Salad Days

The first share included three bunches/kinds of lettuce (was supposed to be four, I think), a wad of Russian kale, a wad of spinach, a teensy little bit of broccoli, and four or five hakurei turnips with greens attached (the only thing in the box I haven't had, I think). Although I'm paying to have the stuff delivered to my door, it didn't work out for yesterday (long boring story), so I picked the box up from a local natural foods store that serves as a drop-off for other people (i.e., it wasn't really out of the way for the delivery person), and got some salad dressing and two boxes of strawberries that look pretty spectacular. (I would have gotten a flat of them, except I had to haul everything on the bus, number one, and, number two, I think I'm going to be getting strawberries in my share next week.)

Normally I am not a Salad Person. I like salad well enough, but I find it to be a pain to buy, wash, prepare, etc., so I tend to avoid making my own. But, hey, three kinds of lettuce, and I have some carrots and dried fruit, and even some raw onion if I feel really adventurous, and there's lunch. And then some strawberries and pineapple for breakfast--there's health breaking out all over the damn place. Except for the part where I could not, not, not get myself to work out tonight. I wanted to, I meant to, but the flesh was completely unwilling, despite the ever-increasing amounts of said flesh.

The six days off in a row were pretty fabulous; they could have been more fabulous only if (a) there were more of them and (b) I didn't have several shitstorms on my desk and in my email when I got back today. I managed to stem the tide on one and repair the levee on another, but I basically have a huge wad of things to do in about two weeks. The new fiscal year starts July 1, and I get a little urpy thinking about the things that really, truly must be done before that time.

Then I turn on a hockey game (go hawks!) and have a beer and forget about it, at least until I get to my desk again.

Speaking of hockey, I've been keeping half an eye on the ticket possibilities, on the off chance that something turns up on Ticketbastard at the last moment. That shows no signs of happening of course. So occasionally I wander over to the resale sites--there's one that Ticketbastard runs, plus craigslist, plus a couple of the other big ones--and it's kind of laughable. At this point, the cheapest ticket for the next Hawks home game, if it occurs, is about $800. Others are going for $4000 or more (lots more) per ticket, and seats on the glass are going for more than $11,000 per ticket.

Which guarantees that I will not be purchasing a ticket for the game. And, if you want to know, it kinda grosses me out. If you had those seats, wouldn't you want to use them? And if you couldn't use them, okay, I can see getting a little more than your money back, but do you have any friends who might enjoy and appreciate them and would even pay face value? I guess, for really good seats, I can see doubling the face value. But the prices listed are just greedy and nuts, and, if I were the kind of person who really believed in karma, I'd think that that kind of markup is a good way to gin up some seriously bad karma. I'm sure there are all kinds of extenuating circumstances--you just happened to find a ticket laying in the gutter, and your house is being foreclosed, so you're going to use the money to put a roof over the heads of your kids--but short of that? No.

And I have to wonder who's willing to pay that money. I mean seriously: it surely isn't the everyday fans who sit in the 300 level, and it isn't the guys who have been following the team for years and years. It's the people who have to see and be seen, I suppose. But WTF do I know? I don't travel in those circles and never will.

It reminds me of what I was thinking about shoes today. (Huh??) No; stick with me for a minute. There are three rough levels of shoes: the completely cheap shoes that are going to fall apart and/or hurt your feet (but may be all that many people can afford); the somewhat-better-made shoes that are going to last awhile but may not be "fashion forward," as they say; and then the really expensive shoes. There are some that are really expensive because they are handmade or something, I suppose, but mostly it seems that people are buying the brand name and the fashionability; they're no longer buying something to wear on their feet to protect themselves from having to walk barefoot, they're using their feet for display purposes. And that's the part that always seems bizarre to me. Don't get me wrong, I like Nice Stuff, up to a point, and I've learned that, with many things, you do, indeed, get what you pay for, so I'll pay, and get, a little (or a lot) more when I can afford to do so, but what I'm buying isn't someone's name on my feet and, as everyone I know can testify, I am not exactly a fashionable person.

Anyway, I could babble on for longer, but I'm also, increasingly, not exactly an awake person, so it's off to bed with me.

Keeping the Economy Moving, Singlehandedly

Work is a pain and stressful and so on and and and.

There; got that out of the way.

Meanwhile, my iPod appears to have died, finally. It's been coughing some lately, when I use it, which isn't all that often. But that will change soon, because it's warm enough to walk to or from work, thus varying my exercise. (Do you think I had enough clauses strung together there?) Anyway, I could probably get the battery replaced, but I've decided what I really covet is a Touch: I get all the music bits, plus WiFi, plus various game and apps were I to want them (which I may not; I'll have to rummage around and see if anything appeals). I do not want an iPhone, because (a) I am content with the cellphone system and service I have now (but not the phone so much, which kinda sucks--Sanyo Katana I'm talking to you) and (b) I loathe ATT.

And, pretty though the iPhone is, I'm really not that interested in it. I want a cellphone for pretty limited reasons--I don't come close to using the minutes I pay for--and having a prettier phone wouldn't change that. I DO want the music, and maybe occasionally the (free!) WiFi, but the websurfing on my phone that probably costs money? not really at all. And the apps and such I can have on the Touch. The nice thing about the Touch is that I get the functionality I want for a one-time purchase price. So, yeah, I think I'm going to get one, even though it means I also have to upgrade my operating system on my iMac, because I'm a couple of versions behind. That, however--and arguably the Touch as well, given some of its capabilities--is a business expense.

I have also been going a little crazy with the ticketing for various events. So far the schedule includes (between now and September): Blackhawks playoff games (first two rounds); the Dead (2 nights); Springsteen; Phish; Widespread Panic and Allman Bros.(2 nights); U2; Dave Matthews (2 nights); a beer-tasting festival; Indianapolis 500; Milwaukee Mile; and the Indy car race at Chicagoland. It'll be interesting to see U2, because I used to not like them very much at all. Over the past 10 years or so I've enjoyed the occasional song, and the snippets I've seen on television or whatever have been pretty good, so I doubt I'll hate it. I also doubt I'll become a devout fan, but I don't know that that's a necessary outcome for it to be worthwhile.

And!! My walls no longer look leprous! Yes, they did, in fact, paint the place (and put a weird switchplate-with-no-outlets-thingy in the middle of one wall, for reasons that are completely unclear to me), and I got the lease extension and they did not raise the rent, so yay. I don't think I could have put moving into the juggling mix without dropping several other things that would have shattered into sharp little pieces and embedded themselves in my feet. Or something.

No Flour

Every time I start to write a post, I end up finding myself four paragraphs later having done nothing except bitch; sometimes I throw in some moaning or whining, for good measure. Then I reread it and I get annoyed with myself and I delete it and go to bed the end.

I had a friend in college--we still exchange the occasional email, every couple of years--who tried to teach me to juggle. I learned the basic principles and did it a little, but I didn't have the patience or enthusiasm to practice it the way it would have required to actually become even the least bit proficient. Nevertheless, that's what I feel like I've been doing lately at work. I'm juggling too many things, and I drop something every so often because I cannot keep them all in the air; or I manage to toss a thing away, but then three more things get tossed into the mix, and something else tumbles to the ground.

There are no 50-pound sacks of flour, and that still counts for quite a bit. I've had a few tantrums with my boss this week, though, because I'm getting quite tired of having him tell me that I Have To Do This Thing! Because It's Late! Or His Boss Wants It! That does not solve any of my problems. I know these things are late, and I even know what it will take to fix them, but I keep getting dragged into something that takes four times longer than it should, or I discover that the previous director of business operations--who is a friend of his--fucked us in yet another way. Next week's blowup will be because a final report for some bullshit little research project about which I know nothing but am still supposed to write was due this week, and I simply did not get around to (a) fedexing the data to the person who's supposed to analyze it (not least because I don't know what our fedex procedures are) or (b) calling the foundation and asking for an extension. I have no clue to whom I'd need to speak, and, guess what, i do not fucking care. It will have to get in line behind the various projects that bring in sums of money with two commas in them, because I deem them to be more important, and if anyone has a problem with my priorities, then I will point this out. I cannot do everything, and I refuse to try.

I hate the conflict, and I hate the timesuck of trying to be nice and polite and full of kumbayahity. I hate that people come barging into my office, no matter whether the door is closed, and then just stand there, even if I'm on the phone. I hate being underpaid, relative both to my coworkers and to the work that I'm doing, even as I hate caring about that. I hate the stupidity of several of the people who are making substantially more than I am and whose stupidity costs me even more of a timesuck. The meetings drive me batshit, especially when people are wandering in and out, answering cell or blackberry calls/messages, which I find incredibly rude. (Look, people, you are not transplant surgeons, so I do not see what could be so fucking important.)

We had a full-day strategic planning meeting this week, and it exemplified nearly everything that's good and everything that's frustrating about the whole situation.

I asked my boss if he wanted me to facilitate the meeting, and he said, sure, if I wanted to. Which I did--not because I actually wanted to do that, but because I knew that no one else would, I knew that he hadn't even thought about it (or put together any kind of agenda--for a full-day meeting!), and I did not want to waste all that damned time. It actually went reasonably well in many ways, in part precisely because I did facilitate it, with an agenda, and a vision of what we needed to do and how to get there.

