Yesterday I signed the contract with Client #6,  finished up the project for Client #2, and met with Blessing.

I haven't mentioned her in a while. She's an accountant who rescued the store from a morass of accounting a couple of years ago, and also was willing to help with inventory, which was certainly a major blessing to me. We became friends, so I took her to lunch to discuss how to do invoices and pay taxes on my freelance income. Her husband has been wanting a website for his business, as it happens, so she is going to swap accounting for computer work, and gets to be Client #7.

This coming week I have twenty hours with Client #6,  a couple of cooking shows, five or ten hours of tutoring, and meetings with Clients 4 and 7. Essentially full time work, but I'm going to get a filing system in hand and my workspace under control, and I'm also planning to do some further study on the software I'm learning.

#1 daughter came up, on a sudden inspiration. It's wonderful to have her here. She told some very funny stories. She also told me that I should take some classes in web design, though #2 daughter assured me that I wouldn't like it, and she may well be right in that.

It's not that I have any desire to be a web designer. I know how to use templates to put together a page when I need one, and I can mess with text perfectly well. However, I now have two clients who don't yet have sites and one who has a site so bad that a redesign is a top priority. I had thought I would refer these people to The Computer Guy, but he doesn't have time for such small projects. I looked at the other local options, and they really aren't enough better than I am for me to want to refer clients to them. These clients assure me that they don't want a work of art anyway.

So I went to the bookstore to see about getting a nice book or two on Visual Studio. I found quite a lot of nice things, including the book on HTML that I wish I had bought in the first place, Head First. If it hadn't been a $40 book, I'd have bought it, and I might do so yet. Unfortunately, they don't do anything on Visual Studio, but I did find a book on it from Microsoft with an optimistic bright orange cover.

Oh, sure, there are online tutorials, but you have to navigate away from the tutorial to do the work, and then go back to the tutorial, and I think that a book will work better for me.

I also found a very funny book on software programming from Joel on Software. I realize that this sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it was quite funny, and so is his website.

Having resisted the temptation to buy both those books, I went ahead and succumbed to a Debbie Mumm quilting book on the bargain books table. I confess. Considering how few books I have bought recently and how many books I wanted, my having bought only two was a major accomplishment. I didn't even look at fiction. And I didn't buy Sensual Knits, either.

I had also looked at books about accounting. I was on my way to my meeting with Blessing, and still thinking that I would learn to do it myself. I needed a book called something like The Least You Have to Know to Stay Out of Jail as a Freelance Worker, A Few Little Forms with Clear Explanations for Non-Accountants, or How to Avoid Paperwork and Quicken. Don't bother looking, because there aren't any books like that.

I did however find there a book that The Empress had told me about, called Do What You Are. It uses the Myers-Briggs inventory to recommend types of jobs, as well as hints for job hunting for the various categories. I'm an ENTJ, myself, and I found their suggestions convincing as I perused the book in the aisle there.

I also read through a couple of books on SEO there in the aisles. These books did not exist back when I needed them, and I was glad to see that I now know all the stuff in those books. This made me a bit more confident about Client #6 -- cause let's face it, I am out of my league there. Not that I won't do a good job for them, but their response to my email of initial ideas makes it clear that I need to change the scale on which I'm thinking.

#1 daughter is going to help me look at computers today. I have software I need, but can't fit on my current computer. She tells me that I have to buy a new computer, get my business website set up, have business cards made, and take some classes on web design and also all the other things I don't know.

I am not completely sure that I have decided to be self-employed. I don't have an entrepreneurial spirit. I want to be able to do my work and have someone else make certain that I get paid something every now and then. That is, I would still prefer a salary. However, I want a salary for doing exactly what I currently do.

I may get over that.

We're going to the farmers market today, and computer shopping. #1 daughter has been starved for company down there in Cowboy Land, and is spending a good amount of time with friends, but we should have time to get caught up on all her news.

So Client #6 has a great big enormous site. My little niche of helping small businesspeople make their websites into worthwhile marketing tools is completely unrelated to Client #6. The Chief Technology Officer called me to discuss contract work.

I can't say that I was completely on top of things in the interview.

"What tools do you use?" he asked me.

I was entirely unprepared for this. The truth is, I use things like searchbliss and marketleap and the free tools at SEOmoz, but I was afraid that this would sound bad. I also thought it might sound bad if I admitted that I hop around using free trials so I won't have to pay for any tools.

