variables and design a survey whose results I could turn into a wall hanging. It would be time-consuming, ultimately pointless, and terribly nerdy. I'm considering it.
Two Thursdays back I took a call that was either the most or least representative quarter-hour of my recent life; I can't decide. At about 4:40, I picked up the phone and got a twangy earful from someone who received a copy of a survey we mailed out on behalf of our biggest client. He had a great deal to say on the subject, none of it positive. I interrupted him after a minute or two to say that, while I appreciate his difficulties, we're only a consulting firm, blah blah blah, so I'm not the best person to complain to... and he said he understood, and then spent TWENTY MINUTES giving me all the details of his ex-wife's allegations that he sexually molested their daughter. More than halfway through, he got to the memorable phrase "something white dripping out of her AH-nus." At that point, I was ready to die, or burst out laughing, or quit. People were walking past my desk, the sun was rounding the heavens, and I was trapped on the phone with the kind of guy you'd edge away from on the bus, quietly murmuring sympathies during the pauses as he JUST KEPT GOING. I was pretty much hysterical (silently) by the time he apologized for "opening up" to me, and laughed myself into tears telling the story to my boss. Then I went home, because holy shit.2
I don't know why a person would ever tell a story like that to a stranger. I have had people cry on the phone, people tell me never to contact them again and then hang up without ever identifying themselves, and a truly unacceptable number of people who sit silently on the other end of the line, only to exclaim "Oh, I thought you were a recording!" when I finally venture a "…hello?" What am I supposed to do about that? Slur my words? Include a headline from the day's paper in my greeting? Perhaps I should preface my "Good morning, [company name]" with "This is a not a recording" or "Hey, little lady." Or maybe I should go into the no-doubt lucrative business of recording phone trees? Point being, even as telephone-as-object loses its ability to frighten me, telephone-as-medium gains strength. Because that's how the people talk to you.
Key difference between my old job and my new one: Out here, when people ask me "What does gender mean?," the answer does not involve the words "category," "analysis," or "construct." The answer is, "You see the two lines, male and female? Just put a check by whichever one applies to you." To be fair, the question wasn't "What does gender mean?," either. It was "What's this word… g-e-n-d-e-r?" Which wouldn't be remotely embarrassing if the two listed choices were not, as I said, male and female. It's amazing how people's confusion overwhelms the very skills, like context analysis, that might save them.
Key difference between my old job and my new one: Last week, we had a pizza lunch to host an employee's son who's currently on his leave from Iraq. People were asking him questions about what his unit does, what the country's like, what he thinks the US should do long-term. In the context of the civil war, one of the managers said something like, "Actually, I saw a Discovery special on this the other day. Basically, it's been the same situation there since about 700 B.C. [the fuck?]. There's no way we're going to change that." Out here, when people pepper their RIDICULOUS REDUCTIONISM WITH ANTI-FACTS, it's often easier to just let it ride. Eat some pizza. Just… eat some free3 pizza.
Two weekends back Mom and I evacuated a closet after discovering some water damage. Inside, among other things, were no fewer than six big storage containers full of fabric and craft supplies. I had planned to use a length of brown-and-cream herringbone wool I found to make a skirt; the kind of fabric that's basically neutral, but you could line it in cherry red and feel a bit like a robin's mate. There wasn't quite enough, alas, and what there was had been ravaged by moths, so for practice I wound up using a spinsterly brownish-greenish-grey of no interest at all. Forget cheerful birds; in this skirt, I'm a bonnet, a white blouse, and three dun-colored sequins away from fronting a Mennonite show choir. But focusing on the positive, I did teach myself to use the new sewing machine, even setting in a zipper for the first time. If I had ever dared try such a thing on the old machine, the police would have found me three days later in a wooded area, cocooned in thread and with a zipper foot lodged in my skull.
