Tales from the Shark Tank

Blogging may be light for a while. I’ve been blogging on breaks at work, because that’s where I have the fewest distractions. (No, “Mommy, come look at my track set. I built it just for you!” Wonderful, but not conducive to coherent writing.) I really shouldn’t do that any more. The new commissioner has already decided, evidently, that I am not to be trusted. Until I can move elsewhere, I need to watch what I do.

Have I mentioned that I hate feeling like I have to be paranoid? No? Well, I do. I also hate the feeling of being watched, weighed and found wanting by someone who has never even met me.

I can’t explain details on this post without breaching a confidence, so please be patient if this turns into a rather cryptic rant.

If rumour is to be relied upon, I need the quest for a different job to resolve itself in the next month. The good news is that I already have some lines on things I would actually like. Given the reliability and number of sources involved, rumour is probably correct. I shall be doing a brief resume update tonight, to add “legislative drafting” to the list of skills, and delivering copies to assorted places tomorrow.

I’m angry at the dictates of political expediency. I’m angry to be subject to such a decision from someone who has never even met me, simply because I’m in this chair. I’m angry because I stayed in a civil service post rather than accept a chief counsel post so that I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now, and the Powers That Be are so determined to be seen Doing Something About The Problem in an election year that the sweep comes down to my level anyway. I’m angry to be thrown to the wolves for things I had nothing whatever to do with, things I didn’t even have a way to affect.

Life, in a popularly ascribed animal form, is about to have puppies.

In spite of a migraine day and other bothersome nonsense, it was a moderately productive weekend. There?s another block of clear space in my closet, a trash bag to go to charity, another trash bag out for this morning?s garbage collection, and two boxes to go to the nearest consignment store. Some treasures that have been in bags for lack of storage space are now in one small drawer. I may ultimately go looking for a vintage shop for them; they belonged to my mother before I was born. (I?d venture a guess that 50 year old nightgowns might qualify as ?vintage?.) They?re very pretty, but it?s really mom who has an emotional attachment to them. I have to keep reminding myself that her desire to keep the tangible reminders of various periods in her life does not obligate me to sacrifice living space to them. It?s my life, and my house, and I don?t need to keep nightgowns I won?t wear or the wool suit that was her first (and last) venture into tailoring if it doesn?t fit me, no matter how beautiful a job she made of it.

I also got to spend some lovely time cuddling and reading to my darling son. He was so sweet. When I explained to him that I needed to lie down with the lights off because I had a very bad headache, he nodded solemnly and said ?ok, Mommy. I?ll tuck you in.? And he did. He arranged pillows for me, told me to lie down, put a light blanket over me, read me a story, kissed me, and wished me goodnight. Then he turned out the light, told me not to let the monsters come out of the closet, shut the door carefully, and went off to play on the computer. Have I mentioned that I have a wonderful little boy?

The shoe finally dropped yesterday. The commissioner of the agency which employs me resigned. The surprise isn’t that he did so; it’s that he waited until now. The new commissioner is an attorney who has been in politics for years, and was at varying points a judge, a prosecutor, and both a deputy commissioner and chief legal counsel for this very agency. I really do feel sorry for her. No one knows what the next election will bring, so it’s entirely possible she’ll be in the position for less than a year. The party not currently in power is already talking about how she’s not capable of the sort of housecleaning they think is needed, and she hasn’t even started. My immediate superior, current chief legal counsel, is so nervous she seems ready to birth porcupines.

Fortunately, there are people who were here and worked with the commissioner-select during her prior tenure. Both my supervisor and I have spoken to some of them. All of them agree on a few things: that she is a no-nonsense person, that she is very professional, and that she expects her upper-level staff (which would be all of us legal eagles) to look professional. Therein lies the rub. All of us are pretty casual. At the moment, I don’t own but two suits that fit me, and I very seldom wear them. “Business casual” is decidedly the order of the day. When the three lawyers gathered to figure out what we needed to do to prepare for our new boss, a topic arose that would only be discussed among a conclave of professional women. We discussed what we would need to wear to create the correct impression. It was all I could do not to laugh at us.