One person wandered away not once but twice, and then started whining at the end of the day because she was tired of the whole thing and wanted to leave, and a couple of others wandered away briefly, but in general people stayed reasonably focused. We managed to identify what we need to do, and we started thinking about how to do those things--except then we got sidetracked because we had to come up with bullshit goals that the bigger organization thinks should be our focus. These goals by and large ARE bullshit, and they will not result in anything real or meaningful, in terms of goals, objectives, or our actual challenges in the coming year. (And, you know, if I got asked by higher-ups about the whole thing, I'd probably say something close to that--that the goals are bullshit and do not relate to the actual things we need to do.) On the other hand, we have a good team, with a lot of strengths, even if there are some glaring weaknesses as well, and we are doing good work, and we are well-funded, so it could be worse.

In addition, I have no difficulties just leaving at the end of the day, or occasionally leaving a bit early if I have something I want to do; I'm even refusing to go to the capitol city for a one-day (bullshit) conference/training session, because (people don't know this is the reason) I have tickets for the NHL playoff games and I will likely have a game one of those nights. There are very few jobs that would entice me, one way or another, to put in 70-hour weeks on a regular basis--or even 55-hour weeks; I did it at the bakery because I didn't have much choice at the time. The job could easily become a time- and energy-suck, and I won't do that. I don't have the desire or energy for it; no one else around me--either above or below me on the org chart--is doing it; and there's nothing to be gained from doing it. If I thought that, say, two or three weeks of intense effort would get me all caught up, and then it would be relatively smooth sailing, I'd maybe be convinced to do it, but it's not at all clear to me that that's true, so screw it. I may need to reevaluate that conclusion.

Meanwhile, I need to finish an editing job this weekend, and I'm hoping to do that Saturday so I can spend Sunday doing a whole big bunch of nothing much. Okay, that's not entirely true: there's an F1 race to watch, and the season's first Indy car race, and a bunch of hockey, so the only question is how long I can remain on the couch.

Tools

The book that I didn't like much was "Girl Cook" by Hannah Mccouch; I thought I would like it, for obvious reasons, and there were bits--some of the cooking bits, in particular--that I liked well enough, but the whole thing was chicklit at its worst. I was musing about why I don't like that genre, and, no surprise here, it's because the stories always seem to be a version of "how I found my prince, even though I didn't think I would." Okay, that's not exactly a novel observation, I suppose, and occasionally there are stories that are well-written, so I don't mean to dismiss them all. (I'd also add that not everything that's written by a young(ish) woman falls into the category, despite the marketing that tells us otherwise.) But it got me thinking about how marriage, at least in its novelistic incarnations, has been transformed.

If you read Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope (or, for all I know, a bunch of other writers from more than a century ago), one of the central plotlines of many of the novels is the urgent need for young women without independent means to find a husband. In all of the stories I can think of, the gentlewomen of no or little means know that if they do not find husbands, they will be relegated to a very poor existence. The only work available (for a gentlewoman, anyway) is as a governess or a companion. In both cases, the women live with another family. In the former, she tutors and raises their children, and in the latter, she provides companionship and, in some cases ("The Eustace Diamonds," for example) she provides a veneer of respectability, because no woman, no matter how wealthy, can live alone, and, of course, household help does not count. Thus, poor women provide the veneer, in exchange for a roof over their heads and food to eat.

One of the other things that's interesting is that women who have an income (Austen's Emma; Lizzy Eustace; Glendora Palliser; an assortment of other Trollope characters) still face tremendous pressure to marry. They are on the market, and they must find someone to marry them before their sell-by dates, else they come to be regarded as old goods.

In all cases, no matter their finances, women are regarded as lucky if they marry for, or with, love and affection. This is particularly true for the poorer women, who literally cannot afford to marry only for love. In the case of wealthy women, the love of a good man makes them better people somehow (as in "Emma," particularly, although that novel has always creeped me out a little). Thus, it becomes advantageous for wealthy women to find wealthy husbands--not because either of them needs the other's money, but because the woman will never believe that he married her for her wealth. Take the Pallisers, for example: Glendora has huge wads of money, much more than Planty, but he has so much of his own that her money is irrelevant to him.

What does this have to do with chicklit?

Well, women now can earn their own way in the world, it turns out. Money confers advantages--that is always going to be the case, I imagine, until we live in a propertyless anarchist paradise--and I bet I was not the only person here who was informed that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as with a poor one (probably not true for me, but that's a different story), but I have never depended on a man for my bread. I thought I was going to do that, at least until the bakery was a wild success, but we remember how that turned out. It's also true that the trajectory of my life has different significantly from that of the majority of women, and it's also true that I don't have children. (On the other hand, I'm not the only woman my age I know personally who has lived alone so much of her life, and another friend my age decided to have a child by herself and has done so. It may be that we all "attract" each other, precisely because of our deviation from the mainstream, but it may also be the case that there are simply more women out there who have, in one way or another, for some amount of time, made major life decisions without a partner being involved in the decision and have not been destituted by that. Yes, I know that it DOES impoverish many women.)

That is, despite the pay iniquities and the financial and other burdens that raising children add to the mix, it is more possible--though, of course, not easy--for a woman to get by without a man. (Of course this is all heteronormative, but it's an aspect of heteronormativity, not an aspect of being a woman, per se, about which I am writing.)

The point--and I do have one here--is that patriarchy, as a system, increasingly must make marriage attractive to women for reasons other than the monetary ones about which Trollope and Austen wrote so perceptively. This is made easier by heterosexual attraction--many women like having sex with men, and vice versa, and at least some of that attraction is every bit as inborn as the attraction that some women feel for women and some men feel for men. And, really, humans are, by and large, social creatures (that's a whole other Wittgensteinian argument that I'll leave unexplicated for now), so forging bonds of various sorts isn't exactly an unusual thing to do. But neither the sexual attraction nor the sociability necessitates marriage as we understand it.

I could also argue, and not just for the sake of argument, that there are all kinds of arrangements that would suit women better: imagine if we had adequate childcare available, or imagine if women were paid equitably. Those two things alone would put more cards in women's hands, and would enable them to tell men who were being assholes to fuck off. Adequate childcare--and the lack of penalties for caring for children--would also enable more men to be better parents, as well. It's hard to be an involved parent when you have to work 80 hours a week, and it's hard to forego that, if you know that foregoing it means you will not be regarded as eligible for any number of career paths that you might desire for your own reasons. That conundrum affects men and women differently in our current society, but it does affect both men and women. (I also know an unusual number of men who have been the primary caregiver for significant stints of their children's lives, and all of them had job or career situations that did not fit the current norm in some important way.)

In the chicklit genre, at least the bits of it that have crossed my path, the men end up fulfilling the same function they did with Trollope and Austen--providing an escape from a situation that was socially, and possibly financially, undesirable, while at the same time providing True Love. "Girl Cook" is a stellar example of it, in fact, because the woman in question is broke, wants to be a chef, leaves the job she has (for very good reasons), and Just Happens to meet a man who is smitten with her and Very Very Rich, plus he owns (wait for it) a food-oriented television network. In addition to her cooking abilities, she was raised in an environment of sufficient wealth & privilege that she can hang with the rich people and not embarrass him.

But the question that always occurs to me is why the women in these novels spend so much time worrying about finding the right man. They certainly do not need to do that in the same way that Austen's and Trollope's gentlewomen needed to do that. However, it does serve the patriarchy, as a system, for women to be worrying about this, so I do, indeed, blame the patriarchy for chicklit, and I have come to regard chicklit as a tool of the patriarchy.

ETA: I posted this, then meandered over to flea's place and found HER critique of chicklit, in terms of a specific book. Go read it.

Count This

Let's just say that the Procedure has been, in some ways, the least problematic aspect of this week, not least because they ended up giving me enough drugs that i was completely out.

Workworld has been an adventure. I'm trying to report our services for a particular funding stream. You'd think that would be relatively uncomplicated, but you would be oh-so-wrong. Friday was an exercise in frustration and annoyance. Part of this is complicated by AP, who is dysfunctional in so very many ways, not the least of which is that i do not trust a single number that she has given to me. But I do not want to pick a fight with her, at least not for the sake of picking a fight--I want to know what we did, and, as in high school geometry class, i expect her to be able to show her work, i.e., demonstrate or document where the numbers are from.

My boss isn't very good at managing all of this, either. I do like him, tremendously, and I know he wants me to do the things I'm doing, but sending me to people in sequence is resulting in wildly conflicting answers and basically making me run in circles. We are having a come to jesus talk on Monday.

After this is over, i am getting all of our contracts--a very small number--and putting together a list of what we have committed to do. Then I am going to gather every last person in the organization who has anything to do with it, all in one room at the same damned time, and we are going to hammer out agreements about what, exactly, we are going to be measuring and counting, and how, exactly, we are going to do that. Then I am going to put together a process, with whatever tools are necessary, to do that. And we are going to put things in place so I don't have to go through this fucking shit every last fucking time I have to put together a fucking report or a fucking proposal.

