Hard to say

..."Oh, it's Japanese food? Someone told me it was Chinese!" I heard at work yesterday, from the other side of the division in the room I was in. Based on a flier Eric got by mistake yesterday, they were talking about a seminar on retiree investments held at a local Japanese restaurant.

"Oh, Jap food and Chinese food are all the same," said the new guy.

"Did he just say 'Jap'?" I asked my coworker, T, on this side of the division, a little louder than I would have normally. The new guy was going on in the same vein: oh those Orientals, all the same.

I got up to go talk to him, and heard J, on the other side of the division, say, "You shouldn't say things like that. A client could be coming through."

The new guy laughed at her, and joked, and went on. I got up and sat down twice, wanting to go say something and horribly fearful at the same time. Finally the new guy made another similar remark and J, defeated because no one around them was helping and the new guy wasn't listening, said quietly, "I can't agree with you, sir. I don't want to hear this."

And I got up and rounded the corner and said, "I agree. 'Jap' is a very pejorative term. Please don't use it again." I looked the new guy in the eye, and he sobered, and said, "All right."

I went back to my chair. T had gone in the meantime and I leaned over the desk and realized I was actually trembling. Not long after, the new guy came over and said, "I want to apologize. I didn't know Jap was an offensive word. I was using it as an abbreviation." I'm not sure I believe this, though he is fairly young, or whether it excuses it. But I smiled and accepted his apology. I don't know whether J got a similar one, or if he thought he'd personally offended me but not her, or if my relatively superior position made him worry. I was waiting for him to say "I didn't mean to insult your ancestors," or something similar, but he didn't. Not that it matters. I'm not Japanese, but here I am with my flat face and epicanthic fold to tell you that racist terms are not cool.

But I also hate how agitated I got over confronting him, and how close I was to saying nothing. I'm hardly a confrontational person, but I should still be able to stand up for what's right. I'm ashamed that it was so hard for me. I guess I haven't had enough practice.

Interviews

And another interview today. At least places are still hiring. This is good. We've also got an appointment with a pediatrician--we're supposed to interview them, but I really don't know what to say. "Do you have an actual degree? Can I see your diploma?"

Incidentally, one of my friends just asked me if I planned to vaccinate my child. I think it's sad that she had to ask. Apparently one of her other friends isn't--said friend citing not only the autism non-link, but also "Those diseases aren't around anymore, so why bother?" People worry me.

It's so elegant/So intelligent

Bridger: You know who's not fazed one iota by all this?
Westphalen: Lucas.
Bridger: His generation grew up expecting this. It's not a revelation; it's a confirmation.

That's from an old show that nobody outside my family admits to liking, SeaQuest. (Yes! I am old! And no, I did not have a crush on Lucas because he was kind of annoying, though I always had the vague feeling that I ought to. Ahem.) In the relevant episode there are aliens aboard the ship (okay, maybe there are reasons nobody admits to liking it) and, as the characters are discussing, everyone's shocked and amazed except for Lucas, the teenage genius on board. He's not shocked and amazed because this is the way the world is supposed to be.

This is how I feel about electing Obama president. I'm getting uncomfortable, progressing to slightly irritated, about all the happy, weepy, I'm-so-proud-of-our-country, it's-so-historic, my-children-will-never-know-what-it's-like-not-to-have-a-black-president (which doesn't even make sense, but I know what they mean) posts and essays and letters-to-children I've been seeing in the past several days. I'm glad they're happy, but I think their reason for happiness is kind of weird. In this way, I am not old. I know it's historic, but I don't honestly feel any amazement that we've elected a black ("black") president. There's nothing wrong with that. This is the way the world is supposed to be.

Snapshots

Click:

I've just left the government center, having been told that their website is totally misleading and what I want is in another castle, and decide to try walking to the Board of Elections building where I can vote early. Four blocks later I realize this isn't going to work, and I start heading back. As I'm walking, a brown car pulls alongside me, then climbs halfway up the sidewalk and paces me.

I think I see a female passenger (Eric asked me later why this was important) and it's plain daylight and there are people around, so I'm not terribly concerned; I just move out of easy reach and keep walking. The brown car gets stuck behind another car, and the light turns red, and I cross and start walking back towards my car.

I stop to read the Constitutional Amendments statue-type thing by the sidewalk. Someone hollers behind me, "I love you!!" I'm not sure whether he's talking to me or not, because I don't look back, but I turn the wrong way up a one-way street and the brown car doesn't follow.

Click:

"I want to know if the cystic fibrosis test covers a particular mutation," I tell the woman who answered the hospital's telephone.

