today i was evaluated.

sounds like i have a disease or am feeling like i might have a learning disability. but its not that much fun.

i had my 1 year evaluation at the office.

overall a very positive review. few of my feelings were hurt. and none of my toes were stepped on. its interesting, in the last firm i was at they almost made me cry (not that that's a great feat, ask my wife). the only criticism was that i tend to not work at the "big picture" scale, causing some friction with coworkers when i don't share in their large view and instead get too caught in the "details".

i can't complain of a review that has that as its con list.

there was even a large push for me to move out of the department i have been working in and towards something else more engaging.

during the evaluation i sat there thinking about how much better it is to get a review like this than to get laid off. last year, just about the time i expected to have a review, instead got walking papers.

within the next few weeks i will go through raises and promotions and work plans, as the office tries to get ready for the new year. the biggest hiccup is that i have to figure out where i am headed in the coming year. what do i want to do with my self that can fit within the framework of the office.

its a big question. and i have very little idea. most of my ideas are about a time somewhere years from now. i suppose i should look at that and see if i can find the baby steps from here to there.

baby steps apparently will keep me sane and take me to the future. i am guessing that Bob knew much more than the rest of us ever will.

...i'll be quiet.

yesterday, after seeing i had blogged about her my wife snuggled up close and expressed love. she made me smile and blush to know i was loved. nothing even PG-13, just the simple leaning into me and telling me that i am her lobster, as it were.

so today we had a full day full of comings and goings and a chocolate fondue. i don't know if i told her i loved her. i don't know if i hugged her to me. the day seems lost in its content. somewhere i am sorry that i may have let the day go without expressing my adoration of her...

...and then tonight, in the midst of me not realizing the day is slipping away, she amazes me. we are hosting friends into our house and as the evening slips later, kevin and i begin to dominate the conversation as only blind boys can. music this, music that. i know that Leslie can only take so much of me in this mood. but as i said i am not noticing the importance of all i am doing. without thinking about it i ask kevin to pick a Jesus and Mary Chain album to introduce a friend to their sound and support a timeline i am purposing. he answers, but not before Leslie turns to me and opinions. i know it is not important to others and it is a minor thing in light of life most days. i am amazed, none-the-less. not that my wife has an opinion. nor that she expresses it.

i find myself stopped by her voice on this subject. Jesus and Mary Chain are an esoteric band that is probably as much status symbol as enjoyment for me.

do you know the Chain?

they are of memories and times past and continue to influence the music i love. but its not a band that Leslie has a history with. and i am not sure she would listen to them if it weren't for me. i am not sure it connects in taste all the way with her. they aren't for many. they are unimportant in the long view.

that she has an opinion defining a difference between Honey's Dead and Stoned and Dethroned means only one thing to me. whether she truly likes to listen to them or not, she has listened to them enough to form an opinion because i listen to them.

i am a bad husband, and i suddenly find the need to track down our Jennifer Knapp albums.

these are the words that begin Milton's most heart-wrenching description of love. "where she is, there also is paradise" it sounds all beautiful and hopeful until you find that the voice is choosing hell over eternity without "her" and then it becomes beautiful and VERY disturbing. we find ourselves in all kinds of pickles over love. there are killings over love or due to unrequited love. there are fortunes made and lost in the pursuit of love. frequently it is expressed that we have lost the meaning of love. that lust and fluid exchange are the only thing we as a culture call love.

i'm not terrible pro-modern-american-culture. i see the problems and generally i find myself a cynic towards them. when it comes to love though i am a helpless romantic. i believe in it. i do not think we have lost it. and i do everything i can to teach it to my daughter. so that when she grows up in an ever more cynical world she too can still have faith in love.

my wife is the thing that leads me ever onward. how quaint, i know. but with her i feel the depth of Milton's words. i follow where she leads, into hell or heaven. it matters not, as long as she is in my arms and i in hers. were she to leave me i would find myself more lost than i think i have ever been. that's saying alot when i for several years wandered the world in the guise of thelostboy.

i don't know that i could write about what makes that love or where it came from. there are so many dimensions. one of the more charming is her imaginary selves. i don't think i really knew of this part of her when we were dating. i might have had a faint introduction to one small aspect of it, but that is not the same thing. my wife has rich, deep, vivid color imaginings about the lives she is not living. in one i think she is a rock star, another a singleton doctor, one of the more charming is that of living a life in ball gowns. i don't know how to describe this to anyone short of calling up images of annie potts in Pretty in Pink, as she dances around the living room in house shoes, a prom dress and a bee-hive. she fantasizes that one day she will be financially able to wear nothing but ball gowns all the time. grocery shopping, house cleaning, playing with our daughter. all in couture. i love this image of my wife. the playfulness it suggests and the blush that plays on her cheeks when she talks of it.

it endears her to me in a way very little else does.

weekdays i ride the train to work. i get off at 4th and Yamhill and then walk across forth to Morrison. on the corner of forth and Morrison there is a bridal and formal shop. they display lovely and (frequently) tragic dresses in their window, come rain or shine. and i look longingly at the gowns imagining which ones leslie would pick to wear to sunday breakfast and saturday market. what dress would she feel comfortable in to take our little girl to the bus stop. it amuses me to no end. as i gaze and day dream i always wonder, if someday i will not just be window shopping, but walking in to buy her a new gown for watering the plants.

i think the day i make the deal that makes my career, instead of going out drinking to celebrate, i will go directly to a dress shop and buy my wife the most impractical-for-daily-life gown i can find. because to see her happy makes me happy.