Not that it has been frustrating or anything. Upside, though, is that it has enabled me to make connections with clinical and other people who might otherwise not know or care who the fuck I am. And it has already become clear to me that part of my message must be that I am not interested in fingerpointing and blaming. Here is what we need to do; let's reach a consensus on how to do that. Yes, I know there have been issues and problems, and it may occasionally be useful to recount aspects of that so we can learn from that, but castigating others will not advance the agenda, so let's not do that.

I'm actually kind of looking forward to that, provided I get the chance to do it.

Meanwhile, this weekend needs to be edit-y, and already has been today. I got up early this morning and cranked away with F1 qualifying on in the background. I'm thinking that I should maybe say no to the occasional editing job, but it's really difficult to do that, especially given the relative lucrativity of the jobs I've been getting, and especially given that Friend will be gone a lot on the weekends in the fall. It also seems--and I could be wrong about this one--that at least a couple of people save the big, gooey, complicated jobs for me, which makes the actual work more interesting (and, occasionally, more horrifyingly bad) and more lucrative per job, even though the rates for the work (by the hour or the page) are the same. (That is, it feels more worthwhile to do one big job for two grand or more than to do eight or ten smaller jobs for the same amount of money, even if the actual time spent is exactly the same. Yes, I know it doesn't make sense, but there it is.) The truly exciting thing is that as soon as the checks for this work come in, I will be able to pay off the student loan--probably in August. The only things that will remain from my sojourn into the bakery world will be a certificate (hey, it was good enough for the Scarecrow, it's good enough for me), the improved skills, the still-aching SI joint, and friends with Mad Pastry Skillz.

Not exactly what I had in mind, but, as noted previously, I'm getting used to that in this life. There's a scene in the first part of LOTR where the hobbits are trying to go through a forest that is basically malevolent; they want to go in one direction, but the forest keeps forcing them in a different direction. I get the same feeling sometimes, although it doesn't feel malevolent. And, for better or worse, I'm kind of getting used to it. More important, I end up getting to do useful work, no matter what happens, plus I meet interesting people and always collect a couple of good friends, so it's difficult to do anything other than roll my eyes and say, "Okay, OKAY! I get it!" even if I'm not entirely sure what "it" is, and even though I most certainly do not believe in deities, fates, whatever.

Sing a Song of Small Things

Did you know that there are these big buildings scattered throughout the city--and a cool big building with gargoyles downtown--that have thousands of books in them, and you can go in and borrow the books and take them home for free? Really! And, as Brazen Tart noted at one point (and I am too lazy to go find the post where she mentioned this), you can put them on hold using teh intertubes, and they'll send them wherever you want to pick them up. Well, whichever library building, anyway. The one I went to today has pretty slim pickings on the shelves (which didn't stop me from finding a stack to bring home), and they appear to be severely understaffed, so there are boxes of on-hold books waiting to be unpacked, not to mention a constant line of people waiting to pick up and/or check out their books. There's another branch that's really close to work, and I think I'll do that one instead, because then I can just run over at some point during the day.

So I got home and noticed that my door wasn't deadbolted--and I knew I had locked it this morning. Turns out there had been workpeople here today, who saw fit to cut a hole in my living room wall in order to get at my bathtub pipes. Well, okay, except it would have been nice to know that was going to happen, you know? And, by the way, LOCK THE DOOR WHEN YOU LEAVE.

I was also feeling grateful for Starbucks while I walked home tonight. Yeah, I know, we're supposed to hate them, and yeah, they could have displaced fewer small indy coffee shops. But they've done two very important things (well, maybe three, if you count benefits for part-time workers, and four if you think they've had any impact on fair trade coffee). First, they made brewed decaffeinated coffee commonplace. Trust me when I tell you that 20 years ago, it wasn't particularly common, and 30 years ago you got hot water and a packet of Sanka. For those of us who are naturally caffeinated, this was a real boon. Some restaurants were doing it, too, but your neighborhood coffee joint? Not so much.

Second, though, they dramatically increased the number of coffee shops, and, therefore, the number of public spaces where people could and would go and just hang out. Yeah, bars do that, too, but alcohol isn't for everyone, and you don't really want to bring your kid to a bar, and, really, you don't always want a drink, especially not earlier in the day. Between television and air conditioning, people were spending increasing amounts of time in their own private spaces; suburbs increased that tendency, too. People used to sit on stoops and porches and such--especially in the summer, when it was hot.--but there's less of that around these days. (Apparently, before air conditioning, people even went to sleep in the city parks--in New York, for sure, and probably elsewhere as well.)

But coffee shops turned that around--the beverages are reasonably priced, more or less, many places have some food but don't require that you buy any of it, lots of places have Wifi these days, and people actually have a place to hang out. (Yes, I know, the preponderance of people there with laptops kind of means people are bringing their private space along with them; they're still in public.) There are at least four coffee shops within a short walk of my apartment, and only one is a Starbucks; there are so many between where I live and where I work that I'd be hard-pressed to count them. It's true that there's a university in the neighborhood, which dramatically increases the market, I imagine, but still. I like to go to one once in awhile--though not any time recently--to do some editing, or just to sit with a book and read. Anyway, I think Starbucks should get some credit for bringing back the coffee shop.

I could tell you stories about work, but I don't feel like it. It's frustrating in an assortment of ways--but I'll still get paid on Friday, and I still won't have to lug flour, and it'll still be more money than the bakery, so it's still all good. I'm trying very, very hard to make my boss happy, but I'm also getting frustrated at the constant stream of "emergencies." They're not all emergencies, mind you, it's just that one of the higher-ups has decided that s/he wants this thing NOW, or, gee, can we submit a proposal for this thing, even though it's due in four days? Or, today, why haven't we submitted a project report on this funding? Hmmm; could it be because I had no fucking clue we had to write one? Could it be that it was due when I was trying to bring in the millions of dollars of funding for the organization? Could it be that I've never seen the contract, despite asking for these things? Whatever. My biggest challenge is not telling people to fuck off (politely, I mean; i wouldn't actually tell them that, but I fear that I am not always at my best when someone barges into my office all concerned about a report that hasn't been submitted when (a) I had no idea it was due and (b) I've never seen the contract).

So back to the libraries: perhaps one of the things I'll do when I win the lottery is fund more staff at the branches near me or something. It's getting to the point that I'm going to have to win a lot more money than I thought. I long promised my old boss at the substance abuse treatment organization that I'd build him a treatment center in the city of his choosing, with the only caveat that he had to name it after my sister in some way. I'd love to endow a chair at my alma mater (undergrad; I would go out of my way to spit on my graduate institution). I definitely want to send some cash to Sarah Fisher; Danica gets all the press, and maybe she's even a better driver (I think that's difficult to say one way or the other), but Sarah was there first, and she's formed her own team, and that rocks.* And she isn't posing in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, either. Oh--and I'd hire a masseuse, or even a couple of them, so I could get at least one massage a day, and then I'd send them off to treat my friends, because who wouldn't like that?

And I'd do things like set up college funds for my nephews and CK, and I'd pay off my brother's house, and I'd spread some cash around to my friends, and I'd throw a great party (or even a series of parties, which would be fun and would be an excuse for people to come hang out and eat good food and maybe even dress up, insofar as my friends could be said to be dressing up). But I really don't know how much of my essential lifestyle I'd change.

I was thinking about that today, too, on the way home. One of the things I do is look at the buildings past which I'm walking and imagine whether I'd like to live in them. You may remember the bitterness-inducing walk of last summer, past the big lakeside mansions; my current walk doesn't cause that, in part because, even though some of the buildings are out of my current price range, they're mostly lovely (or truly crappy) old apartment buildings, or six-flats, or even new condo construction, but not like the downtown luxe-boxes. There's an occasional street or two of single-family homes thrown in, and they're probably quite valuable, but it's not that kind of neighborhood so much.

The thing is, what would I do with all that space? Seriously--it's just me. An extra bedroom--even two, if I'm feeling super-extra-extravagant--and a spacious kitchen, maybe an extra bathroom. (But then I'd have to buy all that damned furniture to fill the rooms, which would be kind of a pain.) A washer and dryer in my unit. Some new small appliances, to replace things that have worn out. But a lot of space? Then I'd have to clean it all, and I have enough trouble cleaning the space I have, fer chrissakes. K and I were laughing about this the other night--what pathetic rich people we'd make. Not that I wouldn't want to try it, mind you--but mostly because it would be so much fun to throw parties for my friends.

And, finally, I killed off my domain name yesterday. I'd never actually built a website, and I couldn't think of an alternate use for just bite me bakery dot com, so I figured it was time to quit paying the $5 a month. Oh well; so it goes.
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*If Marco hadn't taken out his teammate at Indy--who then took out Sarah, possibly destroying her chances of racing in one of the other two races they were going to try to do this season--then she probably would have taken home more money from Indy.

