Yes, Still Here

I've been neglecting you, and I'm sorry about that. The themes for this week were lack of sleep, plus pain, plus a certain amount of drama (some good, some not so much). The pain is primarily from the jammed fingers. The infected finger got better (and less hot) after about 36 hours of antibiotics, and it's nearly better now (and, yes, I'll take the last two days of my drugs, even though I missed a dose here and there). The jammed fingers, though, well, they're extremely swollen and sore first thing in the morning, and kind of purple around the knuckle; they loosen up somewhat by the middle of the day, but not completely, and I typically bang them around at work some. I haven't been taking painkillers for them because I thought ibuprofen on top of antibiotics would make my usually iron stomach absolutely revolt. When I'm done with the latter, though, I'll start taking some of the former. In general, I feel like I have paws rather than hands first thing in the morning.

The drama, well, the drama has had several sources. The good drama is that Craw finally got the offer he was negotiating. It's still going to be financially a bit tight around here, given the added expense of the studio apartment we're renting for his office space, but we're hoping to save money on gas (MUCH less driving each month, such that we can probably cut $200/month from our gas-and-tolls budget), he found a cheaper parking space (he's willing to street-park the car, but I remember how unpleasant that was and I've been resisting), and I should be able to contribute more than we originally expected. Because some of his pay comes in the form of an auto allowance, we should see more of it, i.e., we think it's taxed at a different rate than regular salary.

We also have about three months' overlap between him starting this new job and needing to decide whether to move from this apartment. We both hope we don't have to move (I cannot tell you how much I hate moving), but it's not a simple calculation. We'll see. It mostly comes down to how much you're willing to pay for what. Many people gasp at what we pay, but we have a 24-hour doorperson (who can sign for packages, for example, which is relevant for someone who orders things by mail as much as I do), and T-1 internet access, basic cable TV, and all utilities except electricity (about $25/month) are included in the rent. There are several grocery stores nearby (one is less than a block away), as well as several drugstores; the public transportation is close and frequent; and there are a ton of restaurants within walking distance. Moving itself is expensive--we have so much shit, we'd really have to hire movers. If we don't live in the new place for more than a year--say I really do manage to buy a building and start a business--then we really won't have saved much money at all. Clearly, the solution is to stay where we are and win the lottery.

And, of course, there's been other drama on top of all of the usual and common life stresses. I've been circumspect in this space about details, not least because other people are involved; Craw and I may be open about a lot of things, but our other partners, well, that's starting to tell more things about other people's business than they might perhaps want shared. But we're getting there, I think. It turns out, as with most things, communication is absolutely vital. It's also vital for people to be clear about their wants, and that is not Craw's strong suit: In his last marriage, actually saying what you wanted, out loud, meant you had given the other person ammunition and power--he or (more likely) she could withhold the thing you said you wanted, for example, or use it to extract some other concession. I will not, absolutely will not, play that game. In addition, I get extremely annoyed when someone won't tell me what he or she wants but expects me to know. I was forced to play that game with my mother and I will not do it ever again.

Another interesting aspect of my life these days is figuring out what to do with Mondays. Mondays are, functionally speaking, my Sundays, so I end up being torn between wanting to Get Things Done and wanting to fuck off all day, which is what I typically did on Sunday before. I find myself being more ambitious than I really have the motivation to complete, if that makes any sense. Today, for example, my list included laundry (done, but not put away, plus bed's not remade), take a shower (not done yet, but will be soon), some proofreading (started, but didn't expect to finish), get birthday presents for my nephew (not done, but I know what I'm going to get for him), wrap and mail said presents and something for Craw's new job, which means a trip to the post office (also not done, seeing as how an intermediary step is still incomplete). I didn't put a yoga class on the list but probably should have, and Craw and I will probably manage a dinner together tonight, perhaps preceded by a walk, which will be nice. (We usually go out on Sunday night, but he had a date and so I made one, too; he's more constrained at the moment, given the situation of one of his other partners, and this was a rare opportunity to play overnight.) Which isn't exactly a lazy Sunday, but I managed one of those yesterday; it's more like I've reversed Sunday and Saturday, in terms of activity expectations, i.e., Saturday is usually Chore Day, but I work on Saturday so that's been moved to Monday. But that means my day of rest actually precedes my chore day, and I've always been a save-the-best-for-last kind of person (I think some people do that, some go for the good stuff first, in the hope that the lima beans will somehow fall off the plate, and others mix the lima beans and the dessert, but I think that dilutes the pleasure of dessert way too much).

