Movement

Since vacation, I have been reading a lot more. I still have two very thick novels (Bolaño's 2666 and Byatt's The Children's Book) to finish, both started and abandoned while I was pregnant, unable to focus on anything more complicated than a Gilmore Girl's episode, during the endless months of fatigue and nausea.

I've started small. A Jo Nesbø novel (complete with classic deus ex machina). Some of Bolaño's poetry. Nonfiction on adjusting to a new identity post baby. The collected works of Amy Tan. Slowly I find myself gravitating towards works that require a little more heavy lifting.

It feels good, as if I'm finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. There is still a lot I know that I need to deal with. At the top of the list is finding a replacement for my doctor, who retired last year. Second on the list is convincing her replacement that the intestinal issues I have been suffering from since Toddler Alien was born are serious and affecting the quality of my life. 

I'm still tired a lot. I still find it difficult to put my thoughts into coherent order. But I'm getting there.

 

Outer Banks III - Control

One of the frustrating things about sharing the house was J's family was the complete inability on the part of some members to acknowledge the the world does not always work the way they perceive it should. Never was this more apparent then when discussing the different options of dining together as an extended family of fifteen.

While the Outer Banks is a tourist destination(1), it is also populated with individuals who live on the islands year round and support themselves running shops, restaurants and other establishments that take tourist dollars.

Which means that there are months in the 12 calendar month year when they are not making much money.

J's family had a very difficult time understanding why the restaurants are so small and require reservations for large parties. My repeated suggestion that they either make reservations, call ahead to find out if a place could seat fifteen people or eat early enough that it would not matter were dismissed as fear mongering. My attempts to point out that these were businesses that still needed to make a living during the winter months earned me “you have a second head growing out of your neck” looks.

In short, when it comes to dining out some of J's family acts like fucking tourists, the ugly kind that you want to hit soundly and squarely on the head with a heavy object.

And sometimes it happens without ever having left the house.

To fulfill the family's need for a big meal J's brother, J and I organized an old fashioned stove-top clam bake. We purchased steam pots filled with lobster, crab, mussels, clams, onions, potatoes and corn. We added clam chowder, steamed shrimp, pasta salad, ribs, baked chicken and chicken fingers with fries for the kids. I ran to the store and brought crusty french bread, wine, beer and soda.

The majority of the family enjoyed the meal. J's father hated it. All of it. The potatoes were overcooked. The corn and crab legs tasted funny. The lobster was too tough.(2) He didn't like pasta salad made with balsamic vinegar. He had eaten better clam chowder from a can.(3) The steamed shrimp were too spicy.

He ran down this litany of complaints when I went in to relieve him from Toddler Alien bedtime duty. I offered to make him a sandwich(4), which he refused.

When I finished getting Toddler Alien settled, I came out of our room and began cleaning up the kitchen. J's mother told me to sit down, we would take care of the dishes later. I complied.

Once dinner was finished and the first load of dishes was loaded in the dishwasher, the entire family walked down to the beach to fly kits. I stayed behind to keep an eye on Linus. Before they left, J's mother reiterated that I was not to touch the dishes.

Thirty minutes after everyone had left, J's father returned and began giving haranguing me about the dirty dishes. After several minutes, I headed for the stairs as I did not want to argue with him.

I ran into J's sister on the stairs and suggested that she might want to stay out of her father's way as he had a hair up his ass about the dirty dishes.(5) J's mother heard my comments as she was coming up the stairs and immediately went up to see what was happening.

She came down several minutes later and told me to ignore him. She was not happy. I was not happy. Later that evening she suggested I pour myself another glass of wine and come sit out on the deck.

J's father rampaged through the final two days of the trip, making J purchase food items no one really wanted to eat, overruling cinnamon rolls for two cakes (anniversary cake for J's sister and her husband on Friday, birthday cake for same husband on Saturday) and assisting in celebrating the wedding anniversary by taking the entire family for out for a late dinner.(6)

At the end of the dinner, he turned to J's sister and complimented her on choosing a place that served a “nice” meal.

(1) The Outer Banks in July is Pittsburgh South. You can't throw a rock without hitting a Steelers fan.

(2) I agreed with his assessment of the lobster. It had cooked too long. The crab legs, on the other hand, were perfect.

(3) The clam chowder was made with fresh, local clams.