Later on, he mentioned a tool that he uses, and I see that I can download it for $87. I may do so. I also may not do so, but be prepared to claim that I use this in future conversations of this kind, so as to avoid the awkward silence as I try to imagine what a seasoned professional practicioner of the Dark Art might answer in this case. I've signed up for the free trial.

He also asked how I track my link campaigns.

I do it on paper.

It seemed very likely that this would not be the answer a true Computer Girl would give. However, it is the true answer. "I just use a log," I said lightly. I also said something about being willing to follow his preferred practices.

There was also the question of my rates. I went to a lot of trouble to find out the proper answer to this question, and was rather proud of myself for delivering it briskly as soon as I was asked.

Now, this is a completely fictional answer. I haven't charged anyone nearly that much yet. And Client #6 confessed that it was more than was in his budget.

Since it is a fictional number, and more than I have ever made, and more than I think anyone ought to make, I immediately accepted the counter offer in a happy voice. I think I should work on this. I mean, I may know in my heart that I never made as much as they offer me when I was teaching, but maybe I should learn to sound hesitant and as though I'm doing them a favor.

I'm going to work on that.

I guess I must not have sounded like a complete idiot, because he hired me on for a week, half time. At the end of the week, he said, we would see about going on for a couple of months, and then we'd scale back to one day a week for maintenance.

However, I went after that (since I am still waiting on those documents from Client #2) for a nice long walk and contemplated solutions to Client #6's problem. There were poppies and honeysuckle and quaint little bridges, and I came up with what seemed to me to be good ideas and came right home and sent off some preliminary thoughts to Client #6.

He promptly sent me a contract for two months. I am pretty exultant over this, I can tell you. I can bank half what I make, and be relaxed for the next several months while I seek other clients.

At the moment, I have one large client, Client #6, who is paying me enough to live on over the short term. I also have two fairly large clients, #s 2 and 4, who will, I think, have steady work for me, though not as clearly defined as #6. Then I have my Lite clients, #s 1, 3, and 5. I think they'll cover books and yarn for me. I have to figure out how to have enough work, but not too much at the same time. I have to figure out how to invoice people and pay taxes.

I have to figure out a new schedule that includes housekeeping, knitting, and dinners.

However, I don't think I can really consider myself unemployed any more. I will still go on interviews if any of those places I applied to should call me, but I think it is time to get my Plyer of the Dark Art business cards made.

Quite a few things happened yesterday. I was actually planning to discuss the question of outcasts here, with reference to circus people in particular, because I've had a couple of interesting conversations about that lately and wanted to know what you guys thought. However, events took place.

First, I had a call from the competitor of the store I worked for until recently. He asked if I would be willing to work for him.

"You're fully staffed, aren't you?" I asked in a friendly voice. "And you don't have a website."

There was a pause, presumably while he assimilated the idea that I knew these things. He allowed as how you never know what might happen.

I know that he has only one fulltime employee, so I mentioned that. He hemmed and hawed.

"And she's a single mom, isn't she?" I persisted.

The Empress arrived at that point, and the dogs went into their Cujo imitations.

I may be maligning the man when I think that he was considering letting his current manager go and hiring me instead, even though she is the sole support of herself and her small daughter, but it did kind of sound that way.

The Empress and I had tea and job hunting chats, and then I closed up a kitchen show and went off to book club, where we had a bit of a convo about circus people and outcasts and kindness and stuff. One of the ladies asked me about doing the website for her branch of University Women, and is planning to bring it up for approval at the next meeting.

I got home, had a nice Sonoma Diet lunch, and checked on the website I am hurriedly chasing up the search engines. It had been lower than page 10 that morning (no point checking beyond that), but had gotten up to page six by lunchtime. I should mention that we specially designed the page to be easy to rank for that keyword; the other keywords were nowhere close. I don't want you to think I have superpowers or anything. But I have been pouring a lot of time and effort into this project, since I have a tough deadline on it and no budgetary limits from the client.

I did some article posting and directory submitting and so forth, and then went to tutoring and the Wednesday afternoon marathon.

I was unable to persuade my fellow choristers to share my enthusiasm for Jane Marshall. "We didn't give it a fair trial," I insisted. "We were just singing random stuff." I got the piano player to play the first page. "Isn't that beautiful?"

