Good morning, world!

When my son was a baby, we'd pick him up out of his crib in the a.m. and look out the window and say "Good morning, world!" Well, when you get to be my age and there aren't any grandchildren to pick up (the dogs REALLY don't count here, and yes, I DO know I'm going to have some grandkids someday so I'm not lobbying anymore....) then in some sense this blog is my "baby" and helps get me up in the a.m.

I went to bed with all sorts of thoughts whirling in my head, but at first light none of them seemed compelling enough to write about. Ok, so my daughter didn't vote in the LA mayoral election yesterday. But when I got to my SECOND question, "do you know who's running?" I could hear her bristle. "Duh....Hahn and Vila....(sorry I have to nail this spelling down)....Hahn has the negative commercials and Vila what's his face has 60% in the exit polls." So my work hasn't been in vain.

And then I thought about writing about the traditional New England town meeting. Ours was uncharacteristically short (the main articles proposed by the Selectmen were finished by 8PM or so) and then the traditional horse's ass gets up and starts on the Patriot Act. I probably would have voted for the resolution, which is anti-Patriot Act (because of the library stuff), but listening to him pontificate not only bored me to tears but made me wonder WHY the rest of the people were sitting there letting him do it. We are SOOOO polite. So I left. For nine years I've been held hostage up at the front table. No, that's not true. I loved every minute of it and in fact I learned last night that sitting on a bench on the side, with no water pitcher and no candy passed out from Town Counsel makes the meeting much less palatable. BUT YOU CAN GET UP AND VOTE WITH YOUR FEET, which I did. What a freeing experience. It had the additional value of allowing me to take a pass on the question of whether MA should pull National Guard troops out of Iraq (not that anyone asked us.) As active as I am in state and national politics, I have traditionally been against putting things like this on the town meeting warrant. Conversely I have a real problem when anyone on the Democratic Town Committee implies that we should get involved in local issues (H's A has proposed this too....). So I'm an equal opportunity naysayer.

But I digress.

So, Margie, this is about how you weren't going to write anything, but you're writing. Isn't that a CONTRADICTION IN TERMS? Yes, but I'll tell you why.

Because I remembered how I spent part of yesterday.

In a meeting hearing some very talented and, I'm assuming, well-paid consultants say something I said after one month experience with the situation. (They've been around on and off since December.) On the one hand, I wanted to shout "Right On!" when they pointed out some verities. On the other hand, I could have screamed, knowing that if I had said the same things, they would be dismissed out of hand.

In part this is my fault (BLAME THE VICTIM!) You see, I would have calmly sat down and pointed out (well, I would have been calm at first but then my animation would have gotten the best of me) where the disconnect was. And then expected the audience to go "Right on!" If I were to be a successful management consultant (which I wasn't) I would listen to b.s., stroke my beard or smooth my $500 well-tailored suit, and begin a long slow process of getting the client to see the error of his ways, all the time supporting him/her in their view of themselves. And I am emotionally and constitutionally incapable of that.

So here's one of my plans for retirement. I go in and work as a temp in an organization for a week to a month. At the end of the month, I go into the head poobah and say "you want to know what's REALLY going on here?" Hell, this is a reality show! Am I stupid! My daughter works in LA...I'll get her to start writing the treatment IMMEDIATELY!