Meeting Prep

My mood is flat even though I’m drinking a margarita from a Mason jar.

I straightened my office in preparation for an important Zoom meeting tomorrow morning. Left undecided was the positioning of the cat tree, a four-foot-high structure inherited from my son when his cat came here to live for a bit. I could blur my background – that would be the professional thing to do – but then no one would see my Ansel Adams prints or how cute my kids were when they were little. Or the cat.

The cat sometimes settles atop the cat tree when I’m on Zoom, sits with his front paws folded under his chest where, because he is very gray, he could be mistaken for a misplaced toaster. I like that pose fine. It’s similar to a colleague who had a big teddy bear sitting on the bookcase behind him during Zoom calls. This felt homey to me and calming but curious at the same time. Something to wonder about when I wasn’t paying attention. What is that teddy bear’s story?

The meeting tomorrow is the Commission on Aging, and I am the chair. I am glad to have this position. It’s an honor. But running the meetings can be harrowing. People raise their little wee Zoom hands to speak, and I don’t always see them. That is because there are more people on the call than can be seen on the screen, so I have to go hunting for the little wee hands on a list that appears on the side of the screen. If I hit the wrong button – which I have done – everything disappears, well, the people anyway, the sound stays. This makes me crazy because I can’t deal with disembodied voices. There has to be a face. No talking without a face!

The agenda items for this meeting have times assigned. Item V. is supposed to happen at 9:28 a.m. Item XII. is scheduled for 10:53 a.m. This is intended to make speakers aware of how much time they have but it doesn’t work. People, bless them, almost always feel like what they have to say is the most important thing to be said all day. And when folks are in their zone, telling us everything, everywhere, all the time what’s going on, they are impervious to any kind of hint short of making a slashing motion across one’s throat. I am new to this chairmanship but that feels a wee bit theatric. Raised eyebrows won’t cut it though so I need something better than holding my alarm clock up to the screen and pointing to the time. It will come to me.

While all this is going on tomorrow, a repairman is coming to fix a six-inch wide hole created by some bird or other creature in the side of our house directly under my office. There will probably be pounding or scraping or something going on and, no, it can’t be rescheduled because, you know, home repairs come first always. There is a lot of traffic in and out of that hole which is unnerving if I think about it for long.

My mood remains flat. This chairing business is sobering.