I came back from a nice day with my best guy friend in Tijuana to find out that I did not get the job in Pasadena I'd been interviewing for.

Moments of frustration come and go, but I continue to move forward. I suspect that the process of looking into this possibility somehow brought me closer to my next vocational way station, but I'm not certain how.

What I do know now is that emotions are only emotions, and not facts. The world whizzes by, and if you don't like the view at any particular moment, don't get off the bus at that stop.

I know I love my husband, and that I'm damned lucky to have him.

I know that I respect people who are willing to take risks.

I know I have a wicked temper whose malevolent force is ultimately directed at myself.

I know I sharpened my negotiating skills today, and that will come in handy when I buy the next Attila-mobile. Today it got me a great deal on a new summer purse.

I know I like Punch cigars, and have a few more of them to smoke.

I know someday I have to learn to make homemade tamales.

I know I will start meditating this week.

I know what I know.

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I had my second interview today at the Financial Research Company where I've applied to work as an Executive Asst./Research Asst./Glorified and Glorious Gal Friday. Nothing on my resume looks like I'm suited to this job, but I am. And I suspect that the hiring managers recognized this. We'll see. They say I'll know within two weeks; I'm hoping it's a little less time than that.

If I get the gig, I will have to live fully in every Buddhist moment that I am there—no more absent-minded professor-type behavior. At least not in the office. I wouldn't have been capable of that kind of focus, especially in a support job, in the past. But life prepares one to see opportunities when they do show up. I'd be working with two of the smartest, gentlest, nicest men on Planet Earth, and it would be a blast.

I did ask for enough money that I would not be distracted by financial worries and could really throw myself into learning what needs to be done and how to do it. Every indication is that if I do get the job, I'll also get the compensation I asked for.

So now I wait. And catch up on housework, in case my hunch is correct.

Here's the deal, Boys and Girls: life is sweet. And short. We need to get on with the business of living it. Whether or not I get this particular job it's time to reach out for all the juicy ripe fruit that's within reach.

And eat it. Not slow, not fast. With the juice dripping down my chin.

In light of all this, I'm thinking about getting a convertible as my next car.

Happy summer to you all.

Posted by: Attila at 11:49 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . that illuminates my entire blog, I'd like to remind my readers that I have a birthday coming up (the big 42). Check out the sidebar for my Amazon wish list. (And, yes—there's a whole separate list under my real name, if you happen to know it: first maiden last. So even more gift ideas there.)

Gosh. I'm going to hate myself in the morning. Of course, it's just after noon on Thursday, so that's a while off—unless I'm up late tonight. (Not bloody likely: I have a big interview early tomorrow morning, so I'll be in bed before midnight if I have to take 50 Ambiens to accomplish it.)

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What a roller coaster the last six days has been. I'm not sure when it was that my estrogen levels hit rock-bottom—definitely between Friday and yesterday. Both those days I found myself considering things that were crazy enough, I finally thought to check the calendar. ("See?" one tells oneself. "It isn't all shit. It just seems that way right now.") As a consequence, I didn't run away for a few days to sleep on my mother's floor in El Cerrito and make her buy me Mexican food. I probably did the right thing, but a few tamales would have helped. I swear.

The employment-lead fairy has come, and not a moment too soon: I was really running out of money. Now I have three possibilities, all of them tantalizing. The one that is closest to home is also scariest: it would represent changing to a completely different industry, and doing a type of work I haven't done in 20 years. Because the fear factor is greatest with this one, I suspect it might be the path of personal growth. Another stroke of luck, though, is that it appears the job offers—if they come (and I think they must)—will line up in sequence, and that I won't have to do any tap-dancing (e.g., "that's an interesting offer? Can I think about it for another week?").

And I'm attempting to bust through my clutter by any means necessary. Preferably before a social worker shows up here to find out if our house is bitchin' enough for a child to inhabit.

It looks like I'll be having 10 or so people over in mid-July, as a sort of late birthday celebration. This is also a little scary, since the Attila the Hub and I haven't done a lot of entertaining in the past 2-3 years. It'll be my friends, so they probably won't judge too harshly, but it would definitely behoove me to clear this place out so that I'm halfway happy with it. We probably won't have the new piano by then—nor even art up on that bare spot over the couch—but it'll look better in four weeks than it does now. Trust me on that.

I even bought The Food Magazine today, partly for the recipes and partly because it represents coming to terms with a strange segment of my life. There were so many things I loved about working for The Food Magazine, but despite my best efforts there was one person with whom the chemistry wasn't good, and that was enough to destroy my chances of ever going back—even as a temp, doing jobs I'd been stunningly successful at. It seems so arbitrary, but it isn't: these things happen, and I'm likely better off for it. I certainly have more freelance clients now than I ever would have if I'd been temping for the foodies over the past two years. (And if I get a staff job I'll have to decide what to do about those clients. Keep one or two, I think, and foist the others off onto other L.A. copy editors.)