Sloggity Goodness

I keep marching forward on these things. As I observed to Friend tonight, in addition to getting a crash course on the organizations--which is helpful in and of itself--I'm also getting a crash course on who is helpful and who is not, and on who needs to be managed, and in what ways. All of that is vital information that will stand me in good stead. I have now earned more than three days of comp time--plus, my boss put me on the list of people to get a free box seat to a baseball game next week (during the afternoon, thank you very much), so I've got that, too. That, my friends, along with the comma in the paycheck, sums up why this job is better than the bakery. Yes, I've been putting in days that are just as long as the ones at the bakery; yes, I worked on Saturday, all day; yes, I'm still doing work on the side. But I can go back to a normal day and get paid the same--and still have things like paid time off! (I know, I know, I've mentioned this before, but it's still pretty amazing to me.)

(As an aside, Mom goes in for surgery tomorrow morning, probably around 6 am my time; if things go well, she should be done by 8 or so. What I really wish is that she were going in for a new kidney tomorrow, but I'll be happy if tomorrow's surgery goes well.)

As for the editing, my reputation apparently continues to spread: I got offered a job from a new person today, which I took. I'm going to take advantage of Friend's absence to finish a project and start this new one. I also finally figured out how I want to allocate the extra money--basically, I'm throwing a third of it at my student loan, throwing a third of it into my savings, and throwing the last third into my savings for now but earmarking it for Something Fun. I don't know what the SF will be, and it may not even use up all I'm allocating for it, but it gives me the freedom to take a trip, or throw a party, or whatever I want to do. I'm turning 50 this year, and I want to do something fun. One possibility is a dinner at the chef's/kitchen table at this spectacular restaurant Friend and I visited the summer before last. A second is a dinner party here in the city for some friends. Maybe both. Maybe a trip somewhere (burningman? could be). I don't have to decide now, but I feel like I've earmarked the funds and will find it easier to spend the money. Hell, if I end up being boring and doing nothing, I can always throw a wad at the loan and pay it off completely (it'll probably take me until next year to do it otherwise--which is still about 16 years early, so I'm ahead).

I'll throw up an update tomorrow when I hear about mom.

Update: Mom (!) just called me her own self. She's out of surgery and expects to go home today (and back to dialysis tomorrow).

Upside Down Upside

As the Times is reporting, a lot of people are walking away from their homes. As housing prices drop, they end up owing more on the house than the house is worth, so they figure there's no point, especially if they've got an interest-only loan or if they've got an adjustable rate mortgage wherein the rate is about to go (or has gone) up. And there's a part of me that's snickering at this--not at the people who are doing it, because, no matter how much assistance they're getting, it's gotta suck--but at the bank people who are getting huffy about it.

"They made a bad decision and they should pay for it" is the attitude, the "they" here ostensibly being the homebuyers.

How about: you, Mister Bank, sold them a deal that was marginal for them, at best, and great for you, because you'd make all kinds of money from them, and the deal has suddenly gotten way worse for them, so they're saying "fuck it" and moving on? And you now not only own the house--which you did all along anyway--but you have to do the vacuuming and dusting and mop the floors? Metaphorically speaking, anyway. In other words, one could argue that it was the bank that made the bad decision.

I have accomplished exactly nothing today. Friend and I had some beers last night, then watched TV at his house. This morning featured a lot of laying about doing nothing and cat-petting, followed by breakfast (venison sausage; some plum brioche from the bakery that had been in his freezer for months; and eggs with onions, apple, and cheddar), followed by more laying about. I finally got sufficiently motivated to leave around 3:30 or so (he has to play hockey tonight, else I probably would have had difficulty dislodging myself at all). The trip home is about 90 minutes (two buses and a train), and I've been sitting around since then. Which, on one hand, is too bad, because I have nearly 900 pages of copyediting sitting on my kitchen table. But doing nothing feels quite pleasant.

I won't get much done tomorrow, because Friend and I are beginning our Month O' Hockey. We're meeting for food at 11 am and the game is at 2; we also have games on Wednesday night and Friday night. After the game tomorrow, the plan is to make a stew that was in Cooks Illustrated--a chicken tagine with figs and honey (and lemons and all kinds of good spices), though we're going to use venison instead, because it cooks for an hour or so, and I think the venison will do even better with that than the chicken would, and he actually has venison.

I was lying in bed this morning, contemplating muffin recipes, and, although I probably won't get to making one until Tuesday at the earliest, I think the first batch is going to feature lemon (because I have a bag of them in the fridge) and honey and ginger (Brazen Tart could have guessed those last two), and probably dried apricots, and possibly some dates, though those may wait for another day. (They're already desiccated, so no big deal if they sit around on top of the fridge for a little longer.) And I want to add some fiber to it, too. . . . Ooooo, just found a recipe for honey bran muffins with figs. There's a place to start.

Muffins usually are not terribly healthy--lots of fat, very little fiber, often a lot of sugar. My goal is to make something that is both tasty and relatively healthy (like the recipe to which the Tart linked in a comment below, for example, or like the recipe I found), and that freezes well. So I'm thinking of doing with the lemons kind of what I did for the Tart's lemon tart, except I'll peel the lemons, remove the pith, boil the peels for a minute or two, then macerate them in honey overnight, perhaps with the ginger in there as well. I'll probably reduce the sugar (in addition to a half cup of honey, there's a cup of sugar) and use some wheat flour, and I will still probably go with apricots rather than figs. (Okay; shopping list: apricots, buttermilk, sugar, bran.)

Like a Rolling Stone

To answer kstyle's question, I don't exactly know how it feels.

I am, of course, a little terrified. i don't have a job. I don't even have any freelance or temp jobs lined up. Yes, I've had several interviews (four, to be precise, with a total of seven people) that I think went pretty well, but no one has intimated that I'm going to be hired or made an offer, so I know better than to count on that in any way, shape, or form. I do have a little money in the bank, and a little more on the way from a few different sources (the last few bakery checks, plus a couple of freelance checks), which is how I planned this escapade. And I've also decided that if I don't get an offer by the time I get back from my visit east--i.e., mid-January--or if they say they're not interested after all, then i start looking for a temp agency immediately. I can simultaneously look for more freelance clients, of course, but getting at least a little income will take off some of the heat and drain the reserves more slowly.

I'm also relieved. The job has been wrecking me physically, in several dimensions. I get no real exercise, I do a lot of repetitive motions, I eat a lot of crap, and I'm on my feet for 9 to 12 hours a day, lugging around 15-pound wads of dough. The place is loud. I'm constantly dinging myself on one thing or another. (I whacked my shin the other day--through my pants mind you--hard enough to draw blood. When I raised my pant leg to see--because it hurt--Bossman said, "80-quart mixing bowl?" and I said, "No, a bucket." Yes, I seriously bruised my shin on a plastic bucket. He, meanwhile, has several new burn scars--baker's tattoos, he calls them.) The job wrecks me in other ways, too, but the real reason I'm quitting is that I never intended to work this hard for someone else. If I can't start my own bakery, then I'm going to do something else for pay (and, for that matter, if I still wanted to start my own bakery, I'm not going to earn enough capital to do that by working for someone else).

So it seems like the right and sensible thing to do, even though, on paper, I shouldn't be quitting one job before I have another one in place. I have also recognized, however, that, if I do end up doing the freelance copyediting and proofreading, I'm never going to have the time to search for, get, and complete those jobs while working at the bakery. That is, to implement that plan, if that's the one I end up implementing, I need to have the time to find those jobs.

But you guys know all of this.

Here's another thing: it's not like I'm giving up, say, health insurance to do this, or bennies like the ones the Tart gets. It turns out that the bakery does not, in fact, have properties in the Cayman Islands at which I can stay at a drastically cheap rate. Even my "vacation" wasn't really two weeks' pay, it was 80 hours of pay. (My brother the mechanic gets vacation pay based on his average weekly check, and, because he's flat rate and he's good, that's a lot more than 40 hours of work per week--which means his vacation pay is higher, too.) My point isn't to complain about the bakery--I can point out ways that Bossman could more easily keep people like me, but that's a different subject. My point is that my pay there is nothing special, and making up that pay, or a portion of it, isn't the same as making up a full-time salary, or even hourly pay with benefits.

Meanwhile, today was an extra grind, because I had to wait for the dairy delivery to get my lamination butter, plus I made up the monkey buns, so I put in another 11.5-hour day. I already have 2.5 hours of overtime this week, which kind of makes my point for me. Tomorrow I'm probably going to be assembling gingerbread house kits--or whatever else someone needs, as I don't need to laminate. The only other thing I need to do this weekend is finish the editing job I THOUGHT I'd finished (a few days early!) last week, except I'm an idiot and forgot to do the short bio, intro, and table of contents. I was going through things last night so I could invoice and realized this; the production editor says she's okay with getting everything Monday first thing, but I still felt kinda dumb. It's a small job--less than $200--so I'll throw in a 10% discount on the invoice. Other than that, though, I need to do laundry, and maybe play with the new computer toys, and . . . not a lot else. There's some talk of seeing Friend on Sunday, but that partly depends on how much alcohol he consumes Saturday night and whether he's up for anything on Sunday. Monday I should do a little holiday shopping, and perhaps actually ship a few things off to their various destinations.

I had a pretty good conversation with Chuck today, too; he seems to be doing well, and I'm glad for that. I find that I still can't watch (or, sometimes, even think of) "Elf." But that's for a different post.

