Bad Reputation?

I've been crazy busy with meetings and clients and a cold and year end reports.

You know how when you see pictures of yourself they often don't match up to the picture you have of yourself in your mind's eye? Or if you hear your own voice recorded it doesn't ever sound the way you think it does to you?

I some how, over the years, have developed a reputation for being really confrontational and quite the bitch. Which strikes me as funny because I think of myself as being really quite mellow and, for lack of a better term, chickenshit. I respect law enforcement . . . even if I don't always agree with them, I've never gotten up into a police officer's face or challenged one in front of a client. But, some how, stories circulate around that I have. I respect the medical staff -- and again - have NEVER openly confronted a doctor or nurse in front of a client - but yet, I have the reputation of being something of a ball buster. I've brought nurses homemade cookies in thanks for handling exceptionally difficult clients with more grace than the client was asking for with their behavior. I totally get the notion that District Attorney outranks me. How stories got started of me telling them their job is totally beyond my imagination.

In my personal life . . . I have a very quiet, comfortable, somewhat dull existence. But yet, I seem to have this rather exotic reputation of having parties and a good time and non-stop action. I have the reputation of being the local "token" feminist. That I don't take crap from my man. That I wear the pants in my house. Which is kinda a laugh because I have really overdeveloped domestic skills in reality; and my husband and I have a pretty equal relationship.

But, if people want to fear me and thus do a better job because of it . . . who am I to stop them? And if they want to imagine me jetting of to exotic places and partying with the pretty people and telling my man the score . . . . that's up to them, right?