(4) I'm still amazed that I managed to keep my voice neutral and sincere.

(5) My exact phrasing. I was losing my patience.

(6) I regret that I did not have the nerve to flat out say no to the dinner, since we had to wait almost an hour for a seat and it was half an hour past Toddler Alien's usual bedtime by the time we got our entrees. Especially since I knew that was exactly how it would play out. In an astonishingly sensitive move, the anniversary BIL took Toddler Alien for a walk outside while we waited.

 

Outer Banks II – Bo the Wonder Dog

Before we left for the beach, Toddler Alien was able to meet two of my mother's siblings, his grand aunt A and his great uncle B. A and B came bearing small gifts from a nearby outlet mall, which gave the affair a strange magi-visiting-the-Christ-child kind of air.

Toddler Alien was mostly charming and his few moments of un-charming were caused by my bad decision. I'm not sure what part of my brain thought that putting brownies in front of an 19 month old was a good idea. Once the brownies had been whisked away, he settled down.

B presented Toddler Alien with a pair of running shorts and a matching t-shirt. B was a long distance runner until his knees gave out several years ago. The shorts and t-shirt were several sizes too large and apparently intended for girls instead of boys, even though there was nothing that would have marked the outfit as more feminine than masculine.

Knowing my uncle as I do, I also know that these clothes were chosen with zero consciousness about gender.

A gave Toddler Alien a plush dog. A Ty, Bo “The First Dog” Portuguese Water dog. Complete with red, white and blue Bo tag. A owns this breed of dog, a sweet, well trained girl with a ton of personality.

Unfortunately, we could not take Bo with us, as J's family contains several members who are conservative with a capital “C”. While a part of me would throughly enjoy provoking fireworks amongst the oppressed elite in my husbands family, the other part of me wanted no part of accusations of indoctrination and why liberals are the root of all evil in the Marvel Universe.

So Bo stayed behind, to be picked up on our way back home. This morning Toddler Alien wandered around and about the upstairs with the dog in his arms, leaving a small trail of fake Bo hair behind him. When it was time to go downstairs, he gravely handed Bo to me to return to his crib.

Outer Banks I – Lost in Northern Virginia

 In a moment of weakness many months ago I agreed to an vacation with J's immediate family on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The primary reason I caved after almost ten years of just saying no, was because my father-in-law finally agreed to accept the monetary contributions from all interested parties that would facilitate the renting of a larger house.

I can't say that the week was all bad. The beach was lovely and it was good for Toddler Alien to spend time with his five cousins. But it was not the most relaxing of vacations and J and I are both leaning towards waiting another 10ish years before we even contemplate doing it again.

Our journey began with a drive to Northern Virginia, home of my brother and his wife. The initial drive as lovely. We skipped the highway in favor of navigating through the Laurel Highlands, past Nemacolin Woodlands. We did well and made good time until we got lost trying to find my brother's home. After several (increasingly desperate) calls to my sister-in-law, K was able to pinpoint our position well enough to come get us and lead us back to the home she shares with my brother.

A snack and two glasses of sangria slush shook the dust from the road. It was a late night for everyone, including Toddler Alien, who was enjoying the novelty of being allowed to play with tupperware well past his bedtime.

Because we could not check into the rental until Sunday, we spent Saturday trying to stay cool in the 90˚+ heat. K and went to Office Depot to find clipboards and to Wegman's to buy milk for the house and snacks for the road. We walked out with milk, snacks and four bottles of Folie à Deux Ménage à Trois red wine.

While J napped in the afternoon, K and I took Toddler Alien for his first dip in the pool. Because of the heat, the water felt like it came from a warm tub, but TA did not seem to care. He splashed and giggled and had a great time.

Sunday morning we packed up the car and started the drive south.

An Uncomfortable Moment

I have to make this quick and dirty, as I promised J that I would get some more sleep to mitigate the after affects of the migraine I suffered yesterday. The upside was that I was prepared and had medication ready when the aura started(1), so I was able to enjoy a pain-free day. But I am still wiped out and need the additional sleep.

J's parents and nephew T came today to help J clean up the back yard(2). T is 12 years old, loves spending time with his grandfather and volunteered to tag along and help out.

Toddler Alien adores his grandmother. In his hierarchy of favorite people Grandma is first, Daddy is second, I am third, then there is everyone else.

