The middle-est Sidis-sibling is back in New York. Her words come bounding through the Blog-o-sphere and plop themselves in the forefront of my thinking. New York. All of the thoughts and tasks relevant to my day become blurry and skewed out of focus and overlaid with crystal clear images of… 70th and Amsterdam. The missing of that city kicks me right in the gut. [wait… weren’t you a farmer yesterday?] hahahha, yes! Exhibit A of the strange “Stu/Mary-Sue dichotomy.” My blue-collar, carpenter/farmer persona juxtaposed, just so, against the white-collar, suit-wearing, scotch drinking alter persona, to create an odd balance that pulls me neither one way nor the other. Is it possible for me to find compromise between the city girl and the country girl without submitting to the hated and feared suburban girl? [yuck]

Hello?
Hello, yes, this is Reality calling. May I speak with Sidis, please? … yes, I’ll hold. Sidis! Hi. Yes, it has been a long time. Listen, I heard you’ve been trying to find out how to satisfy both the Stu and Mary-Sue elements of your personality. N-ho, no… relax. I didn’t call to tell you it’s impossible. I called to tell you that you’re in it, love. See how you’re working in the office of an electrical contractor? Right, so… see how all those designer guys sit in an office for a while and then put on their little hard hats and go out in the field periodically? Do you notice how some of them have apartments or condos in town and ranch property with horses elsewhere? Neat, huh? … Yes, yes, I miss you too. We really should keep in better touch.

Western Slope, Colorado, clear blue sky, 70 something – light breeze. My uncle has already plowed and tilled and built most of the deer fence. So we rise with the sun and sit down to a country breakfast; eggs, hash-browns, cheese, bacon all fried up together in the same pan (“feedin’ the troops,” Beth says). Juice, coffee, take your hat off at the table. Over-alls, work boots, tank-tops, cowboy hats or baseball hats sporting the Bruce’s Auto Repair logo. We have a job to get done on this day. We have 80 new grape vines to plant in this earth. We have posts to set for the span-wire that will support the vines when they grow up to be big and strong and heavily laden with fruit.

We attack our task with the energy; with the fervor of creation. The “one-man auger” is large and heavy and cumbersome and requires 4 to maneuver through the loose dirt and rocks, sloping down from the house to the road. “One-man my ass! I wonder how many it would take to run the two-man auger!?!”

Six hours later the digging is done and it’s time to plant the vines. Remove hat, wipe sweat from brow, replace hat. Splash water from community water jug into and over face and mouth. My dad, my Pop, is clearly at home; in his element. He periodically slaps me on the back or puts his arm around my shoulder and with his wide bearded grin tells me that “This is in our blood, you know.” I know. I know that in spite of his PhD and quiet suburban lifestyle with his 3 children, two cars and a dog, he is a farmer… and a carpenter… and so am I.

Cheryle is ALWAYS on the phone… or away from her desk. For some reason her phone forwards all of her calls to me instead of her voice mail if she doesn’t pick up. Greg calls here every day for Cheryle. As it turns out, I probably talk to Greg more than she does.

Greg: You know what, I’d rather talk to you anyway. I talk to you every day and I don’t even know you. Have you always lived in Colorado?
Me: No. I went to school in Alabama.
Greg: Did you graduate?
Me: Yes.
Greg: So you have a degree?
Me: Bachelor of Science.
Greg: Why Alabama?
Me: Auburn, actually. Because they paid me.
Greg: You were on scholarship? For what?
Me: Soccer.
Greg: You went to Auburn on a scholarship and graduated with a Bachelor of Science.
Me: uh-huh
Greg: Sooo…. Whhyyyyy … do you . . . . do what you do?
Me: [silence]…. Heh heh. Thanks, Greg.

So the idea is that I can be more. More of what? (it’s like that Subway commercial “2 for 1.… Do you even want one?”) I don’t really want to be more than this. I don’t even want to be this! So the next question that logically follows is “what DO you want to be?” dunno. And that’s where I am.

Here’s the deal. I reckon finding the right job is like buying a car. You may have an idea of what you want, but you really won’t know until you go for a test drive. Even then, you have to consider options and price…. It’s kind of a pain in the ass. On the other hand, I am still my father’s daughter, and as such, I find myself unwilling to throw something out until it has proven itself useless, almost to the point of liability. Which brings us back to why I do what I do [as Greg so elegantly put it]. I think there might be a job around here that I still need to test drive. I think I’ll use my little tuition reimbursement benefit to take some CAD classes. I told Steve, in a side conversation during my little compensation negotiation lunch, that the kitchen was going kind of slow because I had to design all of the cabinets and draw them out to scale and calculate the necessary materials and what dimension the raw materials needed to be to be the most cost effective, etc. Very tedious, but I liked it. He said he thought I’d make a good designer. He also said I should be writing contracts and proposals. I'm getting the impression Steve has got some plans for me. So to answer Greg's question (if only in my own mind) I'm doing what I'm doing just to get my foot in the door. Once I'm in, there's no telling what I might do.

Wow. I remember when I was motivated... inspired, even... to write lengthy blurbits about whatever... whatever. Now, I'm just tired. Hmm. Where was I? Work. I've been talking an awful lot about work. boring. Lets talk about something else.

I've just spent the weekend with my best-est college buddies. We all met here. The girls. Da bitches. From Jersey, Upstate NY, Atlanta and 2 different Colorado towns. There was a lot of talk about how time can pass and people can change and still we seem to know each other so well and fall into the same old comfort of conversation. Our same old jokes are still funny... to us. No one else thinks it's funny... but then, no one else ever did.

"Friends are the family we make for ourselves." - I forget who said that.

Stop light. Heading East into the sunrise, sun in my eyes; crisp nip in the air, glair on my windshield. Birds flutter up, in, through the rays of light. Silhouettes flickering, fluttering past my view in perfect, chiseled clarity. Time.slows.audibly. Each flap of each wing is heard.

I could be anywhere. This could be anywhere.

Language is a funny thing. What does it mean to think that you can’t say something? It’s so easy to formulate sounds into words; it’s so difficult to get the words to say exactly what you mean; it’s nearly impossible to estimate the weight and impact of a thought expressed clearly. I am astonished at how something so effortless as the spoken word can so dramatically and irreversibly affect the opinion of another; can impact action taken or no. And so we have rules; some written, some not. Rules that say, “you can’t say that” because if you “say that” something bad is going to happen. You will affect an undesirable change in someone’s thought or action. There could be violence, there could be chaos, there could be panic and terror because of the words that you just made. Just words, just made, just made something happen, and there’s no turning back. Action is funny like that. It uses time to make it; like a catalyst in a chemical equation. Time really has nothing to do with the physical structure of word or action, but time must be present in order to make either. I seem to remember that (and pardon my blunder if I’m wrong) reactions that require a catalyst are irreversible. Hm.

Anyway… Steve has noticed my propensity for click-clack-eting away the way I do (like right now) and has suggested to his bosses that I might enjoy writing proposals and/or contracts of varying sorts. At the heart of his concern is my level of boredom. I think he wants to find something else for me to do (other than answering the phone and making copies of stuff) before I get bored and go away. I’m really not all that bored, but I’ll bet writing proposals pays more than filing stuff, so I’m all for it. [Then I’ll get to make all sorts of words, and affect change all over the place… Muwaah-Ha-haaaaa!]