Smile like you're in control.

What a strange week this has been, full of friends and antagonists, both old and relatively new; shifted time; internal evolution and emotional revolution; the deeply ingrained dissonance of a lifetime of staccato tempo, always out of step with the body electric; lost opportunities, chaotic potential, and paper cut insults.

I got in a town car this morning at 3:30am. I hadn't slept in almost 20 hours, after a week of moderate sleep-deprivation (less than five hours a night on average) and more than its share of drinking. Soft jazz played on the radio. The streets were dark and empty. I stared out the window, mutely watching the reflection of colored lights slip over the windows.

After about fifteen minutes, the sound dropped to silence unexpectedly, and the bent and elderly man behind the wheel spoke for the first time.

"Last night I was watching a movie with John Denver and George Burns. I'd never seen it. Burns plays God, and Denver is a man who has lost his faith. Burns comes to him and tells him he has to go around and share the word with others."

"At first Burns is just a voice, then later he appears bodily to Denver. God tells Denver he can look or sound like anybody. God says he appears as the person Denver was most likely to listen to, but if Denver wanted, God could look like anything."

"Denver starts going around and telling people that God is speaking to him, that he has found faith. His wife and family think he's crazy. He doesn't care. He does it anyway." FN1.

Then he adjusted the rear view mirror to met my befuddled gaze in the backseat. "I didn't tell you before. My name is Joe."

While I tend to use this space occasionally for fiction writing, I swear that in this particular case, this is exactly what happened to me. And this town car driver intervention of David Lynchian proportions is a pretty solid analogy for the weirdness of the last ten days of my life.

In some ways, it has been a terrible and disappointing week, both personally and for the collective us. In some ways, it has been a surprisingly wonderful week, far exceeding even my best expectations. Overall, though, it's felt overwhelming full of conflicted potential.

Once, a few years ago, a road trip with my very own the Kate, we were driving across Indiana in winter in the early morning, and she hit a patch of black ice. The car began to spin, and she overcorrected, then overcorrected again. FN2. We glided across the road, the car turning in circles, then continued to spin across the grassy strip separating us from traffic traveling in the opposite direction.

As we crossed the center divide, I honestly wasn't sure we were going to stop. I was pretty sure we were about to spin uncontrollably into oncoming traffic, with my side facing their ominous headlights. I remember clearly thinking, "Wow. If this keeps going, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to die."

A very long moment or two later, we ground out a little over halfway across the esplanade. There was a deep trench in it, and the car's wheels finally lost contact with the frozen ground, wedging us perpendicular to the highway. We were stuck and needed a tow to get the car unwedged, but the car were otherwise fine. Eventually we got pulled out and continued down the highway, passing an eight vehicle pile-up including a tanker truck where several people had been severely injured less than a half mile ahead of us. Had we not slipped into our own vortex, we might have been caught up in it.

I was trying to figure out how to explain the emotional impact of this week, the personal joys and sorrows, the steps forward and back, pressed up against the public horrors heaped on women and people of color by what we laughingly refer to as justice and democracy. I've been trying to figure out to describe the shock and pain I feel personally, how it has strangely rubbed like sandpaper against the contours of an already out-of-context week where the past, present, and future seemed extremely loud and incredibly close.

That moment on the black ice is as close as I can come. This week feels like the moment that unmoored us in the darkness that night, the one we never saw coming until it was too late. The split second out of step, just before everything slips back into place, for better or worse. It is out of sync with the rest of my life, and when the momentum of movement grinds to a halt, I wonder which direction I will be facing: forward, backward, parallel to my regularly scheduled life? Will I find myself miraculously only a little worse for the wear, and continue down the road I was headed as if nothing significant has happened? Will this all fade into a strange memory that seems more like a dream than something that actually happened? Or has the entire thing -- the pain, the disappointment, the surprising happiness -- changed my destination?

I don't know.

And yes, I know this entire piece has been an incredibly non-specific, self-indulgent piece of navel gazing, but the details of my personal frictions, proverbial black ice, barely avoided disasters, and moments of feeling strangely alive? They really aren't significant in and of themselves. Nothing that happened to me directly in the last ten days is all that remarkable or even noteworthy. In a vacuum, they would make for terribly boring stories, really.