A little past four we gathered for dinner. Toddler Alien gets anxious when he sees that dinner is forthcoming. We have been working on getting him to remain calm while preparing him meals, but it has been a long, hard journey to turn him from screaming maniac to civilized child(3). Even though he had been snacking on cheddar Goldfish crackers all afternoon, he began to fuss. To quiet him I poured the rest of the crackers from his snack cup onto the tray's surface.

And he promptly and deliberately threw several of them onto the floor while screaming. J's father admonished not to throw food.

And I promptly and deliberately removed the tray, made him get down from the chair, pick up all the crackers he had thrown and walked him to the trash can so he could see me throwing them away. All the while he cried, but he picked them up.

All the while my in-laws, my nephew and my husband watched. J watched tense, ready to spring in an defend me. His parents and our nephew were silent.

The entire time this was occurring, I was incredibly self conscious. I knew that I was holding up dinner. I knew that the easy thing would have been to quietly pick up the crackers and not delay our guests. And I thought, This is really, really hard and embarrassing.

But I did it anyway. After the trip to the garbage can I put Toddler Alien back in his chair and we sat down to a nice meal of cold cuts, egg salad, cold drinks and cold pickles. Toddler Alien ate an egg salad sandwich, had some prosciutto and finished with some dried apples. Without acting up once.

(1) The worst migraines I have are always triggered by me running around in 80+ degree, sunny, humid weather without eating enough.

(2) Four trees down, four to go. I mourned the loss of the crabapple and quietly cringed that we had to cut down a mulberry too, but the ridiculously tall pine trees had to go. As it turned out, one of the trees was infested with stinkbugs to the point that the tree was probably going to come down on its own anyway.

(3) I can't even begin to imagine what prompts this behavior, but it is so otherwise out of the ordinary that even his daycare teachers have commented on it. J's instinct it to put him in the chair and let him scream it out. I'm more likely to try to find something for him to do to “help” me in the kitchen, but it is still difficult.

Awful

It is a lovely, warm night. I can hear crickets chirping and the fans are buzzing. Toddler Alien is sleeping, J is sleeping. I'm drinking a bottle of homemade mead, one in a case of bottles J found buried in a cooler. It was given to us by friends who moved West several months ago and did not want to take the mead along. The alcohol content of the mead is high, over 12%, but it is smooth with a ginger finish.

I have a full time job. With a 10% raise over my last gig, at a company with a structured development process. A company that is going to allow me to learn how to directly test databases. At the company that lowballed my first salary offer, then came up after I refused the first offer. At a company which, as it turns out, is perfectly happy to allow me to work a schedule flexible enough to get Toddler Alien when he is sick.

A good thing in the scheme of the universe, because sickness occurred on Friday, at the end of my first week as a full-time employee.

The weekend turned into listening to an 18 month old scream for hours on end, until we took him to Children's Hospital(1) and discovered that he had a massive ear infection which required antibiotics. Saturday night he cried himself almost to sleep in my arms, pointing to his crib after his tears, exhausted from being unable to sleep more than an hour for the last 36 hours. A week later he is bright eyed and happy.

All of this and I feel awful over something so stupid and insignificant that I should brush it off and move one. Right now I can't.

J and I took Toddler Alien to Lego Kidsfest this afternoon. It was a fun, overwhelming experience. Lots of people, lots of activity.

As we were leaving the convention center, J asked me to “take a picture of us” in front of one of the Lego models. In equal parts annoyed (because it was loud, I was tired and wanted to leave) and touched, I agreed.

Only to find out that the “us” J was referring to was Toddler Alien and himself, not the three of “us” as a family.

And I felt hurt. Even though J did not intend to hurt my feelings. Even though he communicated clearly and I misunderstood. I was hurt and felt awful, and lo these many hours later I still feel awful. Excluded.

And J feels terrible. Terrible enough that he gave me my card and birthday present (Legos. No really, he gave me Legos. I collect the Modular Building sets. I would collect the Harry Potter sets too, but J drew the line at that) early to cheer me up.

I've adjusted, mostly, to the concept that I am this person/role/vocation called “mom”. But I'm not the fun mom. I'm the “pick up the food you threw on the floor and put in the trash/put your toys away and brush your teeth” mom. J is the fun dad and I am the disciplinarian. Which means that while Toddler Alien does love me, throws me kisses and will not go to sleep most nights until I come in to say goodnight and tap him on the nose, I'm extraneous the moment J walks into the room.