"It would be beautiful if he played 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' with one finger," The Pilot pointed out. Our pianist is very talented.

When I got home, the sample site appeared at #1. I really get a kick out of that.

I also had a message at the SEO post (you know, the one where they gave me downward pointing thumbs on general principle) asking if I would do some link building for quite a big important site. The guy is going to call me today to discuss it.

I can't call all these people "the Computer Guy." But I guess this one might become Client #6.

The site in question has a page strength ranking of 9.5 out of 10, a Google page rank of 7, and thousands upon thousands of links already. I can't imagine what I could do for them, but of course I will be spending some time figuring that out between now and when he calls. I confess that I feel a little out of my depth. However, if I come up with anything, then they will be an impressive addition to my portfolio.

Dinner was reheated stuff at 9:00, with no vegetables, in front of the computer. I need to get home earlier, or make myself a nice salad before I leave the house, or something.

Partygirl's doctor has recommended that she go on the South Beach diet for the summer, and she has invited me to join her.

A couple of years ago, our friend DrDrew shared his secret for gaining thirty pounds over the summer.

You and I might not want to gain 30 pounds over the summer, but it is a fond desire of many teenage boys, and DrDrew was able to accomplish it through weight lifting and -- this is the secret -- adding a pound of ground beef to his regular daily diet. Every single day.

As far as I know, these results have not been replicated. However, I have been able to gain somewhat less than that this spring, and I will gladly share my method with you.

• Begin by having an unusual level of stress in your life. I went with losing my job, but almost any really big life change will do. Partygirl's doctor claims that this single step will do the trick, because of special stress hormones, but I think you can add the following simple changes to your life for better results.
• Step down your exercise program. Even small changes will help. In my case, I decreased both time and intensity and almost entirely gave up strength training. I achieved this by spending my exercise time fretting over the possibility that there might be something I could be doing to solve my crisis, rather than wholeheartedly participating in the physical activity. I also skipped lots of days, since I was too busy wallowing in misery or fretting or job hunting or something.
• Eat whatever is nearest to hand. Again, stress helps with this. If you are really obsessing over things and can also get a few insane deadlines thrown in, you can eat pizza three times a week without even noticing it. In fact, if you make an effort to eat all your meals in front of the computer while working, you will be able to cut your consumption of fresh produce in half or better with almost no additional effort.
• Family support is very helpful. In my case, I had a couple of sons begin working at fast food places. This meant that the list of foods available to be eaten in front of the computer while working invariably included ice cream and fast food sandwiches.

If you will take these simple steps, you will find yourself looking like a sausage encased in your clothes in a surprisingly short time.

I don't know about the South Beach diet. It sounds kind of extreme and seems to involve processed foods. It seems to me that the Sonoma Diet is almost the same, but with better recipes. It has the same time frame and all, so I could do that while Partygirl does South Beach, and still show solidarity.

I tried it out yesterday, actually. Partygirl is waiting for the right moment to begin. "I told my husband I was going to start tomorrow," she told me on Memorial Day. She didn't sound at all certain. But I thought I'd give it a go.

Breakfast and lunch went swimmingly, and I had dinner planned. It was, unfortunately, my turn to bake for the post-rehearsal cake ritual, but I made a nice little carrot cake which seemed relatively benign. I figured I could have a sliver of it without straying too far off the path.

Then I headed out for tutoring, and ended up being there for two and a half hours, just managing to meet CD for the rehearsal for the choirlet. Having had no dinner, I joined right in with the post-rehearsal cake ritual. Our hostess had also made blackberry cobbler, and we all had a serving of each of the desserts. When I got home at 10:30, I also ate some of the dinner that the guys had saved for me. In front of the computer.

Today, I have five appointments. I also have an extremely unrealistic SEO deadline, the kind of thing that a person should only take on for a bet. It seems likely that I will not make it to the gym.

Here's the cake recipe:

Fresh Country Carrot Cake

1/4 c butter
1 1/4 c brown sugar
3 large carrots, grated
1/2 c. nonfat sour cream
2 t pumpkin pie spice
1/2 c  raisins
1/2 c dried cranberries
3 T grated orange
1 egg, beaten
2 c flour
2 t baking soda
1 t vanilla
1 c sliced almonds

Cream butter and sugar, and then add the remaining ingredients in order. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, or until cake tester comes out clean.

