Rhubarb Pie

Also, I'm moving back into my house in Sac next month.

WHOA!  I get the job I want!  Months ago my department offered me very neat work that I totally want.  But, like, they didn't have a way to pay me to do it.  Until today!  The governor signed a bill that has a line item specifically for my position.  It has been very odd, having my career direction waiting on a particular piece of legislation.  But today, ten months later, on the very last day possible, the governor signed the bill.  I get the job I'm mostly already doing!

You know what, 'long as I'm being indiscreet, I might as well be more indiscreet.  One task I'm doing right now is writing standards for water managers to handle climate change.  They handed the job to me with virtually no instruction.  So I was all, cool.  Fine.  I happen to know that the governor's office is also writing standards for climate change in CEQA and city General Plans.  I called over.  They're all, yeah, that's what we're doing and we have nothing written.  I'm all, do you know of anyone who has written anything?  They're all, maybe CalTrans?  But those offices are in a big long process and my office told me to write something up in weeks.  Sure.

Now I know about this stuff and lord knows I have opinions.  So I'm writing these standards.  Who knows if they'll survive review by the next level up.  I don't think they expect what they'll get from me.  But some of it might last, and if it does, not only will water managers who want money from us have to follow them, but since we'll put them out first, other departments will look to them as a starting place.  It feels strange and disproportionately influential.

PICK ME!!! ME, ME, MEEEEE!

It is true, my dear, what you have long suspected.  I am a woman who spontaneously accosts pleasant acquaintances with talk of a Constitutional Convention.  I can't help it.  Since I read about the idea of holding a convention to revise the state Constitution, I've loved the idea of having a system of governance for my state that isn't a horrible overgrown mishmash.  I wrote before about how accumulated code turns into a maddeningly dense thicket, but on top of that, we've made some choices that make it nearly impossible to run the state. 

We have this proposition system¹, you know, and any propositions that get passed become part of our Constitution.  They aren't even statutes that legislatures could amend.  Our Constitution is one hundred and fifty-ish pages long.  There are a couple famous anti-tax propositions, which I don't like because they seem to have given Californians the idea that infrastructure and services should be free.  But setting aside specific anti-tax measures, there's the fact that so many propositions deal specifically with the budget that the legislature doesn't have any room to create a good budget.  People vote in designated expenditures, so that gas taxes must go for road building, for example.  They vote for bonds, which is great, but expensive down the line.  The state budget must be balanced, we can't run a deficit; it requires a two-thirds majority to raise taxes.  So the budget part is a mess².  Other propositions influence the budget as well.  We passed Three Strikes, so we have to pay a lot to incarcerate people.  We passed term limits, which solved the problem of extraordinarily powerful incumbency.  It also solved the problem of legislator expertise, long-range planning and learned budgeting skills.  There's no shortage of examples.  The California Constitution is a mess.

I absolutely love the idea of a Constitutional Convention focused specifically on governance.  I love it for all sorts of reasons.  First, because I believe governance can be done well and if we're going to have mechanisms and institutions running my state, they should be good ones.  Or at least not horrendously tangled ones.  Second because how often do we get a chance to pull back and say "the process itself, is it working?"  I mean, it is pretty common to decide that an outcome was good or bad.  But if you're running a state, it is hard to take a step back and say "this thing that we do every day that we know all the work-arounds for, that we've adjusted to.  Do we actually like it?  Are we getting results despite it or because of it?"  Third, I love the idea of working in a system that is designed to do something.

My biggest fear for a Constitutional Convention isn't that it will get carried away and try to solve everything.  My fear for a Convention is that people won't think about what the government of California should do.  Maybe they'll³ correct a few conspicuous problems and call it a day.  But a document that sets our government in motion should have a goal.  The goal could be to rein in those crazy Californians.  It could be to promote equity.  It could be to get the most out of every tax dollar.  It could be to minimize fear.  It could be to promote business and jobs in the state.  The Constitution could promote happiness or austerity or community or security.  It could be to develop wealth.  It could be whatever the delegates choose.  But they should choose something and then design a system that accomplishes that.  I'd be so disappointed if a Constitutional Convention wrote a document that effectively extended status quo without ever thinking about why.

So yeah.  I have been talking to people about a Constitutional Convention for California.  But not as much as I've been thinking about it.

Proof That I Am Not A Highly Evolved Human Being

1) I have a haircut today with a new hairstylist. I fretted about what to wear to impress her. In my head, a hairstylist is a person who possesses things I will never possess: an aesthetic, a sense of what is hip, craftsmanship, the ability to bring to life a vision. And this person holding scissors next to my head is someone I want as an ally and friend. So I dressed to convey my strongest hopes: she will see me and like me. She will know I am friendly and fun-loving, professional yet playful, curious and accepting, yet with a strong moral compass. She will see this and see in my hair the potential to express all of this and more. Do you know how hard it is to get dressed when this is what you are trying to communicate? I settled on the polka-dotted flouncy shirt I got this weekend. But I got the earrings all wrong.

