Glass half-?

Several mis-, un- and re-misunderstandings later, I'm back! And a bit tired, but that's what sleeping late on Sunday morning is for.

Which reminds me, it sleeted for about 3 minutes yesterday in the middle of the afternoon, and the temp was in the 40s. Weird.

But today, I'm going to talk about taking the half-empty glass and making it half-full. On the web site I manage, there's a place on the home page for the latest news. Since we're a smallish organization, we're not exactly CNN. Sometimes, the latest and greatest is the bitchin' brownies at the Catholic students' bakesale for life or whatever.

But not everyone understands this, and we get calls from The Office Upstairs when the news doesn't move fast enough. My boss has taken to calling the point of contention on the home page "the news hole," which I find incredibly depressing. It's one of those small but important-to-some-people jobs that can take up a disproportionate amount of time.

Every time I hear "news hole," I picture us shoving food into a hungry monster mouth. The word "pie-hole" comes to mind (or "snack-hole," as a friend has dubbed it). So, I suggested last week that we think of a new, less depressing word for the news hole. My recommendation is "news pie." Obviously, I already had pie on the brain with the hole pie-hole thing.

And besides, everyone loves publicity, so they all want a piece of the news pie.

Live and learn

It's been a busy couple of weeks in shorttina-land. A quick synopsis of things I've learned:

1. I left the fine arts field not because I can't cut it, but because I can't stomach the level of pretension that infects every person, no matter how smart or lovely, involved in the scene.

2. Giving up something for Lent is supposed to make you a better person, and complaining incessantly about it to everyone around you neither makes you a better person nor reduces the sum of suffering in the world. If anything, it adds fractions of annoyance to it, so you're doing more harm than good. And that's why I don't give things up for Lent or talk about doing so.

3. Men are bigger gossips than women. I'll bet I get 85% of office gossip from two of my male colleagues. They're also skilled at stalking and unashamed to admit their sneakiness, whereas women will apologize and make up excuses.

Optimistic

For a few days there, I was feeling uncharacteristically optimistic.

Once in a while you can spend time with someone, and even a small moment feels like a happy little pod zipped up against all the other stuff that's going on. The event itself is insignificant and probably mundane--driving on some errand, eating lunch, making toast.

The lasting impression comes from being at ease with the other person. You think:

There's nowhere else I want to be right now.

This is good.

I could get used to this.

I can't wait to do this again.

It's nice, too, when you get the sense maybe, just maybe, the other person is thinking the same.

Whether or not he/she is--and how can one ever tell, really--it's heartening just to have an easy moment with someone. Every day is filled with people and their agendas, conscious and unconscious. We spend an awful lot of time trying to get each other to do our own bidding. There's nothing more comforting than sharing some rest with another person.

And if all of this sounds trite and simplistic, maybe that's because it's deceptively simple. I've been trying to figure out how to explain it for a while, and I'd say we're skirting the ineffable here.

Neighbors

I'm sitting here, watching the neighbors across the street move out. It was especially strange this morning, because for several hours the people moving boxes out weren't my neighbors. I might have wondered if they were being robbed, except the boxes were so neat and the people were taking their time, packing in a very orderly way.

I didn't know my neighbors were moving, but I'm not surprised. They were renting from a family friend, and at some point, when we were still talking regularly (more about that in a moment), the woman had mentioned their lease would be up last fall. She's about to deliver her third baby (second since I moved in less than two years ago -- very efficient!), so I imagine they've outgrown the house.

I liked these neighbors, although they curiously decreased their friendliness sometime last summer. After a very strange interaction when they ignored me while I was standing about six feet away, planting flowers, I clued in that they may think I stole their garbage can.

In fact, the garbage pickup just switched them, but mine was crappy and theirs is nice. It took me weeks to notice (I thought mine had just been automagically replaced by the sanitation department), and by then I thought, well if they're mad they should just ask for theirs back rather than being passive-aggressive.

I have to say, I won't miss their dog. They let the dog out every evening until about 10:30, and he stands in the one place where he can see from the backyard and barks at anything that moves. The noise travels in a beeline for my bedroom window.

Nope, won't miss that at all.