Ramblings…

(Originally published Thursday, April 11, 2013)

Have you had a math problem or chemistry problem (or whatever you may be bad at) and tried to grasp the concept of how you get from problem to solution, and you literally think so hard about it that your head starts to hurt? Yeah, I didn’t think it was possible, and sometimes people will joke about it whenever you say casually, “let me think about it”, and their response is “don’t hurt yourself.” Well I exercised my brain so hard today that I think I literally pulled a muscle. Math has always been something that I’ve been terrible at. In college, I was miraculously able to ace Accounting I, with the help of my dad. Bless his heart, I remember Daddy trying to teach me how to do certain things, and for whatever reason there was a block that would keep me from understanding it and figuring out how to work the problems. By the end of the tutoring sesh, Daddy was frustrated, I was hysterically crying, and I was maybe 25% better off than I was before. But over time, I got it.

So for the past two weeks I’ve been undergoing intense training with my new job. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to try to cram this much stuff, well with the exception of college exams. The difference here is I know I ACTUALLY have to utilize this knowledge in order to perform well at my job. My trainer keeps telling me how great I’m doing and how impressed she is with me being able to recall things so quickly. I think she’s just being nice and trying to encourage me, or MAYBE I am just that good and I don’t give myself enough credit. Whatever the case maybe, my head still hurts, even though it’s 7 hours later.

Last week, I shadowed some of the designers at their appointments. This one designer I was with would take her shoes off at every residence we went into. I thought to myself, “Ok….just make yourself at home.” Well today while I was at the corporate office training room, I decide to take my shoes off. NOTE (because Daddy I know you’re reading this shaking your head and thinking, “Anna!”): it was just the trainer and myself and my feet were starting to get blisters from my shoes. I made the comment once I took them off that I going to be like the aforementioned designer and not wear my shoes. My trainer responded that it is actually company policy to take your shoes off in any residence. She later explained to me that many companies now require employees to do so because people up here have made it such a frequent request. They don’t want dirt and street filth into their homes. While it’s understandable to some degree, I think it’s kind of ironic because some of the people up here have this preconception of southerners not wearing shoes. This immediately made me recall an episode of SATC where Carrie attends a friend’s baby shower and the host makes all of the guests leave their shoes by the front door because they don’t want the children exposed to any unnecessary filth. Once the shower is over, Carrie goes to find her shoes, in this case her $400 Manolo Blahniks, only to find that they’ve been stolen. Well lucky for me, I’m too poor to afford such extravagant shoes, and even if someone were to steal them, I doubt they could wear them because I have a size 11 foot.

I was talking to my one of my girlfriends back in Mississippi a couple of weeks ago and she said, “You know, I knew you were moving to D.C., but then the more I thought about it, I realized you ACTUALLY live near the President.” I laughed and said, “Well, yeah…I mean D.C. is the nation’s capital.” It’s funny now because I actually had this same Aha moment earlier in the week. My trainer, who used to work for the company for 15 years and then retired, told me that she actually did design work for Jenna Bush while George W. was still in office. Then last week while we were at one of our client’s condo, the owner told me that he bought that condo 32 years ago and Truman lived in the same building while he was in office for two weeks while they were re-decorating the White House. He joked and said, “You women just can’t have anything that once belonged to another woman else has can you?” I said, “Oh no sir, we want it to be our own.” After all of that and knowing that I really do live in the Capital City, I sometimes have to pinch myself. It’s all so surreal. I tend to keep myself so busy I guess it never “clicks”. When I get time for myself, mostly when I’m out running down by the Waterfront I’ll just stare at the Washington Monument, watch the reflection from the lights of the airplanes flying over the Potomac in the evenings, smell the cherry blossoms, and I catch myself being in awe.

Then I think, “Damn…I live in D.C.”