Word Weaver

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

From "To a Louse" by Robert Burns.

I have been quoting this particular verse for years- not knowing the poem it came from until tonight... Live and learn- or live and louse, I guess.

This quote will become pertinent in time- as you may have noticed- I have a tendency to ... meander- but I always have a goal. Kind of. Sometimes. OK just go with it.

First 2 weeks of the new job. I'm liking it. My boss is a terrific guy. His boss is also a terrific guy. Real people- not MBA's or super execs- just guys who work hard- cuss a bit more than occasionally (as do I) enjoy a well placed sarcastic comment and realize they work with people, who have lives, because they too have lives. It is good. The upper boss even inquired as to my well being... he asked my boss- "Has she lost that 'deer in the headlights' look yet?" So much for an affected outer aura of calm. (I just typed an 'outer aura of clam...' I wonder what that might look like... hopefully it would be at least a bit gritty)

My style concerns were more or less unfounded- I could come to work with bunny slippers on- they do not seem to care if I wear slingbacks or peek toes. But shoes were a big part of the first week.

Syd- are you looking here? You were right.. (Henry she is going to be harder than usual to handle after this admission... sorry) 3 1/2" heels are NOT work shoes. Not any job that requires standing in them anyway. After day two in the spiky heels I felt like both of my hips had been yanked from their sockets, I practically crawled home. They did look fetching when I crossed my legs- but after a day in them the only things I wanted fetched were a walker, advil and an ice pack. I lurched to the store on Saturday in my beat-up sneakers and purchased 2 pairs of the most stylish shoes I could find with a 2" heel in black and brown and if anyone gets tired of looking at them they can just be relieved that I no longer resemble a poster child for the March of Dimes.

Adjusting to wearing suits when the humidity hovers at 85% was also a challenge. At the end of each day I felt like I had spent 12 hours in a slow cooker. I lost 4 lbs.- this in and of itself would be surprising- add to that the fact that every day seemed to be someone's birthday- by Friday when no cake was served at 4 pm I was nursing a severe frosting jones. That was the day I found the local Starbuck's and spent 10 minutes gnawing on a chocolate biscotti until the cravings subsided. I have to temper the snacking or the suits I have just spent WEEKS locating, purchasing and shortening will go from fitted to sausage casing to tourniquet. I have learned how to go a full day in heels, and to wear a suit with the jacket for 8 hours but I still need to breathe- for this a bit of room is needed.

And the technology. Day one I got my laptop- no problem really adjusting to the PC- for a Mac user this is like going from teaching the Advanced Placement class to teaching Special Ed. It can be done. It takes more time and you basically cover the same material but the process is a great deal less intuitive and S-L-O-W. I move too fast for the PC- the touch pad just annoys me- with a mouse you are MOVING things around- with the touch pad I feel like I am tickling it to make it go (c'mon, c'mon cootchy cootchy coooooo) - and forget that little button in the middle of the keyboard. It reminds me too much of the little man in the boat and in the case of this particular laptop is BLUE. Like the little man got frostbitten- but I tend to overthink and anthropomorphisize ( I don't KNOW if this is a word- what I am meaning is we think our computers are people, only cooler). Perhaps. It's a Mac thing- we take computing personally- which is why all the toys start with "i".

Day Three I got the Treo. And they set up my desk phone. And I had a laptop. The full suite. And they all talk to each other. The voicemail goes to the computer as an e-mail and gets played as a .wav file. It also sends the e-mail to the Treo if I am out- or not...for awhile listening to e-mail on the Treo was kind of cool. I wandered to the bathroom more than once that day and hid giggling in a stall listening to messages-all from friends who wished me well- (I had no work contacts as it was just day three..) and marvelling that I could be that connected- literally anywhere. I also figured out after a few hours that in addition to GETTING calls this little marvel could MAKE calls- so I made calls. I called Kiwi. I texted Michael. I called my desk phone so I could watch the message go from desk phone to laptop to Treo- and it was at that point I was pulled from my technology induced haze by a blaring car horn as I was doing all of this on the sidewalk blocking the OUT ramp of the 54th Street Garage.