Who knew that time was so subjective?

Two Hands

So you remember the smashed left hand, right? Well, on Sunday I was sewing Craw's and the Kids scout patches on for them, and I poked my right forefinger with the blunt end of the needle (sufficiently deeply so it bled a bit). Last night it was swollen, red, and throbbing, and not in a good way. My doc called in an antibiotic prescription, and it's a little better this a.m., but still. At this rate, I'm going to be making croissants with my feet, and I don't think any of us want that.

Rule Number One

Luckily, purple is a good color for me, given the frequency with which I turn body parts that color. Today, despite Rule #1 (which is "No pain," for those of you following along at home), I jammed two fingers straight into the wall, at full speed, while trying to hit a handball (I talked S into playing today, because I have to play tomorrow night and I haven't played in a few weeks). I missed the shot, too. After writhing around for a couple of minutes, I wrapped more duct tape around my fingers and kept playing, but every so often I'd hit the ball in exactly the wrong way. It's not nearly as bad as it could be--everything's a little tender, the knuckles are a little swollen on my middle finger, and there's a bruise on the tip of my index finger--so I'll just drug up with ibuprofen and use duct tape tomorrow and I should be fine. It's also worth pointing out that I'm likely to be playing someone who's a lot better than I am, meaning the games will be short. Painful, perhaps, but short.

Also, we played Refrigerator Bingo today--I yanked out a bunch of containers that had been in there for awhile, or that seemed like they might be moldy and disgusting, or whatever, and got Craw to go through them with me. The salsas were mostly okay. The old coconut milk, not so much; he said it didn't even smell like coconut any more. The pineapple with mold on it is gone, as is the three tablespoons of caramel left from about November, maybe December, from school. I also found a jar of stuff that was unlabeled and I could not identify. It looked okay--no mold or other growths on it--and I was pretty sure it was mine (it was kind of sweet/gingery-smelling, which is a sign that it's mine), but I had no memory of what it was. Craw sniffed it (bringing to mind George Carlin's meatcake), and even tasted it (!), he being a braver soul than I am, and I finally figured out that it was the glaze I concocted for the Thanksgiving desserts. It's mostly jelly of one kind or another, I think, maybe with some simple syrup in it (remembering what I put in it is probably beyond me), and he says he'll use it, so it went back in with the salsas. It'll probably resurface again, untouched, in a few months.

RBPs

Yes, people, today I earned some RBPs (Relationship Bonus Points), primarily by not being an asshole. Today is the Blue and Gold Dinner, which is apparently a BFD for boy and cub scouts (they get patches and promotions and the like), and you may remember that Craw is a scout leader and the Kid is a cub scout. Because his pack is located at the catholic church where he goes to school, they also have this thing about once/month called "Scout Mass," wherein all of the scouts show up in uniform. Craw and I left at about 9:00 this morning (yes, I sacrificed yoga), with the plan of picking up the Kid, dropping me off at a coffee shop somewhere, them proceeding to the aforementioned mass, and us all hooking up after mass, along with the lovely and talented ex-wife and her parents, for the B&G Dinner. Craw called the lovely and talented as we headed out to her house, and she began one of her patented rants; I'm not sure what, exactly, Craw had done wrong this time (except perhaps take me, his actual spouse, to the volunteer appreciation dinner at the church a couple of weeks ago, and let me tell you that that event was not the highlight of my social life, or perhaps it was the fact that I would be along today, because I'm, you know, Craw's wife and the Kid's stepmother). I stayed in the car so he could negotiate with her (and I offered to not go to the dinner, if that would be preferable, so long as the Kid knew why I wasn't going), and apparently there was more drama, all taking place in front of the Kid, of course. But they came out and we all drove off to find me a coffee shop. The one Craw remembered turned out to be closed, so it was back to the McDonald's a couple of blocks from the church, but decaffeinated coffee-flavored beverage and a gummy cinnamon roll were still preferable (in my mind) to the body and blood of christ, so that was okay. (Hey, I've seen transubstantiation and wasn't that impressed.) I sat there for awhile, with my NY Times, but ended up writing a long, and long overdue, letter to an old friend (yes, with paper and--wait for it--a fountain pen; I love fountain pens). I called my old boss to congratulate him on his new job, I chatted with my mom. Then Craw called to tell me that the Kid threw up twice during mass, and so was going home with L&T. Craw still had to attend the dinner, but I did not; he dropped me at the train station so I could get home. He was apologetic for me missing yoga, but I pointed out that I got credit for being willing to go to the dinner without have to actually attend the dinner, plus I get some time to hang out by myself, so it's really a winning situation all around.

