Jaci Dawn

The title to this blog post has nothing to do with anything. It’s just that it is the first day of March and it sounded funny.

February went out with a wintry blast and March marched in like a lazy lion. We got snow. Don’t hold your breath: it isn’t like the sort of March blizzard I have seen blow across central Nevada in March, dumping truckloads of the stuff. (Digressing here: I remember a March trip when we got caught in a blizzard just outside of Eureka. Dad had to chain up & my brother helped him. We were following some trucks, traveling in a station wagon: my dad, mom, brother, sister and myself. It must have been about 1971, the last time we had the station wagon (Terry will correct me in the comments). There was a disabled car on the shoulder that everyone passed but we saw a young woman sitting behind the wheel, so Dad stopped. She was traveling alone, unprepared for winter in Nevada and terrified of accepting help from strangers. But somehow Dad and Terry convinced her that we were safe – a family traveling to Ely – and she reluctantly got into the car with us. We took her into Ely, got her set up in a motel. I don’t know if we gave her numbers for tow trucks or help or what happened after that. I don’t remember any other contact with her, just that terrible snow and her frightened face in the car with us.)

Seque back to the snow we got today:

I might even have to use 4×4 to get out of the driveway! OK, so it wasn’t dramatic and compared to the storms that moved through the Midwest February 29 (praying for you folks!), it was not even a blip on the weather calendar. But it was pretty and pretty temporary.

I went to work.

And somehow I want to turn this post around to what I do for a living, so bear with me. I started out awkwardly with snow and a funny unrelated headline.

We’ve had some very good, intense days at work and I have not felt like doing anything after hours. I’ve come home, napped, played cards and watched TV for the past two weeks. My naps consist of falling into deep non-REM sleep and rising back slowly to consciousness after 30-45 minutes. It’s a way of coping with stress.

It isn’t a bad stress: I love my job. But it can be intense.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned I work in real estate. I am not an agent (that’s a job for extroverts and I am not one), but I work in the closing end of things. It’s fascinating work. It’s also very mundane and involves a lot of filing which involves a lot of paper cuts.

I have learned to love invisible band-aids.

It is work that demands a lot of attention to details, memorization, and adherence to filing nuances. I file alphabetically, by last name: to file any other way is heresy. We file by a numeric code, which is not heresy but is better than by address (in which case, I file by the street name, then the number). I think people with an organized mind consider filing an art and I consider filing an art. I’m just so far behind it all the time at home.

Do Not Mess With My Filing. That’s up there with: Do not get between me and my first cup of coffee.

The job is interesting because it involves math.

Did I hear collective groans? No, no, no – it isn’t like that at all! Or maybe it is.

I grew up during an era when math was not considered a “feminine” domain. I had the double-whammy of being in 4th grade when we moved from “long division” to “short division”. If you think you know what “long division” is, tell me about remainders. If you don’t know what a remainder is, you have never done long division. Trust me. I spent my entire 4th grade year curled up in a ball with my fists in my eyes, trying to shut out the reality of math homework. My mom did my math (in tears herself) and gave me five minute breaks to run around the yard during which time I pretended to be a wild horse. We spent a lot of time on the telephone with my best friend, Trudi, and her mom. Trudi was also curled up in the fetal position in denial.

In 8th grade, I had a wonderful math teacher (Mr. English, oddly enough), who told me I was smarter than I gave myself credit for. He was the one and only math teacher I ever had who gave me a vote of confidence. His class was the only class I actually learned anything in.

So here I am, in 2012, working with math for 4-6 hours a day. MATH.

And it’s fascinating. It’s fun. It’s easy to make an error. But ALL math errors can be corrected. It’s amazing how you can manipulate numbers. It’s amazing how numbers create patterns.

I have always been very good at patterns. Patterns on the phone, patterns on the typewriter (it’s the only reason I understand QWERTY – I never took typing but still use pick-and-poke. I can pick-and-poke pretty darn fast).

We use formulas at work. Formulas are not fail-safe but they are simple and easy to understand. *IF* you understand the very basics of math.

I am amazed at the number of people who do not understand the basics of math. Percentages, mostly.

I homeschooled my kids. Don’t know if I have ever mentioned that, either. I have great disdain for the Entity called Public School (or Government School). I love teachers – or most teachers – but I disdain the Public Entity.

I had to teach my kids math. It helped that my husband has conquered abstracts like Calculus. But practical math lessons?

Ha! I get a score for this because I will bet my “bottom dollar” that my kids still figure percentages in their heads the way I taught them. And my kids understand percentage.

I took them shopping, you see. I can figure 35% off of an item in a thrice: ten percent three times plus one half of that. Or: 35% of $30.00 = $9.00+$1.50 or $10.50.

So my work comes naturally. I do use a calculator (it speeds up the process), but the work is still about percentages.There’s a rhythm to %. It’s almost musical. Maybe it is musical. Music is a math skill.

The stress isn’t in the math. The stress is in dealing with interruptions, extroverts who need to talk, the phone (email me, please), and volume. Volume is a good stressor.

The interruptions and extroverts talking or calling me leave me exhausted. The volume can be tense. Right now, we are having a VERY good opening to March. What this means economically is beyond me (that’s advanced math). What it means personally is that I will be immersed in math tomorrow.

Extroverts who thrive on the spoken word will never understand: math is a silent place to go, a hidden garden. You can’t have multiple interruptions and you can’t have a conversation at the same time.

Maybe that is the beauty of math that I seek: the silence.

Have you ever noticed how silent snow is?

See how neatly I moved back to snow? Unrelated to the subject at hand, but neatly sandwiched in.

This is what happens when I am over-tired.