� me in e-mail to Catharine earlier this afternoon

Also what I told her is that while I know what I should do and what any sane person would do, I am still on the fence with respect to how I feel about it, I am having trouble balancing while holding onto my dignity. I haven�t talked to the doc yet about trying to get them to come up on the salary, he has been in and out all day; but I am holding hostage a research proposal of his and I am going to make him sit down and talk to me in return for getting it back with my salient and incisive comments attached.

(Update: now I have talked to him. That�s right, things move pretty fast around here, blink and you�ll miss them.)

Argh. Argh argh argh. Things are seldom as bad as I think they�re going to be, right? No one I know who lost a job and had to find another was looking for longer than five months. Let us do the math and figure that I write much better cover letters than most people though probably there are fewer listings to which I�d be cover-lettering in the first place though that in itself is a kind of beneficial self-selection but then again I would not be dedicating myself full-time to the enterprise, and by these calculations, dating of course not from the accepting of the Gastro job but the ready-set-go of getting out of it, I should be looking at a different gig in about� six months. Which would still be over a year before I�d be starting grad school, and therefore in the main two important ways would be absolutely worth it. People are just going to have to show me a little kindness on the low-tax-bracket tip in the meantime or I will cut their fucking hearts out, that�s all. Because honest to god, I didn�t think it was possible to make this little anymore with a college degree, a few months ago I saw receptionist and admin-intern jobs, "AA degree preferred," that paid better. And I thought to myself, I guess, Damn, I�m glad I�m not in that boat. Look who�s rowing now.

I am in a bit of a mood today, sorry. I stayed up too late last night working on one of my long-neglected organization projects (so actually I should be congratulating myself), and the amount of time it took to do what seemed like not so much work at all made me feel all desperate and operatic, and out of spite I did not brush my teeth before I went to bed. This is another subject on which I am slowly confronting myself, I don�t remember whether or not I have written about it here, the extent to which when things started unraveling with Todd � or, I would like to believe is more to the point, when they started to unravel in such a surreal way and with the liar accusations always forgrounded I mean � I let other things unravel too. Stacks of papers to file, dozens of pirated cds in plastic sleeves with no labels, summer clothes thrown haphazardly into boxes in my closet, a months-unbalanced checkbook, you get the idea. And not that I am angling for sympathy on this count or anything, but suddenly I am finding it very difficult to spend my free time other than with Steve. The hot botanist or clerking with myself? Please. But it is all my choice, and I understand that. So last night, when I was at home, I virtuously stayed up until two with the cd-labelling, and tonight I am going to go home and go directly into do-the-dumb-stuff-I-gotta-do mode, I may not even change out of my office-girl duds just to emphasize that it�s work I�m doing. Also I have been blowing off a research protocol here at Gastro that any day now could blow up in my face, so maybe that should be Job One.

All I have to do to get hired, basically, is fill out an official application form so they can have it on file. This takes about a week to process, and starting dates for new hires are Mondays, so mine could be as early as January 27. Yes, that pap smear is whispering sweet seductive nothings in my ear even as I type. I said I�d fill out the form today but I think I�ll get around to it tomorrow � I want to experience my ambivalence for a while; a few months down the line it will be important to remember that I felt like this � after I find out whether Herr Doktor had any sway with HR. Basically I told him this: I talked to the HR lady about going permanent, and she proposed to start me squarely in the middle of the pay scale, and I wondered whether you would be willing to talk with her and see if we could start me towards the high end, which would only be more in keeping with my skills and experience. HD: "So you�d consider sticking around if we could do that for you?" Which was interesting to me because he seemed to think I was negotiating rather than last-ditch-attempting, but if it works in my favor, well then that is a misimpression I am not going to correct. Me (having made the speedy deduction): "Yes, I would." HD: "Well, then I�ll talk to her. I�ll try to talk to her today. I think we should be able to make that happen for you. Do you know, are there any benefits we�d be offering you?" Me (knowing quite well that there are and perhaps at this point pushing my luck): "I think there are some, but I�m not sure what. I�d have to talk to her about that too, since they�d have to be pretty good for me to start in this salary range."

And there you have it. It�s so funny, no, strange to me how I know how smart I am and well organized and even super charming to everyone I talk to on the phone, everywhere I work they are in my thrall of competence and silk blouses yet it is so hard for me to ask to have this quantified, it feels like a transaction that ought to be beneath me. It makes me ashamed. (In case you think I am bragging: I also talked to the temp pimp last Thursday, who said that I am the best temp she has, she loves to send me out because I make her and the agency look so good, and that if I did not take the Gastro job she would have no problem keeping me working until I found something permanent. So there.) I am ashamed even to be writing about it in my diary.

I had a really good run last week, by the way, of feeling just terrific about myself, feeling unsmugly top-to-bottom justified. At Number Two�s on Wednesday, I was talking about someone who�d hurt me badly and was going around pretending (?) that this was not so, making blithe anecdote out of what to me is the stuff of nightmares and, not to put too fine a point on it, that drives a person to seek therapy. It was not Todd. Number Two asked me why I didn�t confront this person on the issue and I said that it was because the person obviously needed to be believe in that alternate reality (which was true) and that since I was over it and also knew I was right, making a stink would only be malicious. I said I tried, as policy, to try to be the better person � to hold myself against grudges, not to get bogged down in resentment, to keep trying to give others a chance to do right by me. (Don�t I sound like such a Buddhist?) She was sort of peering at me for a few moments, as if to watch for some flutter that would indicate I was fibbing, and I said no no I�m not, I honestly do feel this way, I didn�t always but I have for a few years and I�m so much happier now. Then she said that she hadn�t thought I was lying, she just flat-out was having difficulty believing that I could be so bighearted. She said that she�d gotten angry on my behalf listening to the facts, and she couldn�t imagine the effort it must have taken me to go away from anger myself, she knew people twice my age who could not or would not do it. She said that as far as being a good person went, I was doing phenomenally well. Then on Thursday was when the temp pimp gave me love, and I think it was Thursday night that Steve was moved to share with me a list of my attributes as he sees them, and one that he mentioned was the same thing Number Two had said: that I am simply a good person. And now I sound like a cornball, I know, but it�s just the best thing I could hear, ever, from anyone. (It also reminded me of another scene from "Metropolitan," the one where Charlie bares his heart to Audrey by presenting her a similar list, where he calls her virtuous. But I didn�t mind this time. A person could do a lot worse.)

Weekend: got some nice sleep, made split pea soup, watched the first three episodes of "My So-Called Life" with Vanessa, went running, bought asparagus at the fruit market for 79 cents a pound, listened to Kelly Hogan, saw "Talk To Her" (DAMN) and some cool pop-science documentaries, started reading "A Man In Full," took a lovely cloudy-afternoon walk, passively learned a little about the Capitol Hill real-estate market, completed the trifecta two nights running at Rebecca�s party and then a going-away event for one of Steve�s colleagues, got picked up on right in front of Steve by a greaser dude who thought I looked like a librarian and then that I talked like a doctor and whose route down the street from Linda�s to the Cha Cha may or may not have constituted following us. Took full advantage of the fact that whatever other compromises would be required before committing to Gastro, a pee test is not one of them.

And next holiday weekend I am going away with some of the book-club ladies to a cabin down by Mt. Rainier. Skiing, snowshoeing, estrogen, wine. Bring it on, I say.