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December 30, 1997
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The power went out last night. I don't know for how long. I woke up when it came back on because I heard the Personal LaserWriter 320 print out a test page. I saw the clock flashing, got up and reset the time and the alarm, and proceeded to lie awake for g*d knows how long. By the time I went back to sleep it was 7:30 and the alarm went off at 8:00. No wonder I'm tired today. I checked for snow but there wasn't any. The rain didn't seem like the 20 inch deluge they were predicting either. High wind warnings are out. The gate just crashed shut. I had it wedged open in case it snowed last night - it's difficult to open in the snow and the condo association won't shovel my walk if it's closed. The wind is howling like a ghost chorus. And throwing stuff around like Lithobolia - the rock throwing demon of Portsmouth in colonial times. The Beans of Egypt Maine's Christmas balls are in a heap at the foot of the little tree they hung 'em on. It's a miracle they didn't all break. Some of 'em are even still on the tree. Must be those with the high quality hooks. Things that don't normally fly fill the air. Y'know, if Santa had a wind like this the other night I just might believe reindeer really know how to fly. They wouldn't need wings, that's for sure. I haven't seen the house sparrows or the local pigeon contingent all day. They must hunker down someplace to hide from the wind lest they get blown to a whole 'nother time zone without lifting a feather. A small airplane just flew directly over my unit on its approach to the Lawrence airport. Fairly low. In this wind. A few snowflakes drift by. A car full of kids just arrived in the parking lot. They exit the vehicle screaming at each other. Loudly. The Beans of Egypt Maine are boiling water for tea or coffee or something. I can hear the kettle whistling. The other night one of them was in the bathroom conducting an argument with another one who was downstairs. In my bathroom, I could hear every word of his side of the argument and almost none of the other side. It wouldn't have made sense even if I could hear all of it. In my therapist's waiting room this morning, I started reading an article in Newsweek about "Young Unhappy Professionals" - the new Yuppies: "Sick of selling out but too high-powered to drop out, some have found a better solution: selling in.". Newsweek doesn't exactly define "selling in" but the gist is that these yuppies quit their meaningless high paying jobs to do meaningful jobs, or something like that. They want fulfillment. Fancy that. Have their cake and eat it too. Or something. Does this mean I was trendy when I quit my high paying, high status, high aggravation, job to wash litterboxes and guard the nests of invisible yet stupid birds? I'm not young so I don't count in the demographics. But then again, the Newsweek writers seem to suffer from some mathematical disability because they talk about people putting 20 years into their careers and discovering they don't have a family (excuse me, why would it take 20 years to notice you don't have any children? wouldn't the cleaning lady have tripped over them?) yet the examples they cite are people 35, 31, 36, 32, 27 ... umm, that means they've been investing themselves in their careers since they were 11 or 12? I still wanted to grow up to play third base when I was 12! And the 27 year old quit a Madison Ave advertising job. Heck, if I'd been in a Madison Ave advertising job since the age of 7, I'd have burned out when I hit puberty. Then they cite some guy who "after 30 years as a Hollywood player" went to work for Save the Children. They don't say how old he was at the time. Let's see:
Of course if these people were really working in their high powered careers at the ages of 7, or 11, or even 16, it's no wonder they didn't notice they didn't have children! | |||||||||||||||
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