2) I am contemplating, in fact, even anticipating, the murder of another sentient being. I am planning to poison the family of squirrels living in my roof. This is a terrible thing, and I know I should be ashamed. I know I should get a Have-a-Heart trap and wait patiently and lovingly for the critters to emerge, and then apologize for their confusion and drive them into an adjacent county, far, far away where they will not make it back to my roof. But instead I am planning to poison them, like the contractor told me to. Unless you would like to come rescue them, and make a home for them. I know how you like things that are living as unwelcome guests in other people's houses. You can have my squirrels, but you must speak up now.

I'd settle for professional.

Dude, why do I gotta walk past the guards?  I mean, the better question is why we have to have guards at all, considering that we are a boring state agency that no one cares about enough to bomb.  Why do we have to have security theater at all, since I have zero confidence that they provide me any security in any context whatsoever.  But since we have them, why do they have to be a low level annoyance all the time?

There is a morning guard and an afternoon guard.  The morning guard is a cheerful white-haired guy who will talk your ear off.  He is relentless, a caricature.  He starts to talk when you open the door and if you answer anything, there is no limit to how long he talks.  I walk by with no pause, and he will talk to me up two flights of stairs until I open the door to our branch.  He pins newcomers, who don't know that there will be no natural break, ever, and are too polite to walk away.  I come out onto the landing, see someone uneasily shifting and trying to put distance between them, and I overtly laugh and point.  I make eye contact and laugh into their desperate gazes.  You're trapped, sucker, and you're on your own.  You gotta learn to pass the guard on your own.  I have finally trained him not to address me.  No eye contact, no response, aggressive stride.  But it means snubbing someone two or three times a day, which makes me feel slightly yucky.  I don't want to be put in situations that require bad manners.

The afternoon guard doesn't talk that much, but he's mildly creepy, with hard staring and efforts to make small talk.  He leaves his desk to open the door for me, crowding me as I go through.  I don't want to be friends with the creepy guard.  I would like the mildest professional recognition, so I don't have to show ID every time.  He does awkward banter or asks me questions, and I don't respond or give him a non-committal short answer.  No eye contact for him either.  We aren't friends.  I don't want to be friends. 

Why did my building get the two annoying guards?  Why do I have to be rude just to walk through my lobby?  Other guards in other agencies seem fine.  Back when I was on the federal side of things, we had even more guards.  Don't know how it worked out like this, but the guards there were five completely gorgeous black guys.  I didn't think we needed security, but if the taxpayers want to spend their money arranging for me to walk by an array of gorgeous men every day, I'm not going to complain overloud.  They were pleasant and professional, didn't talk my ear off or stare at me.  See?  Those were good guards.

Where to be on Election Day and Inauguration Day.

Hon, if you are teaching people how to visualize a future, you are doing them a tremendous service.  I've recently started to notice how incredibly bad people are at doing this.  They always assume the future is an extension of what they are used to, and their plans for the future are 'continue what we do'.

For a while last month, I was going to the state's Water Plan meetings.  I went to thirty short meetings in a few weeks, with very literally the top experts in thirty different aspects of managing water.  These experts were supposed to tell us what we need to do between now and 2050.  They were supposed to make recommendations, and it is not farfetched to think that these recommendations would be used as a basis for legislation.  I could not believe how few of them could imagine and make plans for the future.  I was appalled, and by the third or fourth meeting, started openly scolding them.  This was great, because we run in small professional circles in a pretty small city, and I just know they're hoping to work with me again. 

But I could not believe how limited their views are.  Most pictured the present and made timid little requests.  "I, um, guess that we might need to build some new canals to handle another twenty-five million people, so, if you don't mind, maybe we could encourage the department to consider doing some modeling of the problem."  Are you fucking kidding me?  This is the state plan that is supposed guide us for the next forty years and you would recommend considering new data?  Picture the year 2050, picture less water and crazy weather, picture doubling the state population, and demand your fucking canals.  If your vision of the future includes water coming out when you open the faucet, figure out how that happens and tell us what we need to do.  But they couldn't.  They had no concept of the future, no vision of that world, and therefore they weren't working backward from anything.  They were proposing temporary patches for whatever their current problems were.  It was astonishing*. 

Then!  My other rant!  Is sorta related, but not really, but the segue is astonishing things that people cannot do.  We give out grant money; people send us grant applications.  They're applying for a few hundred thousand dollars, and very few of them can tell us what their project does.  In three or four pages of describing the project, they never answer the question: what will you do if we give you the money.  The conversation goes like this:

Us:  What will you do if we give you $300K?