In short, things are looking up. Stay tuned.

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I often wonder about the nature of marriage, and I think my husband has it easier (and harder, of course): he has seen a successful marriage, up close and personal. I haven't.

To me, being a decent wife is the hardest job I've ever held. I know it may get harder when I become a mother, but I think it's easier—in one way—to submit to the next generation, versus one's own. This is it.

"Go ahead. Make my day." (I've been hearing that a lot this week, of course.) I'm going to annihilate the enemy.

Can you tell I spent last weekend in weird introspection?

I may not meet the "Nancy" standard, but I will provide our kid(s) with an amazing example. And that will be their father's legacy, too.

Via con Dios, President and Mrs. Reagan.

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I went to Leo Carillo Beach today (Monday) with some friends who were in town briefly before heading off to England to live for a year. I'll miss them, but it was nice to see them for a little while.

I've decided that that was my last hurrah before diving into my current proofreading project, due at the end of the week. This means I won't be going out to see Reagan's coffin tomorrow. That's the bad news. The good news?—the husband and I are planning to get out there sometime after the President is buried, say in a couple of months. After the crowds have died down. We can look around, then, and I'll pay my respects at that time. Because I suspect Reagan would have wanted me to meet my deadline.

Last Saturday night I was at a wedding reception with my spouse and a lot of old friends, many of whom go back with me 10, 15, 20, 25 years. We danced and I described the scene today for the good professor, who knows some of the players. I explained that at one point I found myself on the floor with Mr. Linguistics—a classical-only guy—who was attempting to dance by moving only his hands.

"Move your hips," I told him. "Your hips. Important."

After that what he was doing started to resemble Actual Dancing almost as much as my own efforts, though I don't delude myself that I can dance any more than I can sing.

The professor reminded me of a time several of us had met in a Berkeley alternative nightclub and danced in our own free-form ways to some African fusion music back in the 80s.

"We were all bad," he told me. "But out of all of us, you enjoyed it the most."

I do. I can't explain it, but I do love to move.

And now I'm sunburned and ready to do things less fun and flashy—but more lucrative.

Even a messy life full of frustrations has its moments of joy.

Posted by: Attila at 02:25 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I used to be in charge of killing spiders when I lived with the mathematician; he was afraid of them, hated them. (I was also in charge of getting the dead birds out of the back yard when they were killed and left there by the neighborhood cats.)

I've lived in houses with lots of bugs for half of my life, which has given me a very friendly disposition toward spiders: all those things they like to eat, I want them to eat.

And then, having started T'ai Chi just last January, I'm not too interested in killing anything that doesn't really have to be killed. I started this policy with the spiders in my house.

It hasn't been a high-water year for arachnids, not really: you can tell from going outside and seeing how many webs are on the patios. There aren't many. (Each species seems to have years that there are a lot of it—these are temporary imbalances that correct themselves as the ecosystem moves along: there have been squirrel years and spider years and one cottontail rabbit year, followed closely, if I recall, by an owl year.)

But there are spiders all over my house. I haven't yet perfected the art of "Quasi-Buddhist Humane Relocation," since they're hard to catch. There are two underneath the bathroom cabinets. There is one in at least one corner of every room. There are so many cobwebs it looks like the Haunted Mansion in here—without the weird mirrors.

I guess I must do something. Perhaps little traffic signs directing my eight-legged friends to the outdoors?

Must learn to catch them to release them outside. Let me know if you have any tricks or tips before we are completely overrun with cobwebs, and start to look like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.

Posted by: Attila at 02:18 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Just when I was, once again, enjoying the "semi" aspect of my "semi-employed" status, I got a note to the effect that another cookbook is on the way. Oh, well: I can definitely use the money. And it's a short one.

I told my 67-year-old mother today that I'd finally shipped off the erotica I'd been copyediting, and reminded her that it was the first pornographic manuscript I'd ever worked on (in a professional capacity).

"How is it different from other types of manuscripts?" she asked. "Does it take longer?"

I informed her tartly that, no, I never did have to take breaks to masturbate. As as matter of fact, I was moving at such a clip on those stories that toward the end each time I started a new one I'd start to think, "sex again! Why couldn't it be about food or architecture this time?" This proves that any kind of job can be drudgery if you let your attitude slip. (And please: do let me know if you hear word of any books or magazines that would require knowledge of sex, crime, food, architecture, guns, health, and hunting. I'd be home where the heart is in that kind of setting.)

Of course, I think the fact that my Memorial Day blogging turned into a weird reverie about the two lead actors in Band of Brothers and what it would be like to have a threesome with them shows that these things always have some sort of effect—one way or another. The hormones were in the bloodstream at that point.

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