Meanwhile, my boss loves (loves, loves, loves) the work I'm doing with the croissants; he particularly likes my lamination, so I got that going for me, which is nice. Craw is still negotiating with his prospective employer; if they meet his last request, we should be able to manage it, though we might have to move and some economies will be necessary. (We'll for sure have to rent another space for his office, which is what makes it more difficult to afford.) And I have to play handball Tuesday night (I'm filling in on the team, so it really is "have to," and, since it's at 7:00 pm, I'll have time to get there). I know, I know, nothing that big of a deal here, but still. It's good.

Why, yes,

I AM procrastinating, now that you mention it . . . I've finished my laundry, however, and I've cleaned out some of the crap from under the bed and herded some of the larger dust buffalo out from under there, and I paid a bill. The only two household chores left on the list are cleaning the pit that is the bathroom and getting a few groceries, the latter because I'm bringing dessert to a dinner party on Saturday and I should make things ahead of time whenever possible. I was contemplating working on the raspberry and chocolate mousse dessert I'm developing, but I think I'm going to go the easier route and just make a chocolate espresso tart. Hard to go wrong with chocolate, and, despite the crankiness of the chocolate sweet dough, it's still an easier task than the other one.

One of the side effects of my current schedule--my schedule since last July, for that matter--is that I no longer read a newspaper on a regular basis. I try to get the Sunday NY Times, but I'm lucky if I've read the whole thing by the next Sunday, and I read some favorite blogs, and I usually check the Times online, but I don't sit down with a newspaper every day, for the first time in about 15 years. Given that I don't watch television, either--seriously, the television is on in our house about an hour a week, if we're lucky--I mostly get news snippets from the aforementioned sources and from the radio in the morning. Since I listen to a local rock station rather than, say, NPR, I don't get a lot of news from there, either. (I cannot abide talk radio in the morning. I don't mind--I actually enjoy--music, and I particularly like the DJ on my station, but the news-talk thing? I hate it.) The blogs are surprisingly helpful (digby, tbogg, and susie madrak keep me abreast of the latest scandals, generally), but I still miss my newspaper. The problem is that papers aren't delivered in my building before I leave for work and the newsstand in the subway station doesn't really open at 6:00 am (despite the proprietor's claims). I suppose I could try the boxes on the corner, if I could remember, and, really, that would be better than a subscription in that I wouldn't have to buy it every day, and I have about 30 minutes on the subway each way, so I could probably get through the bulk of the paper.

Okay, this procrastination is making me crazy. I want to get some things done, and then perhaps some ice skating with B, and possibly Craw and B and I getting together for a beer or something later this afternoon--and, with any luck, Craw and I discussing his job offer later. Which would be nice.

Saturday's Work and Sunday's Rest

Saturday, well, Saturday was the Day of a Thousand Croissants. Saturday's tasks, in full:

• cut up Friday's 72 pounds of dough into six-pound pieces and letting it rest in the freezer
• make cinnamon streusel for the funeral cakes and grease the 25 pans
• laminate 12 pieces of croissant dough (i.e., shape each piece into a rough rectangle, take 1.5 pounds of butter and cut it up and pound on it until it, too, is a smaller rectangle, enfold the butter in the dough, trim the dough so the whole thing resembles a sandwich more than a package, roll it out on the dough sheeter to the proper thickness and dimensions, and fold it up onto the pan)
• put a second set of folds into each of the twelve pieces of dough (i.e., run it through the sheeter again, along a different dimension, and fold it again) and leave them all in the freezer to rest for a couple of hours
• make 24.5 funeral cakes (the batch size I make usually yields 25+ cakes, but we were out of sour cream, so the batch was slightly smaller)
• move the 12 pieces of dough into the walk-in refrigerator so it doesn't get too frozen
• check on how the croissants are selling, seeing as how I put several dozen more in the store on Saturday, and discover they're selling like the proverbial hotcakes, only they're croissants
• make croissants for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday (because I won't be around on Sunday or Monday), which results in approximately 450 croissants total, each one shaped by my little hands

