So That Happened

1. I'm currently sitting at a table in the cafe of my local bookstore, "looking for jobs." I give this phrase the safety of quotation marks because I find I'm much less hard on myself for failing to accomplish tasks I've arbitrarily encased in quotes. And also because, as I get weirdly self-conscious looking for employment in public, what I'm doing right now could hardly be construed as seeking employment in any logical way.

My usual seat next to the wall is occupied, so I'm out here in the open next to the New Science Fiction section. I feel exposed and vulnerable, like I'm presenting myself for the Red Carpet Fashion Police. Except instead of judging my ensemble, the ghost of Joan Rivers is directing her raspy, snide remarks toward the fact that I'm contemplating a job listing for a male bilingual case aide when I am neither male nor bilingual (nor, for that matter, a case aide).

Every time I sense someone coming up behind me I switch my internet tab to npr.org to make myself look smart and not at all unemployed. I must seriously rethink this approach. I just frantically minimized Craigslist and the NPR headline on the page behind it was "Haunted Dolls are a Thing, and They're Not Cheap, Either." Good, Margoshes. Excellent. Because nothing says "I'm a stable human being" quite like pretending to read articles about wind-up dolls. I bet every person in this bookstore just saw my computer screen and is thinking, "What an intellectual, well-rounded adult female she is. She's sure got her finger on the pulse of this nation's problems. Now there's someone who is definitely not looking for a job."


2. As I sat there, "looking for a job," I overheard a young man at the cafe counter ordering his lunch. "Can I have the broccoli cheddar soup?" he asked. The barista asked how many crackers he would like, which I found an odd question but evidently the customer did not. "Three packets," he said, pausing a moment before adding, "I was going to reply with something esoteric like, 'As many as will fit into a baby's hand,' but I thought that might be weird." The barista laughed. "And can I get a drip coffee, too?" the man asked. "What size?" the barista answered. "Enough to fit in a baby's hand?"


3. [From early February] I think I may be losing my mind, and not in the I-put-six-socks-in-the-washing-machine-and-only-five-came-out kind of way. I mean that for the past two weeks, the only thing I've wanted to do is sit on my bedroom floor, hunched uncomfortably over a jigsaw puzzle while listening to NPR stories I've already heard. Sometimes this Rockwellian scene includes a steaming mug of tea, but most of the time it's just me, Robert Siegel of All Things Considered, and a puzzle of Moscow's onion domes in the dead of night, where half the picture is entirely black and all the pieces are the exact same shape.


4. For Christmas/my birthday, my friend gave me a five-year, one-sentence-a-day journal. Each page is dated at the top and has five groups of lines with enough space for you to fill in the year and summarize your day in a single sentence. A few nights ago I decided to read back through what I've written so far. On March 10th, I was mopey and depressed and contemplating the merits of spending the rest of my life in a cave I would dig in the backyard. One day later, after hours spent painting trim in the kitchen, I wrote "In case the issue ever arises again, remember that paint is NOT an adequate substitute for caulk." Between this and monitoring the popularity of our country's haunted dolls, I'm really tackling the hard-hitting issues over here. You're welcome, everybody.