Hmmph?huh? uh-whut? my life?

This blog-writing thing is really cutting into my blog-reading time. Maybe that's why certain, let us say, details of significance in the past few weeks have slipped through the cracks.

For instance--this week, I quit my job. Gave notice for mid-May. I have to say that it was in toto a very satisfying experience. I enjoy my work. I'm good at it, too: it requires both an intense appreciation of taxonomy, order and detail, and a large margin of tolerance for mayhem and anarchy. While that may not be a conventional description of cataloging, most catalogers would recognize the truth in it. Does any other profession contemplate the chaos that ensues when someone whose name is Janet Smith writes a book about something? Which Janet Smith? Ay, there's the rub. Is it impossible to imagine that the same Janet Smith who wrote this book on how Ashtanga yoga can improve your golf swing, also wrote the Ph.D. thesis on Korean incidence of listeriosis? (*sigh* Guess you had to be there ...) My work also gave me the opportunity of working with some really cool stuff, like this, on a routine basis.

But I'm done. I have other stuff I need to be doing right now--some of it parenting (where is that child?), some of it looking forward to the next time I'm back to a paid gig (I have a degree to finish, and for a number of good reasons, I probably really need to finish it by the end of the calendar year). Honestly, I think I've made a decent contribution on the project that I've been working on for the past couple of years. It's time to go, though.

My boss--a man I dearly love in spite of (well, in part because of) his making an easy target for mockery --bore up admirably. In fact, his response was all a girl could hope for. There was about 10 minutes of pacing and agitated 'Goddammit!', implying how adorably irreplaceable I am and how they just won't be able to soldier on without me; and then he trotted out many kind words and handshakes and assurances about how 'if there was anything he could do for me professionally,' etc. I was a little teary by the end of it all. I kinda want to pack him up and take him with me, with his fetching Alabama-inflected Japanese expressions (shikata ga nai was my fave), his propensity to hop when enthusiastic, and his utterly transparent flattery when trying to palm off especially tedious or intractable tasks.

So--anyway--I'm in a 'lame duck' phase. I've been working like a moderately efficient machine, trying to push through as much book-mass as possible in my remaining time. At the same time, I'm struggling with a mass of procrastinatory items--each represented by its surrogate scrap of paper on my desk--each of which either has to be resolved, or alternately surreptitiously thrown into the recycling bin, after judiciously measuring the likelihood of anyone ever inquiring into, or being served by, whatever horrid little bibliographic knot I had once been determined to solve once for all.

In mid-May I'll have 2 weeks of sloth well-deserved respite--a pause that refreshes, I hope--before summer classes start, and over the summer I'll have a few hiatuses and breathing-spaces as well. Remember this? That's on the calendar--and about 6 weeks closer than when I first mentioned it!--but it almost got whited out, when 2 weeks ago Howie came to my study one evening as I was farting around catching up on blogs doing research on the fine craft of the personal essay. "Was I supposed to do something with this?" he asked, shoving toward me The. F*cking. Rental. Contract. That. Was. Due. With. Deposit. Two. Weeks. Previous. Thank you, my treasured spouse, for re-introducing to my bloodstream the rarefied buzz that only cortisol can give. Happily, one frantic phone call to the realtor about twelve hours later and a FedEx'd check reinstated us in the Honor Roll of Vacation Renters.

Then, the most far-reaching bit of news: about a month and a half after his interview, and then after about 5 days of nag-telephony, Howie finally learned that he did not get the nod for the faculty position at Big Southern U. His principal response, was, I think, relief; he has funding for his much-beloved current project for at least another year. But my own reaction was more like a tidal flood of irritation, which lasted about 18 hours and which I was in no mood to write about.

This may come a surprise to anyone who read this or this or this, all of which seemed to suggest that the prospect of moving filled my heart with Dread and Angst; however I think I would have felt the same irrespective of the outcome. Still, if the outcome had been different, I would have been so frantic in starting preparations--getting the house ready for market, planning a move--that I might not have noticed my own upheaval.

Maybe it was an ejection of accummulated annoyance and resentment that my superego was diligently keeping at bay until it was safe to hit the release valve; but a more plausible explanation for my state of mind is that the Big News was, essentially, about Howie and not about me in any way, except in its effects. It's all very well to say that we make family policy and big family decisions together; and further that it's been a deliberate decision (though not in conditions of our own choosing) to sustain Howie's status as Mr. Provide, Provide. Still, whenever it's shoved up my nose, it stinks. Whether this foreshadows how I'll cope with being out of the gainful employment sector for a while--well, let's see. I'm open to being surprised.

Comments

[Melissa]

My my, thank God for Ikea. I hate when I have nothing to add....and yet, here I am commenting and saying nothing more than-nothing.

[science chick]

Now's the time to sit back, chill, and let your life wash over you like a great sunami.....go with it and it will take you on an adventure to new uncharted territory!

When all else fails, you can take comfort in http://onion.com/news/index.php?issue=4017&n=1 (help! I don't know how to creat a !@#@@###! hyperlink!)

[science chick]

Aha! Take that!

[Lee]

Three words - Iron Chef America.

[red clay]

oh, honey.