Speaking of me dying: I started volunteering at our local middle school three weeks ago, because the teacher who handles regular ESOL classes arranged to teach English to immigrant parents of students on Wednesday nights. When I agreed to help, I sort of imagined I would be assisting a real teacher; it sounded a little frustrating and maybe boring - I don't really like being told what to do or constantly second-guessed - but that makes sense, right? You know, to have someone around who's a teacher, or has done this before. Instead, though, I have my very own group of six adult women: 3 Brazilians, a Mexican, a Korean, and someone from Thailand. I hope to God they don't hate me for being YOUNGER THAN THEY ARE4 and bothering them with verbs and crap. I love helping them, and I certainly have plenty of experience *taking* language classes, but I'm not experienced enough to be entirely confident that they don't, as I mentioned, hate my American guts.5
Butters sends you all the best, sleepily, from his post on the floor behind me. James menaces, vulture-like, from the top of the desk above my head. He likes it up there, presumably because Butters isn't yet able to follow him that high and bite his head. Butters is kind of a jerk.
1. If you're looking for some bonus writing, you could do worse than the first five pages or so of this recap of "The Apprentice." Just Jacob's descriptions of the contestants. Heck, just the description of Ms. Trump on page 2. Why do I read recaps of "The Apprentice"? Same reason I read recaps of "American Idol," or (formerly) "Doctor Who": when Jacob is not impenetrable, he is amazing.
2. This paragraph was lifted in its entirety from an email to Stefka. Just so you know.
3. MS Word asks whether I wouldn't like to insert the macro "Free Nuts." No?
4. It's been so disgustingly long since I posted that I'd forgotten how to format a link (!) and had to look it up.
5. And this one from an email to Jackson. I'm sorry I keep offering y'all dregs and patchwork. I promise I'll take some quizzes or do some memes or something.
All my study - and yours, if applicable - of Chinese history is validated by that one paragraph, because that is the most perfect description of a meeting with MA that I can imagine. The only thing wrong with it is that I did not write it. Which fact threw me into a deep depression, rendering me incapable of composing a post, etc.1
The other four weeks six weeks, however, are my bad.
What have I done instead? Work, for one thing. I was in a couple of days the week between Christmas and New Year's, even though the office was closed. But only in early January did we finally enter the last of the accursed surveys, or at least catch up with all the ones we've received. The current count is 4453 of the one, and 621 of the other. I personally handled over a third of those, and no amount of stat-tracking in a carefully shifting rainbow of markers could disguise how little fun it was. On the other hand, in the course of copying over 50,000 checkmarks from the paper forms to the database, I noticed that if you zone out and look at the rows and columns, they begin to look a little bit like… weaving patterns. So I could theoretically assign some variables and design a survey whose results I could turn into a wall hanging. It would be time-consuming, ultimately pointless, and terribly nerdy. I'm considering it.
Two Thursdays back I took a call that was either the most or least representative quarter-hour of my recent life; I can't decide. At about 4:40, I picked up the phone and got a twangy earful from someone who received a copy of a survey we mailed out on behalf of our biggest client. He had a great deal to say on the subject, none of it positive. I interrupted him after a minute or two to say that, while I appreciate his difficulties, we're only a consulting firm, blah blah blah, so I'm not the best person to complain to... and he said he understood, and then spent TWENTY MINUTES giving me all the details of his ex-wife's allegations that he sexually molested their daughter. More than halfway through, he got to the memorable phrase "something white dripping out of her AH-nus." At that point, I was ready to die, or burst out laughing, or quit. People were walking past my desk, the sun was rounding the heavens, and I was trapped on the phone with the kind of guy you'd edge away from on the bus, quietly murmuring sympathies during the pauses as he JUST KEPT GOING. I was pretty much hysterical (silently) by the time he apologized for "opening up" to me, and laughed myself into tears telling the story to my boss. Then I went home, because holy shit.2
I don't know why a person would ever tell a story like that to a stranger. I have had people cry on the phone, people tell me never to contact them again and then hang up without ever identifying themselves, and a truly unacceptable number of people who sit silently on the other end of the line, only to exclaim "Oh, I thought you were a recording!" when I finally venture a "…hello?" What am I supposed to do about that? Slur my words? Include a headline from the day's paper in my greeting? Perhaps I should preface my "Good morning, [company name]" with "This is a not a recording" or "Hey, little lady." Or maybe I should go into the no-doubt lucrative business of recording phone trees? Point being, even as telephone-as-object loses its ability to frighten me, telephone-as-medium gains strength. Because that's how the people talk to you.