"Okay, well, I can see if the system will tell me," she says dubiously. She looks. She finds nothing. "Sorry. But I can give you the number of the lab that does it, MLabs. --Wait. Where are you calling from?"

"My cell phone," I say, cautiously.

"I mean, are you a patient or what?"

I explain my situation. She says, "Okay. Because I'm not supposed to give you medical information if you're not a physician. Like, I can't give you this information because I'm not a physician either. There's a law that says I can't give this to you."

"But I'm not asking for advice," I say. "I just want to know a detail about the procedure."

"I'm sorry, but I can't tell you that. I can't even give you the number. It's my job, I have to obey this law."

I realize there's no use arguing, so I get her to repeat the name of the lab and tell me the city they're located in. I say sweetly, "Then I'll call them myself. Thanks for your help." I call the lab and they're perfectly helpful. I hope that the woman worries all night about whether or not she should have given me the lab's name and city.

We could probably find a renter for the house.

On the way to work today I heard a radio DJ discuss how he went with a friend to an appliance warehouse and was embarrassed when his friend tried bargaining with a salesperson for a TV. "He said, 'I don't like this price, how about X instead.' I was mortified. I put my head down and walked away. I mean, who DOES that??" I turned it off because I was yelling, "People from other cultures, you narrow-minded twit!"

We had Easter dinner with Eric's family. I assisted by braiding the dinner roll dough and setting the table. Over dinner, we discussed making biofuels, moving to the country, white asparagus, conversations you never want to have with your mother (Brenda was having one and her daughter was trying hard not to), and our house. Angie says we overpaid, at least for the amount of time we're staying here. Eric (and Angie's husband) disagreed, saying that part of that judgment was hindsight; if the economy hadn't turned south, we'd have been fine. "As it is, we might have to move a year later than we planned," he said. Brenda said, "You won't move." I said nothing.

Previous to dinner, we were sent out to Kroger to get an Easter basket for Addie. She is one year and eleven days old. We got a felt basket, a little stuffed animal, and a box of banana toddler cookies, and the mothers added shoes before they presented it. On the way back to the car, we discussed whether we would want to give our kids Easter baskets and how we would celebrate Easter, if at all, since we're not religious. (Our solution was to get invited to the nearest grandparents' house for dinner ever year. And I'd be happy to celebrate it as a "welcome to spring" sort of thing.) "I mean, Christmas is more of a secularized holiday," Eric said.

"So is Easter," I said. "At least, where I grew up it is. I had no awareness growing up of this fish-on-Fridays thing, and I still don't think that our spring breaks always included Easter like yours did. And we certainly never got Good Friday off." I looked up my old school district (Lake Washington), and I remembered correctly. Their spring break is next week. We are moving. In one year, I start job-hunting.

I made this bread today. It started yesterday--well, Thursday really, with taking my sourdough starter out of the fridge and feeding it. I'm really liking this starter thing. I flubbed parts of the recipe, but the bread turned out very nice anyway--crackly brown crust, chewy inside with pretty good crumb. It makes an excellent toasting bread with cheese. Still not sour; I think I just need to wait for my starter to be older for that, but even if I never get actual sourness, the starter seems to make pretty darn good bread. This recipe made four small loaves, just enough for me to eat before it gets stale (with maybe a little help from Eric). I may freeze the others for Thanksgiving--or I may keep them for subsequent weeks. I plan to make this Buttermilk Cluster roll for Thanksgiving, so we won't be completely lacking bread.

I made a Meijer run today, while Eric was getting fitted for his first pair of glasses ever (he only needs them for driving so far, the lucky stiff), for Thanksgiving supplies. We're having Thanksgiving here--I forget if I've written this before--but not actually having it, so to speak; the mothers are still providing most of the food. But their house is undergoing a Five-Year Plan for renovations, and our dining room is bigger, so we're eating here. But I'm still making rolls and casserole and mashed potatoes (because Brenda doesn't like cheese) and squash and pie, and serving snacks and cider. So there is preliminary cleaning happening this weekend, with the bulk of it happening Wednesday (which Eric might have off), and there will be preliminary cooking and chopping Wednesday. I love the holidays. Hearing the Christmas music in the stores already is only half spoiling it. (I was in Meijer today in the shoe section and heard "And so this is Christmas," coming out of the loudspeakers, and said aloud, "No, it's not, it's not even Thanksgiving yet, people." I truly don't understand this.)

