Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Lunch with my dear Italian friend yesterday brought with it startling revelations. For instance I learned that my cleaning lady, whom we share, apparently lusts after my husband. It is only her respect for me that keeps her from pouncing on him on the days he works from home and she is there. Oh but if you could see her. She is everything you envision white trash to be – a caricature straight out of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. She is thirty. She is heavy. She is peroxide-blond with alarming black roots. Her fingernails are painted blue. She has loser men in her life and two young children to raise on food stamps and the money she earns cleaning houses. She lives in a basement apartment with no windows. She has no health insurance. She cannot clean houses for very many years more. It is too exhausting. If dreaming of my husband every night eases her pain, it is the least I can give her. But that's all I'm giving her.
Spring is such an elusive thing here in New England. At 7 a.m. this morning the thermostat read 27 degrees Fahrenheit. Nonetheless, a few determined blades of tulip leaves poke bravely through last year's leftover leaves. But not these jade shoots or the morning blue sky is enough to alleviate the mud-colored treescape morose and brooding in my garden. Will it ever be spring?
At the State House I spend an hour this morning in the office OF A VERY PROMINANT PERSON to help an aide with her computer. Not that this is my job. It had just become impossible to communicate with her electronically and so I decided to help her out. Someone had to because the completely incompetent IT Department sure can't be counted on to help. Come to find out that this office is positively Medieval. Nobody uses Outlook. The concept of a share drive is non-existent. Hardly anyone uses email. "Well He likes everything written on hard copy. Then we shred everything once a month," says she as I work to heal her ailing computer. "I see..."
Three more days. Three more days... and I will be awash in the color and sunshine of Sanibel. As will the daughter. As will the hubby. And as we ride our bicyles through the nearby sanctuary in search of aligators, he will be dreamt about by a woman awash in a dead-end life.
Spring is such an elusive thing here in New England. At 7 a.m. this morning the thermostat read 27 degrees Fahrenheit. Nonetheless, a few determined blades of tulip leaves poke bravely through last year's leftover leaves. But not these jade shoots or the morning blue sky is enough to alleviate the mud-colored treescape morose and brooding in my garden. Will it ever be spring?
At the State House I spend an hour this morning in the office OF A VERY PROMINANT PERSON to help an aide with her computer. Not that this is my job. It had just become impossible to communicate with her electronically and so I decided to help her out. Someone had to because the completely incompetent IT Department sure can't be counted on to help. Come to find out that this office is positively Medieval. Nobody uses Outlook. The concept of a share drive is non-existent. Hardly anyone uses email. "Well He likes everything written on hard copy. Then we shred everything once a month," says she as I work to heal her ailing computer. "I see..."
Three more days. Three more days... and I will be awash in the color and sunshine of Sanibel. As will the daughter. As will the hubby. And as we ride our bicyles through the nearby sanctuary in search of aligators, he will be dreamt about by a woman awash in a dead-end life.
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