Monday, February 8, 2010

My Sister is Writing an Actual BOOK......


......so, you're stuck with me. (Her posts live on. Look for 'On the Road'.)

The picture above is of my actual desk. Nature is reclaiming it's own and, at fifty five years of age, I find a portion of comfort in that thought.

Anyway, it's not nearly as cramped as it looks. I cropped out a good square foot of bare desk space from the foreground. My husband is a good sport and only occasionally makes ominous references to 'The Day of the Triffids', or says, "FEED me, Seymour!"

In the winter, this desk is where it all takes place. This is where I pay my bills, listen to music, post comments to Reddit, maintain my websites and natter with my friends. It's my game room, my daily news, my reference library and my solace on those nights when I simply cannot sleep. What better place to keep my plants? Their quiet and exotic presence is a pleasure to me and an inspiration as I realize that these other lives, strange and unfathomable as they are, grow and bloom as happily as if they were in their native South Africa, Turkey, Central America or Asia, instead of in a dinky old Cracker Jack box of a house in Yorktown, New York. They bring the world to me as surely as the internet does.

I spoke to an old friend yesterday. It had been almost twenty years since we were last in contact. I shouldn't have been surprised that it felt like only yesterday. Tempus certainly does fugit, especially after you've hit forty.

My search for a nursing job that I can tolerate continues in frustrating fits and starts. I applied today at Ethan Allen Staffing; a very large temp agency that supplies workers to all sorts of industries. They have an application and interviewing process that would make Henry Ford drool with envy. You fill out many forms; you watch a video on 'Safety in the Workplace'. You take a test. You read a pamphlet and then you take another test. Only then are you allowed into the interview portion of the process. If you 'pass' that, you read a booklet, take another test and finally collect all your proofs of identification, certifications and licenses that were being scrutinized and photocopied while you were running the maze. They told me that I'll, "...be in the system by tomorrow". Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

This blog is actually called 'TacomaGals' and will go back to being so when my sister has polished and published her book. I read a rough draft and it's really very good. She can put together a plot, which is amazing to me. I am, and have been, an avid reader all my life. For the last ten or fifteen years, my favorite books have been mysteries. Scandinavian mysteries. (I blame 'Smila's Sense of Snow' for that.) You think I'd be able to throw together a semblance of a plot after all my exposure to Henning Mankell, Steig Larsson, Karin Fossum......but no. I am but a poor essayist. If I had the talent of S.J. Perelman or E.B. White, I could be content with that. Alas.

Time to water my plants; an exercise in concentration since most of them are sitting atop important and sensitive computer components. What's life without a little risk?

- Maggie