Which is what I felt when I realized that J wanted a photograph of him and Toddler Alien without me. Extraneous.

(1) I'll have a post on them shortly, because Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh is an awesome institution. This post will include a rant about the standoff between UMPC and Highmark. A standoff that could essentially cut off access to 2/3 of the hospitals in the Pittsburgh metro area to Highmark subscribers.

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.

Aimless

Last week, I sat for too many minutes staring at a Craigslist ad for a Personal Assistant for an unspecified company. I knew I could do the work with my eyes closed, yet the desire to apply for the job was not there.

I'm spending a lot of time in the past couple of weeks trying to get back to OK. OK with the increasing knowledge that my career as a quality assurance professional is essentially over. I can't compete with out of work developers with scripting skills. The jobs I am being offered are well above my abilities.

OK with the fact that my employment at major-chain-bookstore has come to an end as the location will be permanently closed at the end of the day Friday. I've been scraping pennies together to buy a bottle of something bubbly and take to the store Friday morning, so the staff for the final shift has something to share at the end. Working at the bookstore was my Plan B and it was ideal. More time to spend with Toddler Alien. More time to write. Some pocket money, so I do not feel like I am mooching off of J whenever I want to buy something for myself.

OK with asking J for money, whether it go towards buying milk for Toddler Alien or a pair of jeans for myself. This is a difficult one, as J vacillates between being easygoing and freaking out whenever we have a big expense.

Case in point: my last trip to the doctors, to get a prescription written to end a multi week sinus infection, ended up costing roughly $250.00. Ninety dollars went towards the office visit and the remaining $160.00 for the antibiotics and two inhalers the nurse practitioner prescribed to control the coughing from the infection. The reason it was so expensive can be found in J's plan – a high deductible H.S.A plan that does not cover prescriptions or anything other than a well visit to the doctor until the the deductible is reached.

Even though I attempted to explain to J that it would be expensive, he freaked out when I came home and showed him the bill, leaving me feeling useless and ashamed that I could not cover it. I need to take this medication from April to October in order to control my symptoms. I should also being taking an antihistamine with the inhaler, but I have cut that from the regime because of the expense.

So here I sit, knowing that I need to find a job, any job, that will give me halfway decent medical benefits so I can control the asthma and see a doctor to deal with ongoing, lingering aftereffects of the pregnancy. And I have zero motivation to do so.

A Quick Entry Before an Orgy of Cooking

As it is jambalaya day, in celebration of Fat Tuesday.

I went to a baby shower yesterday. The shower was held in honor of a former coworker. Unlike the last shower I attended, this one was a much less stressful affair. I still got dressed up, but instead of the pretty purple Ann Taylor number, I opted for nice jeans and a killer jacket.

I sat with two other former coworkers and four members of the guest of honor's bowling group. It was a comfortable arrangement. The food was fair, the gifts were nice and there were no games, which made the majority of guests very happy.

As I had additional baby stuff to give the GOO and her husband, I hung back at the end of the shower, waiting for the party to break up. GOO approached our table and I showed her some recent photographs of Toddler Alien, then passed the iPod to one of the other guests.

"Your first?" she asked.
"And only" I replied, laughing. "One and done!
"You don't want to give him a little brother or sister?"
"No. I hated pregnancy and I hated childbirth" I explained.
"Well some women have a hard time" she said. Her tone and body language implied that I had experienced complications.
"Oh no, the pregnancy was completely normal. I just really hated being pregnant and have no desire to do it again".

The look on her face was priceless.

The Liquidator

Note: This is a continuation of my last post. I spent the weekend trying to get a handle on what upset me so much after completing my shift on Friday. Now that I have pinpointed the source of my emotional disturbance, I wanted to distill it for posterity. Because I like to read myself talking or some such rot.

Friday morning, we had our morning staff meeting. The café shut down when the doors closed on Wednesday night, the employees charged with packing and transferring as much as possible to the two stores remaining open.

K, a service manager who has worked at the store for 20+ years, since before the build of the location was complete, struggled to remain composed as she announced the corporate office put up the store for bids by liquidators. By the end of the day all the stock and fixtures would be sold to the highest bidder, who would sell it off for whatever profit could be made.

After shelving new magazines, I offered to answer the phones, in order to give the long-term staffers a break from answering the same painful questions over and over again.