Bread

I baked my first bread made from my sourdough starter today. Aside from not actually being sour, it turned out wonderfully. I'm all excited about having grown my own yeast. The bread is soft with a crispy crust and a pretty open crumb, tastes pretty much like French bread from the store (it could use slightly more salt, too), and made a great grilled-cheese sandwich. Also good with apple butter, but then, any bread is good with apple butter.

I also received Amish friendship bread starter from Eric's sister and brother-in-law (I'm not sure which of them actually did it). It came with a recipe. The recipe requires a box of instant pudding mix. What kind of Amish recipe is that? I'm going to make the bread, as it so happens we have a box of instant pudding mix that we're unlikely ever to use up any other way, but I was tempted to track down the originator of this recipe and take issue with him or her. I'm fairly sure that boxes of instant pudding mix are not a common Amish crop.

Christmas shopping

I went Christmas shopping yesterday. Our plan was to finish Christmas shopping by the end of October, in order to avoid the too-early Christmas decorations and music. I found that, near the end of October, I was too late--to avoid Christmas merchandise, at least. Christmas merchandise in the fall is acceptable and even laudable in a craft store, because it takes that long to finish things. Lowe's? Not so much. Lowe's was even playing Christmas music, a circumstance that caused me to decamp as quickly as I could once I found they didn't have what I wanted.

Yet another reason to prefer Home Depot--they also had Christmas stuff out, but they weren't as obvious about it. Plus no employee there steered me away from the perfectly serviceable stones I was considering for my garden paths saying "You'll want something more decorative, and I’m afraid we don't have anything; you should have come in two months ago."

I did get some good things, including exercise equipment for Mom and a woodcarving vise for Dad (why did I buy such heavy things for flying with me across the country?). But I got quickly tired out. I don't have the stamina for shopping anymore. I'll go to the bookstore tonight (and return the shelving unit from BB&B I bought for us that fell apart as I took it out of the box), and everything else--except things for Eric's friends where he has no ideas and I can't help him--I'll order online, and we'll be done. And then we won't go shopping, except for the grocery store, until January. Let's see how well this one works out.

Let us treat you to four cell phones

Eric told me last night over dinner that he'd transferred money from his account to our shared one, and to remind him to switch his direct deposit, because we only had fifteen dollars in the shared account.

"Fifteen dollars??" I screeched.

He looked at me as if it was no big deal. "Yeah. I was checking for my FAFSA. But now there's more, because I transferred some."

"We need to go over our finances," I said.

Accordingly, after dinner, we did. There were several last-minute charges that we'd made for the trip--I'm still not used to the idea of Eric using his bank card as a credit card and therefore rendering me unable to track the account in the checkbook--and there were also four charges made on the Tuesday we were in the Dominican Republic. Three to one cell phone company, and one to another. "Our account is compromised," Eric said, and called up the Visa number on the card and cancelled both our bank cards. (Later we realized that since I don't use mine except to get cash, and I can't remember my PIN so I don't even do that, it was almost certainly his card that was compromised.) Then, for good measure, we checked our credit cards, but there's been no untoward activity on those.

We kept our credit cards in the room safe while we were in the DR, and the only times we used money since that shopping trip last Saturday was to buy tourist cards to get into the DR, tip the maid, and buy dinner on Sunday, all with cash. My conjecture is that we ran into an unscrupulous cashier sometime on Saturday, maybe even one who overheard us talking about being out of the country. But I guess that's not the point. We're lucky that it was a bank card, and therefore the charges stopped once they used up the money in the account, and also lucky that we didn't have as much in there as we normally do. Eric transferred the money he'd put in the account, plus that fifteen dollars, right back out again, and he's going to the bank today to dispute the charges.

It burns.

I saw this on a site just now: "Bees, mosquito's and ants, oh my!"

It's an article title. The mind boggles. I tried to comment, to say "How could you possibly, in any way, in any sense on this good green world we call home, think that that apostrophe belonged there? How?" but it didn't let me without registering, so I shall nurse my pain in quiet. I mean, after I hit "Publish Post."

Customer service

And I just remembered this other thing: I called another florist today, one that a couple of people have recommended as good and cheaper. The girl who answered said, "Well, the person who does wedding flowers has a note on her desk, and she's dealing with another bride right now. So I could take your name and number and have her call you back."

"That sounds fine," I said.

"Your name?"

"Jenny," I said, and spelled my last name.

"Okay, she'll give you a call. Thanks for calling, good--"

"Wait!"

"What?" she said, surprised.

"My number?"

"Oh, right," she said vaguely. I gave her my phone number. I'm not so sure I should expect a call.