wanted to let you know that I won’t be in tomorrow for your normal Tuesday. I was at work and got a call that Mama fell and I had to catch a flight down to California. I might be out for a few weeks, at the least. Sorry. I’ll give you a call when I’m settled, when I know a little more about how long I’ll be gone.”
So she really hadn’t seen me this morning. I guess the pit boss must’ve pulled her aside during that very rotation. Now that my brain had figured out the timeline of events, it settled on the effect. Rachel was gone.
I called her back when I got to my car and when I finished the call, I sat there for a second in thought. It looked like Mack was, in fact, going to be my dealer for a while. My momentary attraction to him had brought up that “single” word again, and it wasn’t just my taxes reminding me this time.
Thinking of my list had brought to mind that if I was going to have such high expectations of my spouse, I should only expect to have to meet his hopefully equally rigorous stipulations as well. And, as it didn’t seem very likely that I was going to be able to stop the decline of my follicular output, I needed to step up my efforts and put this spouse-seeking-venture front and center before I became completely bald and decrepit.
If I was being honest with myself, it had been a while since I’d been on many dates, as my focus for the last two years had been the research and publication of my latest professional manuscript (in hopes it might help me toward my tenure goal). So I resolved to log in to some of my old online dating profiles that night after my classes.
I pulled my car out of the casino parking lot and began the few-minute drive back to my condo overlooking the water so I could change for work. I sighed happily as I drove along the waterfront, the sun reflecting off the glassy surface of the sound.
Sure, I had a good forty minute ferry ride that I could use to log onto some of those dating sites, but even reading was sometimes tough, finding myself happy just looking out at the picturesque landscape of mountains and water that made up where I lived.
I sighed. Yes, the sites could wait until tonight.
3
Irrational numbers
L eaning forward and propping my elbows up on my desk, I looked around my office in the university mathematics building.
The organized shelves full of books, the perfectly placed posters, and the predictable ticking of my mathematician’s clock (instead of 3 it said -4+7, instead of 7 it said the square root of 49, and so on) calmed the wicked instability the discovery of the bald-spot had brought to my life. Things were going to be okay. I could handle this. If getting a husband and a house had helped Kirsten climb up the ranks in the science department, it was worth a try for me. And I needed to start with the husband first.
I clicked through my email one last time before shutting things down for the night and heading home. Just as I reached to grab my purse, my door opened and Henry, the sitting mathematics department head, walked in.
“Lauren.” He dipped his head in a hello. His gray hair stuck out in odd directions and (as always) a geometric-patterned sweater vest hugged his lumpy septuagenarian body. Wire rimmed glasses perched on his red, bulbous nose. He harrumphed and his wild white eyebrows bobbed up and down as he looked around my office.
“Hey Henry. What can I do for you?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, our new professor will be moving up in a week or so and I was wondering, since your offices will be right next to each other, if you wouldn’t mind showing him the ropes. Becoming a mentor, of sorts.”
I blinked slowly. The weight of one-more-thing pushed down on my shoulders so palpably that my hand reached up to my neck in hopes of relieving some of the pressure.
“Well…”
I really didn’t want to. Besides the fact that I quite liked the whole “being the person who knew more” part about acting as a mentor, it
So she really hadn’t seen me this morning. I guess the pit boss must’ve pulled her aside during that very rotation. Now that my brain had figured out the timeline of events, it settled on the effect. Rachel was gone.
I called her back when I got to my car and when I finished the call, I sat there for a second in thought. It looked like Mack was, in fact, going to be my dealer for a while. My momentary attraction to him had brought up that “single” word again, and it wasn’t just my taxes reminding me this time.
Thinking of my list had brought to mind that if I was going to have such high expectations of my spouse, I should only expect to have to meet his hopefully equally rigorous stipulations as well. And, as it didn’t seem very likely that I was going to be able to stop the decline of my follicular output, I needed to step up my efforts and put this spouse-seeking-venture front and center before I became completely bald and decrepit.
If I was being honest with myself, it had been a while since I’d been on many dates, as my focus for the last two years had been the research and publication of my latest professional manuscript (in hopes it might help me toward my tenure goal). So I resolved to log in to some of my old online dating profiles that night after my classes.
I pulled my car out of the casino parking lot and began the few-minute drive back to my condo overlooking the water so I could change for work. I sighed happily as I drove along the waterfront, the sun reflecting off the glassy surface of the sound.
Sure, I had a good forty minute ferry ride that I could use to log onto some of those dating sites, but even reading was sometimes tough, finding myself happy just looking out at the picturesque landscape of mountains and water that made up where I lived.
I sighed. Yes, the sites could wait until tonight.
3
Irrational numbers
L eaning forward and propping my elbows up on my desk, I looked around my office in the university mathematics building.
The organized shelves full of books, the perfectly placed posters, and the predictable ticking of my mathematician’s clock (instead of 3 it said -4+7, instead of 7 it said the square root of 49, and so on) calmed the wicked instability the discovery of the bald-spot had brought to my life. Things were going to be okay. I could handle this. If getting a husband and a house had helped Kirsten climb up the ranks in the science department, it was worth a try for me. And I needed to start with the husband first.
I clicked through my email one last time before shutting things down for the night and heading home. Just as I reached to grab my purse, my door opened and Henry, the sitting mathematics department head, walked in.
“Lauren.” He dipped his head in a hello. His gray hair stuck out in odd directions and (as always) a geometric-patterned sweater vest hugged his lumpy septuagenarian body. Wire rimmed glasses perched on his red, bulbous nose. He harrumphed and his wild white eyebrows bobbed up and down as he looked around my office.
“Hey Henry. What can I do for you?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, our new professor will be moving up in a week or so and I was wondering, since your offices will be right next to each other, if you wouldn’t mind showing him the ropes. Becoming a mentor, of sorts.”
I blinked slowly. The weight of one-more-thing pushed down on my shoulders so palpably that my hand reached up to my neck in hopes of relieving some of the pressure.
“Well…”
I really didn’t want to. Besides the fact that I quite liked the whole “being the person who knew more” part about acting as a mentor, it
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