Them:  The headwaters of our beautiful creek start in beautiful mountains, in grasslands that swish under majestic oaks.

Us:  That's nice.  What will you do if we give you $300K?

Them:  Ecology is absolutely vital to human survival and besides, we love the creek with all our hearts.

Us:  This is your last chance.  What will you DO if we give you $300K?

Them:  I truly believe the neighbors are ready to come together on this.  There was a lot of hostility to the idea before, but now people realize that the children are our future and we want them to be able to go fishing in our creek when they have their own children.

Seriously.  We reject easily half the applicants we get because after reading pages of their application, we cannot tell what they will do.  Sometimes you can find the answer in a throwaway paragraph.  Oh.  They'll fence off half a mile of the creek from cattle.  I can't tell if people do not know themselves what their project is (in which case, it is not ready to be funded) or if they cannot follow the fucking directions**.  But if you can help the kids who come see you answer the question, whatever it is, you will have given them a skill that most people evidently don't have.

I Love My Job

(Hee.  I would also suggest that our hourglass friend consider some other futures: a paperweight?  Maybe not until retirement.  Or maybe one of those electronic teller vacuum tube cylinders that you put your checks in at the drive-up aisle for the bank?  It would take some stretching, but it could be exactly the right fit, especially with the emphasis on promptness that she's developed.  That is highly valued in a customer-service environment.  And there's always fashion, with a figure like that....)

I get to say the following things at work:

"Your homework is to daydream.  Make time for it, and when you do this, notice the things you are including in your dreams.  What kind of people are around you?  What do you spend your days doing, and what do you do at night?  When you're good at your job, who notices, and what do they say?  There are lots of people who have ideas about what you should do in your life, and if you let them, they will give you lots of advice.  But the only one who can do a really good job making your daydream come true is you, and that means you have to daydream, and to pay attention."

or 

"From what you've told me, and what you've shown me on this resume and cover letter, here's what you're good at.  Let's talk about those things in more detail, and also anything else you've been told you're good at that we might want to highlight, too."   

or 

"What your parents or your professors want you to do is important, but it shouldn't be the primary driver of what you do.  If it turns out that what you want isn't the same as what they want, we'll figure out a strategy for managing that.  But first, let's look at what you want." 

or

"Okay, so, to get there, let's talk about the plan of attack.  There's a lot of work to do, but we can break it into chunks.  Let's look at the whole path first, and then we'll drill down and talk about step one, and what you'll want to do next." 

I say other things -- like, you'll probably enjoy talking to this person, or you might want to visit this website and take a look around, or you'll probably want to spend a few minutes with this book or this computer program.  But the stuff above, it's so much fun to say.  Sometimes nobody else has said things like this to these students.  Sometimes I take something fuzzy and overwhelming and shine a light on it or show how it is a series of small steps.  And it is so great when a student walks out of my office smiling and with a renewed sense of confidence, just from our conversation.  I am so lucky that I get to do this.   

I could travel, go to Greenwich.

Hi. Thanks for helping me. I’m kinda nervous about being here, but your office is nice. I’ve been thinking a little about my options, what I want to do when I get out of school. Sometimes I think I am only good at one thing, and I just do the same thing over and over again. Like, I finish my job, and then I turn over and do the same thing again. I mean, I like it, but then I wonder if I could be more. Maybe when I get out of school, I could start working my way up. I bet I could reach forty-five minutes, if I tried. If I could do that, maybe I could aim for an hour, or a day. I mean, after I’ve worked at it for a while. You know what else I want to try? I’ve been thinking it’d be sooooooo cool to have hands. I’m not complaining or anything, but it’d be nice to stay upright the whole time. I bet it’d be fun to have moving parts.

Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do if I followed my dreams. Do I want the big glory, huge fame, like the countdown for New Years in Times Square?  Some of my friends talk about joining the Long Now, but I don’t know if I really have the stamina for that. Maybe trying to be all millenial isn't a good fit for me. Maybe I just want a simple life in a sweet little city. I could be a college score board, watch all the games. I’m minoring in Scorekeeping, so maybe that’s a clue about what I like. And I barely passed Circuits, so I think I want to stay analog. I mean, some of my best friends are digital, and I’m totally cool with that. If they’re happy, I’m happy. But I don’t think that’s for me. Should I do more school?  Try to find a job somewhere?  Is it OK if I don't have big dreams? I know that I totally want to stay Eastern Standard. It just feels right to me. What should I do, Ms. CounselorLady?

What Are We Working On Today?

This is my new hourglass.  Have a seat, and let's talk.  We only have half an hour today.  We can get a lot done in half an hour, but, this is your life, which is rich and complex, so we might not finish everything up in this one meeting.  We can take as long as we need.  We'll see how far we get today, and I'll probably send you off with some homework, and we'll figure out together when it makes sense for you to come back.  Now, tell me where you'd like to begin?   

