I was in a weird, slodgy mood this morning and it took some doing to get beyond that. It reminded me of a recurring dream I have had since childhood, where I go underwater and try as I might, I cannot get my head back up again. You know, so I can breathe. I don’t know what that dream means and I’m not sure I want anyone to “interpret” it for me. I’ve been dreaming that for a heckuva long time and I am still alive and wildly kicking.

The pre-work part of my morning was okay overall. Since we are going through a vee-hickle maintenance marathon this week, it included the extra wrinkle of driving the GG to work but I actually kind of enjoyed that little jaunt. I got home and ate breakfast and stuff and I was in my library. You do know that, even though we have books all over the Landfill, my own personal “library” is a little basket in the Blue and Only Bathroom, roight? What moom doesn’t have a nice little library in the bathroom?

Today, there was a New Yorker in my library. Only one, for once. Usually there are two or three or four… The magazine that’s there today is the one with the cover that I don’t like and I’m not gonna tell you why I don’t like the cover but I don’t like it enough that I am keeping the magazine folded inside out for the duration and I will be more than happy when it’s time to recycle it. I started to read a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, an author that I am kind of lukewarm about. Not that I am anywhere near any kind of an expert on literature. This story grabbed me. Middle school girl in math class, day-dreaming on a beer buzz about the older boys she’s been hanging around with and trying to pass a kleenex “note” with a lipstick imprint on it to one of them. Turns out her single casino-worker mom took off and she’s been home alone for going on five days. Middle school kid. I am a fast reader but I knew that I had to put the magazine down and get to work. But it haunted me. I could identify with that kid. Okay, I didn’t drink beer in middle school and I didn’t hang around with older boys and I wouldn’t’ve been brave enough to send a boy a lipstick kleenex note and my parents would *never* have left me alone overnight at that age. But a lot of the rest of it rang true. Sitting in a classroom daydreaming about boys and being terrified that the teacher would call on me.

I got to work and bludgeoned my way on to the online New Yorker site to finish the story. I won’t say what happened in case y’all get the New Yorker. And then I started dragging myself back to reality. I didn’t start to recover anything resembling a decent mood until somebody (they know who they are) twittered something about “bow echo”. Say what? I yelled “over the wall” to my cube neighbors, “hey, do you guys know what a bow echo is?” Nada. Wiki defines it as

the characteristic radar return from a mesoscale convective system that is shaped like an archer’s bow.

I read that out loud and everyone including W3.0 absolutely cracked up. Say what? That got my head out from under water and my mood continued to improve. And that was a good thing because the last couple hours of my day included a presentation. It went okay. Despite the fact that everyone including me was half asleep when we convened. Despite the fact that my long-suffering, cat-herding boss couldn’t remember which spec we were reviewing or who had written it. In so many ways, he’s the kind of boss you want. Micro-manager? NOT!!! (-:

Color credits:

Blue: “Daisy” (aka blue Honda Civic) in for scheduled maintenance Monday morning.

Black: “Ninja” (aka black Honda Civic SI, 6-speed manual (YAY)) in for scheduled maintenance Monday afternoon (exchanged “Ninja” for “Daisy”)

Green: “Dogha (aka dirty old [beloved] green Honda Accord V6) in for scheduled maintenance Tuesday morning (exchanged “Dogha” for “Ninja” Monday afternoon)

Purple: color of girl’s lipstick in recent New Yorker Joyce Carol Oates story

Blue: color of flowers in today’s pic

Brown: color of leaves in today’s pic

Onward and upward and a bunch of stodgy old systems analysts added “bow echo” to their vocabulary today although I’m not sure any of us truly understand it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.