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Tuesday, Jul. 08, 2003 / 1:33 p.m. ~Office Work As Genetically Inherited Destiny?~ An indication of how long I've lived here: I was greeted by one of the Supervisors, in the ladies room a little while ago, and she said, "Hi", and I said, "Hey". I'll never forget the first time I was made fun of for saying "Hi". Now I'm one of 'them'. When I was a young girl my father would take me to his office. I don't remember why, but it was usually on weekends when no one else was around. I suppose his job was a large part of his life, I suppose he needed to go there often, and not during regular business hours, because I suppose he made his own hours. But I loved the office supplies. I loved the electric typewriters used by the 'secretarial pool', the sea of desks at which women sat to type and fold and staple and talk on phones, I guessed. There were rubber stamps too (one he ended up giving me later was a stamp of his signature), and ink pads, and paper clips and pens and staplers, and all of it was wonderful to me. I have no idea why. (Maybe because he was a mystery to me, we didn't live together and I didn't know who he was - this was a part of him, a puzzle to figure out?) Earlier, and younger still, when I was 8 years old and I traveled back to Chicago with my mom, to visit her mother, my grandmother (horrible sentence, I know), and we'd visited my grandmother in her office, where she was an editor for a small publication. This may have been my first time amongst the desks (pre-cubicles), the typewriters, most manual back then, the people all dressed up for work, the supplies, and since that was during a normal working day, the "This is your granddaughter?!"s, etc. And gifts, things given by strangers. I loved it. The apparent camaraderie, the tools that seemed so foreign. My mother worked as a secretary or a receptionist for most of the time I knew her, when she wasn't teaching or playing guitar, or painting, or playing in nightclubs. Her day job was office work, and I never went to her office, or saw any desks where she might have sat throughout any given day, or days, but it somehow seems natural to me that here is where I have ended up. And not that this is the end, but it often feels that way. I was folding letters earlier, using the technique my mother taught me, to make sure the folded size matches the envelope, and then gluing with my glue stick, and stapling and I'm always typing (thank god for my high school typing class), and it feels natural, in a way. As natural as working at the bookstore did. Gathering my new books from the receiving area, hauling them to my sections on a cart, making room for everything, changing the face-outs, managing the overstock, just thinking about how much I loved it makes me want to touch books right now. Really. I loved the feel of them. Some people loved the used bookstore, the smells, but I wanted my books new and shiny, the paper untouched. Speaking of books, I had accumulated enough bonus points over at the Quality Paperback Book Club to order the whole set of Harry Potter books for free. Fun. I'm late jumping on this bandwagon, mainly because it is a bandwagon, and I hadn't really felt like jumping on, but so many people I respect are raving about these books, so I will now have them for my own, to read at my leisure and see what all the fuss is about. Anyway, just thinking about my job, and the potentially genetic evolution, or inheritance, thereof. Both my parents were incredibly intelligent, intellectual, and mostly artistic, thinkers, involved, Bohemian, but they made their livings doing office work. My father was an Insurance Underwriter, and of course he resented the hell out of his wife and family for making him feel he had to be a breadwinner and stay at a job he hated, for years, but that was his fault, not ours. When I think about what I want to do, as in "DO", and this is spurred on by a book review I was reading earlier, a book about figuring out what to "DO" with one's life, I think, "I want to write". It pops in my head. Where to go from there, I have no clue. Maybe I can one day be the photojournalist I once wanted to be� Penelope is back today - extra long weekend to visit her husband's sick mother - and she finally brought me the fridge magnet I'd asked for months ago when she visited her home, which she does often, not forget to get me a fridge magnet, but visits her home, and I love it. She got me two, not just one, and they're perfect! Really, I got so excited, I showed everyone, gave her a big hug, went on and on, at least briefly, about my refrigerator covered with magnets, and how Kukla knows, she saw it, and Q too, and how I'll have to take a new picture to show Penelope, or bring in my old one - yes, I do have one, a few really. It's quite the conversation piece, I suppose. I ask people to bring magnets from their travels, and when I travel I usually pick one up, and these are placed on the fridge, the dishwasher, the filing cabinet, etc., anywhere they'll stick, along with the others, the fried eggs, and mini shopping carts, fruits, taxicabs, hot dogs, etc. I must be a great person to give gifts to, I'm outrageously appreciative. Especially when the gift is unexpected, and perfectly chosen just for me. It's a better day than yesterday, I felt it as soon as I woke up. I kissed both girls good morning, and they must have felt it too. I'm wearing a shirt with an embroidered sailboat on it, sailing on an embroidered line of sea, beneath an embroidered sun, under which an embroidered seagull flies. It makes me happy to look at it, silly as it is. One last thing, to get in my 'reality television' comment of the day, the finale to "For Love Or Money" was the most streeeeettttcccchhhhhhhhed out finale of any in history, two hours that could have easily been one half hour, but it was good, really, to see him turn down the one who wanted to marry him and bear his young, in favor of the one who never really wanted him at all, and hear her, and watch her tell him she'd prefer to have the one million dollars instead, thank you anyway. Classic. Really. Staged? Perhaps. Not quite so very 'real'? We may never know, or we might as soon as ET jumps on it, but it was good for what it was. Junk TV. Like a good cheeseburger, fries and Coke. American as all the above. Yes, it makes me proud to be an American, the Reality Television shows. I.E. "Big Brother", and tonight is the night! **Just saw my Yahoo! horoscope and it seems appropriate: "Today is your day to dream, and dream big, dear Aries. Think about what it is that you want the most out of life. Aim your arrow to the stars and pull back your bow as far as possible. There is no limit to how far you can go. Your only limitation is your own imagination. Don't worry if your plan doesn't seem to make any rational sense. Worry more about what you want and less about how you are going to get it." Cost of the War in Iraq
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