Still flailing � typo, I bet you can guess: "failing" � and floundering on the what-to-do-with-my-miserable-little-stunted-life tip; I have an inkling or two but for the time being will refrain from writing about them here because I think it makes me seem like a spaz, I�m always embarrassed when I revisit the record of my suddenly championed and as suddenly discarded impulses. Here�s one thing I do know, though, and the thing is dumb and obvious and pathetic but it�s strange how liberating it feels to have hitched my wagon to something fundamentally undiscardable: whatever I end up doing for a paycheck, I mean in the far-distant days in which I will have done with flailing and the rest of it, will not require me to be at my desk at a certain time every morning. I was going to add more about not having to get "coverage" over lunch, not having to tell someone if I go on a break, that sort of thing� I will refrain. For one thing, it is all of a piece, and for another it�s the mandated start time that�s the sine qua non � even if you are not, on paper, in a support position, as long as your workday begins with clock-punching then y�are, Blanche, y�are. So, good: in this tiny way Jobwatch has just become more focused.

I talked to my sister on the job tip about a week ago and she was so kind I almost started boo-hooing from gratitude right there in the Madison Market parking garage. I think it might be time to put together that secretarial version of my resum� and start trying to work it. There�s no shame in wanting health insurance, some work is better than no work, blah blah blah, and also, in a weird way it�s the having isolated (see above and see my previous comments on the current temp gig) my constitutional aversion to this kind of work and this kind of place that makes the prospect of doing it for the time being a little more palatable, a little less necessarily-about-me. A few years, even. I didn�t write in my diary yesterday or otherwise slack, instead I charged myself with absorbing the full centrifugal force of a workday�s tedium and redundancy. This is what it�s like; I made myself experience it. Liz, who is either too complacent or too good a citizen to go online � or does she not want to? � spends her days reading the same e-mails over and over again, and I know this because her monitor is in my sightline. When someone important walks by, she nods slowly at the screen, pretending to be lost in deep consideration, and emits a thoughtful, "Huh." (She�s making sixty grand if she�s making a dollar, by the way.) The head IT guy, who�s on the creepy side if you get my drift, girls, made me sign up for MSN Messenger and tried to convince me there was an issue with using my workplace e-mail address as my login so I should use my home account, and of course he was leaning over my shoulder while I was configuring the thing. He assumed I was credulous and/or clueless and when I asked why not use the work account he spewed some nonsense about servers and routers and how they�re different for temps � this reminded me of a friend of mine when I was little who advised me to say the word "hypotenuse" as often as possible because it would make people think I was smart � upon which I immediately called bullshit, unmasking myself as technologically clueful and causing him to blush and retreat (though not to desist from his further attempts to socialize via, yes, MSN Messenger). And trust me, you don�t want to know how much Creepo Peepo is making.

I just realized, I forgot to get the Big Boss�s coffee this morning, it utterly slipped my mind. D�oh. Also, before she left last night she gave me the remains of a bag of homemade toffee she�d been snacking on and told me to hide it from her until today. The toffee she seems to have forgotten. She�s off tomorrow, so unless she remembers again by quitting time, it�s mine. And did I mention, there�s some possibility that my tenure here will be shorter than any of us had planned for. Turns out they�re unhappy with my plans to leave early on December 31 and especially to be gone on January 2 � I�m going cross-country skiing for the long weekend with Steve, near Okanogan � and if I can�t make an arrangement with Liz, then they will thank me for my service, dismiss me without prejudice, and get the temp agency to send over a new victim. Which to me is the encapsulation of makework, because what is the relative inconvenience of having to train a newbie and get her up to speed � such as it is � versus that of letting things slide to voicemail and the back office for one lousy day? A day, by the way, that is the Friday after New Year�s. Like anything�s going to happen that day. The BB herself will be on vacation. It�s so retardo, I can�t bother working myself up over the injustice or wringing my hands because I might be getting paid two or three fewer weeks than I�d thought: go ahead, you clowns, and fire me. Good riddance.

One of the cube-dwellers has brought her spawn in today since I guess they are off from school. I have "Under the Volcano" on my desk and she noticed it. "Look, Justin," she said to her son, "it�s a book about volcanoes! Maybe she�ll let you borrow that so you can read it, wouldn�t that be fun?" To me she confided, "He just loves volcanoes, they�re his favorite." Yeah, kid, take it, I think you could learn a lot from this book. There�s a table set up around the corner from me with many varieties of cakes and candy on it and, hell, I might just ignore the mango and cantaloupe in my lunchbox and eat myself into a sugar coma. More toffee for the taking, too. I kind of want to ask for the recipe, but it was made by the ex-Widgeteer who was snotty to me my first day on the job and I kind of don�t want to give her one more thing to feel superior about. I did my caking last night. It is a flourless mocha fudge item � ingredients: 2 cups sugar, 1 cup espresso, 1 pound each butter and chocolate, 8 eggs � that I will take to Steve�s sister�s house for Christmas-day dinner along with my beef Wellington. I spent almost a hundred bucks on a single piece of meat (huh huh huh), for a moment my heart almost stopped when I saw the per-pound for extra-prime filet but then I said What the fuck, it�s Christmas. And isn�t that sentiment what the holiday season is all about?

With respect to finding secretarial-type work, another factor on my side � such as it is � concerns how people still guess me much younger than I am. My second day here, the trainer guy was asking me all about where I was from and what brought me to Seattle, and I said something about having been here quite a while. He asked, "Wait, when did you graduate college?" and I told him, and the realizations playing across his face, well they were embarrassing too. He later said he thought I was maybe four years out of school. And yesterday the BB was near my desk chatting with someone who I suspect is about my age, and when I interjected something she teased, "Oh honey what do you know, you�re just a baby." So if I do the resume teardown � I heard a nice term the other day: "soft demolish" � and, you know, erase the first few jobs on it and change the titles and play up some administrative responsibilities or whatever for the rest of them, then I can make myself look, on paper, like a much likelier candidate for a job that someone a few years out of college would want, and then if there is an interview I will play it cool, not mention anything not on the resume, and focus on letting that energy and equanimity flow. I do happen to have been offered, over other candidates, both of the last two temporary office-girl jobs I have applied for, and if for the sake of argument we can put aside the context of temp-job nothingness, that fact is not nothing.

And then, maybe, I could keep on with the editing program � I have to register by the end of the week and pay them about twelve and a half beef Wellingtons; on the credit card, please � and take other classes, and for all appearances I would be a go-getting, knowledge-hungry youngster who was interested in starting from the bottom and working her way up, a baby just beginning to cut her teeth, and although I�d be a secretary I would also have my secret agenda, I�d be doing a good job but also using those chumps for their paycheck and their health insurance, biding time until I�d acquired the resources to grow up. It wouldn�t be so bad. It could be worse.