So, yeah, I worked until nearly 6:00 last night, meaning I missed having dinner with Craw and the Kid--but, hey, I got more than seven hours of overtime last week.

I miss handball terribly. I still get to a yoga class at least once a week--generally on Sunday morning, and sometimes on Tuesday or Wednesday night--but I just can't make it to handball at all on Saturday. Now that I know what the requirements of the job are--how the work load is distributed, I mean--I might be able to rig something so I can play on Thursday or Tuesday, at least until the busy season starts, but I doubt it'll be a regular thing. I might look for players closer to the bakery or something, which wouldn't be ideal but would still be better than not playing at all. I miss the exercise, for one thing--even though my job is physically taxing, it's by no means the same thing as playing a game--and I miss the actual game. Feh. I usually drag my gym clothes to work with me, unless I know it's going to be impossible, but that makes me even more annoyed, because then I've lugged the extra weight to work and back home without ever actually using the crap.

Okay, it's time to chill. Craw and the Kid are napping in the other bedroom, and then there's talk of going to the conservatory and seeing plants, plus there's some kind of chocolate fest, too. Our plan was that Craw would take the Kid back to the Kid's mother's house at the usual time--i.e., leave here around 3:00--which would give me a chance to clean the bathroom and give me and Craw some time together later. Of course, mom called, oh, an hour and a half ago, and said she's going to the movies with her mom and won't be back until 4:30 or so. Plans? What plans? I really, really hate having my day screwed up like that. And, of course, if Craw complains--which he doesn't do nearly enough--then she turns into the royal pain in the ass from hell, so I have the choice of complaining to him, thus making him miserable from both sides, or not saying anything, which is usually impossible for me. I try to limit my commentary, but it annoys the fuck out of me. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised: This is the woman who expected Craw to drop off the Kid at her place after our wedding in June. Yes, you read that correctly: she thought Craw was going to shlep out to her place to drop off the Kid, because, you know, she's leaving to visit her extended family the next day, so she's busy and all. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are more selfish and lazy, but I tend to eliminate them from my life so I don't have to deal with them. I don't have any choice in this case, which means I get a much closer experience with these behaviors than I otherwise would. I guess I can regard it as a learning experience, eh?

Days' Work (Thursday and Friday)

Yeah, so I missed yesterday; so sue me. I had dinner with B last night, and then waited up for Craw to get home, because his head was exploding with waiting to find out about the job. Yesterday's list, as best I can remember:

• dropped about 54 dozen muffins into tins (after first putting little paper cups into the tins, and putting each tin on a sheet pan, and putting streusel on the banana muffins)
• made 72 pounds of croissant dough (which involved 43 pounds of flour, which meant I went to the basement and lugged a 50-pound sack of flour upstairs)
• made the croissants for today (and got a ton of compliments from my boss for how my laminating is going)
• cleaned the new dough sheeter thoroughly
• helped put the baguettes into the oven
• moved the dough balls from the shaping machine onto boards (while one of my coworkers moved the dough from big balls into the shaping machine)
• made almond filling for the croissants
• cleaned the muffin machine, which means taking it apart, cleaning each piece, lubing up some of the washers, putting the machine back together, and hoisting it on its chain so it hangs from the ceiling once again

I know I'm forgetting a few things, so you'll have to wait until I can look at my list. Meanwhile, today I:

• made another 72 pounds of croissant dough
• laminated 12 pieces of croissant dough
• put cheesecake crust into petit four molds and, later, into heart-shaped molds
• made cheesecake filling twice, once for the mini-cheesecake petit fours and once for the heart-shaped cheesecakes that will get strawberry topping
• lugged another 50-pound bag of flour upstairs
• made three dozen ham and cheese, three dozen almond, four dozen chocolate, and nine dozen plain croissants, and put the additional seven pieces into the freezer until tomorrow
• made egg wash for the croissants, yesterday and today (I prefer to make it more often rather than less, because raw eggs sitting around, ick)