It could be worse, from the health standpoint, but I doubt that either the South Beach or the Sonoma regimens would countenance it.

Since Erin is back to the complex charted color work, I haven't had any chance to work on it. I have had either houseguests or the aforementioned irrational behavior going on all the time, and complex colorwork hasn't been an option.

So I went ahead and began the Icarus shawl from Interweave knits. I'll tell you more about that sometime when I don't have an insane deadline.

Since I came over here last week and crowed about having had a blog post at SEOmoz (and did I mention that it was also Dugg and SEOranked? I bet I did), I also have to come here and report that I got three thumbs down.

Not on my post. It would be okay if people disliked my post, I guess. But there were only thumbs up there. The thumbs down were at my profile.

I went to my profile to change the email address. It has my business email address from the store which, as you know, closed. The owners haven't yet actually taken down the website, but presumably it will disappear soon, since no one is paying for it, so I figured I should change my email address, and the URL, too, to something that will still exist next week.

There it was, in black and white: three thumbs down. I went to look at the post to see what the thumbs-downers had said. "Go back to the knitting blogs where you belong!" maybe. Nope. Only thumbs up.

I've never posted anything else there. I scarcely ever comment (you know I'm not much of a commenter). All the comments that were showing, in fact, were my boring and repetitive "Thanks!" to all the nice comments at my post.

And yet I had three thumbs down. On the profile page, where it looks like personal distaste. How did I manage to inspire this distaste? I have no idea.

This will be good for my humility, which needs some work.

I'm planning to write an offensive blog post today. I'll stop for a moment here so you can leave.

I'm writing this because of something people have been saying to me a lot during my unemployment. They're telling me that I will find a job easily because I am smart.

Now here's the first offensive thing in my post: it's true, I am smart. I'm actually Quite Smart. It is not polite to admit this, and of course in real life I don't. But in order to write this post at all, I have to admit it, so I have. I am going to assume that everyone who is still reading is also Quite Smart, and will sympathize.

The point of admitting it is to say that being smart is not always a plus in a job hunt.

First off, people are more comfortable with other people who are about as smart as they are. That is the second offensive thing I plan to say. I realize that this argument has been used to support all kinds of discrimination. When people claim that they are just more comfortable with people of their own ethnic background, faith tradition, age, gender, or socioeconomic level, and that this is why they choose to work/worship/hang out with people like that, I think they should get over it. I tell them so, too.

But, you know, hanging out with people who are not as smart as you is a lot of extra effort.

Oh, not if you are in the majority and you let everything whiz past the others. I have had this experience from the other side, because I have frequently been the only English speaker in a gathering. Unless everyone else is speaking French, I am lost, and even then I am slow. When I am the lone American among foreigners, I try to watch the faces of the people and behave as though I am involved in the interaction in some way, and the foreigners typically give me occasional little pats or hugs to show that they recognize my presence. It's like being a dog. If the Quite Smart people are the majority in a gathering and they have conversations or make plans without considering the others, it ends up being like that.

If you are not in the majority, you can end up seeming eccentric and scary. Or obnoxious. Or else just being desperately bored because things are going so slowly. I think this is mostly about speed of processing. If you are faster than the mainstream in a discussion, then you will feel like the dog on a walk with a slow owner -- you get to the end of the leash and have to circle back or sit down and wait.

Since neither of these options is very good, people who are Quite Smart have to learn to interact well with those who are not. You have to be careful about your vocabulary. It isn't possible to slow down the speed at which you think to match the others in the group, so you have to work extra at paying attention at the speed of the overall interaction, in spite of its being an uncomfortable speed. You have to watch out for topics that the others consider offensive, because if they talked about those things they would be trying to show off.

In fact, intellectual competitiveness can be a real, though brief, problem. It's brief for me, I think, because I don't compete, and in fact I really make an effort to accommodate. I assume that people who are smarter than I am do the same for me. If you have trouble with this on an ongoing basis, it is because you are competing. If you don't compete, then the others can't do so either, and will relax after a bit. Trust me on this.

I've seen this most with my kids' dates. This is because they are in my home, and once we see that they are Quite Smart, we don't bother to be careful. Often they have been the smartest person they know for much of their young lives. They come into our family and that is no longer the case. For some of them, they have been proud of being Quite Smart, and their first impulse is to compete.