I had a fair amount of nervous energy when I got home, and turned it promptly to good use. I’ve been telling myself for quite some time that I needed to weed my closet, and that there’s no point buying or making anything until I know what I have. Now I have to do it, and last night I got a good start. I made it through my blazers, dresses and suits. The end result is a box of things for the women’s shelter, a few for the resale store, and a collection of blazers that I’ve brought into work, because both my fellow lawyers are the size I used to be. I haven’t even started on the blouses, sweaters or slacks yet, and there’s already perceptibly more space in there. I also have more blazers that fit than I thought I did. Who knows? If I can get rid of enough, I might even find I have room to put everything away. That is, in the end, the object of the exercise. Making a good impression on my new boss is just a nice fringe benefit.

Our local township school district offers classes for the community in the evening, on topics ranging from exercise to dream interpretation. It looked to me, browsing through the catalogue, they would offer a class on just about anything someone wanted to teach.

I decided to sign up for a low impact aerobics class, which met last night for the first time. I found out a few things. One is that I’m not the most out-of-shape person in the room. Another is that I really can make it through an hour long workout without either getting sick or falling over. And the third is that my face stays red for a long time. For a good half hour after I got home, you could have cast me as the tomato in an advertisement for ketchup.

I just wandered off to the State Supreme Court Law Library over in the next building. I needed to review some superceded statutes so that I could discuss them intellegently with a judge. I was already in practice at the time in question (1986) but I was not going to rely upon 18 year old memory.

I found what I needed, and found that, contrary to the argument of defendant’s counsel, the law had been properly applied back in 1986. Now some of the penalties are in the discretion of the judge. Back then, they were mandatory.

The treasure appeared on my way out. I was glancing at the shelves and found myself staring at a handwritten “Maryland 1765″ on the cover of a huge, obviously hand-bound folio book. Upon opening it, I found the proceedings of the Maryland Colonial Council and the Colonial Charter. It’s fascinating, and beautiful, and to my way of thinking belongs in a rare book collection. But since it’s just over in the State Capitol Building, a short walk away, I can read it. It’s fascinating to see what was considered important enough for the Council to discuss, and more so to see in their discussions the origins of some of the issues that are still concerning us today.

This is going to be fun!

Friday night, feeling very much as if I wanted to swat someone into next week, I asked to use a dear friend’s guest room for a night. It’s all of 10 minutes drive from my own home, but no one could create a crisis in which I would feel obligated to intervene. By the same token, any genuine emergency could and would find me.

It was a lovely evening. My hostess had said that she was well versed in the art of being self-indulgent, and intended to teach me how it was done. She had a willing if not terribly adept student, and a great deal of unwinding occurred. When I wandered off to bed, it was to fall asleep pretty nearly as soon as I lay down, which is a rare treat indeed in my world.

But a fly had gotten into the ointment. My mother managed to create the emergency that genuinely required my personal attention. No less than three people tried to either deal with it or at the very least shield me from it. But the assessment of all involved was that the only person likely to be able to talk my dad down from his panic was me. How did she manage to cause so much consternation? Indeed, it took great effort. She went to a doctor’s appointment at 2:00 p.m, telling Dad she was going shopping thereafter. And so she did – but she still wasn’t home at 12:30 a.m. I calmed Dad down, but then couldn’t calm myself down. Finally, at 1:30 a.m., I called their house. She answered, and got quite an earful. The thing that gets me is that she said that everyone was mad at her – her doctor, for being late to her appointment, my dad for not calling to say where she was as it got later and later, and me for waking not one but two households – and that she didn’t see how she could have done anything differently! We have discussed that. I suspect we may continue to discuss that at intervals. We may discuss it until she stops responding with “but I told your dad where I was going, and that’s where I was!” The comment that seems to have made the deepest impression was “Mother, has your brain turned into marshmallow fluff?” It seems to me that it has: sweet, fluffy, and quite without substance. Aaargh!

Unwinding did happen. Sleep happened, if a bit off kilter. I’m feeling much saner today than I did on Friday. But I lost most of Saturday afternoon, and ended up dropping half of what I’d planned for Sunday off the edge of the world to keep the cascade of consequences of Mom’s exercise in spaciness from spreading beyond the households already hit by it. If the “sandwich generation” is the one that is taking care of both their parents and their kids, then I guess that explains why my brain sometimes feels like peanut butter.