I have decided to visit my family the first week in January, and I've nearly decided to take a train (because I really hate to fly, and that reduces the vacationy aspect of any travel), but I haven't booked anything yet. Today Bossman asked me to stay at the bakery a few extra days, because he's going out of town on the 28th or 29th. It turns out that his real concern seems to be that there be enough croissants in the freezer so his going away doesn't matter, which means I don't necessarily have to be there on a given day, I just need to make sure there are enough laminated dough products in the freezer. I'll double check that tomorrow, and then book the travel. I'm also going to get bro involved such that I can surprise my parents, which will be amusing.

And is wine an adequate dinner? Tonight's survey says yes.

The Importance of a T

Today's interview seemed to go fabulously well; I really enjoyed it, if you want to know, and I seemed to connect with the person (the HR guy, as a matter of fact), and I'd say they're still pretty interested in hiring me, even if they don't quite know what they're going to do with me. Thanks to my previous 873 interviews there, I was able to say, "I think what you need is X," and have HRGuy say, "Yes, that's very astute of you." But you know? Until I show up for work the first day, it's not a done deal. Hell, I don't even have an offer yet.

I've also been busy: coffee with J, book-buying for the nephews and CS, and dinner with Friend last Monday, lots of nothing on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (I think: I don't remember precisely), a hockey game with Friend on Friday, beer with Lole and his Cute Girl and Mel and her husband (she worked at the bakery last spring, until she got the Brazen Tart internship) on Saturday; slept late Sunday morning, because it was the first day in months and months where I had nothing to do, then Friend came over and we went to breakfast, he tried (and failed) to fix my internet connection, then we headed to his place for a fire in the fireplace, and checking out whether we should do a computer trade, and a simple dinner in front of the TV ("Kinsey" followed by a tape of a football game). I headed to the interview from his place today, then came home and waited for the internet-fixer.

Somewhere in there I managed to acquire a cold, but it's a strange one, in the sense that I didn't have the typical cold symptoms, I just had to blow my nose a lot, and, yesterday, I sounded a little hoarse. So, okay, whatever; I have tissues. Better than having issues.

I keep thinking about Stuff, too. One thing that makes the conversation difficult, I think, is that few, if any, readers in this little space really look to Stuff to provide meaning or comfort in their lives, so we can look at the piles-of-stuff people (if I may categorize for a moment) and kind of shake our heads, even as we recognize that, in many parts of the world (and country), even the most simple-living of us would be regarded as fabulously wealthy. So there's that. At the same time, at least a few of us have been or are in situations (or have/had relatives in situations) where money would have made, or did make, all the difference. And not big wads of money, either; not big-mansion-on-the-lake money.

Or here's another way to think about it: do the math to figure out what you make, after taxes, in a day. Now, imagine someone who makes a million dollars a year; not a lot, by the standards of the mansions on the lake. Assume s/he gives up half his/her income to taxes (which is already probably wildly inaccurate, in that there are likely tax shelters about which you and I know nothing). That person earns $1923.08, after taxes, each working day. That person gets more in a DAY than I need to pay my monthly rent, health insurance, student loan, and public transportation each MONTH.

Or yet another thought: when my sister-in-law secretly didn't pay the mortgage for 18 months and my brother and she and my nephews were days away from losing their home, my parents and my SIL's mother were able to help out, prevent that from happening. My mother helped them get their finances together, and I think they're fine now. Or how about these past couple of months, when my SIL had her knee replaced AND my brother was out of work with a torn bicep? If they'd been barely scraping by, or if bro hadn't upped his disability insurance last year, or whatever, they'd've been screwed. The point is, none of the amounts of money about which we're talking is all that much to the mansion people--they wouldn't notice it.

And it's that disparity that irks me. Not because I want the piles of money or stuff, but because I think we should all have access to some insulation.

Speaking of which, the other thing that irks me is that the rich are insulated from their mistakes--or even just unfortunate events--in the way the rest of us are not. Yes, my brother was insulated by my parents, and we are all extremely grateful for that. Yes, he actually spent the money on disability insurance, but not everyone can afford that. We all should have some insulation.

On the other hand, all the money in the world would not have saved my sister's life (even as a little of that money might very well have saved others' lives). So, yeah, it's messy. What I most try to avoid is carping on the people most nearly around me--because that only serves the purposes of the really rich. Let the poor and middle class fight over the crumbs, while they feast on the whole cake, all while thinking they deserve it.

Not Crazy

This week should be a lot more crazy for me than it has been so far. But one of our wholesale customers hasn't paid the bills--to the tune of multiple thousands of dollars--and so we have cut off their croissant supply. Their orders make up about two-thirds of our wholesale croissant sales, so it's a substantial decrease in my production. On top of that, we pretty much expect Friday through Sunday to be slower than usual. On the other hand, of course, we're selling the mini plain croissants as a special in the store, plus Brazen Tart's place wants a whole big bunch for Thursday, plus some people have ordered full-size croissants from the store, so it's not like I don't have to make any. Today I shaped croissants from six pieces I'd put in the freezer Saturday, and tomorrow I'll laminate ten pieces (I think eight will be enough, but I'd rather stash the two extras in the freezer) and make sure there will be enough of everything to last until next Tuesday.

I'll go in Friday and help Phil and dick around some, but I'm not going in on Saturday. I figure, it's going to be slow, and my hours will be short enough this week such that I'm not giving up much overtime, and I can make substantially more per hour by doing the pile of editing that's glaring at me, so better I should do that. Besides, it'll be nice to have off three days in a row, and it'll be nice to have the extra time to do the editing. On top of that, another editing job just came in this week. It's not due until the 7th, but I'd like to at least start it. This one will be interesting and kind of fun, in that part of my job is to make the text longer (the author was apparently a little more terse than would have been desirable; the publisher needs a certain minimum number of pages to put a spine on the book, and it's not clear this manuscript gets there).

I think I'm going to keep doing the freelance work even if I get the other job, and even if that job pays a decent buck. I may not say yes to every single opportunity, but, on the other hand, I want to keep my hand in, and continue to improve, for that matter, and I like the extra income. If I could manage to do that much work while working 50 to 55 hours a week at the bakery, I can't see why I couldn't do it while working 40 hours a week at an office job.

I'm going to need to take drastic action at the bakery, meanwhile: the christmas music started today, and I cannot, simply cannot, listen to it ten hours a day, five days a week, for the next six weeks. I have a little radio with headphones, which I'll try; I hesitate to use the iPod, only because it's getting old and crotchety as it is, and a flour-filled environment (plus the risk of getting banged around) probably isn't the best thing for it. If the radio doesn't work, I'm maybe willing to shell out the bucks for an iPod shuffle; my sanity is worth $80. But nonstop christmas music is just not an option--I found myself gritting my teeth several times today, and I know it was from that.

And, meanwhile, I'm having dinner tomorrow night with Chuck and his son. They're heading to Chuck's family's home, so we can have dinner at our usual spot, and I can hand off some baked goods, and they can head north. Sometimes it feels strange to keep doing what we've been doing--we're divorced; we're not supposed to do this, somehow--but it seems to be working for us, so I don't much care.

Pennies

How I wish--O! so fervently!--that I had an alternative to the Microsoft Office products. Yes, I know there are alternatives out there, but my clients use Office, so I must, too, and I hate it, with the white-hot heat of 10,000 suns. it is so very, very dysfunctional. I consider myself a reasonably expert user--I can use styles, for example, if there's noone else using that document who is going to fuck up the styles--but it just freezes and breaks and wtf. I suspect part of it is that I'm using a Mac, but I've lived in the Windows world, too, and it's just awful. Take yesterday's adventures: I went to mactopia and found the latest update (from January, but whatever) and installed it . . . and then all of my toolbars were broke, plus all of my macros--and I had, oh, 20 or so that I had developed for my copyediting--were gone. Just gone--unrecoverable. Apparently, the newest version of Office for Mac--the one coming out around now?--is changing the macros are handled such that there's no cross-platform compatibility. This isn't necessarily an issue for me, as I don't share, say, workbooks with macros in them, but what a pain in the ass. I'd give up on it entirely if I didn't need to track changes in documents that I'm editing.

The weather here has finally changed. The list of things I have to do when that happens grows a little each year--or, perhaps, it just seems like more. Switching my clothes out isn't that big a deal, not least because I now have an abundance of closet space. I also have to crank up the vaporizer (I woke up at 2:30 am Saturday night, barely able to breathe, so I filled it and I'm better now; it's a little amazing what a huge difference that makes). I have to start slathering my body with lotion after I shower, but, in part because of my job, my fingers still crack sometimes. Getting dressed takes longer--all those layers of clothing; back when I practiced yoga and played handball, that was even more of a pain, because it meant changing several times in a day. The bathroom doesn't have a radiator, so I have to run the shower for awhile so it's not cold in there when I get in the shower. But I can switch back to flannel sheets, which I adore, so it's not all bad. Still, I think I'd trade the flannel sheets for not having to stand on the train platform with cold, damp air swirling around my legs.