Kind of an "Aha! Here is a foeman worthy of my steel!" moment. However, we are all Quite Smart chez fibermom, and we don't compete. I don't know what that feels like for them, but you can tell they are having to adjust. From the outside, they look like people who thought there was another step on the staircase, and then it turns out that there isn't -- not quite a stumble, but a little bit of uncertainty while they adjust.

Anyway, in a job hunt, you are up against the comfort level issue right away. It is highly likely that many of the people you interview with are not Quite Smart, and they are very likely to find you intimidating or odd.

This is easier for me now, because I look so harmless. I used to be both pretty and smart, and this can, frankly, create hostility. There were times when I interviewed with some guy and I could just tell that I was his chance to get back at all the girls who wouldn't go out with him in school. Now, I am clearly someone's mom, and not scary at all. So as long as I can keep from being obviously Quite Smart, I don't end up seeming scary. Eventually, of course, I'll relax and someone will notice that I am Quite Smart, but by then, they have gotten used to me and they don't hold it against me.

In addition to the comfort level, which is probably the main issue in job interviews, there is also the qualifications issue.

The thing is, there are some jobs for which being smart is an advantage. Employers want Quite Smart people for these jobs. You can go right ahead and be obviously Quite Smart, and they will not mind, even if they themselves are not that smart. But for many, possibly most jobs, it is not an advantage.

What's needed in many jobs is someone who will contentedly follow directions.

Really, I am very biddable. I follow directions cheerfully, and I have plenty of other things to think about if the work I am doing happens not to be particularly challenging. But a potential employer doesn't want someone who is going to get bored. Or who is going to think of new and better ways to do things. Both those prospects sound dangerous in many work settings. They make you unpredictable, and predictability is more useful in most jobs than smartness.

I haven't had a new job to apply to in a week now, so this is sort of a moot point. I have had plenty of work to do, and being smart is an advantage for this work, so I'm just sort of going ahead and considering the lilies of the field. I feel better, though, for having had a chance to make this offensive response to the "You won't have any trouble..." comments. Now I just need to think of a response to those who say, "Oh, yes, that must be hard at your age."

Wow! Check out Chanthaboune's new website! It's still under construction, and your browser will affect how it looks, so if it's weird, just come back in a few days and look again. A physicist friend says that it's only missing the scent of jasmine. Please imagine that for yourself as you admire it, to get the full effect.

  Yesterday after church we went to the local botanical gardens. They haven't been there very long, but they are well worth a visit.

The day also featured Wii and ice cream.

We've had an ongoing discussion this weekend about preferred sensory modalities.

I'm not sure where this conversation began. It could have been when we were watching Numb3rs and #2 daughter remarked on how irritating it would be to have someone talking about math the whole time.

I pointed out to her that we talked about music the whole time, ourselves. I mean, we talk about lots of other things as well, but there is certainly a whole lot of talk about music.

As long as the other people have the same preferences, it isn't noticeable that one person is talking about a certain

subject with great frequency. I had noticed, in conversations with The Computer Guy, that I talk about language a whole lot, but that's only because I'd give an example of something involving language and he'd counter with something about road design. To me, the task we were working on would have been self-evidently all about language, and to him, it was a design issue, very like roads.

#2 daughter is a visual processor. The simple proof of this fact which I offered to her is that she puts on her glasses when she answers the phone in the morning.

I rarely put on my glasses at all, unless I'm driving. Visual input just isn't that important to me.

We were speculating about people we knew. M Bassoon was among them. I always think that auditory is a good starting point for musicians. #2 daughter disagreed. "Music is very visual!" she insisted.

Music isn't visual at all for me. This is one of the things about the various sensory modalities that causes them to affect communication. It is so completely self-evident to each of us that the way we perceive things is the way things are, that we have trouble perceiving them any other way.

So it is very strange to #2 daughter that I can't easily recognize my own car in a parking lot.

Well, maybe that really is strange.

She was also showing me pictures of The Computer Guy on facebook, where they are friends, and testing to see whether I could recognize which of the people in the groups was in fact The Computer Guy.

By the fifth or sixth picture I could.

She laughed at me for this. I like and admire The Computer Guy.

"And you've met him, right?"she asked. "Or have you just seen his picture?"