I'm sure there was more, but I'm exhausted. The good news is that a job offer is apparently winging its way toward Craw; no idea whether it'll be a good offer, but, hey, it's an offer. That's two down, three to go--i.e., two people close to me have job offers, and three more are still looking (one has had two interviews, and our collective fingers are crossed). I hadn't thought about it until this week, but it's true that four of my closest friends (if we can count Craw as A Friend for these purposes) and my most recent ex-boss are looking for jobs. It's a little crazed.

Okay, I'm exhausted: Craw didn't get home until nearly 11:30 last night, and my alarm still went off at 4:54, though, of course, my brain decided that 4 am was a fine fucking time to wake up. Four hours of sleep really isn't enough . . .

The Day's Work (Wednesday)

Today's list, as best I can remember it:

• cut up 72 pounds of dough into 6-pound pieces and store 36 pounds of it in the downstairs freezer, but only temporarily, which means each tray goes down the stairs and then up the stairs, all because there was stuff on the lift and I couldn't use a speed rack to take the trays up or down all at once
• pound 18 pounds of butter, in 1.5-pound chunks, and laminate the above-mentioned 72 pounds of dough with the butter
• dip approximately 425 little heart cookies into chocolate such that only half of the heart is covered in chocolate
• cut up onion rye dough into 16 3-pound-12-ounce pieces, and, after the dough rises, help cut each of those pieces into 36 rolls
• cut up tomato-garlic-Italian-spice dough into about a dozen 2.5-pound pieces, and later help cut those pieces into rolls
• cut up about 35 pounds of brioche dough, shape it into balls, let it rise, and then shape each piece into a loaf
• eat way more sugar than is healthy, mostly in the form of two-day-old cinnamon rolls, which means I could just eat the really good sugary bits in the middle
• brush off the dough sheeter so it can be dismantled to make way for a new (used) dough sheeter that is about two feet shorter on one end, thus making more space in the kitchen; watch the owner climb on scaffold to rewire the outlet for the new sheeter; discover, with him, that the new sheeter doesn't quite work yet; and make room in a corner for the old sheeter so today's croissants and tomorrow's doughnuts can be made (the latter not by me)
• attempt to get a handle on just how many croissants should be made on a given day, and discover that the night baker didn't realize I'd taken today's order for an extra 17 chocolate croissants into account when I made up the trays yesterday, thus baking an extra dozen and a half chocolate croissants
• make today's croissants, trying (and succeeding) not to let the dough fall to the floor because the catch-trays aren't available; the list includes about 30 ham and cheese, 36 chocolate, 24 almond (we're out of almond filling until Johnnie shows me how to make more tomorrow), and 72 plain
• transfer the baked tomato rolls to sheet pans, in part because Brad (a) made a small loaf of bread out of the leftover bit of dough that couldn't be made into rolls and (b) gave said loaf to me

There was a certain amount of standing around today, given the craziness with the sheeters. I did not make it to yoga, though there's still a chance (not a very big chance, mind you) that I'll get off my ass and go downstairs and work out or something. At least I can unload the dishwasher and set up Craw's coffee for tomorrow and so on, before I go have a quick beer with S. Craw and the Kid are racing cars tonight at cub scouts and won't be home until about 9:00 or so, but I haven't seen that much of Craw.

As you can tell, today was kind of an off day, given the standing around parts, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. I did my best to pitch in with someone else when there wasn't anything obvious for me to do, but it was definitely slowish. Still, I've been marveling at how much I'm learning from all of this. There's no substitute for getting my hands in there and just doing things, and it's interesting learning it from people who are good at it, who expect (and need) me to get it quickly, and who are running a business rather than teaching a class.

