Getting Back to It

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Last year, when Senator Oletha Faust-Goudeau was trying to decide whether to run for the Senate or stay in the House of Representatives, I urged her to go for it. In one of our conversations, I made a rash offer: “If you run for the Senate seat and win, I’ll come up to Topeka and be your session secretary.” Well, she ran and she won, and I’m keeping my promise.

The powers that be told me I should come to Topeka Thursday and Friday this week “to get your office set up.”

Yes, indeed, but how am I supposed to do that when all the furniture in the room is marked
“Senator Francisco” and the boxes have been piled so high that I can’t reach the top one? Where is the furniture that belongs to Senator Faust-Goudeau? Why did they have to put boxes of books at the top of the piles? Should I just knock the piles over so I can get to the boxes at the bottom?

I don’t know, so I sit here waiting for the poor maintenance men to come move things around.

It’s eerie being here after my absence last year. So much has changed, because they are slowly but surely renovating the Capitol. The mail room is around the corner from where it used to be. Secretarial Services has a new office down the hall from its old one. Access to one of the elevators has been blocked off, but that’s OK because there’s a new elevator that will be operating soon.

All this is on top of the changes I have seen before but didn’t remember at first. The computer tech people are in the basement, as is Legislative Research. Conference rooms have been created. The Sergeant-at-Arms dispenses supplies from what appears to me to be an inadequate space.

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The maintenance man just came to move boxes around and told me that Senator Francisco is now operating out of one of the beautifully renovated offices in the east wing, which come with mahogany desks and bookcases, so we can keep her furniture. I guess I’ll go around and take off the stickers. I still wonder what happened to the furniture that was in this office last year.

What will Oletha say when she sees this room?

I’d better get back to it. I plan to continue this blog. I have no computer and no Internet access in my “studio apartment,” but I plan to write it at the end of the work day. There may be days I’m not able to do that, however.
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