CALL ME SNAKE

I’m self-employed which, as many of you know, is just one step above being unemployed, and a small step at that. The other day, while our children were being tended to by our excellent but high-priced babysitter (who earns more per hour than I do), I came up to the house from my office to have lunch and ended up reading an article in the Boston Globe.

”You’re supposed to be working,” my 7-year-old daughter admonished me, upon entering the room. And so I was. We were paying that excellent babysitter a lot of money in the hopes that I could work and earn even more money–or at least enough to come out even–but there I was reading an article about new problems with the Big Dig. Or some other kind of new problems (of which there is no shortage). I forget. When what I was supposed to be doing was writing about supercomputer simulations of galactic mergers and the regulatory role of black holes on galaxy evolution. My daughter’s timely rebuke kept me in line, and soon I was back downstairs, diligently sitting at my computer while staring off blankly into space. Thinking of those new problems, and maybe some old problems as well…