I already have a ticket (and a decent one) for the Sunday Bruce show--but now I'm trying to score a floor ticket for the Monday show, and may even have found one. That means I'm probably going to exceed my entertainment budget for the month, but what's the point of doing all the side work if I can't do things like that once in awhile? In fact, that's precisely why I've been willing to take on all the extra work I can get: so I don't have to count every damned penny. I still do that, insofar as I track what I'm spending, and on what, but it's not the anxiety of looking at the checkbook, and looking at the bills, and wondering how I'm going to get them on the same planet.

I've been in that situation--for more than 10 years, as a matter of fact, from about 1981 until, oh, about 1995--and, as J and I have discussed repeatedly, it wears you down. I can't even imagine what it's like when it's the only circumstance you know, or when you're trying to support your kids, too, or when, say, your kids get sick or hurt. I still have a certain amount of anxiety around it, as you all have seen displayed here, but it has lessened gradually over the past 18 months. I still get a little anxious (okay, more than a little) about what I'm going to do next, how I'm going to get out of the bakery, blah, blah, blah, but I have irons in various fires, and we'll just see what happens first. I think even if I got a day job that only required, say, 40 hours a week for a decent salary plus benefits I would continue to take on editing projects as offered; hell, if I can fit the work in when I'm working 50 to 60 hours a week, I can certainly fit it in when I'm working fewer hours, and that would mean paying off the student loan sooner and maybe increasing retirement savings while I'm at it.

Speaking of your kids getting sick or hurt, Paul Krugman got it exactly right: "I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children." That's really at the heart of it all. Either we take care of each other, or we don't. Will there be some people who exploit whatever system is in place for their own benefit? Of course; look at all those executives who get exorbitant pay even when their companies have gone into the toilet or when they've had to cut jobs (never their own, of course) or when they get their money on the sweat of the workers. I wouldn't say that those executives don't deserve health care, for example, no matter how many people they've exploited. And everyone else deserves it, too. I've always said that I want the same health care plan as my representatives in Congress, and the same retirement security as well. Seems fair, no?

Bruised Flesh

Not mine--I'm speaking of the flesh of the two heirloom tomatos and the one not-quite-ripe peach that got a little bruised in transit Saturday and had to be consumed Saturday night; it was a tragedy, I tell you. I ate the tomatos with a sprinkling of sea salt and the peach with a sprinkling of brown sugar (no, not honey, surprisingly enough).

For an interesting post, as opposed to the drivel I put up, go check out the Brazen Tart's description of the dance on the line at a high-end restaurant (i.e., a dinner check of somewhere around $100 per person). For those of you who don't visit such places, note that you actually get three desserts: the "predessert," the actual dessert you order, and then some cookies (probably not of the fortune variety) or some other kind of sweet with your check. I have worked in restaurants (though never anything high-end, and not in a million years), and I have worked service jobs where I had a lot of direct contact with the public, but I've never done anything like worked a line in a good restaurant, and even from the Tart's description, you can tell that the pace is different from the work that I do. In my case, the time pressures are more from the fact that the night guys will be coming in (at 6:00 pm), and we have to be out of there, plus the croissants have to be on sheet pans and ready for baking and such, rather than that the customer is waiting for sweetness to arrive at his or her table in a timely fashion. There are exceptions, of course, in both directions: Tart has a lot of prep work to do, as she noted, which is similar to the stuff we're doing, and I occasionally have an order for which someone is waiting. Both of us have to get a lot of work done in the hours allotted.

For example, for a catering order on Friday, I assembled 10 large tarts, and garnished a total of 14: four Tartes du Sous-Bois (ground hazelnuts in crust, filled with hazelnut-sour cream frangipane and fresh raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and cherries; glazed after baking and garnished with raspberries, blackberries, and candied lemon peel), four chocolate mousse tarts (someone else had made them; I garnished them with raspberries), and six fruit tarts, for which I had to bake the crusts from the sablee dough I'd made the day before, fill with pastry cream, then arrange strawberries, blackberries, kiwi, raspberries, and mandarin oranges in a pleasing pattern, then glaze it). The sous-bois tarts and chocolate mousse tarts were marked so they could be sliced into eight pieces, and I garnished them so the garnish was on each slice.

Meanwhile, Lole was in a macaron-making frenzy. Over Thursday and Friday, he made caramel, pistachio, and chocolate, plus the fillings for each, plus the filling for raspberry ones, to which he didn't get before his week ended. (The cookie part of the macaron doesn't have a flavor--they're all made with, basically, almond flour, powdered sugar, and italian meringue--but each is colored appropriately, so they must be made and piped and baked in separate batches.) And, let me tell you, he definitely has the macaron mojo goin' on: they were beautiful and delicious.

You'll note that no mention was made in the previous two paragraphs of croissant-making. We managed to squeeze in the butter-shaping (Lole) and making room in the freezer by putting 40 dozen plain croissants on pans and hauling the cabinets down to the walk-in freezer, then cutting up the day's dough (me), slicing ham and cheese (Lole), and, eventually, after the tarts were done, laminating (me), but we didn't shape a single croissant until nearly 3:00 pm, IIRC. We cruised after that, however, and got out of there around 6:00.

The Tart observes that the pay in the industry is a sad joke, and that's one of the things that makes me a little crazy about the whole thing. What she doesn't point out, and what you may not realize, is that waiters and waitresses in her restaurant can take home more on a weekend night in tips than she makes in a month: Front-of-the-house staff can make serious bucks in this business, but the people who actually make the food, not so much. (Similarly, because of something I completely inadvertently saw at work, I believe that a couple of 20-somethings who kind of manage the store staff make about two bucks an hour more than I do--not quite the gap that Tart experiences, but it would result in about $400 more a month in take-home pay for me, which would be a substantial increase and would substantially reduce the pressure to do the extra work.)

I should point out that if I were willing to do work more like the Tart's, and could find a union job, I could make a little more; in part, it's my lack of interest in the fancy plating and working a line that holds me back. This may sound like orneriness on my part, but I would like that work a lot less, and the pay isn't a lot more, i.e., the trade-off isn't sufficient, and it still wouldn't lead to a longer-term solution that I'd really like. The Tart can be a superstar pastry chef, if that's the direction in which she wants to go--she certainly has the talent, and the background, and is young enough to spend some time getting the experience in fancy places, and did I mention her talents? (If I'd started the bakery, she would have been one of the people I'd have tried to hire or get involved as a partner.) Throw together the monetary and physical factors I've detailed here, and you're starting to get some serious difficulties--difficulties that eventually cannot be overcome by loving the act of making the food or the love of the food, at least not by me, and at least not at my age. (That doesn't stop me from feeling like a failure, however.)

That's something that makes me a little sad about my bakery dream going up in smoke: one of the things I wanted to try to rectify was that imbalance between the monetary rewards for the people who make the food and the monetary rewards for the owners or front-of-the-house staff. I don't know how I would have done it--or even if I could have run a business successful enough to execute such a plan--but it was definitely one of my goals. Profit-sharing, for example, could have been a way to do that; the more you work, the bigger your share of the profits. Or something. The reality is, if making lots of money is important to you, you certainly don't go into a business where the profit margins are non-existent or vanishingly small and where the only people who make serious money are the superstars. (Even mediocre lawyers make more than I do, for example, and I make the best croissants in the midwest.) If what you want to do is make money, you don't become a pastry chef. Hell, you don't even buy a restaurant; more than 90% of restaurants fail in the first two years. In short, I didn't expect that going into this business was going to make me rich.

It's not all monetary, though, it's a combination of factors. More bluntly, I also didn't get in this business to work long hours for low pay for someone else's profit. I was trying to find a combination of challenges, and work that I liked, and an opportunity for success, and maybe the opportunity to do these things in an equitable way, and starting my own bakery seemed like an excellent combination of those things, given that Chuck was going to support me for a little while (hah!). Well, it's spilled milk now, and the best I can do, I think, is figure out what to do next. I detail the issues with the current situation as much as I do not so I can whine and complain but so I can figure out the pieces. For example, I DO love a lot of the aspects of being a pastry chef/baker, and I'm good at it, and I'm continuing to get better, so there is a certain amount of satisfaction, but it turns out there isn't enough satisfaction to compensate for the low pay/long hours/for someone else's profit combination. If I can't have my own business, I'd rather work at a less satisfying job, for more money/fewer hours/paid days off. If I were making, say, $14/hour instead of $10, working exactly where I'm working, the choice would be only a little less clear. I suspect I'd still want to get out of it, though, if only because the work would be just as hard, the hours would be just as long, the paid days off would be just as non-existent, the profit would still go in someone else's pocket, and the long-term viability of the work would be just as tenuous.

And I don't think there's a single "right" combination, for me or anyone else. For some people, making a wad of money is the most important thing, and they don't care what the work happens to be or what they have to sell, or how much of their souls are included in the bargain. For other people, loving what they do is the most important thing, and they don't care if they have to live in a hovel or eat only Ramen noodles to do it. Some people have others depending on them for food and shelter, and they can't afford to be picky about either thing. Some people need a job with benefits. Some people get lucky or unlucky at a crucial moment, or make a decision at a crucial moment that leads one way or the other. We're all just muddling along here, I guess.

