It's hot in Italy

Hello, all. We made it! This is not going to be a long post, because I am tired and also this keyboard has a backspace key that sticks and deletes everything I just wrote. Damn it! There it goes again.

It is very hot here. That is kind of an understatement, actually. It is so hot that although I have had about four gallons of water today, I have not had to find a bathroom at all. Sorry if that is too much detail for you....The air is so heavy that I feel like I am inside a warm cloud.

This morning we saw the Borghese Gallery, which is on the former estate of the Pope's nephew. Unfortunately, I do not remember which Pope, but you can look it up if you want to know. He owned and commissioned many beautiful pieces, including some by the sculptor Bernini. No cameras allowed, of course, so no photos of them unless I sprung for a 40 Euro souvenir book, but Google Bernini if you are curious.

We had a delicious lunch at a restaurant called La Bruschetta (literally "the burned toast"), at the recommendation of our hotel owner who is an American woman of about my age, and who apparently knows good places to eat wherever we might be going. She hasn't missed yet. We had mixed vegetables, which turned out to be marinated zucchini, eggplant, green beans, spinach, red peppers, small roasted potatoes, onions, and (inexplicably because it contained no vegetables) a piece of delicious quiche. Then we had an order of breaded stuffed olives (YUM), and a plate of gnocchi with tomato-basil sauce. It was all delicious. Oh, and we finished with a piece of custardy lemon cake with almonds. The three of us just shared one order of each of these things, which was plenty.

This afternoon we had the longest walk known to man, trying to locate the Pantheon. My father, who is usually very good with maps and directions, must have been suffering from heat stroke or jet lag or something, because he led us on a labyrinthian tour of local piazzas, taxi stands, and careening scooters down back streets. When we finally reached the Pantheon, everyone was too tired, hot, and crabby to enjoy it. (Had someone listened to me when I said to turn left out of the bus stop instead of right, we might have avoided such a hike, but we did stumble upon a very nice square with a Bernini fountain along the way, so it was not all bad.)

But not to worry! We were quickly revived by some delicious gelato: I had almond sorbet and wild cherry sorbet, and wow were they good. My mom especially loves the gelato. She is anxious to have it for breakfast, since we have heard somewhere that locals do that.

This was followed by another forced march through the heat. I am the only member of our party not suffering from blisters on my feet. But at last, we got back on our sightseeing bus and got off at the Colosseum, which was particularly exciting for me because I missed it the last time I was in Italy. For some reason, it was unexplainedly closed the day my sister and I tried to visit it. A very impressive structure (which the audiotour on our bus went to the trouble to stress was never used for martyring Christians or sacrificing people, contrary to popular legend--but they would hardly admit it, now, would they?), and we were there at the perfect time to get photographs of the crumbling stone in the pink-orange late afternoon light.

And now, I believe it is bed time. The jet lag yesterday was torture, but my body has adjusted quickly. So far....And also, there are some obnoxious Americans yelling in this Internet cafe. Why is it that Americans seem to think that speaking LOUDER IN ENGLISH is going to make someone who doesn't speak English miraculously understand them?

Thanks to everyone who sent messages. I will try to write back soon! Ciao!

I got the job, I got the job, I got the job!

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!

An official offer is contingent on successful drug testing and criminal background checks today, of course, but I haven’t had so much as a poppyseed muffin or a traffic ticket. I think it will be fine.

On Monday, I had my “informal interview lunch” with the three members of the department, and I felt like it went really well. The hardest part was just figuring out what to wear (new black polo, black-and-tan flowered skirt, new brown sandals, in case you’re wondering). There was a lot of discussion of the job and the department, a little casual conversation and joking around, and I felt very comfortable wit them. I left them with a solid handshake and the sense that I had done well. But then, of course, I had to wait for them to call me, which is when my brain started its over-analysis of every casual comment and signal.

I know I promised an update sooner, but I was just too nervous to sit still and type anything. It’s been a long week of pacing around, nailbiting, and waiting for the phone to ring but being too scared to answer when it did.

Which it did, this morning, while I must confess I was still sleeping. (I won’t tell you how late it was, or you’ll hate me.) But I might as well enjoy sleeping in while it lasts. Soon enough I’ll be waking up to an alarm in the dark, and rushing off to work like the rest of the world.

The voice mail message they left (because I wasn’t about to answer the phone in my half-awake state and let them know what a layabout I am!) was fairly neutral, which was both good and bad: either they were calling with good news and wanted to give it to me live, or they were calling with bad news and didn’t want to leave it on my voice mail. Or maybe they had offered it to someone else yesterday, who had turned it down this morning, and now I was their second choice. Or maybe….

