Let is not be said that all of my life has been crap. On Sunday, for instance, things got better for awhile thanks to an unseasonable snowstorm in my uncle’s neighbourhood. Suddenly my mother’s car was free and we were off the hook for the afternoon…so we booted downtown for high tea.

Sigh. I am a middle-class girl, raised by middle-class people, married to a middle-class guy. I have largely middle-class ideas and middle-class expectations. But every once in awhile I get a glimpse of a world I’ve only read about, a world of exquisite service, spotless linens and a piano player who could do “Always on My Mind” in a classy way. Of course, this was also a world I soiled with sloppy tea-pouring, clumsy treat-handling and the presence of the whirling dervish crumb storm we call son. And yet, I felt the magic.

Maybe it was because I was dressed up. Maybe it was because everyone loved the Blake, despite his tendency to scatter scone crumbs in a 5-mile radius of the expensive house high chair. Maybe it was the effect of the tea, quaintly named “Eve’s Temptation.” Maybe it was getting out of the house on a weekend I’d resigned to laundry & marking. Maybe it was seeing people my own age in a non-professional setting. Maybe it was fulfilling one of my life goals and being present at a birthday party (albeit sans present). Maybe it was the luxury.

But I’m tempted to say that it was none of those things; instead it was the secret snob smothered by a lifetime of suburban experiences and socially conscious study. It was the part of me that walked into the ballroom of the Hotel Macdonald the day after Preacher & Martha got married and thought quietly, I belong where people will wait upon me.

We all think that, but in my case it’s true.

So that was good. And my job interview on Tuesday went well, so much so that they even called my references. But the negative balance of the month reasserted itself powerfully as the week progressed: I didn’t get that job; Betty got her job; and while I was away on the interview one of the subs found my field trip money and sent it down to the office, where it currently sits in lock-up until I can get the budget secretary to both appear at her desk and get off her long personal calls. I’ve been reprimanded twice for my (admittedly stupid and careless) money-handling; a nice touch on a day when I had to flee the department office whenever anyone showed up for fear that they would ask me about my interview and I would start crying.

(I did actually start crying this morning, but then a student showed up for help and I had to pull myself together after a measly two teardrops.)

One last good thing before I forget that anything is good about this month: yesterday St. Jack came into my school to talk to Theresa’s creative writing class about writing professionally. It was awesome: we’ve fallen out of touch over the past few years and I’ve never really understood how he got to his place in publishing, nor have I ever really known about the two years he spent doing a creative writing degree. Jack intimidates me somewhat; I always wonder why he’d want to talk to me. Yesterday I discovered, as I do every few years, that there is a reason why I can still list him as a friend rather than someone I used to know when I slept through the night and spent too much money on hair dye.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 4/28/2005 09:25:00 p.m.