Thursday of This Week

 Was the day that felt like everything had just gone to hell, which is a good topic to discuss on this, the Saturday, the supposed day of the rapture, an event that I don't believe is happening as I've seen nothing in the series of tubes of people being lifted up into the sky at 6pm.

Thursday was the day I received a phone call from the unemployment office saying, in essence, that I did not qualify for unemployment because I did not make enough money at Borders and because my separation from my former employer was voluntary. To the credit of the Mr. F (no first name) he sounded almost sympathetic as I explained that the separation from my last job was due to the stress of a probation that was indefinite and ill-defined (as I received no goals for improvement or milestones to reach).

So I'm out of personal money, a point that was driven home when I attempted to purchase two new bras at Marshall's yesterday and discovered that I did not have my check card with me. My check card was sitting in a drawer with my checkbook, placed there as an acknowledgment that I have no money.

No money for bras. Which I need, as the ones I purchased after Linus' birth are ratty and ill fitting. All my clothes are ill fitting right now. My new pants slide down my hips. One pair manages to be too large and has a zipper that refuses to stay properly up. The new t-shirts did not survive the first wash. I look and feel like a slob.

Thursday was also the day that I realized that no job offer would be forthcoming. D, the recruiter, had promised to call me last Monday. It is now Saturday and I have not received a phone call. Which means no offer.

I stood up for myself and it turned out to be a pyrrhic victory. Unemployed, no income, simultaneously overqualified and unqualified to work.

Bridge Building

I don't know my father's side of the family very well. After finishing his degree, my father moved from the Midwest to the east coast. There he met and married my mother, a decision that caused a great deal of tension in his family (1). Over the years there have been unpleasant incidents between my mother and members of my father's family. Between the incidents and the geographic distance, most of my knowledge of my paternal aunts, uncles and cousins comes from letters and photographs. Several years ago there was a family reunion. My brothers and I were not invited. From my point of view, it seemed the final split for any semblance of a relationship with the paternal branch of my father's family.

So I was surprised when a cousin I last met when I was too young to remember her, reached out and contact with me via Facebook. This contact was facilitated by the more reasonable of my father's two sisters. Interestingly, the cousin is the oldest daughter of the less reasonable sister. (2) She and I occasionally exchange messages.

She has a daughter (ST) who has been accepted into a prestigious program at Pitt for her junior and senior year of schooling. As she is coming from out of state, the tuition is incredibly expensive and the housing costs will almost double her final bill.

ST wrote to me recently, asking if J and I could help her out by allowing her to stay in our home during her schooling in Pittsburgh. She offered to pay a nominal amount of monthly rent ($200.00), assist in cleaning and childcare, cover her own groceries and has already made arrangements to stay somewhere else on weekends.

On one hand, it is completely fair to view the her actions as a rather nervy violation of etiquette. I know a good number of otherwise reasonable people who would be insulted by this request.

I'm not insulted. I think it takes a lot of courage to reach out to a previously unknown family member and ask for help. As an individual who has paid out-of-state tuition and is still paying off the loans, I can sympathize with her predicament. Off campus housing would be less expensive, but she is under 21, coming from out-of-state and it will not be easy for her to rent a safe, inexpensive place without an adult co-signing for her.

I'm uncertain how to help her. Our house is tiny and the only room we would be able to give her is currently my study. I have no desire to take on the financial risk of cosigning for a rental property. We can definitely give her a safe place to do laundry, get a hot meal and get a break from campus. But I wonder what we could gain by opening up our home for her for a little while.

(1) My mother is Catholic, my father Baptist. His family was not pleased.

(2) The less reasonable sister was especially critical of my mother and fond of making cutting, passive-aggressive remarks about our moral and spiritual upbringing. I recall one incident in particular when I was around ten when she told us a bible story using a book of solid colored pages. She was surprised that my brothers and I were able to interpret and explain each of the colors in the book.

Uncharted

I'm still in a holding pattern with the current job opportunity. D, the recruiter who set up the interview, called on Thursday. The news was not great. Initial reports are that the salary the CEO is willing to authorize is 2K less than my bottom line.

I can not pretend that I did not feel a little bit of relief at the news. My first impulse was to take his offer to tell the company to sock it.

Instead I asked for some time to think about it and told D I would call him back on Friday morning.

J and I sat down and talked Thursday night. It was an uncomfortable, productive conversation. J admitted that my return to work would take some pressure off us financially and felt that I should give the opportunity a shot. He also felt that some of my response was out of ego.

Which upset me, as I did not feel that he was giving enough weight to my feelings about it. To be fair to J, it is a integral part of our relationship that we give each other occasionally harsh reality checks when issues such as job offers come up, in order to ensure that we are responding to negative feedback intellectually instead of emotionally. J was only doing for me what I have done for him many times in the past – making sure his ego was not the only thinker in the room.

I can't disagree with his argument about the money. While we are doing OK on just his salary, there is very little room for mistakes. Me returning to work would mean that I could pay for daycare, bank the rest and give J enough room to increase our retirement investments.

The problem, from my point of view, is that one of us needs to work at a company that allows the flexibility necessary to raise a small child. And J's company is not that place. If this initial feeler is any indication, then this place is not appropriate either. Right now, they have not made an official offer, which means I can walk away without affecting my unemployment compensation. The initial amount does not include enough PTO for me to securely take care of Toddler Alien when he is ill or enough money for me to hire an interim nanny when he can not go to daycare.

I called D back on Friday and told him that it would not be enough money, for all the reasons I expressed to J. We discussed what I would consider reasonable (flexible time off that could be made up, additional PTO, other factors) and he put in a counter offer.

Now I wait. D feels optimistic that he will be able to work something out. I'm skeptical. My gut instinct (and downright cynicism) tells me that they would not have attempted such a lowball offer if the name on the resume had been male and they will not be all that interested in discussing my need for an appropriate work-life balance. Considering the fact that several of the people I interviewed with admitted that they had difficultly filling the position, you have to wonder.

But, at the very least, I have stood up for myself.

Decision

I'm a huge fan of XKCD. Randall Munroe has created some pointed (and poignant) comics over the years.

Today's comic like a slap-upside-the-head. Zombie Marie Curie says to aspiring girl scientist: “But you don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and doing that it so hard that you become great in the process”.

When was the last time I wanted to do something so hard that I became great?

I can't remember. Literally. Maybe going to graduate school in North Carolina.

My entire life, I have fallen into things. Fallen into English because I thought I was good at it and comfortable. Fallen into QA because I followed an impulse to answer an add asking for liberal arts majors to apply.

I can recall many times when teachers and friends spoke out and said “You would be great at this”. Such as my high school math teacher, who nagged me to go to an engineering camp for girls because “you have a creative brain. You would be good at this”. J's most recent pep talk, when he talked about a children's book I wrote many years ago, but never illustrated.

But I can't remember the last time I made a conscious decision to want to do something, then followed through the tough parts to become great at it.

I have a decision to make. On the surface, the choice is simple and should be automatic. But the more time I give over to thinking about it, the harder it becomes to determine which is the correct path. The decision is this:

I am in the process of negotiating my salary for an interesting and challenging QA position. It would be a great opportunity.

Except that I don't think I want to do it.