The end of day occurred at noon, when a crew of men carrying briefcases and floor plans entered the building. They stalked the floors, studying the shelves and layout, taking notes and making a concerted effort to avoid eye contact and stay out of the way of the staff.

A second man followed closely behind, in search of the store manager, D. He had heard the store was closing and upon locating D began asking information about the general layout and square footage of the space, as he was interested in renting the location.

Finding myself with a few free moments, I headed to the staff room to grab my iPod, so I could show a new coworker some photographs of Toddler Alien. D called to me in the staff room, asking if I was available for a quick task.

The liquidator was in the stockroom, surrounded by several FedEx boxes, addressed to the store, that needed opened. D introduced me, and I put my hand out in a genuine attempt to be professional.

It is now, two days later, that I realize why this man's handshake was so indistinct. He had not wanted to shake my hand.

The boxes contained the “going out of business” signage, which needed to be sorted for use in the next few weeks. Included were a set of walker boards. “These will be used outside” said the liquidator. When D asked if he would need store staff, the liquidator replied “No. Usually we go to the homeless shelter and offer some guys $20.00 to stand outside during the day”.

D continued going through the boxes while I silently stacked placards on a cart. The liquidator held up a set of stickers and said “These are seals for the service door. Every time you open the door, you need to place a new seal and log who opened the door and when, such as when you take out the trash”. When D explained that the service door could only be opened by a service manager and offered to have the staff remove trash from the front, the liquidator replied “No, because then the employees will just hid the books in the trash bags and take them out the front”.

At this point, I was finished stacking placards, all of the boxes were open and I was beginning to actively dislike the man. He had not wanted to shake my hand, he showed not an ounce of empathy for the homeless and assumed that the staff would be out to steal his stock by hiding it in the trash.

Shortly before the end of my shift, K gathered us all together again to update us on the current news. She instructed us to remove anything considered a personal item before the end of the day. When I asked about the collection of ARCs, she said to take them today, as tomorrow they would be sold.

Another service manager, G, checked me out at the end of my shift. I offered to push someone out a window for him. He said “Can you push the liquidator out the window. That man does not have an ounce of empathy in him”. I replied “I suspect there will be a line”.

Back to the Land of the Unemployed

Which is where I will be returning sometime in the next weeks. After trudging through the holiday season, selling calendars like it was something I was born to do, I was delighted to accept an offer for one of the two open part time spots at the major-chain-bookstore, thus delaying any decision about returning to full time work for several more months.

Only to discover when I came in for my second shift this past Wednesday that the major chain was filing for bankruptcy and the store that had so recently hired me was on the list of closures.

I have an emotional advantage over the rest of the staff, most who have spent years working together at this location. One manager was hired the store opened twenty years ago and remembers when the company was building it out. So today I volunteered to spend my shift manning the phones, answering the same set of questions over and over again and listening to the same set of comments.

• When are you closing? I don't know, a time line has not been set yet.
• Are all the stores in Pittsburgh closing? No, stores X and Y will remain open.
• When are you going to start discounting the inventory? No time line has been set.
• Are you still taking gift cards? Yes, online and at the stores which are remaining open will honor gift cards.
• This really sucks. Yes. Thanks.
• I'm so sorry to hear that you are closing. You are my favorite store. Thanks.
• Channel 4 said you were going out of business this weekend. To quote a coworker after I got off the phone "Channel 4 lies".
  
• This is bullshit. I understand.
• And my personal favorite "I live in Dormont. I don't want to drive across Pittsburgh and the country to use my gift cards". When I suggested he used the online store, he digressed into a rant about Amazon.com and how he still had not received an order he placed for a Christmas gift, leaving me so aggravated that I removed one of my shoes and mimed banging it against a counter while fantasizing that I was aiming it at the caller's head.

The speaker of the last quote also threatened to "call investor relations" and complain because I could not tell him when the liquidation sale would start.

The liquidator came today. He is an older man, blandly dressed in a grey suit, black shoes, white hair. His may be the most indistinct hand I have ever shaken. I relished the snarky thought of him coming down with whatever crappy illness that has been lingering in my immune system for the past two months.

In the very brief period of time I spent in his presence he struck me as a most unsympathetic of men.

To be continued... 

