It's Hard To Keep Them Down On The Farm

Just outside the front door where I was staying in Paris

I know that my gentle readers have been patiently waiting for details on my recent trip to Paris, but this week, I have found myself in kind of a funk.

The view from the end of the street

I had a wonderful time in Paris. How could I not? We had perfect, sunny, warm weather almost every day. The one day that it did rain was perfect in its own way because the umbrellas and the puddles provided atmosphere.

The park at the Place des Vosges

While I was in Paris, it was easy (well, relatively easy) not to think about life back home -- about dealing with Unemployment Insurance and finding a job. Now that I'm home, I'm a like a little kid who came home from a party hopped up on sugar and wanting to sleep in her party dress and patent-leather shoes.

The dining room at the apartment in the 7th arrondissement

It probably doesn't help that I went to Walmart two days after I returned. It was, in retrospect, a stupendously bad idea, but I needed cat food and paper towels. So I went. And if that didn't convince me I was home, dealing with the Rhode Island Department of Labor and realizing I'd found it easier to communicate with people in Paris using my limited French certainly did. So where does this leave me?

Paris was awesome, and I realize that a steady diet of awesome -- like a steady diet of birthday cake -- is probably not healthy for me. And my life here is good, it really is. But "good" has come with a price, and I guess my point is, if I'm going to pay a price anyway I'd like a little more awesome, s'il vous plait.

Act Now! Operators Are Standing By!

WANTED: Job for individual with such a high degree of fabulosity as to be almost unemployable.

Candidate possesses excellent organizational skills and the ability to pull miracles out of thin air (also known as the sport of Extreme Problem Solving). Able to get a great deal of work done while appearing to be engaged in nothing in particular. Candidate has reached a state of decrepitude where she can no longer do any heavy lifting, but she is still willing to do the odd bit of climbing to reach the desired objective. Well-versed in Microsoft Office applications, but may, at first, run screaming from the room if presented with an Excel spreadsheet. Can Google like a rock star. Plays well with others, provided the others are not marinating in unmedicated mental illness.

Special Skills:
• An encyclopedic knowledge of show tunes
• Spelling savant
• Drawing food cartoons
• Writing, drawing, and saying random things that make her co-workers laugh
• Large catalog of literary quotes to be deployed at various times
• Plus! Almost daily cat stories, absolutely free!

Paging Dr. Jung

I'm having recurring nightmares about spreadsheets. Endless, boring, soul-killing spreadsheets. I don't need a psychiatrist to know what that's about.


Do you want to drive a creative and conscientious person to despair? Give her a lot of spreadsheets. I mean, a lot of them. Make sure that some of them only she will ever look at - that they serve no purpose whatsoever - and then require her to keep them up to date.


Next, some spreadsheets should never add up because you have not given your creative and conscientious person the correct data. Change her data to correspond with the numbers she is not allowed to know. Berate her for the spreadsheets not adding up. Repeat.


Of course you, gentle readers, would never want to drive anyone to despair because that is not what nice people do. But I think it's going to be a while before I stop jumping like a cat on hot bricks every time I see the Excel icon on my computer desktop.

What's New, Pussycat?

The last day on my job was Christmas Eve. Leaving was the right decision, for a number of reasons for which this is not the proper venue. Giving myself time to figure out what comes next, to heal, to rest -- that was also a good decision.

Still, I find myself like a deer caught in the headlights, like the victim of an accident wondering what just happened. I've spent three days wandering around, in and out of my home, starting at sudden noises and forgetting what I'm doing. I've slept a lot.

Part of me has been upset about this, thinking that I should Get Things Done and Accomplish Tasks -- presumably to justify taking time off. But my body and mind have not cooperated. Beyond taking showers and feeding self and cat, I have accomplished nothing.

This morning the sun came out after a year and a half of overcast days (I may be exaggerating a tiny bit). I sat in my sunroom and thought, "I can do this. I just think I'd feel better if I knew what this is." Apparently, the answer is not forthcoming.

And so, I'm sitting here, watching the sunshine sparkle on the snow, and waiting. Patience. It's a virtue -- one I am being dragged kicking and screaming into cultivating.