Erin, enough already! I planned out how I would graciously respond to either a yes or a no, and then called.

Which is how I learned that I was their top choice, they felt there was “good chemistry”, and they were going to offer me a very fair salary (more than I had been expecting!).

When we hung up, I actually jumped up and down like a lotto winner, fists held aloft, whooping. (In my pink pajamas, no less—there’s your visual of me for the day.)

And then I called several people who I knew were holding their breath on my behalf—my parents, my personal reference, my counselor. We were all excited. This was good news. Yay. Etc.

I’m just so relieved, that I will be coming home to a good job and a regular income and health benefits and all that! Now I can enjoy my trip to Europe that much more, and I know that I can spend a little on souvenirs and gelato without worrying that it will affect my ability to pay the electric bill this fall.

Thanks for listening. I may not write again before I leave for Europe, because I’ve got a lot to do and I’ve been putting it off this week, but I plan to update the blog with travelogues while abroad. The 2005 European dispatches were very popular, so feel free to share with your friends. More readers can’t hurt me.

A second interview!

The phone rang tonight at 6 o’clock. My heart always stops when the phone rings these days, but I figured it couldn’t be anything job-related at that hour. It was, however, one of the interviewers calling to say that I am one of three finalists for the job!

On Friday morning, I will do some testing in Word and Excel (because the other two finalists are not local, we will all be doing our testing by email instead of in person to make it fair—I will get an email with the test materials at an appointed time; and then the person sending them will call to make sure that I received them; and then I will have an hour to finish and return them by email; I feel like I'm getting instructions for dropping off a ransom), and then next week they plan to schedule final interviews.

Tomorrow I’d better take my one and only suit to the dry cleaners. I’m glad now that I got a plain suit instead of pinstriped, because I think I can get away with wearing the same black suit to both interviews (with a different shirt, of course).

I appreciate how quick they have been to make decisions so far. They told me yesterday that they know it’s hard to wait over the weekend to hear about a job, so they were planning to notify everyone by Friday whether they would be called back for a second interview. But I certainly didn’t expect to hear from anyone by today!

I would love to know one way or the other before I leave for Europe a week from Monday. And it would be so great to know that I was coming home to a job. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too far. But cross your fingers or say a prayer for me.

At last, a good interview

I just had a job interview, and I think it went really well! Actually, I know it went really well, because while he was walking me out, the head of the department I’d be working for said, “That went really well”.

You know how sometimes you have an interview (or even just a conversation) and you end up saying all kinds of weird, wrong things and giving more information than you meant to, and the interviewer asks questions you don’t know how to answer, and pretty soon everyone is looking at you like you’re completely psycho?

This was nothing like that.

I nailed it. I was prepared; I gave honest, well-thought-out answers to all their questions; I praised the work their department has been doing; I asked what effect the upcoming leadership change might have. They were clearly impressed. (Can you tell I’m on an adrenaline high right now?) They seem like a good team to work for. They laughed at my jokes. I even saw the main interviewer write down “SMART!” on his notes and underline it, and he called me smart.

Truthfully, as of 7 o’clock this morning, I really did not think it was going to go well. I got very little sleep last night, between nervousness and heat and my cat who wanted to cuddle (why, Louie, why? It’s 2 AM and 75 degrees in my room—why would you want to sleep on my stomach??). So I woke up in a fog this morning and blundered around, pretty sure that I was about to blow it.

But I didn’t!

They’re supposed to let everyone know by the end of the week whether they’d like to have them back for a second interview. I told them that I’m leaving soon for a long-planned vacation in Europe and that I hoped that wouldn’t affect my chances. I think it’s a good sign that they asked exactly when I was leaving, and all of them wrote down the dates of my trip.

I will post an update as soon as I hear from them. Even if I didn’t get it (although I’d say I have a decent chance unless they’re just that effusive with everyone), I was heartened by the positive experience. No one has called me “smart” in a professional setting for a long time. Take that, old job!

Old friends

Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends. You know that Simon and Garfunkel song? It gets kind of weird and discordant in the middle, but I like the images of old men on a bench, watching the world go by. Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?

Today I went to a party at the house of my oldest friend (oldest as in time I’ve known her, not her age). You know how there are some people in your life, no matter how long it’s been since you saw them, you can still pick right up where you left off as though no time has passed? Our friendship is like that.

We met in the second grade after my family moved into the house where my parents still live, and my new friend lived only two blocks away. I used to cross the creek behind our house by myself, and cut through the neighbor’s yard—with permission, of course—to go to play at her house. Her family had a frisky black poodle who would beg to play fetch for hours. I babysat her younger brother a few times, and I think she watched my sister once or twice. We worked on Girl Scout badges together. I went to the beach with her family, and she went skiing with mine. On summer evenings in our adolescent years, I would call her most nights after dinner to go for a walk through the neighborhood above us, where we would stroll up the hill past massive homes with lawn sprinklers spraying cool mist.