The Day's Work (Tuesday)

I kept a list today . . . but I left the little notebook at work. Here's what I remember:

• greased 36 7-inch pans
• greased and papered a half-dozen or so sheet pans, and greased another dozen w/o putting down parchment
• broke 360 eggs into a bucket
• went downstairs and got the cookie machine onto and then off the little lift
• separated the croissant dough into six-pound pieces and put it in the freezer
• "caught" approximately 80 sheet pans of cookies (i.e., Jackie fed the pans into the guitar cutter, which dropped rows of variously shaped cookies onto the pans, and I grabbed the pans from the other end and put them onto speed racks)
• dipped about 2/3 of those cookies into one or another kind of sprinkle
• laminated the six pieces of croissant dough, i.e., sandwiched butter between the dough), putting single folds into four pieces and a double fold (or book fold) into two pieces, and then putting an additional double fold into each piece
• talked with the owner and Johnnie about croissant production
• made tomorrow's croissant dough (which means Johnnie doesn't have to do it in the morning)
• made approximately three dozen ham and cheese, three dozen almond, six dozen chocolate, and six dozen plain croissants, rolled the almond croissants in almonds, and egg-washed all of them, then distributed the pans to the rolling rack or the freezer, as appropriate

I had lunch in there somewhere, too (leftover whole-wheat spaghetti, with some frozen broccoli thrown on top). The timing is such that I can watch the sun rise over the lake and the eastern most part of the city from the window of the train as I go to work in the morning, which is most cool. Soon I'll be going to work in the daylight, which seems wrong, somehow, for a baker, but I do enjoy being able to observe the change of seasons with this work. The fact that I leave so close to the same time every day makes it much easier to note these facts; with office jobs, my arrival time might vary by as much as an hour or an hour and a half, depending on what I was doing. It's too soon to think seriously about ditching the winter coat--WAY too soon--but the increasing daylight hours make it seem like less of an impossibility.

Naming the Problem

In the late 1950s, Betty Friedan realized that millions of American women were suffocating in their lives as housewives. Women were expected to devote their full energy to making a home--cooking, cleaning, chauffering, entertaining, whatever was demanded. Female orgasm was supposed to occur primarily or only through intercourse; women who needed clitoral stimulation were "immature." Women could not get a credit card in their own names. They were regarded as freaks if they were unmarried. Many of the top universities did not admit women. Owning a home or a business without a man around to sign the mortgage or loan papers was difficult at best. Marriage and childrearing were supposed to the the be-all and end-all of female life, no matter that most housework is mindnumbingly tedious and that childrearing, especially in the early years, means spending many hours a day without having a conversation with another adult. One's whole life was devoted to other people's needs, and, worse, this was supposedly because it was in women's "natures" to want to do this, meaning that women were afraid to speak up for fear of seeming unnatural or mentally ill. Friedan found out, and reported, that millions of women had a voice within "that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.'" She called it the problem that has no name, but, gradually, in the 43 years since her book was first published, a revolution has begun. It's a revolution that's not finished, by any means, and it's one that began centuries ago, depending on how you count these things, but Friedan started a whole new wave of it, simply by describing the problem, by naming it, by enabling other women and men to see their own lives in a new, more liberating, and more fulfilling way. Thanks, Betty.

Football-Free Zone

Yeah, well, so I've fallen a little behind in providing you with a production list for the week, haven't I? I tell you what: I'll do it next week, and I'll actually keep notes at work. I'm keeping notes on the croissant production, too, because it's gradually moving into my hands (literally, I guess). Saturday we ran out of plain croissants by 10 am, and we had only two ham and cheese left by 10:30. I'm going to put together a little worksheet for the people in the front to fill out, so we can get a sense how many we're selling of which kind. Anyway, among the things I did this week were: crack 270 eggs (I cracked more than that in total, but the 270 was for one batch); make 25 more funeral cakes; make many dozen croissants; make and fill a half dozen chocolate mousse cakes, then cover the sides with this tootsie-roll-like substance made from chocolate and corn syrup, then put a fringe of that substance on the top of the cake; shaped a bunch of rolls; dipped rum balls in chocolate so someone else could roll the wet-chocolate-covered rum balls in chopped nuts or chocolate sprinkles; and set up a half-dozen cakes. I know there was more, but I tend to zone out.