I carried the Treo home and played with it on the bus- tinkering with it as it did not come with a manual- which I NEVER would have read anyway- paf- manuals. I don't need no steenkin manual. Unless I wanted to resolve the following conundrum. The phone didn't ring when people called. And there seemed to be no indication anywhere on the device when someone left a message. When I finally figured out how to access voicemail- there were 12 messages- 8 from me- wondering where the hell I was... in addition to this my personal cell phone had also ceased to ring- a form of silent protest I thought, to the crowd of technology now occupying my handbag- personal cel- treo, camera, Tamagotchi (not mine- a friend's- no, REALLY). And the phone on my desk- while it would blink pleasantly when there was a message- and the little envelope icon showed up nicely on the screen, it made not a peep- or an old fashioned ring- or a giggle- I chose every tone I could try- nothing. Helen Keller made more noise. Today- SEVEN days after getting the Treo, I found the mute button on the Treo, switched to the "On" position. The desk phone was a bit trickier- when you choose a ring tone you need to hit SAVE- obviously the default setting is a cold stony silence. A bit like a technological game of Simon Says. OK- Phones: 2- Melanie: Zip. I haven't yet figured out what the problem is with my personal cel. I think with all the new stuff coming into the purse- it just wants to be held.

ANd then there is the issue of electricity. My little office- which now just holds only me and an assistant as the 3rd party has moved out and we no longer have to take turns exhaling, has only ONE electrical outlet, 2 plugs. The laptop needs one and after looking at the blog and Bunny way too long on the Treo, it needed charging. Problem. The outlet is located behind my two-ton desk- movability- zero- I think it was there before there was a floor. There is a space of about 2" between the wall and the desk and another 3" space between the desk and the filing cabinet next to it. Also a pre-floor model- I can't tell how long either have been there until the results of the carbon-dating samples come back from the lab. The only way to plug in the charger was to wedge my lower half between the filing cabinet and the desk and my upper half between the desk and the wall. Picture the game of Twister having been re-invented by the Marquis de Sade. Now imagine you are trying to do this in a skirt, jacket, heels and stockings. Quadrapalegics have more mobility. I managed to get one leg between the filing cabinet and the desk and my shoulder and head behind the desk- one leg raised high- for balance so I did not fall completely behind the desk and become irretrievably wedged- at this point the prohibition on slingbacks came to mind as the raised leg was rapidly losing one stylish shoe to gravity and dangling provocatively (I WISH) from my clenched toes.

I was just about getting the plug into the wall when I heard "Everything OK in here?" My boss. His boss. And the president of the company stood in the doorway of my office looking in. At me. Doing some sort of demented arabesque behind my desk. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. I'm betting they haven't had a first impression quite like that before. I can just hear my boss telling the other VP's as they walked away- "I told you- this one's not afraid to get her hands dirty..." Oy.

But things are improving. I've been meeting the people I work with and learning who does what. In a company this size- about 10x bigger than the fabulous paper store's, there is a staff of about 12 people who do what I used to have to accomplish on my own. It's nice and I do not talk to myself as much... though sometimes I still do- just to reassure myself I am making at least a little bit of sense. And to chuckle. It's all so wonderful and new and I find it hard to believe that I'm actually there- that they picked me- it's a really nice feeling and I want very much to do a good job. I think I will.

But about Robbie Burns' quote. I bought a small fabric keyboard for the Treo. I wanted to be able to type on it ( and truthfully to blog) and I just can't seem to get the hang of the little keys on the PDA. I have heard it called "fat fingers" but it's really just too small. Archy (the cockroach, of Archy and Mehitabel fame) could not type on these keys. And I love the idea of having a fabric keyboard- almost like a loom, that you could weave words on. I was talking to Gaby on the train tonight- she saves my blog posts and screams that I do not print them out somewhere as a precaution against the day when the internet has a fatal meltdown and the blogposts disappear forever. I told her- it's just stuff. She became agitated. "You made me CRY." " You make people laugh!" And I thought about it. More than once I have heard that I see people - my friends- differently than they see themselves. I do not know this really- as this is just how I see them, always. It is not new or unusual to me. I make it a point to tell the people I love that I think they are smart, or funny or brave or even silly in a really good way and I tell them out loud. I do not think they hear it so well. Most people are so accustomed to their own inner dialog, filled with their own... stuff- they do not hear good things when they are said- or dismiss them as flattery used to further the speaker's own agenda. But when I write it here. They look. They read- sometimes more than once- and thanks to the site meter I can see they have done that- and I smile because maybe I have gotten through just a little and woven a small piece of something they can hold, and look at, and believe. Just a bit. And that's good. :) X