I woke up this morning to T walking into the living room, sobbing "Grandmaa-aa-aa!" (She really likes my mom. Also, like the rest of my family, she is really cranky when she first wakes up.) Usually it's her job to not-so-gently wake me up so I can relinquish the couch to her, while I go to the back of the apartment to sleep a little longer in S's bed. Today, she walked over to my side, paused for a second, then flung herself despondently on the rocking chair, saying, "Daddy, you wake her up, I don't wanna watch! I don't wanna watch!" Such drama, that one. Later on I got a better send off from her. And now I'm heading out to Thai and Trivia.

Cringe Night was hilarious and awesome. There was a cute guy reading the poems he wrote when he was 14, a pretty woman reading from a short story about meeting Michael Hutchins from INXS (she wrote the story in order to give it to him, to inspire him to contact her and fall in love with her; she did end up throwing a dot-matrix-printed copy of it onstage at one of their concerts), and two or three other random diary-readers. My sister had brought one of her old journals, thinking she might read this lengthy, painfully-sincere, and enthusiastic review of a Sting concert we attended, but she was too intimidated by the quality of the other readings. Maybe next time.
One guy read from a diary he was assigned to keep during his 8th grade year; I had the exact same assignment, and I still have the diary. Blog fodder!
CJ is, right this moment, booking our trip to Maui. It is happening, people. To put my fickle mind at ease, we are paying extra for a pre-nup (i.e. trip insurance). But now I can start dreaming of snorkeling with the manta rays, sunsets on the beach while sipping mai tais, and volcano-exploration.

I'm in Brooklyn, because I am of course still unemployed, so I can go wherever I want during the work week. And my sister really wants to go to Cringe Night tomorrow, so here I am. Once I got here, T, my 3 and 3/4-year-old niece, kept asking me how long I would be staying. Actually, she was more pessimistic about it: "So you're leaving right after dinner, right?" "So you won't be here when I wake up, right?" "So you'll be here tomorrow in the morning, but you'll be gone when I come home from school, right?" She has been slaying me with the cuteness and the cleverness and the funnyness.
Right now the three grownups are in front of three computers. Sk just farted audibly, S said "gross!" and Sk said "YOU'RE gross!" and S said "that's mean!" and I said "BOTH of you are gross!" and S went "Aw!" and Sk went "Ha!"
This is what we do after the kids go to bed.

Oh SHIT, it's NaBloPoMo. And my blog-slacker sister
is doing it, so I really have no excuse. I just reread some old blog posts from 2003, looking for the 7th-grade diary entries I transcribed (they're in February, if you're interested) and man, I used to blog all the time, plus I was so much funnier and more energetic. What the hell happened? It's kind of depressing.
I have lots of things I could talk about, but a lot of it is personal. And I'm the only one of my friends who lays themselves bare on a blog, so I think part of my problem is Fear of People Not Liking Me. This is an ongoing crisis (see: the previous 5 years of this blog) and one I need to work on. But, like most difficult things I "need to work on," there's always tomorrow to start actually working, if you know what I mean.
Anyway. I'll blog every day for this month, even though I took the weekend off. Here, I'll tell you about my weekend in animals:
I met a very pretty, gray, short-haired dog on the street Friday night, before the Sitting Next To Brian CD release show. The show was fantastic, by the way. We were drifting off to sleep by the end of their set (not the band's fault) so we missed Space Captain.
The next night, CJ and I saw The Darjeerling Limited, which was great, though felt similar to The Life Aquatic. A snake has a cameo role.
Yesterday, after a baby shower at Chandler's Tavern, I drove up to Lenox, where CJ and I went for a short walk at the Audubon place. We turned a corner of a path and saw a beaver slip into a tiny pond. We froze, and the beaver slowly swam in a circle and came back to where it had been before, about ten feet away from us. It lumbered up onto a fallen log and started nibbling on dead leaves. Beavers are very noisy chewers, and when they're standing half-submerged in a pool of still water, the vibrations cause tiny ripples to radiate out from their bodies. It stayed there for a while, then took a small branch in its mouth and swam a few feet away to continue chewing, as if to give us the full Beaver Viewing Experience of swimming, eating, and grasping things with hand-like claws.
This morning on my drive home on the Pike, I saw a couple of guys in orange safety vests standing by the jersey barrier in the middle. As soon as I whizzed past, they dragged a deer carcass across the roadway to the shoulder, each of them holding a rear leg, going as quickly as they could. The deer wasn't mangled at all, it was just dead. I spent the next ten minutes daydreaming about calling the local hunting store to find out if I could pay someone to clean and dress a doe I'd hit with my car (if I ever do, god forbid), or would that be a problem, since I didn't have a deer-hunting license?
And now I'm home, and need to do some interview prep work. Which is difficult, and which is why I haven't started (see what I did there? With the tag-back?). The interview is only rhetorical at this point; I expect it'll be scheduled soon. I hope.