Anyway, I have to finish making my gallons of tea for the week, I should go to the post office if the rain stops for long enough, I have to apply for a couple of jobs, and I have to shuck, boil, and roast the dozen ears of corn I have, so I can use some for a corn/beans/tomato salad to take to the Aretha Franklin concert tomorrow. Which is likely to not suck.

Fear of Falling

In the past two days, Marty (the new guy from my pastry school, who's heading to France tomorrow for 10 days but will be working with me full-time after that) and I made up 500 pounds of laminated dough into croissants. Yes, you read that correctly: a quarter-ton of croissants, in two days. Thanks to that effort (and Marty's already proving his worth), this coming week won't be as bad as it might otherwise have been. (Bossman is taking a class Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and he leaves Thursday for Texas, which means, in part, that Thursday will be a 14-hour day, because I'm going to be the bakery's resident expert at a foodie event in the evening.)

But that's not what I want to write about.

Over at Flea's place, she recently wrote one of the funniest posts I've ever seen. She then followed it up with two related posts that sum up many things, including my fears, and that brought tears to my eyes.

As I have spewed my fears all over this space, my readers have reassured me multiple times, and I appreciate every word of it. I've had to keep reminding myself that I'm not in dire straits. But in the back of my head, I hear a panicked whisper that says, "Not yet. But it could happen." Where the panic comes from is that I realize that I'm one stroke of bad luck away from disaster, precisely because I don't have much money. Yes, I'm getting by, and even making enough to afford some fun, but it's all held together with spit and baling wire. As Flea's experience shows, sometimes nothing can protect you. Except money. And if you don't have that, you're fucked, plain and simple, and not in a good way.

There are two things (at least) I want to make clear. The first is that there's a tendency in all of us when we read accounts like these (or accounts like the ones David Shipley provides in The Working Poor) that tempt us to search for some big mistake that someone made that We Would Never Make. And it's bullshit, it's a kind of incantation we chant to reassure ourselves that we can't, won't, no never would find ourselves in That Position. Even a fragment of honesty, however, makes it clear that the incantation--and the blaming it implies--aren't the right answer to the fear of finding ourselves in a desperate situation. Compassion strikes me as a better response, as well as concrete assistance--how about real health care for everyone, just for starters?--and a better safety net and a living wage. When's the last time a politician tried to feed his or her family on a minimum-wage job? Or even on the nearly-twice-minimum-wage money I'm making? I can't imagine trying to feed another person, much less a couple of kids, on what I make.

And that leads to my second point. Bad things happen to everyone. No amount of health insurance is going to keep you from getting fibroids, or cancer, or a broken bone, or double pneumonia. (Actually, some kinds of health insurance make possible health care that helps catch some maladies early when they can be cured easily.) I figured out, when my sister died, that everyone's life has bad shit in it. It's why I had little patience with Chuck's ex-wife's moaning about how difficult her life is--and, more to the point, why I had little patience with his son's mimicking her complaints. Even more to the point, everyone makes mistakes, including some big ones and some expensive ones. (My sister-in-law not paying the mortgage for a year and a half, without telling my brother, would be an example of that one, in that my brother came within days of losing his house.)

But, and this is a big goddamned but, money means you have a cushion, a protective layer, that lessens the effects of the bad shit and big mistakes. Imagine that Chuck had really gone round the bend and run up, oh, $30,000 in credit card debt on a card he got while we were married. At the very least, I'd have to hire a lawyer to avoid being socked with part of that debt. Yes, you can tell me I shouldn't have married him, that that was a Big Mistake--but that wouldn't pay my debt or hire my lawyer, would it? That wouldn't protect me from collection agencies and a fucked credit rating and possibly garnished wages or some such.

And so I live with the fear. It's always been there--it eased up for a couple of years when I was debt-free and making (relative to my usual wages) more money, and able to save some. But that's all gone now, and I'm working in a low-paying job, in a low-paying industry, at work that is physically grueling and that can't be maintained over the long term. Frankly, I think fear is the appropriate response. And trying to find a way into a better situation, which I'm doing my best to create, but the fear stays with me.

Chats in the Offing

As I'm leaving work today, after putting in another 11-hour day (total this week: 57+ hours), Bossman's wife says to me, "You have to convince Bossman to hire Brad to come in on Sundays." Bossman had mentioned to me, months ago, that Brad wanted to work Sundays at the bakery. No one--including Bossman--wants Brad around. We don't like him. The Wife, however, "misses Brad," she says, and "Bossman just can't work seven days a week." I kind of hedged and said, well, you'll have to convince a whole lot of people. To which she responds that "Bossman and I write the checks, babe."

I just left and left it at that, especially since I was on my way out the door after the aforementioned 57-hour week--you know, the one I work so that her kids can go to college, and so that she can flit in and out and do whatever bullshit she does and still collect a salary?--but I really would not have wanted to say any more, because who knows what would have come out of my mouth. (Bossman witnessed this whole interchange, and I'm sure he had some idea what I was thinking, even though it was all done in this supposedly joking fashion.) Because you know what? She has no fucking clue. And you know what else? If Brad comes back, I'm out of there. She thinks Bossman works a lot now? Wait until he has to produce 5,000 croissants a week for the store, markets, and orders--without me.

I'm friendly to her--because why not, and because I see how difficult she is and I don't see any reason to rock the boat unnecessarily--but lordy lou is she clueless. She talks about the business in "we" terms, but I'm here to tell you that she really doesn't have any idea what's involved in the business, and she sure as fuck doesn't do any serious work in the business. For one thing, if she really wanted Bossman to spend less than 14 hours/day there, she would do something more productive than nag him. And I'll bet you a dollar that she nags him constantly about am I doing the orders, because they're paying me a whole $10/hour and all.

I think Bossman and I are going to have to have a little chat on Tuesday. I certainly won't say "It's Brad or me," or anything like that; I am not a believer in ultimatums. But if Brad does come back, I will be disrupting my own personal plan in order to get out of there. It's also true that we need more help at the bakery, but we need a fuck of a lot more than Brad coming in on Sunday, which I'm sure Bossman already understands, but Wife does not. Part of the problem is that we have two people coming in on Saturdays--one from my program and one from another program in the city--who are great but who, because they're still in their programs, can only come in one day a week. Yes, fine, they'll join us full-time--in July. Bossman and I are trying to figure out how to get through June, not to mention May.

Okay, I must sleep. One of my best friends came through town last night--he's driving a car from New Jersey to California--and we were up until after 2 and then up at 6:30 this morning. It was quite wonderful to see him; I miss our long email exchanges from what seems like a million years ago. But I must now sleep, because tomorrow I must edit my butt off, then get a massage, and on Monday I must once again edit my butt off and then see a friend from the substance abuse treatment place days--and she has a car, and is willing to take me grocery shopping! Meanwhile, though, sleep.

Cha-Ching

I think maybe, in response to Ann's comment, that I should 'splain some things. For one thing, her comment (and reading my old posts) helps me see just how much I yammer about money. I think it's an awkward subject, but it seems to me that I should try to find ways to talk about it, not least because it's important in our everyday lives.

Although my day job is low-paying and physically grueling, it IS a job. I could live on what I make, just barely, if I were willing to live in a tiny apartment, have no social life, and eat as cheaply as possible; doing without health care or health insurance would help, too, as would doing without cable/internet and doing without a cell phone. I'm willing to work a second job so I can live in a one-bedroom apartment, go out to dinner or drinks with friends, eat organic (insofar as I eat anything other than meals out or bakery food), have health care and insurance, have an internet connection and cable TV, buy stuff, and have a cell phone as well as a land line. I don't like debt: my only debt right now is my student loan for pastry school, and I pay more than the minimum payment so I can (a) pay it off sooner and (b) pay less over the life of the loan. (If I paid it on their schedule, I'd pay twice the original loan amount--the loan amount plus the same amount in interest--which I think is insane.) That is, though I have credit, I have no desire to use it for material comforts, not least because interest rates are usurious, and I will do without rather than run up consumer debt. (I am not critical about people who have had to use credit cards to get out of jams and then find themselves in an even harder place; I have a parental safety net that many people simply do not have. I am critical about people who pile up debt for big houses, cars, and other conspicuously consumed items, but I may also be overly harsh about that.)

Not so terrible, really, especially compared to most of the rest of the world's population. Relative to what I have earned in other jobs, relative to what people with my level of education and experience can/do make, well, that's a little different comparison.

The other thing about my current situation, and probably the reason I write about this so often, is that it feels precarious to me. I've been getting enough side work such that I feel like I can breathe a little right now, but it's all built on being able to continue all of this work for the indefinite future--which is simply not realistic or pleasant to consider--or on finding another job that is less grueling and pays more--which, as I've noted before, is much more easily said than done. That's the source of the anxiety, I think, and why it shows up in my writing here so much. That is, it's not the immediate lack of money that makes me anxious--I have enough for my current needs and such--it's that I know my current situation is not one that will work for the long term, and my options seem so limited or difficult to attain that I start to worry about what I'm going to do.