I had to admit that I had sat across a table from him for a couple of hours at a time, on several occasions. But if I saw him out in the street, I might not recognize him. Unless he spoke. Then of course I would recognize his voice.

It seems to me that my agoraphobia is mostly about perception. There is something wrong with my perception of the world, I think, that makes certain spaces distressing to me.

While we were at the mall, we went into a book store. They had a magazine rack that angled out toward the customer. It made us feel dizzy and queasy.

It was not a pleasant sensation, but when #2 daughter complained about it, I seized the moment to tell her that this was how it was for me in the mall.

It's not that I am scared of people or that I imagine dangers around the corner, but that the sensory input is horrible in some way that is different from what most people receive there.

For me, the sounds are awful. The way it looks there -- more in some stores than in others -- is strange and confusing. I can't tell how to get out. It gets worse over time. Scary roads are like that, too. Gravity appears not to be working properly.

The magazine rack made us feel as though something was wrong. #2 daughter felt as though it were going to fall on her. I felt as though there were an earthquake going on. She has never been in an earthquake, which I think is why that didn't occur to her.

Now that is a design issue for sure.

On further consideration, we thought M. Bassoon might be more of a kinesthetic kind of guy -- touch dominant, as Ozarque puts it.

I asked #2 daughter what he does in a stressful situation. None of us uses only one processing mode. But when you're under stress, you hang on more tightly to the preferred one.

So, if you think you're lost,  you will probably stare at the map if you are more visual, run your finger along it if you are more kinesthetic, and talk about your route (whether anyone is there to hear you or not) if you are more auditory.

M. Bassoon doesn't get lost. However, once when they were uncertain about where they were going, he and #2 daughter reached an intersection, and M. Bassoon said "She lives on this road."

"He saw where he was," #2 daughter concluded.

"Not necessarily," said I. "It could just have been a physical memory."

You know how you can't remember whether you've taken your vitamins or not, but when you reach out for the bottle, your hand tells your brain that it has already made that motion today? Or you can't remember the phone number until you being to dial it (this is not such a good example any more, I realize)? Or you write a word to determine how to spell it?

These things are more often true for the kinesthetic processors among us.

And music is pretty physical, too.

So, yeah, we were talking about all this as we enjoyed the gardens.

There were mosaics, such as this giant ear of corn in the vegetable garden. I liked the way the vegetable garden was a welter of flowers and herbs and vegetables all higgledy-piggledy in the beds. I would do that in my own garden, but my husband would hate it.

It was also interesting to see how big the vegetable plants get if you don't pick and eat them. A lettuce the size of a basketball wouldn't taste good, so we don't grow them that big, but they look imposing.

People talked to us there. Other visitors, I mean, joined in conversation with us.

It struck me that #2 daughter seemed surprised by this at first. She has obviously been living in The Big City so long that she is out of the habit of this kind of routine friendliness.

Around here, mere proximity gives you the right, or at least permission, to talk with people.

My college buddy M.A. found it alarming. She seemed to think people were going to attack her, or steal her luggage, or something, when of course they just wanted to know where she was from, and help her carry things, and possibly give her a recipe or something.

#2 daughter, having grown up here, wasn't  alarmed, but she was startled.

She left early this morning so she could get back in time for her pedicure appointment, followed by a job interview.

I might take the day off today. I am supposed to review a presentation and write materials for it, and the presentation is to take place a week from today, but I am waiting on someone else for that. And I do have a tutoring appointment. But my menfolks have the day off, so there might be more lounging around in my future.

#2 daughter and I went to the mall yesterday.

A little background may be required. First, I needed to buy something for job interviews and client visits, not to mention the possible workshops. I was thinking of it in terms of the fact that I had gained weight this spring, but my daughter informed me that since I hadn't had a new jacket, in any size, homemade or storebought, for nearly a year, I just needed to buy a jacket.

I've been saving my tutoring fees for this purpose. I've had it in my mind to go to some nice little dress shop where I could put myself into the hands of a competent saleswoman and walk out with a useful jacket, but we don't have any stores that like here any more, so it meant going to the mall. The mall is fairly high on my list of aversions.

The rest of the required background is that I suffer a bit from agoraphobia. Shopping malls are not so high on my list that I am afraid of them, but they are high enough that I tend to feel disoriented there, and to have a desperate desire to get out of them very early in the shopping experience. Left to myself, I would almost certainly buy the first jacket that came close to fitting me and wasn't actually made of yellow vinyl.  Accordingly, I waited until #2 daughter, the champion shopper, could come along.