[Update: I did send a revised resume, with a short but funny/mildly-self-deprecating email; the guy wrote me back almost immediately saying not to worry, he hadn't read the previous one yet. Sorry for ignoring your advice, commenters; I went with a former co-worker's opinion.]

Last Thursday, I drove CJ to a CVS to get eye drops and much-needed pain reliever for an eye thing he was going through. I could tell it really hurt because he was kind of trembling and not-talking. While cruising through the parking lot, a big old sedan in front of me suddenly stopped. So, I pulled into the open spot he had just passed, and parked. As CJ and I searched the car for his pain-killing prescription (with increasing distress), a very angry man suddenly knocked at the window. "Do you do that a lot, stealing people's parking spaces!?" I opened the door to be polite and asked him to repeat himself. He did. I said, "Oh, were you going to back into it or something? I didn't know." (By the way, there were plenty of parking spaces. Plenty. And the dick didn't have his blinkers on.) He said something angry to me back, about being careful or something, and how I should watch out and pay attention (I didn't pay attention). He was so furious, so furious at ME. I suddenly got angry, and as he walked away, I said to his back, "You don't have to be an asshole about it." He immediately turned and rushed up to the car saying, "Excuse me? Did I use bad language with you??" I glanced over at CJ, still wincing and fumbling around in the dark for the prescription, and I said, "No, fine, you're right. Have a good night" -- that last bit said with sweetness and only a tiny hint of sarcasm.

After he walked away and the adrenaline rush subsided, I felt like crying. We decided the prescription was not in the car; this was bad, and meant he'd have to just use Advil. As I walked a blind CJ to the CVS, I had to excuse my bad behavior to CJ: see, I used to just turn meek and yielding when confronted with jerks, but now I stand up for myself, maybe a little too much, when I should really be polite but firm. Plus, because CJ had his eyes closed, I felt I had to convince him that I hadn't actually knowingly cut the guy off. (He doesn't know me well enough yet to know I don't pull that crap.) But replaying what had just happened made me feel worse and less-together. I nearly fell apart in the freakin' CVS, and I think it all happened because I'm unemployed.

Here's why: My ego has taken a big hit, which I didn't really expect from being laid off; I don't feel it consciously. I know I'm good at what I do (or used to do). But I am definitely more insecure than I have been in a long time. It's not a good feeling. Nobody's more critical of me than I am. I don't know how to counteract this, except to just be aware of it. I hope I don't end up stripping for cash just to feel better about myself. If you catch me on the pole, please pull me off of it.

Inside CVS, CJ sat in the waiting area while I collected the other stuff he needed. As he occasionally blotted at his teary, shut eyes, and I held his hand and tried to distract him from the pain, I thought I saw the angry guy walking up the aisle. I hoped he saw me, and I hoped he felt guilty.

Shit. I just noticed that I made a typo in my resume -- you know, the resume says I'm detail-oriented and have excellent proofreading skills. The error: I wrote "saavy" instead of "savvy" (neither looks correct to me, to be truthful, but the dictionary says savvy). I sent this resume to my previous workplace, for a job I am desperate to get. So, now the question is, what do I do about it? Hope they don't notice, or send a charming/funny/impressively-brave email fessing up to the mistake? Help me, people.

Why haven't I been blogging? I don't know. Time keeps slipping away. This is my month of Sundays, after all, and I have been living the life of a leisurely retiree (in that I don't go to work, but I try to spend as little as I can). I'm almost done refinishing the bench thing (just need to put on the actual stain/finish); I've been cooking, going on hikes, doing laundry, planning projects, making new earrings for Dandie, and not cleaning the house. Plus, spending time with CJ, which takes away from my productive time. From the above list, we do the hiking and cooking together, but none of the other things, but we go to see shows and we watch DVDs and occasionally shop for eyeglasses. Also, we drive to and from our homes. He lives an hour away, but it's a scenic hour.

We've been dating for 2 months (in fact, it might be exactly 2 months today, from the first face-to-face date) but are planning a trip to Hawaii in February. This is terrifying to me on several levels, the worst one being my lack of income. Even on a good, well-employed day I'd be worried about spending the money, but throw my unemployed state into the mix and it's super freak-out time. And that's not even considering the commitment involved in planning a trip 4 months out with a new relationship. (We have already discussed trip insurance and the like. It's the single person's version of a pre-nup.) This is one of my many problems: Most people would be focusing on the Hawaii part, with the beautiful sand and flowers and snorkeling and sushi, where I only see the dark looming clouds of "what if?" Sometimes I really hate my brain.

Warning: This post really could have been multiple Twitters, but I don't want to overload their system.

I'm getting into an unemployed groove over here. Get out of bed at 9:15 or so, eat breakfast in front of the computer, do some job search stuff, eat lunch, then work on refinishing my table (see below) until I can't, read crap online and work on other minor projects, play Turok, make dinner, eat with radio, then upstairs for TV/Turok/more computer time, or out for singing/a show/etc. In bed by midnight. That's the semi-productive life I've been leading.

