Monday and Tuesday

The interview was splendid. I'm afraid to talk about it--afraid to jinx it. No doubt dozens of thoroughly qualified people trooped into their offices after I left, and it's anybody's guess who gets the final nod. (Equally doubtless: my farflung home base is as much a drawback to them as it is to me, though they didn't bat an eye.) Can't hope. We'll see.

What was interesting, though, was getting a taste of what the world might be like in a truly woman-run environment. Not women-as-men--women who train to compete in the same language with the same tactics as men--women who must suppress an entire universe of their reality to appear competitive and dedicated. This woman--the one I'm dying to tell you about--is no chest beater. She smiles and her eyes crinkle up, and she doesn't ask interview questions: she just talks, and sets you at ease, and sprinkles her conversation with asides about the state of the world and the earth, and politics, and how frightening it is to raise up children now. She laughs and throws her head back--she flatters and engages, and in the end those of us trained in interviewing the other way worry that time is slipping away and ask, "Is there anything you want to know about me?" and she'll say, "Oh, tell me about your kids!" And you know that she's not asking to hold it against you later, but because she has kids of her own.

It was a lovely hour. Even if nothing comes of it, it made me so, so happy.

And look where I got to be yesterday because I wasn't hoofing it into Manhattan for a job. Liam made a gingerbread house at school. And Maisie's Dad came to visit to see her school holiday concert. Everybody's happy.