The way a very public trial in Florida, a routine trial in D.C., a bill in Texas, a trip to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and a conversation with a drunk Eastern European man who lives in France about justice, social activism, and my past makes me question my career choices isn't all that interesting in and of itself. Just like reliving some of the best and worst parts of high school while stuck in a dorm in Boston at a week-long company retreat, full of the kind of giddy highs and lows one only really has at sleep away camp when you're twelve and your real life is so far away it is easy to envision mountains where there are only mole hills, doesn't make for an epicly told tale at the end of the day. Neither does the way receiving bad news in a particular moment lessen the sting, only to find the poison of the forgotten embedded stinger slushing around inside bring on the full necrotic blow the next day.

But, in the moment of unknowing, that feeling? The feeling I had crossing the black ice, or when the driver seemed to be strangely trying to tell me, with the borrowed voice of God, to wake up and pay attention because this was one of those moments that if I didn't stop and look around, I might be missing my life speeding by me? That is worth telling. It is worth noting those moments that unhinge you a little, driving you to question things about how others perceive you, how you see yourself, and what you should be doing with your life. It's easy, in the day to day, to forget the miracle of having a life at all can be. It's easy to coast along in your routine and never question the assumptions of your values, the correctness of your choices.

"Keep your distance; I haven't got a thing to say.
Where's the exit? What time is it, anyway?
You said I would like it here, but I don't feel a thing.
Where's this happening -- in your head?
But my mother said
Smile like they want you.
Smile like you're in control.
Smile like you mean it.
Smile, baby, you're on a roll.
Smile, smile, smile…."
"Smile," Cristina    FN3.

________________
FN1. The movie, it turns out, is Oh, God!, released in 1977.

FN2. I feel compelled to mention here that Kate is a very good driver who has never had an accident. This incident was the closest she has ever come to being in one. It was a fluke thing.

FN3. A playlist for this week, so I remember:

1. Smile - Cristina
2. You Better You Bet - The Who
3. Nervous Lonely Night - Jessica Lea Mayfield
4. What Was It You Wanted - Bob Dylan
5. Hold On, Hold On - Neko Case
6. You Are What You Love - Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins
7.  For K, Part 2 - Lana Del Rey
8. They Never Taught Us That In School - Gayle Harris
9. A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off - The Magnetic Fields
10. Throw It All Away - Brandi Carlile
11. In Between Days - The Cure
12. Use Me - Bill Withers
13. He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' - The Velvelettes
14. Wild Ones - Flo-rida feat. Sia
15. Girls Like You - The Young and Famous
16. Never Let Me Go - Florence + The Machine
17. Hide & Seek - Imogene Heap
18. Hang with Me (Acoustic) - Robyn
19. Someday? - Concrete Blonde

What Would You Wear To An Interview No One Could Smell But You?

Happy holidays from PDX

Dear reader:

First of all: happy holidays to you and yours.  Hope you had a wonderful December full of food and fun and friends and fragrant delights.

Second:  Holy cow! Has it really been over a month? Wow. And what a month! I can't believe I haven't talked to you in so long. My apologies. After a fairly stagnant 2012, so much has happened in the last thirty days, I hardly know where to start.

News of foremost importance: I have a new job! In a whirlwind turn of events, I am left my old job. On Sunday, I board a plane for three weeks of training on the East Coast that begins my training and transitioning, not just to a new company, but into a new field. Or in my case, an old field. My very first jobs were in IT and customer service, and I am returning to form as I take a position in customer service and tech support for a web development company.

Endings and beginnings, they all
mean one thing: PAPERWORK.
Exhausting!

What does this have to do with the law, you ask? Absolutely nothing. This is a big shift in my life and times, and I'm excited to have you along for the ride, dear reader.

One of the things I'm most excited about it that my new employer has no restrictions on scent in the workplace, so I can now wear my lovely perfumes with abandon (provided I'm not, you know, knocking people down with them). And I thought of you, dear reader, as I was doing my interviews only two and a half short weeks ago, and how I wanted to talk to you about all my plans and schemes and future dreams and where scent fits into them.

All my interviews occurred in the span of four days in the wee, small hours of the morning and at a distance, thanks to the wonders of Skype. Nonetheless, I got up and did my hair, make-up, suited up, and generally got gussied so I would be in the proper formal mind set and feel like I was projecting the right attitude. (Though I did not once have to wear painful shoes, and it was glorious.) As I primped and prepped, I went through my scent wardrobe and thought about what to wear.

It was an intriguing challenge, because I needed interview scents, yes, but since no one would be able to smell them but me, it was a question of what would comfort me, challenge me, help me put my best foot forward.

My picks were as follows:

So much love for Mandy
and her gorgeous scents! 

