I’m sitting in my office, which is blessed by a large window and a lovely view. It’s snowing again, and so cold the flakes are staying tiny and separate instead of clumping. It looks for all the world as though some giant is shaking a sifter full of powdered sugar across the landscape. It’s not quite time for me to leave, everyone else has gone, and the quiet is a lovely respite from an utterly crazy day. I knew I was in trouble this morning, when I heard myself tell my son “Passive resistance is useless. You’re going to get dressed.” Mind you, he loves school once he gets there – it’s the clothes themselves he objects to. His method of conveying his displeasure is to become as limp as a noodle when presented with his clothing. On the one hand, it’s maddening. On the other, it’s a great improvement over using my arms for dental exercise.
Nor were expectations disappointed. I got in to be told that I needed to prepare “talking points”, which is an outline of why we’re asking for the legislation we’re asking for, in terms not even a lawmaker can misconstrue. They also need to be a short summary of the primary elements of a set of rules that is roughly a thousand pages long. And they needed to be ready before my supervisor left to go to a funeral in Ohio, so time was rather tight. In spite of the best efforts of my keyboard, (I went marching over to IT to demand a new one) it got done on time, and it’s only two pages long. I must admit, when I looked at the finished outline, I found myself wondering how the writers for the Traffic Security Administration managed to use that many words to say that little.
Tomorrow I get to try, yet again, to convince the Powers That Be that the attack on the World Trade Center did not invalidate civil rights or the prohibitions against discrimination based on national origin. I expect to fail, but when the ACLU sues the state on the next grand plan, I want to be able to say “I told you so.” As for tonight? I’m planning to bake brownies with my kidlet. I can’t think of a better thing to do on a snowy night.
PLEASE don’t bake the Brownies!!! They’ve done so much to help you clean. And they seem very nice, too! Bake gremlins or hobgoblins instead!! Or at the very least cookies.
No, no, never fear. That was “brownies” with a small b, not “Brownies” with a capital “B”. But the capital-b-Brownies surely didn’t object when I served them small-b-brownies warm with ice cream for desert one night!