When we were in fifth grade and tired of the afternoon program at the elementary school, our mothers decided we were responsible enough to come home alone after school, if we were together. So on alternate days, we would ride the bus to her house and then to my house. Her home was clean and peaceful and silent in the afternoons. I remember the pungent, yeasty smell of their kitchen bread drawer, which seemed strange and wondrous to me—bread at my house was kept on top of the refrigerator in plain sight. We would eat whole wheat bread and thickly spread raspberry jam, and do our homework or play with the clothespin dolls we made outfits for from fabric scraps.

In the summer, we made our younger siblings perform in plays that we wrote and directed and designed the costumes for. We would spend hours in my basement, rehearsing and planning and trying to convince the younger ones to go along with everything. Somewhere, I still have a cassette tape with a radio play that we produced; it was about a princess, of course, and our voices sound childlike and precocious over the hiss from the microphone. We decided that my sister and her brother would get married, and then we would be related. Unfortunately, neither sibling was as excited about that plan as we were. They’re still not.

Later, she did not drive and I did not have a car, so we rode the school bus together all through high school. I remember many mornings falling asleep shoulder to shoulder in the pre-dawn gray, hunched over our bulging backpacks in our laps, me with my viola case between my knees. The worst was on rainy days, when we had to squish together on the crowded bus, wet coat pressed against wet coat on the damp green vinyl, the windows fogged with the breath of fifty groggy students, the floor slick and gray from soaked shoes.

Our families are friends, which probably helps us to stay in contact. (I am not in contact with anyone else from school. I wonder from time to time how some of my old classmates are doing, but it doesn’t trouble me enough to find out.) Our parents have dinner every few months. Our mothers talk on the phone, and update us on one another’s activities. Her dad and my dad play their guitars together for fun, and even go to concerts (by which I do not mean screaming mobs and mosh pits and overpriced T-shirts—I mean two guys with guitars and microphones at a church multi-purpose room). So I generally know where she is and what she’s doing.

Still, it was nice to see her in person. I can’t remember the last time I saw her, actually. But when we sit and talk together in her backyard in the heat of a July evening, it feels like no time has passed.

Seeing my friend makes me realize anew that I am lonely. A little lonely, I mean. I have my family nearby, and I see people and talk to others on the phone, but I don’t really have any close friends here in town. There’s no one I can call here when I need to vent about something. My college friends, because we have taken different paths and live in different places, have inevitably drifted away, although we still have the bond of common experience and genuine affection. I’m not surprised by the drifting away, but I miss the connection of real friends. I miss having people I can call for spontaneous meals or movies. Does this make me sound pathetic? I’m afraid so.

I was talking to my counselor about this last week, because he’s been encouraging me to get out more. But the thing is, I do get out, or I try to. I stretch myself beyond my level of comfort nearly every week. Sometimes it’s hard for me to even leave the house when I know I will have to talk to strangers, or go somewhere I’ve never been before. Still, I am involved in activities like the community orchestra I play with, where I make myself go to practice every week and usually enjoy it once I’m there; and I have taken several classes through the community college, but I just don’t seem to make friends—at least not within my peer group, and not in as short a time as a weekly class with ten sessions. It takes me a while to warm up to people. And right now, I don’t even have a job to go to, where there would at least be some work friends to have lunch with or talk to about my day.

I have met some very nice people in the orchestra, but they are older and have families and other commitments, and it’s just not the same. And yes, I’ve tried online dating, but I found it very impersonal and weird. Either I made a snap judgment about whoever I was matched up with (and believe me, some of them were for good reason—like the guy who listed “tattoos” first on his list of things he couldn’t live without; I’m sure he is perfect for someone, but that someone is not me); or the person I was matched up with made a presumably hasty judgment about me, based on my profile picture or one of my statements. After a few months of this, I decided that: a) I couldn’t afford it anymore since I’m unemployed; and b) it wasn’t really helping me to make connections with anyone. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d still like to meet someone the way people used to. Whatever that was.

As I said to my counselor, I don’t know where my peers are! I am not going to hang out in bars, and I am not involved in a church, and those are the only groups I see with people my age, other than the young married parents who are friends with other young married parents. I’m not quite at the point where I want to join a “singles” group, although I’m not ruling it out yet. So where does that leave me? If you live in Portland and have a group of friends who could use a quiet, wry addition who enjoys movies and good cheap dining and has a station wagon that would hold several people, think of me for your next event.