First Round Interview Day:  Aftelier Perfumes Cepes and Tuberose, which I am currently OBSESSED with and will giving its full review due very soon. I picked this because I felt like it was both sophisticated and soothing, refined and elegant, but still warm and comforting. I felt both fancy and at ease, and that's not an easy scent combo.

Second/Third Round Interview Day: This was the big interview day, and felt very "make it or break it." That morning, I laid heavily into the Chanel No. 5 EdT, such that a cloud of lovely was following me all day long. It was good I wore my perfume steel, too, because this was a tough round of interviews. Despite feeling my confidence shaken like I'd just gone twelve rounds with Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia," the scent kept hitting me all day, reminding me that I am resilient, not to mention classic and beautiful and enduring, and would survive no matter what came next.

Fourth Round Interview Day: At this point, I felt pretty positive I wasn't even in the running. This interview was scheduled before the second round I felt like I blew, and I was worried it was more about going through the motions. Nonetheless, I wanted to put my best foot forward, so I went for something that would make me feel pretty and happy, something I find easy and undemanding to wear. I also wanted something with a strong personal appeal, something to make me feel good since I thought the interviews weren't going so great.

In the end, I chose a scent that I never get the compliments on even though I feel like I should. I settled on fruity floral fun in the form of Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir, which turned out to be a great choice in terms of personal ease and confidence.

Then, dear reader, I did the only thing I could do: wore pretty perfume, took deep breathes, and hoped that this time the die would fall in my favor...

See ya, old job! Me and
my TARDIS stickies
are outta here!

...and IT DID!

Despite all my private hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing, I got the job! How much my perfume factored into this, I cannot tell you. In my mind, though, it is a measurable factor in my personal feelings of preparedness and appeal, and consequently my success.

Also, one of my new coworkers is a fellow 'fumie! We already talked perfumes on GChat! Surely, this is a good sign!

So what about you, dear reader? What would you wear if you had a job interview no one could smell but you? And what scents do you advise I take with me to meet my new employers while I spend three cold weeks in Boston this January?

Inquiring 'fumie minds want to know!

Mitt Romney and the Myth of Women's Work

Thanks Binders Full
of Women tumblr!

Last night, while driving back from dinner, David and I pulled up to a light.
D: "Oh no! Mitt Romney has been here!"
Me: "How do you know?"
D: "Look!" *points to papers and broken binder scattered on ground in middle of road* "Binder remains!"
Me: "But where are all the women?"
D: "This is the Pacific Northwest. They knew they could flee for safety here."
Me: "Run, women! Run for your lives!"

. . . . 

Okay, all binder hilarity aside (and there is some good stuff out there, my favorite being the customer reviews on Avery 1" binders for sale on Amazon -- Thanks to Carli R. for the link), there was something former Governor Romney said in the debates, something inaccurate and truly sexist, and it didn't have anything to do with binders full of women, or even a flexible work schedule being required such that working women can get home in time it make dinner. FN1. The moment that I keep returning to with fire in my belly got buried between those two more obviously tone-deaf moments, and because I can't let it go, dear reader, I'm going to talk to you about it.

Okay, here's the critical snippet of transcript, reader. Let's play a rousing round of "Spot the Sexist!"

Romney: "Now, one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort, but number two, because I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes they need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school. She said, I can't be here until 7:00 or 8:00 at night. I need to be able to get home at 5:00 so I can be there for -- making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said, fine, let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you."

Did you catch it? It's probably all those logic puzzles I had to do in preparation for the LSAT, but ever since then, if/then statements really jump out at me. "If" implies a condition, something that may or may not happen. It's only a precedent possibility. It isn't a foregone conclusion. It's something that isn't necessary or inevitable.

"I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes they need to be more flexible."

"If."

If.

This is the torn in my paw, the splinter in my skin, the pea under my mattress, dear reader. And I'll tell you why this bothers me so much.

First, it offends me as a feminist because it implies the work a person - male or female - does at home (keeping a home, raising a family, cooking meals, shuttling kids around, etc.) isn't real work, that they aren't part of the 'workforce.' This argument is, of course, completely nonsensical, as we all know that housekeepers don't work for free, daycare isn't provided gratis, personal chefs don't volunteer their services. These are jobs that have market value. We've determined, even under the most mercenary capitalist calculations, that these services have a value.

This is an assumed benefit, you see. Like a hidden cost, it rides for free in the market place, never being thought of for its true value. However, if every person doing home care shifted one home to the left or right, did their neighbor's work, and submitted a bill to said neighbor who in turn paid them, these individuals would no longer be 'invisible' members of the "workforce." The idea that society requires this sort of task shifting in order to fully acknowledge the monetary value to this benefit is, in a word, stupid.