She is such a champion shopper that I was able to take the funds I'd intended to spend on one jacket, and end up with two suits. I can wear the black one when I want to seem intimidating and powerful, and the green one when I want to seem creative and friendly. Both the jackets also looked fine with the jeans I was wearing, so I can also wear them for my regular client visits.

They are of course from last season's clearance rack, but I can't feature myself going to interviews in this season's jackets anyway, since they are mostly natural linen in smock-like shapes and short-sleeved numbers in ice cream colored stripes. Very pretty, but not the image I'm hoping to project.

Following this escapade, we went to lunch and made lists for ourselves for the next steps in our respective job searches.

#2 daughter is not unemployed, but she is ready to move on in her career.

As for me, I'm certainly still job hunting, but I think it's time for me to consider what steps I would need to take to get from where I am to the point where I can think of myself as a successful freelance SEO, rather than as an unemployed person who just happens to work a lot.

Here's #2 daughter's chicken salad sandwich. Handsome, eh?

Some of the things I need to do just involve action -- I need to get billing and financial records and taxes and things figured out, and get my paperwork system to the point where it can accommodate more than a handful of clients at a time. I need to figure out how many clients I need and can handle, and begin approaching more potential clients.

Some involve an investment, and I am not yet prepared to go further than buying a suit. Well, okay, I'll buy some pantyhose, too, when I actually have an interview scheduled, but I have to draw the line there. Still, it is clear that at some point I will need to upgrade my computer to handle the additional programs I am and will be using, and I will have to have a website with a proper domain name, and business cards.

The business card issue has been on my mind. I don't think I can approach potential clients without something to hand them. And, while I have figured out what to put on business cards, I don't think I can actually make them without a professional email address, and perhaps a website as well.

So the approaching of potential clients is currently one of those things like the story of the old woman and her pig, where there are things that must be done first, and then things that have to be done before that, and then things that have to be done before each of those things, before you can actually get the pig over the stile.

We lounged around after lunch, talking. #2 daughter was invited to parties, and I proposed that we go hiking, but it was hot and we were comfortable on the sofa with our feet on the new coffee table #2 son made, so we didn't move much at all.

So yesterday I finished my school visits, responded to The Computer Guy's excitement over the initial response to my publicity with as much modesty as I could arrange (his web site was "exploding," he said, and we've had requests for information from towns over 100 miles away; my modesty involved not saying "Umm, yeah, have you noticed yet that I'm hot stuff and you should hire me?"), tutored, and then headed straight to Janalisa's party.

It was her daughter's graduation party, a very elegant soiree with lovely food and pleasant conversations. Janalisa's house is just outside town, reached by means of a winding lane bordered by great banks of honeysuckle. There's a nice greensward behind her house, with pine trees around it, and the weather cooperated.

I got home just before #2 Daughter arrived. We ordered in pizza, watched Numb3rs, and talked till the menfolks arrived. Constant contact via IM is wonderful, but it does mean that we didn't really have any news to catch up on.

Actually, I had a far-reaching variety of conversations yesterday: wedding dresses, Gilbert and Sullivan, Schrodinger's Cat, college majors, names, LivePerson, the history of processed foods, relationships, working alone vs. working with others, how people behave when arrested...

That came up because we were watching Numb3rs, which features lots of arrests. I had dropped off a flyer at a residential treatment facility, and someone was being arrested.

She shrieked as though being assaulted, and cried, "Please don't!" and stuff like that, which is why I noticed her. I naturally looked over to see if she needed help.

On Numb3rs, people being arrested either run away or sullenly accept their fate. I remarked on this difference to #2 daughter, who assured me that in her neighborhood, she sees people being arrested fairly frequently. They want to get it over with, she said, without drawing attention to themselves. They look sort of embarrassed.

I stared at her a bit at the idea that seeing people arrested was a frequent feature of her life.

My lettuces are happy here, in the rain. I cut their leaves for salads every day. Really fresh lettuce has milk in the veins (lettuce milk, natch) and tastes wonderful. It is a completely different experience from store-bought lettuce.

#2 daughter and I are going to go shopping when the rain lets up. I have to get a jacket. I am not good at clothes shopping, and she loves it, so she will help me with this difficult task.