I’m afraid this has taken a rather melancholy turn. I didn’t intend it. I read in Newsweek recently that mental health professionals are recommending blogging to their patients as a form of therapy. Because blogging has a built-in audience, or so we believe when we do it, we get that sympathetic ear we are really looking for, that helps us feel better about our problems. That’s what sets blogging apart from keeping a journal or diary, which is also something therapists recommend, but you know that no one is going to see the journal, and you don’t get the same psychological benefit from it. I guess what I’m getting at is, tonight’s entry has been therapeutic for me, because my (presumably) sympathetic audience is out there reading and nodding your heads. So thank you, dear readers.

Bad dreams

Woke up tired and grumpy this morning. I discovered that it was already too hot to have the windows open for a while (at 8 AM, no less!) to cool the house down. But it’s only 72 inside now, and 75 and climbing outside.

I had been in the middle of a bad dream, in which someone was in my house. I have a recurring series of dreams in which someone—always a man—breaks or sneaks into my home. Sometimes the man forces his way in, sometimes he’s hiding somewhere in the house. In last night’s dream, I realized that I had forgotten to lock the door at all, and he was behind the shower curtain. I saw him hiding there and ran to the neighbor’s house, but no one answered the doorbell. I kept trying to dial 9-1-1 on my phone but couldn’t seem to push the right numbers.

It doesn’t take a professional therapist (that reminds me, I’ve got an appointment today…) to figure out the cause of these dreams: sometimes I’m afraid of living alone. Especially at night.

In the daytime and the evening, I love being alone in my house. I love to look around and smile at this place that belongs only to me. I enjoy the peace and quiet, the solitude, the freedom to wander the halls in whatever I happen to be wearing (or not), and to eat right out of the refrigerator with my fingers. I like having control of the remote, and I like being able to stop a movie in the middle if I want to do something else for a while. I like to read in the living room without someone else’s stereo or TV show blasting me out. I like having 100% approval over all decorating and furniture decisions. I love that if there are dishes in the sink, there’s no one to blame but myself—and I don’t have to wash them until I get tired of seeing them there. I love vacuuming only when I feel like it. I love that there’s only one lap for the cat to choose from, so I don’t have to watch him cozying up to someone else when I’m cold. Most of the time, I really love living alone.

But at night I get nervous. I’ve been living here by myself for more than two years now, but the creaks and settling sounds of the dark house still worry me. Anything that sounds like a window opening, or a footstep in the hall, still freaks me out. I glance around at the slightest scrape or shadow, and I hate it when the cats stare at something behind me that isn’t there. In my bedroom, I turn the TV on with a half-hour timer and fall asleep that way, because otherwise I hear everything with that superhuman, extra-alert hearing that magnifies every tiny squeak into dangerous intrusions. (I know it’s not good to sleep with the TV on, but it’s only on just long enough for me to get to sleep, and then I can usually stay asleep just fine.)

Consequently, I dream from time to time about someone breaking in. I’m very careful not to watch movies or TV shows where women are attacked in their homes, because while my memory has conveniently erased all the geometry and state capitals I ever knew, it can play whole remembered film scenes of women being threatened/attacked— in glorious Technicolor, no less.

I know, I know that it’s so unlikely that anything will ever happen to me, but it’s hard to convince myself of this while lying helpless in the dark. While the rational part of me knows that my statistical odds of a break-in or attack of any kind are very low, my racing pulse tells me otherwise. It makes me want to get a big dog, but then of course I remember the urban legend about the single woman who did just that, and then the psycho who broke in simply killed her dog first. You see what I mean? Why would my brain possibly retain that ridiculous story, except to torture me?

When my building was being fitted with new siding and windows last winter, the workmen went off and left a window open one evening. I got home from dinner at my parents’ house to discover it wide open in my living room, no screen, plastic sheeting flapping ominously. I knew that I had to search the house to make sure everything was okay, but my knees were shaking so badly that I couldn’t do it. That’s always the scene in the movie where the crazy man is hiding in the closet with the hatchet, and you’re yelling at the hero/ine, “Get OUT of the HOUSE!”, but they never do. So I called my dad, who (fairly) graciously came over and did a sweep for me, and then suggested I get to know my neighbors better so they could do it next time.

The construction went on for several weeks, during which time they had a lockbox on my door so that they could come and go as needed. Every night I would come home and make sure all the windows were locked, and then look in all the closets and under the bed with my breath held. I was very relieved when they finished up. (So were the cats, who would greet me at the door after work as if they were trying to tell me, Someone was IN the HOUSE while you were GONE, and I would reassure them that it was just the men installing the new windows, but their nervousness made me edgy too.)