BUT, even if I set this feminist objection aside, the historian in me is appalled by the sheer willful ignorance of this statement. This historian, with her very expensive education in American women's history, is the yelling voice in my head, and her secondary objection actually gets to the far more problematic part of Mr. Romney's privileged point of view.

As far back as this country has existed, women have worked. Puritans like John Cotton and John Rogers remarked as they settled in Plymouth, Providence, and Massachusetts Bay on the work performed by women of the native peoples. Be they Pequot, Narragansett, or Mohegan, these women completed all agricultural work except the growing of tobacco. All the food stuffs planted and reaped and prepared in those times, you know the ones that kept the settlers from starving in those first rough winters? Women created those goods for gift, trade, or purchase.  These same Puritan men set about building a City on a Hill; meanwhile, their Puritan wives canned goods, wove cloth, dried meats, and preserved and created other goods to be traded, sold, and purchased between the colonies and with the natives.

During the American industrial age, women worked in factories and manufacturing from its beginnings in the mid-1700s all the way to its end in the 1900s. Women worked during both world wars. Poor women, immigrant women, and women of color have worked in domestic positions for white families for pay in this country virtually forever. FN3.

Women have always worked. They have always been part of the workforce, even when you limit the definition of "workforce" to work done outside one's own home. They have been paid teachers, nurses, factory workers, craftswomen, midwives, trade persons. Even during the Victorian period, wealthy white women worked as novelists and writers and educators.

National Women's Law Center's report
on pay inequity is available here.

This notion that there was a magical historical past where women did nothing but kept house and raised their children is a myth. If it has ever existed, it was only for the very, very wealthy white women of the Victorian era and for a handful of years to a select group of middle-class white women living in the suburbs in post-WWII America, a lot of whom had been forced out of jobs they enjoyed when the war ended and they  'went home,' giving their positions to returning veterans. And let's not forget, as documented in detail by writers like Betty Friedan, these women were deeply miserable, to the point that they inspired the second wave of the feminism movement and its efforts to obtain equal access to the sphere of public work and employment opportunities for women. FN4.

There is no "if." This fabled "if" has never existed. Women are an integral part of "the workforce," both in the public and private spheres. The work they have done and continue to do remains underpaid, under appreciated, and often unnoticed, but make no mistake: it is WORK. We are part of the workforce. We have always been part of the workforce. We will always be part of the workforce.

That former Governor Romney believes that this fact is at present -  or has ever been - conditional demonstrates how completely out of touch he is with the reality of the vast majority of women's lives. He also seems crazily uninformed about American history for someone who seeks our highest office.

And that, my friends, is what makes me most afraid. How can we expect someone to govern our country with our best interests in mind when he truly does not even see half of us? He is blind to the lives of all but the most privileged women, and he presumes that the work they do is both inherently less valuable and should come second to their familial obligations, as though men do not have to and should not have to share these same responsibilities. He is fundamentally blind to women and to his own male privilege, in the same way he is blind to poor people and his corresponding wealth, to working class people and his corresponding family purchased opportunities, to people of color and his own whiteness.

No wonder then-Governor Romney and his male cohorts 'could not find' any qualified women to join his cabinet. He never saw them in the first place. FN5. And in his own words, as recently as just this last week on prime time national television, Mr. Romney has revealed that he still doesn't.

"Through their own words
they will be exposed. 
They've got a severe case of 
the emperor's new clothes."
~ "The Emperor's New Clothes," Sinead O'Connor

_______________
FN1. Though don't mistake me, all of that was some heinously sexist b.s.

FN2. Yes, a historian, professional feminist, and attorney all sit around, yelling different arguments at me /the world in my head, while the 'fumie just sits in a corner, sniffing at her wrists and muttering, "pretty!" Doesn't everyone's head work like that?

FN3. Well, you know, after we stopped enslaving them.

FN4. Again, it is worth noting here that this 'workplace struggle' was largely lost on their impoverished sisters in arms as well as women of color and immigrant women, all of whom never had the luxurious option of staying home and remaining outside the public sphere of work in the first place.

FN5. And in case this whole binder business wasn't offensive enough, it turned out to contain an incredible amount of spin. The real story involves being approached by a women's group in Massachusetts with a request to include more women in government, not a concerted effort on Mr. Romney's part to find women for his cabinet.