Back From Hiatus

I've started looking for full-time work. I'm only a couple weeks into my search and I'm already seriously considering a change in profession. Remain a part-time bookseller for the large chain with severe financial problems? Get a paralegal certificate? Go back to my self of 16 years ago and be an administrative assistant?(1) Wait tables?

There is nothing quite like a bad interview. I'm still fuming from the last interview, 50 minutes over the phone(2) with a bad connection, speaking with an individual who asked vague, broad questions and had the nerve to complain to the recruiter who set it up that my seven years of QA experience did not make me "qualified enough" as she would have to invest too much time to "train" me to use the bug tracking system and other (very expensive) testing tools. The fact that it has been a function of my profession to learn how to use such tools on my own completely escaped her. And it was not from the lack of trying on my part either.

I know what the problem is. I am totally unwilling to put up with any bullshit from any interviewer or organization at this point in my life. I would much rather be upfront about what I want and what I think I can provide then go through the rigmarole involved to land a job these days. I know that odds are stacked against me - I'm competing with laid off developers with MIS degrees and tons of experience working on $100,000 defect management systems while I have been trained/self-taught and work almost exclusively with open source tools.

Ugh.

(1) Interesting detail - the wage I am paid now, as a part-time bookseller is the same amount as the wage I was paid in 1996 as a full-time receptionist at a collection agency.
(2) Really, if you are going to waste my time with a phone interview that long and I'm in the area, just bring me into the office.

Cognitive Dissonance:

Is watching a woman in a full-length fur coat, waiting for a $5.00 latte, scream about how oppressed she is. So loudly that all conversation in the tiny mall coffee shop comes to the screeching halt, as none of the other customers are able to hear each other.

Scenes from a Mall

I'm still regrouping.

As part of the regrouping process, I have taken part-time seasonal(1) work staffing a calendar kiosk run out of a large national bookstore chain. This affords me plenty of time to watch mall life unfold and write tiny notes about what I see and think on pieces of register tape, tiny sheets of notepaper and on the back of half-sheets of invitations to a store's open house. (2)

The kiosk which I am staffing is in a small mall located in suburban Pittsburgh. The stores a mix of independent and upscale chains such as Restoration Hardware, Williams Sonoma and Anthropologie.

Most weekdays, my pacing around the kiosk is punctuated by the click-swish sound of hands washing mahjong tiles at the nearby tables. Almost daily, groups of four women take over the tables, set out the racks and shuffle tiles. Some bring a thick, felt cloth to muffle the sound of tiles on formica. They bring over trays of lunch from the nearby Panera and spend the afternoon playing. On breaks they wander over to the kiosk to look at the calendars and offer up bits of information about their lives. One woman, a thin, wiry individual with orange-red hair confesses that she comes every week, she is widowed and playing gives her something to do.

The customers offer up all kinds of information to me. They talk about their children, grandchildren and favorite pets. Some stop on the way into the movie theatre and return after the show to give me a short review and pick up a calendar as a Christmas gift.

There are crazies as well. One man asked me why anyone would purchase a calendar of Michelle Obama, as she is a “jerk” and went on a rant about how “we” paid for her Harvard education. I politely demurred that we stocked calendars for all tastes. Dissatisfied with my answer, he sat down at a table, turned the chair so it would be directly in line of sight of the cash wrap and proceeded to glower at me for the 20 minutes it took the upstairs Chinese restaurant upstairs to bring his take-out order to him. Another co-worker warned me that there she has been sexually harassed by a man, who followed her around the kiosk while telling here what he would like to “do” to her. When I asked her why she did not call mall security, she confessed that she did not know if that was okay.

(1)I worked for the same organization for 1.5 years in the early 2000's while J was under and unemployed. I was hired as a seasonal employee and the manager was happy with my work and asked me if I would continue part-time. I worked there until J and I moved to Pittsburgh.

(2)The invitations are placed on open tables by the owner of the florist/tchotchke shop located directly in front of the kiosk. She is a cranky, cranky woman who spends a lot of time complaining about the state of her business and the fact that her customers are “crowded” by the portable display pods in front of the kiosk. Many of the tchotchkes she sells are of a genre hereby dubbed “christian, inspirational”, which would not be a problem except for the fact that a significant demographic of mall customers are older Jewish women who have (I suspect) little use for tin figures of santa claus and gold-glittery tin signs that proclaim “Jesus is King!” She bought several scripture-a-day calendars, stating that she gives them as Christmas gifts to her girlfriends every year.