Hey sugar. Did you have a good weekend? I had a good weekend.

Friday night was Chris's birthday party.  He turned thirty-five, so he declared his candidacy for President!  He is running on a platform of "Birthdays for everyone and getting down."  I don't see how it can fail.  Chris wore a blue velvet suit and a red-white-and-blue tie, to show the voters that he is serious about his campaign.  He didn't wear a flag pin, though, so the voters have questions about his patriotism.

Saturday night was Margie and Amanda's wedding reception.  They were beautiful, of course, and it turns out Margie is the heartfelt romantic, the one who tears up when they repeat their vows.  Margie!  I thought she only cries for an elegant spreadsheet or a well-designed fishscreen. 

Sunday, my sister and I had friends over for dinner.  Chili and cornbread, salad and peach pie, out on the back porch with a fire in the chiminea.  It was so very nice.

Sherry, here's the thing.  Chris's party was fun, but I've had the same reaction at the last couple parties I've been to.  I already know how that evening goes.  I hate to sound jaded and I am psyched to be invited, but truly, this party form has stopped offering me anything new.  I know what it is like to enter the party and I know what kind of snacks they put out and I know about the non-dj'ed music and I know about taking a break on the fire escape and I know about the brief pieces of conversation with new people.   I love the idea of parties, but I've stopped enjoying the standard party format for my people.  Part of me thinks this is the same frustration I've had in other parts of my life.  Honestly, I'm pushing my late thirties.  I am so freakin' tired of living a twenties lifestyle.  I've done that for fifteen years now.  It used to be exciting when someone got a new loft and invited us all over.  But now I know what that is like.  There's no learning curve.

I want to go to different kinds of parties.  I've never thrown a one-year-old birthday party.  That'd be new.  Barbecues with kids running through in a herd would be new.  Even going to a different party culture would help.  Maybe Ethiopians know how to bring the party.  Maybe a quinceñera would be more interesting.  Maybe different people would throw parties with themes I can't imagine; that'd be fun.  But standard parties, even with great people, now feel predictable to me.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but it is getting old.

Part of me says that I want to move in to my next life stage and have new experiences, and then another part of me remembers how much the fundamental structure of my life does not change.  During the week, I have been going to school or work during the daytime, coming home for dinner and then going back out to exercise since I was twelve.  If something changes so I don't have evening sports, I get antsy  until I search out a new activity and restore the routine.  The stretches of my life that haven't been on this schedule probably add up to a year or two total.  Weekends are still most familiar to me when I do house projects.  (After the chicken coop, the order goes: front yard landscaping, outdoor shower, pond.)  I've thrown parties or had people over for dinner since high school.  Maybe I have some notions about moving into a new life stage, but really, the structures of my life and things I do are pretty impressively stable.  I've never successfully shook those up.  I don't even want to.  I'm a mostly placid person; I'm not the type to up and move to an apartment in Hong Kong and immerse myself in a glamourous life of diving in southeast Asia between consultant gigs.  I don't even want to.  I just want my own good and comfortable life to evolve, get out of stasis, bring me new ways to be content and domestic.

Why would I carry a cute bag when I have a frayed backpack?

OK.  Here are some potential positive aspects of the project to dress me:

I am not poor and am willing to spend money on clothes.  (This will be more true after I put a new roof on my house.  Once that is done, I'll be able to spend money again.)

For someone who wears entirely neutral clothing, I actually have a strong aesthetic preference and am not afraid of color.  You asked about shoes.  I like maryjane-esque shoes and I like shoes with dots.  I don't like pointy shoes because my toes are not pointy.  I can't wear a narrow heel because I'll roll my ankles.  I love piping in general, don't like fussy fastenings.  I have definitely not solved the boots problem.  I looked at the flat boots on that site and the boots with the two elastic sides, and both are ridiculously narrow for my calves. 

Jewelry.  Actually, I quite like jewelry, although I never wear it.  I'm in the habit of taking off jewelry to work out, and then I never put it back on and then I never put it on in the first place.  But I like it and have some earrings and necklaces that I'll put on when I do wear girl clothes.  I either get jewelry in the Garment District in Los Angeles or, oddly enough, at farmer's markets.  That makes it sound like hippy jewelry, but it is more like craft fair booths are making an inroads at some of the different markets I go to.  I don't have any good jewelry, of course.  But I do have sparkly earrings.

Handbags?  I have some, and they are better than no pockets.  But they aren't as good as pockets.  They're so prone to being left behind.

That will have to start you off, hon.  The concept for the rest of it is vague, and by vague I mean hidden in a deep fog on an island far out in an ocean I've never been to.