The things I haven't done

I was reading an excellent article on Bill Clinton in the lastest Esquire magazine. (The format may have gone over to sexist pandering, but it still has some first-class essays.) I've always been a Clinton fan, and I'm proud as punch about the work he's taken on since leaving the White House. His mentors and role models have been Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela - that says a lot for him, in my opinion. Anyway, he's working on saving not the whole world, but at least a little piece of it by zeroing in on HIV/AIDS in Africa as well as taking on numerous other objectives around the globe that he hopes will ease poverty and suffering. Since his cardiac surgery he sees his own mortality staring back at him in the mirror, and he wants to do something that matters with the time he has left. I know how he feels.

I wanted to save the world once. Didn't many of us? Weren't we at some point burning with the desire to do something? It's a sad thing to be on the downward side of life and realize that you've mostly spent it in the most mundane and self-centered way. Maybe I can point to necessity for that - I had to eat and I had to have shelter - but I think that that has a kernel of a lie in it. I just never got off my ass and did it.

And while I'm ruminating on paths not taken, I've been thinking a lot lately about a job offer that I turned down right out of college. A woman entrepeneur wanted to hire me as her personal assistant and speech writer. Wasn't that cool? But I was fresh out of college - at the age of 35 - and I had already accepted a job at a start-up computer company; I didn't know then that I could have jumped ships. I wonder where I would have gone if I had?

You take one street instead of another, and you change a thread in the weave of the world.

To quote Lili von Schtupp . . .

I'm tired.

So tired that when I took a short nap, I dreamt bout being tired. Then I dreamt about sleeping - standing up against the doorway, curled up next to the sink. Heh. So tonight I'm passing Mommy duty off to darlong, and I'm going to drug myself, pop in the earplugs, and hopefully sleep straight through for about nine hours. From my lips to God's ear.

The Pixilator is going strong; she's gained weight and also I think added some height. Now she's about four inches tall :) Mao is being just outstanding with her. He's always been the most patient of all the cats when it came to her, but today he actually started playing and wrestling very gently. He'd let her "tackle" him and then roll around; he'd pretend to bite her, but you could clearly see that his teeth were biting air. She loved it. Little will play tag with her, but there hasn't been any rough housing between them - yet. Rocky is still scared, Mokie still hisses and whaps her on the head, and Holmes is still mostly jealous. But, you know, no bloodshed, no mayhem. It's going remarkably smoothly.

Thank you, everyone, for the comments about how cute the kitten is :) I'll try not to spam you with Pixel pics. Emphasis on try.

I'm going to be applying for a contract job that not only is for call center software support - but it's for tax and accounting software. During tax season. I? Am freakin' insane. But I figure that it's got an end date of April, 2006, and I can do it part-time, so what the hell.