1:09 pm - Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004
Office rain
The thing about crappy radio stations is that they sometimes play really good songs. I�m generally one of those people who hum along when I like the song, but I refuse to be caught humming along to anything on this radio station lest someone infer that I really don�t mind it so much. I do. It�s like an auditory splinter. They throw in something good, maybe by the Beatles, for example, and I feel irrationally upset, like people who get upset when lots of people they don�t know use �Their� road, and I can�t tell if it�s because I feel like �My� song has been sullied, or that my constant ire over the music has been momentarily assuaged.

Work has been interesting. Boy greets me in the evening sometimes with �Any office drama today?�

First, my immediate supervisor�s husband came down with pneumonia. He ended up in the hospital and there was much speculation over how bad he was. We were worried, as was she, but he pulled through and now they�re on vacation in Mexico where he�s not snorkeling, not smoking Cuban cigars, and not drinking because he�s on antibiotics.

Then another coworker came back from her vacation and announced she�d gotten married. I thought it was a joke wedding at first, because the last time she�d spoken much about this guy she�d said she�d really rather stay single.

Go figure.

My boss says she learned in sociology that the happiest people are single women, followed by married men, then married women, then single men. I was telling Simon that once you get settled into singleness it can be enjoyable, and when you see yourself leaving it�s not like leaving a bad space where there�s no missing it or even thinking about staying there�. No, you look at your life, and you say goodbye, and you choose something different. I�m thoroughly happy with the choice I�ve made, and I�m happier now than I was when I was single, but I have to say I didn't leave singleness because it was so awful but because Simon is just that great.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at my desk and I started hearing a drip drip. And I�m looking around, because where could this be coming from? And there�s nothing there, but an hour later it is there and it�s raining on my desk, and we�re running for buckets and covering up the computers and throwing the papers anywhere but the rainstorm. I tried to go up in the attic to put buckets there, but the one place you can�t get to there is where the leak was, of course, so we just had to stick with the buckets down here. We put up a whole lot of buckets and go home for the night. This morning the rain has turned into a deluge and there�s a puddle for a desk and a swamp for a carpet and the strangely pleasing sound of water plunking into buckets. Today our office Man went on the roof and set up a pump to get the water off the roof where it pooled behind the ice and it�s stopped raining on my desk.

Then I noticed that it was leaking in the lit room, and me and the office Man had to move all the literature out of that room and down the hall into another room.

My boss is thinking we should just move it back it when things dry up, but I say we leave it where it is and put the copier in there. She said she�ll think about it.

In the meantime the desk looks more like a garage with its tarps and buckets and ladders.