Alive and Well

Just checking in here. I tend to abandon the blog when I'm busy with things that I don't want to (or cannot) procrastinate from.  Basically, work started up again, which is good because I was kind of climbing the walls there for a bit. It's slightly odd, though, because while I work for a Joint Committee ("Joint" referring to both the House and the Senate) and my "real" office is physically located on the Senate side and because the office I work out of 90% of the time is the Senate Library and has nothing whatsoever to do with the House, all Joint Committees must choose a chamber through which to process its paperwork. My Committee chose the House, so in all technicality, I am a House employee (even though I've been over on that side of the Hill maybe 4 times in the past 6 months).

Our Committee's polices dictate that we wear full business attire whenever the House is in session (and my own boss prefers business attire at all times, but that's another issue). Committee staff tends to dress up more than Member/Senator office staff and non-office staff (like the library, etc). The House has been in session, the Senate has not. And again, I am physically located on the Senate side, and it's about eleventy billion degrees below zero outside these days. End result? I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the entire US Senate wearing a dress and nylons. Most people are running around in jeans (dressed up jeans, but jeans nonetheless) or are otherwise in "weekend" type clothing, which is very weather appropriate.  I get odd looks in the lunch line. But rules are rules and truth be told, even if work-casual type clothing were allowed (slash not frowned upon) I wouldn't have a thing to wear anyway. I've got two speeds these days--"to the nines" and "baggy, possibly with holes".

This brings me to today's outfit. 

Sorry for the poor picture quality--it was the best I could do. Closet mirrors don't make the best setups (particularly not when said closets are in extremely messy bedrooms-come-bike-garages). Anyway...

This was my first day wearing this dress which I love for a few reasons: it's pretty warm, it's pretty stylish, it makes me feel as if I should be employed at a newspaper sometime in the 1940s (one of these days, I have to get into how I'm pretty sure that on a subconscious level, I have modeled my life after Lois Lane's...it's un-freaking-canny). Also, it earned me about 30 compliments today (one from a particular young man who, well, it's nice to get compliments from if you're me :) ).

The major reason I love this dress, however, is that I bought it when I first moved to DC, in or about July 2004. The idea was that this would make a nice interview outfit, and I had images of myself toiling away into the wee hours of the morning for some important Senator, in my first incarnation of Capitol Hill career ambition. Two issues: it was too small, and was therefore an "incentive" outfit and, I did not have a job on the Hill at the time and wound up having very serious problems getting one. I eventually wound up moving in the exact opposite direction of the "incentive" to fit into this dress, and after years of hard work and heartbreak, gave up on the idea of ever working on Capitol Hill.

Today, after a few more years of hard work (physically and professionally), I wore my dress, toiling away in the US Senate. I didn't even realize the relative significance of this until late this evening. It's just something that happened. And the irony of ALL of this is that I became a librarian SPECIFICALLY because I had given up the idea of a Capitol Hill career. This was the next phase, a new leaf, "Plan B", however you want to think of it. The job with the Senate Library pretty much landed in my lap, it was almost a total fluke. I had absolutely no intention of being a Capitol Hill librarian--I actually wanted to work (if I'd had my pick) in an academic library's rare book room. Anyway, now I'm working on Year 2 in the Senate. Also, I broke out this dress not because I finally had the job and the dress size to match my mental picture--I broke it out because it's warm and it fit....something that can be said about maybe four articles of clothing currently in my closet. The image that ambitious but pretty lost 23-year-old just happened...by accident. 

Tomorrow, I think I'm going to go do something that my 19-year-old self promised myself I'd do when I'd "made it" on the Hill. Go get my shoes shined. It's another little oddity in my bizarre obsession with a Capitol Hill career--there's a shoe shine station in one of the tunnels on the House side that, as a winter break intern in 2000/2001, my very first of what would turn out to be many work experiences on the Hill (during the Clinton/Bush changeover time), I looked at as...I don't know. I wasn't impressed with it because shoe shine stations are all over the place. But I guess I just pictured various members of the Washington political elite stopping for a quick shoe shine on their way to or from important meetings or something. I don't know. I just remember liking it, and telling myself that once I'd made it, I'd go get a shoe shine. 

I don't feel like a member of the Washington political elite and I'm not. I may be just about the farthest thing from it and I no longer (and haven't for years) strive to be among them. But somehow still, I feel like I've made it. And my shoes are pretty scuffed up :).

Comments

[Catherine]

I <3 this post.

[Catherine]

Why thank you, Mrs. Finke :)