Key difference between my old job and my new one: Out here, when people ask me "What does gender mean?," the answer does not involve the words "category," "analysis," or "construct." The answer is, "You see the two lines, male and female? Just put a check by whichever one applies to you." To be fair, the question wasn't "What does gender mean?," either. It was "What's this word… g-e-n-d-e-r?" Which wouldn't be remotely embarrassing if the two listed choices were not, as I said, male and female. It's amazing how people's confusion overwhelms the very skills, like context analysis, that might save them.
Key difference between my old job and my new one: Last week, we had a pizza lunch to host an employee's son who's currently on his leave from Iraq. People were asking him questions about what his unit does, what the country's like, what he thinks the US should do long-term. In the context of the civil war, one of the managers said something like, "Actually, I saw a Discovery special on this the other day. Basically, it's been the same situation there since about 700 B.C. [the fuck?]. There's no way we're going to change that." Out here, when people pepper their RIDICULOUS REDUCTIONISM WITH ANTI-FACTS, it's often easier to just let it ride. Eat some pizza. Just… eat some free3 pizza.
Two weekends back Mom and I evacuated a closet after discovering some water damage. Inside, among other things, were no fewer than six big storage containers full of fabric and craft supplies. I had planned to use a length of brown-and-cream herringbone wool I found to make a skirt; the kind of fabric that's basically neutral, but you could line it in cherry red and feel a bit like a robin's mate. There wasn't quite enough, alas, and what there was had been ravaged by moths, so for practice I wound up using a spinsterly brownish-greenish-grey of no interest at all. Forget cheerful birds; in this skirt, I'm a bonnet, a white blouse, and three dun-colored sequins away from fronting a Mennonite show choir. But focusing on the positive, I did teach myself to use the new sewing machine, even setting in a zipper for the first time. If I had ever dared try such a thing on the old machine, the police would have found me three days later in a wooded area, cocooned in thread and with a zipper foot lodged in my skull.
Speaking of me dying: I started volunteering at our local middle school three weeks ago, because the teacher who handles regular ESOL classes arranged to teach English to immigrant parents of students on Wednesday nights. When I agreed to help, I sort of imagined I would be assisting a real teacher; it sounded a little frustrating and maybe boring - I don't really like being told what to do or constantly second-guessed - but that makes sense, right? You know, to have someone around who's a teacher, or has done this before. Instead, though, I have my very own group of six adult women: 3 Brazilians, a Mexican, a Korean, and someone from Thailand. I hope to God they don't hate me for being YOUNGER THAN THEY ARE4 and bothering them with verbs and crap. I love helping them, and I certainly have plenty of experience *taking* language classes, but I'm not experienced enough to be entirely confident that they don't, as I mentioned, hate my American guts.5
Butters sends you all the best, sleepily, from his post on the floor behind me. James menaces, vulture-like, from the top of the desk above my head. He likes it up there, presumably because Butters isn't yet able to follow him that high and bite his head. Butters is kind of a jerk.
1. If you're looking for some bonus writing, you could do worse than the first five pages or so of this recap of "The Apprentice." Just Jacob's descriptions of the contestants. Heck, just the description of Ms. Trump on page 2. Why do I read recaps of "The Apprentice"? Same reason I read recaps of "American Idol," or (formerly) "Doctor Who": when Jacob is not impenetrable, he is amazing.
2. This paragraph was lifted in its entirety from an email to Stefka. Just so you know.
3. MS Word asks whether I wouldn't like to insert the macro "Free Nuts." No?
4. It's been so disgustingly long since I posted that I'd forgotten how to format a link (!) and had to look it up.
5. And this one from an email to Jackson. I'm sorry I keep offering y'all dregs and patchwork. I promise I'll take some quizzes or do some memes or something.