Okay, I’m freaking myself out here, and it’s the middle of a beautiful sunny morning. Like I said, most of the time I love living alone. It’s just once in a while that my imagination is too much for me. But I never forget to lock the doors or windows.


(In other news, I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of my GRE study materials. No, really, I am. I opted for the Super Saver free shipping from Amazon, but now I kind of wish I had paid the $6.99 to get my books sooner so I could get started on relearning all the math I’ve forgotten. I’m even looking forward to studying, if my brain hasn’t completely atrophied from lack of use in the last few years.)

A new plan

I’ve made a decision: I want to go to library school.

A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a job as a library assistant at a nearby public library. (I haven’t gotten a call yet for an interview; when I called to confirm that they had received my application, they said they had gotten a lot of applicants, so I’m not holding my breath. Even though it sounds like a great job for me.)

Regardless of whether I get it, I realized that I was more excited about that job than anything I have applied for yet, or anything I’ve read about in the paper or online. And that got me thinking. I don’t want to be a business executive or manager or something, so why would I want to work in an office for the rest of my life? That’s mostly where I’ve been applying, because I know I can do office work and can probably get hired. But I don’t want to be an assistant forever, either, letting someone else take all the credit and all the money. At the wise old age of 29, I’m starting to think about the idea that we only get one shot at this life. If there’s something I really want to do, I should do it now! What am I waiting for?

I’ve always loved libraries. From elementary school on, I have volunteered after school or during lunch to shelve books. I even spent a semester of my senior year in high school as a library aide (being in the orchestra messed up my schedule, and there were no electives I wanted to take during my free period), where I was entrusted with processing the new periodicals and helping students use the card catalog, and the librarians loved me and encouraged me to pursue a library career. It was my favorite part of the day. Yes, I was one of those kids. I sought refuge in the library because the harsh world of school was too much for me. But I also chose the library because I loved books and reading, and the smell of old books, and the delightful order of rows of spines on shelves.

I even looked into library school a few years ago, after I moved back from China, but I just wasn’t ready for it then. I was tired. I didn’t want to go back to school yet, and I didn’t want to study for and take the GRE, and I didn’t want to move. But it’s always been at the back of my mind.

Suddenly, something clicked for me this week. I think I’m ready now. I’ve had a few months of unemployment to figure out what I like and what I hate, and what I might want to devote the next 30 or 40 years of my life to. I read the classifieds every week with a highlighter, and the jobs I’m actually interested in all seem to require a Master’s degree. Most of them require a Library Science degree or something like it.

I still want to write, but I don’t think I am going to be a full-time writer anytime soon. In the meantime, I would like a job where I actually want to get up and go to work in the morning.

So, having said out loud that I want to go to library school!, I have started planning:

Where? The closest program is at the University of Washington, and that’s where I hope to be accepted. They have a part-time distance learning program, which takes three years instead of two to complete, and involves some time on campus and a lot of coursework online. This would enable me to continue living and working (I hope!) here. I could easily get to Seattle for the on-campus times, and I know a lot of people who would take me in up there. It’s also not a great time to sell my condo here, so I would be glad to be able to stay.

When? Fall 2009 is the next enrollment. Applications are due in February. This gives me a few months to study for the GRE, take the GRE, get my test results back, and take it again if necessary. (My math skills are pathetic. Really. My junior high and high school teachers would weep if they saw me trying a basic algebra equation lately.)

How and Why? I am still working out the financial aspects. I’m not thrilled about more debt, but the distance program is cheaper than the residential program overall. And once I graduate with a Master’s, my earning potential goes up considerably. Also, there’s only so much I could make as an administrative assistant or (shudder) call center employee. In the long run, I think the investment will pay for itself.

I’m getting excited about this, in a way I haven’t been in ages. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a real goal. Even though I will have to take some kind of drone job while I’m in school, at the end of it I will have so many more options. With a Library and Information Science degree, I could work as a researcher, a librarian, an archivist, or many other things that I would enjoy. I might actually get to do something fun with my life.

In other news, I had a found money experience today, which was a little more impressive than a folded twenty in my winter coat pocket. I got a letter from my bank saying that there was a tidy sum of money in my name that needed to be claimed. Don’t worry, this is not a Nigerian bank account scam (the deposed Nigerian prince in the letter assured me of such); it’s a long story involving a savings bond, but I’m pretty sure it’s legitimate. I can’t believe I now have an additional cushion between me and the cold, dark world of unemployment and foreclosure and living in a box and all the other things that keep me awake in the night.

So all in all, it’s been a good week! Happy Independence Day, everyone.