It also brings up old crap. When I finished grad school, I was un- or underemployed for more than a year, as I've said here before. Could I have moved back in with my parents, if all else failed? Yup--and that's not an option that everyone has. But seriously; who'd want to do that, at the age of 36? Yeah; me neither. The fear and anxiety (and grief, for an assortment of losses) stayed with me for much of the last 13 years. It abated somewhat, with the last job; even when the company started to fail, I thought I had a partner who would help me as I made a transition to something new. As all of that blew up in the past 18 months, the anxiety has reared its ugly head again, and the particular choices I've made and circumstances in which I have thereby found myself have reawakened the fears again.

Keep in mind that I don't think I "deserve" this or that--job, salary, compensation, material lifestyle, whatever. I think all of us "deserve" work that is valued, living circumstances that are comfortable and free of anxiety about things like food and health care, etc.--me no more or less than anyone else. I'm closer to having a lot of that, because of the time and place in which I live, and also because of the genetic luck of the draw, i.e., I have brains and skills. And, yes, I work hard, but that is by no means either a necessary or sufficient condition. So it's not that I feel cheated, that I've been deprived of something that's rightly mine or something like that, it's that I don't know how I'm going to maintain. I want to create the time and space to do needlepoint, to write (other than to you guys), to make dinner for friends, to sit in a cafe and read a book for fun, without having to worry about anything right that minute. I've had those things before, and I want them again, and instead I'm worrying about paying the rent--not next month, but next year.

Anyway. I need to sleep.

Things I Discovered

on my walk home from work tonight (and i say "tonight" because I worked almost 12 hours today and therefore didn't get out of work until after 7:00).

1. It doesn't take all THAT long--about an hour and 15 minutes, when taking what i think is the most direct (i.e., shortest) route.

2. There are a couple of stretches that aren't as well-lit as perhaps they could be, most notably the stretch that features the cemetery along one sidewalk and the train tracks (atop an embankment) on the other. There's enough traffic so that it's probably not a big issue, but it's still not great.

3. The most direct route (as opposed to the scenic route, I think) goes through a few somewhat unsavory bits. Even the unsavory bits seem pretty well-populated, but there were one or two places where groups of 20-something men were hanging around. It wasn't an issue, i.e., no one hassled me, because, despite today's warmth, I was still wearing my work pants and a down coat, rather than, say, summer clothing, and because these men had perhaps not ingested quite enough alcohol or other substances to have turned into complete assholes, and perhaps because (so I'm told) my style of walking is sufficiently quick and forthright that easier prey is likely to come along--but any of those things could change.

4. I really must do more yoga. I managed at least a few minutes of it a couple of days this week, but I can tell that my body is stiffer and I think I'm getting arthritis in my right hip, so I must make more effort, else the walking will have counterproductive effects as well as productive ones. The trick may be to alternate walking home and practicing some yoga when i get home.

All of this is predicated on working a few fewer hours per week. I got home at 8:15 tonight, and luckily had no intention of, say, making dinner or doing much of anything. It's already 9:00--I'm drinking some club soda, I'll soon pour myself a glass of wine, I may be able to find some television that isn't completely annoying, but on a school night, it would be nearly time for bed and I wouldn't have done my next-day prep yet. (Next-day prep includes putting out most of my clothes for the next day, packing real clothes if I'm going someplace after work, preparing my lunch, and pouring a bowl of cereal (leaving out the milk), which i then slip into a large plastic freezer bag.)

And not just that: I'm exhausted. I had dinner and a couple of beers with a friend last night, and he pointed out that I can set limits to the number of hours I'm willing to work (while acknowledging that that's easier recommended than done) and tried to get me to stop taking on even more crap at the bakery (the website; photography for the website; transitioning to Quickbooks). He's right, of course. I also had a revelation this week, sort of. For one thing, I think the own-my-own-bakery-or-coffee-shop dream is nearly dead. I don't see my way clear to doing it my myself, for sure, and there are so many issues involved that would take time and energy to solve; I don't think I have it in me to do it. I don't think I want it badly enough, is the thing, on top of being somewhat risk-averse these days and on top of feeling too old to do it. But I also realized that if I'm going to work 65 hours/week for an average of about $12/hour (I'm counting straight time, overtime, and editing time in the calculations, with appropriate remuneration for each), I'd rather do it all for me and be able to set my own schedule. And then I reminded myself that I have several things (doctor; eye doctor; divorce) with which I must deal before I attack the what-do-I-do-next issue.

Speaking of divorce, we did last night. Chuck had called to tell me that he finally got all his documentation, and it turns out he only owes about $300, so he's going to just go ahead and file separately without itemizing. He then suggested we get the divorce moving along so we don't have to go through this again, and I agreed. He noted that he was tired of "banging his head against a wall, and tired of begging," which rather took me by surprise. I managed to bite my tongue, but i was a little curious regarding exactly what begging he'd been doing. Trust me when i say that he hasn't begged me for anything, most certainly not for a reconciliation of any kind, and he absolutely hasn't done any of the things that I told him I needed to see in order to be able to trust him again; in general, he's done pretty much the opposite, all along. I'm not sure how this translates to "begging," but I really didn't feel like getting into it with him about it. In any case, we've started that process moving again, so I'm going to keep it moving. I want to be out of it. It breaks my heart in so very many ways, but it is over and I want it over in all of the legal ways as well.

Shiny Happy Teeth and Gums

Well, that could have gone worse. Although I spent $24 on a taxi (which I would not normally do, but the bus got caught in traffic and I was afraid I was going to be late--though the hygienist was late, so I could have stayed on the damned bus), and although the visit itself wasn't exactly cheap, there weren't any holes that needed repair. The hygienist also noted that there wasn't a lot of buildup, which surprised me, since I hadn't been there in about 18 months; I credit my semi-regular flossing and Tom's of Maine, even if Colgate bought them up last year. (I've been using Tom's products for nearly 30 years.) I bought a bunch of books for my older nephew (whose 10th birthday is Friday), plus Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex, in preparation for the festival over at Twisty's place. I already have a bone to pick with her (Firestone, I mean), but that's the point of this exercise. I had lunch with Jane, which was great, of course, as well.

Now I wish I had another day off, but I pretty much always wish that.

The latest episode with Chuck has him asking me to consider filing a joint tax return this year: he's going to owe $2k, and of course he doesn't have it. I doubt very much that it's of any benefit to me to do that, but I told him to send me all his stuff and I'd take a look at it and run the numbers. He was appreciative, and also had the good grace to say that he doesn't want it to cost me anything more than it already would have done. The one way it may benefit me is that it would allow me to take the student loan interest deduction, but I doubt that will be enough of a benefit for me. We'll see. If nothing else, maybe I can help him figure out how to owe less, which I'm willing to do. It also occurs to me that, if it's a wash for me but benefits him, I can tell him I'll do it on the conditions that he (a) file the divorce papers and (b) sign the loan papers before April 15.

Fortunate Daughter

The fortune cookie I got tonight said, "You are direct, and others often appreciate this quality in you." Musta got someone else's cookie, I guess.

Are you sitting down? Because, kstyle's comment that one doesn't know when one is having good luck notwithstanding, I think I got some actual good news today.

First off, the doc doesn't think my dad's cancer is aggressive. He wants to go back in again in three weeks, to check on things, make sure they got everything, etc., and I don't know whether they'll want to do any other treatment, but everyone's guardedly optimistic. I talked to my dad yesterday, and, though he's by no means a complainer, he commented that catheterization isn't much fun, especially when they use a catheter that's apparently the diameter of a sewer pipe, and especially when they remove said catheter. He noted, "When they tell you to hold your breath, you're not going to like whatever comes next."

Second, mom talked with their accountant today on my behalf. Apparently, since (a) I cannot get health insurance through the bakery, and (b) I'm self-employed, and (c) I made a profit, I can (d) write off my health expenses, including insurance, up to the amount of profit. And I made more than the health expenses cost me, so yay. That could reduce the amount I have to shell out for 2006, which would be nice.

I worked for about four hours at the bakery today, on the website. It's coming along, but I think I'm going to end up doing more of the design than I originally thought, and, of course, I'm doing all of the writing. I'm also trying to set things up so that the product lists, especially for the holidays, can be reviewed easily; anything that Bossman can't do won't survive me leaving. Luckily, I've been there long enough to see how he works and to judge his computer capabilities. He'll tell you he's happy when he can open his email, but he's really much better than that. I set up a workbook for him to record his cash payouts, and he uses it just fine, including hiding and unhiding sheets. (He had a workbook, sort of, but he had a new one each month, and things didn't necessarily total properly, and a second cash-related worksheet was in a different workbook, and so on. I put together one that will work for the whole fiscal year and that enables him to email the stuff to his accountant each month.)

When I got out of there, I shelpped down to my old neighborhood and went to the thread store and got the scrim and the first batch of thread for the new needlepoint. They even had some extra-wide 18-count scrim, which saved me the trouble of ordering it online. Now all I have to do is draw the picture and then draw it onto the scrim. I had an entertaining interchange with one of the russian ladies who owns/runs the place. She's old and grandmotherly and has a thick accent, but also a sparkle in her eye. I think she kind of remembered me from previous visits.

I still wish I had another day off tomorrow, but, alas, not; tomorrow it's back to the croissant grindstone. Still, Bossman made it a point to tell me that the minis for BT's place looked really nice this morning, and the full-size ones looked pretty good, too. Which won't stop me from playing the lottery.