We finished doing our taxes today (and by "we" I mean "I," in the sense that I did the calculations and Craw looked things over to make sure I didn't make any big mistakes). It was extremely strange to do it, and, of course, not strange at all. We need the refund to pay off the rest of the little debt we have (except my student loans, which will be a longer project), especially until we know what kind of job he's going to get and what kind of salary. I'm making more than we'd planned--I even got a couple of hours of overtime last week--and we're spending less on some things than we budgeted, and, hell, I even get a fifty-cents-an-hour raise in March, but we don't know what's going to happen so we're trying to be frugal-ish. He's supposed to hear by the end of this week whether he's getting an offer from the company w/ which he interviewed last week.

I keep trying to find some epiphany to share with you all, but, alas, nothing's forthcoming. I will say that it's an adventure being in this kind of relationship, i.e., this intimate committed thing. I'm not really accustomed to it, though, of course, I'm getting more practice. Just to give you an idea, I was 40 when I met Craw, and I hadn't been in a boyfriend-type relationship for fifteen years. I had (and have) many friends and lovers (sometimes combined in the same person, sometimes not), but the whole living-with-someone thing, nope. I sometimes think that's more difficult to get used to, even after all this time, than the open-relationship thing. The latter, well, once you realize that you're not particularly monogamous by nature, then it's a matter of how you're going to assimilate that knowledge about yourself into your life and your relationships. But the living-with (or, gasp, marrying) someone thing, well, that gets to a different place. It requires solving a different set of problems, I guess I mean to say, and, by virtue of the ways we interact, we end up displaying more of our good and bad selves than even many of our closest friends get to see.

But you guys probably know all this already; I'm just a little slower to get around to it than most people--which makes it more challenging and less challenging. It's less challenging, at least for me, because I'm reasonably comfortable with who I am. I have my less-lovely moments, of course, like everyone, but I'm kind of like Popeye: I yam what I yam. It's more challenging, though, because I'm not a kid. My parents will celebrate their 50th anniversary this year; they've not just grown old together, they grew up together. They've been through nearly their whole lives with each other. Me, I'm used to making my way more or less by myself. With lots of friends, mind you, and many people who love me and care for me, but Craw and I were already pretty much grown up when we met. What that means is that Craw has married a crotchety old pain in the ass, but he seems to enjoy it.

(Insert Clever Title about Hands)

As I may have mentioned here before, my father always told us that you can't make a living with your hands any more. He was a sheet metal worker for 40-some years and made a more-than-decent living, in part because he was a union sheet metal worker, a status he was able to maintain even when he and my uncle took over my maternal grandfather's business, thanks to his union having an "owner-operator" category for its members. Anyway, when my brother announced that he wasn't going to college, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, not least because he also announced that he wanted to be an auto mechanic. My brother is a very, very good mechanic, and he makes a decent living, my father's declaration notwithstanding.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as you might imagine, given the amount of time I spend making things these days. (Today: a batch of brioche, which was eventually separated into small rolls and into cinnamon-raisin loaves; all of today's croissants, plus two extra pieces turned into almond and chocolate croissants, because Johnnie made six extra pieces of dough today; some filling for some turnovers; and maybe something else, though it's escaping me at the moment.) It's true that I couldn't do the things I like to do and have this job, unless (a) I'd made a bunch of money at a previous job and saved it up, (b) I drastically changed my lifestyle, or (c) I had a partner who could contribute significantly to the household expenses. I've mostly got (c) going for me, at the moment, though we've been living in part off my savings for awhile, so (a) is in there, too. It's also true that I want to have my own place, I think, though of course what that place will be remains to be seen. I do believe I can pull it off, if the stars--and funding--align properly; certainly this job is giving me really crucial experience.

But the point of today's meanderings is similar to other points made in this space, namely, I come from a family of very smart people who make things. I don't regard this as mutually exclusive, especially given my family experience, but our culture in general, and the Management attitude that prevails throughout our culture, does regard making things and being smart as mutually exclusive: If you were smart, you'd be making money rather than things. And, really, smart isn't going to make you rich, either--college professors, who are presumably some of the smarter people among us, at least in some sense, make shit for pay, as do elementary and high school teachers. Anyway, I don't have anything organized to say today, and I have the results of a Salvation Army expedition (5 pair of jeans for $10.36) in the dryer downstairs, and I should eat something, and I'm eagerly awaiting Crawdaddy's arrival (he had a job interview today), and no, I didn't make it to yoga today, either.