All right, all right, I've been avoiding you

Today started with a hairball. Or was it an omen?

I was just on the other side of sleep this morning when I began to hear the unmistakable sound of a cat hacking something up beyond the foot of my bed. I recall a dim thought about investigating, but then fell back asleep and forgot all about it...until my alarm on the dresser went off. I leaped up and raced around the end of the bed to switch it off--landing smack in the middle of a giant, cold, wet hairball. (Note: if you have trouble waking up in the morning, an adrenaline jolt from stomping on something cold and slimy with your bare feet is quite effective. My shrieks undoubtedly woke the upstairs neighbors, if not the actual dead.)

So that probably should have been my first clue.

I should start by saying, I like my job. I really do. I'm grateful every day to have a job in this frightening economy, and most of the time I find my work very busy and interesting. But the thing about a busy and interesting job is, sometimes it can be entirely *too* busy and *too* interesting. Right now, we're in the middle of a big reorganization of people and departments and responsibilities. It's like Fruit Basket Upset, only with people's jobs. No one really knows what everything will look like when the tornado finally sets us down in some field, but in the meantime there's still plenty to do. In fact, there's more and more every day, masses of papers swirling around me that I manage to snatch out of the wind and hold onto long enough to put on my to-do list before they're gone again.

This was my first day back after a pleasant four-day holiday weekend, and it included a lunch meeting, an afternoon meeting, and several red-alert crises. Tomorrow I have a breakfast meeting with a new "team" that has been formed from some existing departments. What makes me a little concerned is the fact that when I looked at the list of invitees, I'm the only administrative person on the list. The other six are either project managers or program managers. Is it cynical of me to think that this may result in more work for me?

My boss--my immediate supervisor, that is--says sympathetically, "Everything runs downhill." She used to be an assistant, so she gets that extra work tends to fall on the lowest-ranked person. (Me.) Others are not quite so sensitive.

Do I sound ungrateful? I feel guilty for complaining, because there are so many people out of work these days. People with real problems, like losing their houses and not having the money to fix their cars or pay for their kids' braces. I, on the other hand, have a full-time job, with excellent benefits and enough wages to pay the mortgage and have a little left over for electricity and food and stuff.

I should be kissing the hot concrete at the building entrance, twirling in Julie Andrews circles in front of the jammed copier, hugging the boss who brings me yet another "urgent" project. I should not be resenting the long walk from the parking lot (past the managers' reserved spaces that are always empty), or the lady who microwaves broccoli at 9 AM, or the man who sits behind me and has long, loud personal phone conversations in a voice like a hive of bees.

And yet, I do resent them. Of course I do. I'm pretty sure if I were in the Garden of Eden, I would be complaining about the itchy grass or the too-sweet fruit or the offensively naked man or something.

Also, in case you haven't figured it out during my three-month blog hiatus, I did not get into library school. I wasn't surprised, really, because so many retirees or laid-off workers are going to grad school for a renaissance career as a librarian. The thin envelope contained a letter saying they had a huge pool of applicants this year, more than ever, and they hated turning me down. Part of me was relieved. Now I don't have to figure out how to pay for grad school, saddling myself with massive debt or taking on another job. And I don't have to take on studying for classes in addition to my full-time job. Also, I wasn't 100% sure if I wanted to take that path, and now the decision is made on my behalf for at least another year. But I was also a little disappointed. Finally, I thought I had figured out what I was going to DO WITH MY LIFE. Now I'm not so sure.

When people ooh and ahh over the fact that I graduated from Whitman, I always feel like a bit of an impostor, a poseur compared with my overachieving classmates. I haven't been awarded a Fulbright, or a Rhodes scholarship; I'm not in medical school, law school, or Harvard Business School. I don't work for a national newspaper. I'm not solving global warming or the hunger crisis. Nor, even, am I married with two or three adorable moppets whose pictures appear in the alumni magazine.

I work in an office. I have an ordinary job, an ordinary single life, an ordinary condo and dog and car. Ordinary is okay, especially in this economy, but I'm still left with the looming question of where I might be headed from here.

So...that's enough maudlin reflection for tonight. In better news, I took Sam to the vet a few weeks ago to be weighed, and he had gained ten pounds in two months! This is excellent news, because weight loss is a symptom of heartworm, and it's a good sign that he has gained some back. He was down to 68 pounds in December; now he weighs nearly 82, right in the target healthy weight for a German Shepherd. When I pet him, I can't feel all the bones in his head or count his ribs anymore.

His final blood test is in August, six months after his last injection. That's when we should know for sure whether the heartworm treatment worked or not. My guess is--no, I don't want to jinx it by speculating, but let's just say I have hope.

In the meantime, Sam seems much happier with life. He bounces along on our walks, his tail curved up, and his ears taking in every crow and squirrel. I took him to a dog park for the first time on Sunday. He *loved* it! I was a little worried because I don't know his history, particularly in socializing with other dogs, but he loped around the park and sniffed the butt of every canine who would hold still long enough (and some who wouldn't). Then he came home and fell asleep in the middle of the floor for the rest of the day.

Also, I discovered tonight that he goes *crazy* if I blow air on his face. He leaps up, races in circles, runs into the couch and the piano, and then comes back for more. Pretty soon I was laughing so hard I couldn't get any air to come out, and I forgot all about my stressful day and my existential crisis, and then he rolled over for a tummy rub. Just like a dog.