Law of Unemployment Number One

Unemployed + uninsured + visit to the dentist = 1 cavity and a $400.00 bill.

The upside? The bill was the most painful part of the experience.

Marshall's Greentree Road, 3:00 PM

Wednesday afternoon is the time to wander the Marshall's on Greentree Road if you are interested in observing the cross section of humanity that is the wealthy housewives of Mt. Lebanon. It is also the place to be if you want to come within inches of colliding with a former Penguin turned color announcer known in the Pittsburgh area as the “Ol' Two-Niner”.

The housewives are a scary lot. Unfriendly, dressed to the nines, they stalk the store and stake a claim at the racks of designer clothes at cut-rate prices, hovering over the large, button down w/collar white shirts with scary intensity, sending out a “I'll cut you” vibe to any individual tactless enough to attempt to reach for that size 12 Calvin Klein suit jacket and matching size 14 skirt and ramming into me with their miniature sized shopping carts, pausing to say “excuse me” after bruising my poor hip. The “excuse me” is delivered unrepentantly, a two-word verbal dressing down meant to convey how nervy I am, to be standing in the aisle, blocking her way to the size 6's.

I feel very large next to these women as I rummage through the size 12 and 14 pants, wondering when I will have enough energy to push myself back into shape and reminding myself that even if I am able to achieve some sort of “shape” my hips may be unwilling to allow me into anything smaller than a twelve.

I watch a 14 year old girl try on a short, red strapless dress for an upcoming homecoming dance. Her father comments that she looks sexy. As I enter the dressing rooms to try on a stack of pants and a couple of suits, I tell her to lean over and shake, to make sure the strapless top stays put.

He talks about how he is raising her on his own. It is an excellent ploy, as he and his daughter receive more female attention then either know what to do with. One woman suggests Spanx to wear underneath the dress, to give it a cleaner line. Another gives him options and advice about shoes. As he talks on about her, how conscious she is of her body, her voice floats out from the dressing room where she is changing back into street clothes

“Dad, you know I can hear every word you are saying, don't you?”

The suits don't fit without major alterations to both pants and jacket. No money for alterations now, no suit. The pants look terrible, cheap and ill fitting. I sigh and return everything to the attendant.

I wander a little longer, seeking pajamas for Baby Alien. At 9.5 months old, he measures 34 inches long and towers over most of his mates in the baby room at daycare. I've already looked in several thrift shops, but have not yet gathered the patience necessary to dig through the poorly organized sections of baby wear, a puzzlement as the adult clothes are neatly organized by color and size.

I've been tired a great deal this week. I sleep a lot during the day, my body's way of recovering from the months of stress it has been carrying. Next week Baby Alien drops to part time daycare and I am making plans for the days he is home.

Pushed Out

On the 22 of this month I became officially unemployed. For the first time in my life, since I started working at the age of twelve, I deliberately walked off a job.

It is cold comfort that I choose this status voluntarily.

It is cold comfort that Pennsylvania is an “at-will” state and my contract allowed me to exercise an option to leave their employ without notice.

It is cold comfort that the majority of my coworkers were upset and threw a cocktail hour in my honor on Friday evening.

It is cold comfort that my former employer framed my resignation in such a way as to imply that I was fired and made a major error in the subject line of the email he sent out (1) to the rest of the company announcing my departure. I swiftly dispatched the notion that I was fired as untrue and requested that they tell anyone who believed that I was fired the truth.

It is cold comfort that one of the most libertarian, pro-business of my friends was the first to suggest, without having listened to any analysis of the situation from myself or J, that I was pushed out deliberately because I had a baby. He also, in all seriousness, suggested that I sue them into non-existence, pointing out that “they don't make enough money to settle and you'll bankrupt them if you sue”.

J and I don't have the money to sue, but it was interesting how to witness how quickly an individual's professed values change when it concerns people he or she knows in real life.

I can't prove that my former employer pushed me out. Instructions were always given verbally, never in writing. Negative feedback, on the other hand, was given in writing and usually involved some element of, for lack of better phrasing, “making shit up.”

It has been five days and I'm still emotionally and physically exhausted. The teeth grinding has stopped and the migraines are gone, but I feel achy and sore and bruised all over.

And I have no idea what I'm going to do next.

(1) He referenced an employee fired in January instead of myself.