For lunch yesterday I made an egg sandwich, a mug of tea, and a glass of watered-down unsweetened organic cranberry juice, to which I accidentally added a generous dose of milk. Normally I stop myself before actually pouring the milk into the wrong container, but this time I just filled my glass of juice to the brim with creamy goodness. I might be starting to lose it.

Yesterday was also day two of my furniture stripping project. I'm working on a rough-hewn-looking coffee table that I bought for $20 via Craigslist. It appears to be a knock-off of a fancier, pedigreed table that Pbup had (and probably still has). I'm using a water-soluble stripper, which means it doesn't work all that well, but I don't need to use a ventilator.I also have to scrub the stuff off, hard, so I also get exercise, kind of.

If you've ever wondered where everyone who doesn't work a regular 9-to-5 job goes during the day, I can tell you: WalMart. Twice I've had to go to the dreaded WalMart to get more supplies; the second time, I rode my bike there, and with my messed-up hair and work clothes, I fit right in. I didn't even bother unrolling my right pant leg. I still hate it in there, and their selection is shit, but it is about a mile and a half closer to my house than Foster-Farrar. And if I can't justify going to the cheapest possible store while I'm unemployed, when can I justify it?

I've been reading about salary requirements, and how to handle requests for them, and I just want to point out that the word salary is really weird. If you see it used frequently, it ceases to have any meaning. Salary. Salary salary salary. It's like a salad, and celery, together. I feel it would be better if it were spelled salery.

Doing all of these little projects, and cooking real food, is time-consuming. And I am starting to feel stressed about my lack of income. I am torn between wanting to continue enjoying myself (while still looking for work) and just taking any job at all in order to stretch out my severance pay for as long as I can. And by "any job at all" I mean soul-withering work like temping and data entry. But jeez, I don't really need to be that person, do I? I haven't had to do that kind of work for 12 years. Universe, please give me permission to not be that person. I will repay you by doing the crafty things I've been putting off: finishing my quilt (started, oh, 4 years ago or so) and completing the new scarves and opening an Etsy shop and writing the pitch for that magazine. Amen.

This week has been all about choices.
I could get up and out of bed when my alarm first goes off in the morning. Or I can stay in semi-consciousness for an hour or so, enjoying the warmth of my bed and the cats lying on me.
I could clean the bits of raw chicken out of the kitchen sink strainer, or I could leave them there and let the cats eat them during the night.
I could work on the various art projects I want to create, or I could play Turok: Evolution.
I could get angry at the two loser assholes who won my eBay auctions and then never responded or paid me, or I could shrug it off and get the auctions canceled so I can just redo them.
I could fall into the trap I commonly lay for myself at this stage in a relationship -- where I start saying critical things without thinking, subconsciously trying to push them away and/or test their devotion to me -- or I can try really, really hard to not do that.

This week, I've been choosing the second options.

New guy CJ (note: not his real initials) and I walked up to the doorway of number 118, where a couple of young men stood smoking outside. "You play Halo?" one of them asked. Yes, yes we do. "Upstairs to the left."

Yeah, we know a guy. A guy who has two huge TVs, two XBox 360s, 2 copies of Halo 3, and enough controllers and leather sofas to accommodate 8 players simultaneously. We hadn't actually played Halo before, but CJ once had a serious XBox addiction (he kicked it) and I've done my time on the Quake and the Unreal. We set up our characters (him: mad hatter; me: pretty pony), learned the controller basics of moving around and shooting, and went to multi-player slaughter-town. We played against a bunch of guys who had obviously spent a lot of time playing: They knew all of the game board maps, which guns were best, where those guns were stored... Meanwhile, my character kept looking up when I meant to look down, I had to stop moving in order to remember how to switch weapons, and I frequently spent several minutes "firing" at people while not noticing I was out of ammo. Still, I managed to kill a few people.

I was playing with 7 men, ages ranging from, let's say, 22-40, and I really, really didn't want to be treated differently because I was a woman. But the patriarchy is a funny thing. It gets into you guys, way deep inside where you don't see it, and you do things like think you're doing me a favor by letting me kill you. Please: Fire away; I know I'm going to get killed again and again, I'm a big girl, I won't cry. Do it, and don't patronize me. I know you think you're being nice and considerate, and are letting me kill you because you think I'll get too discouraged otherwise. But I'm not a child. In fact, I am likely older than you. CJ was doing almost as poorly as I was, and you didn't go out and find him, stand in front of him, and let him wale away on you until you died. And then say something like, "Well, I was getting you pretty hard, so..."

Why is that?

Still, I'd play again. I didn't get mad or even irritated, because I understand where it was coming from. I can handle a little mild sexism and I'm not surprised when I find it in places where normally only boys roam. I wish I could practice on my own so I'd be ready for next time... But I'd rather keep the $400 and whatever carpal tunnel health I currently have.

Unemployment update: So far, not-working is as awesome as you had always feared it might be. It's gorgeous outside, so I might go take a walk around Fitzgerald Lake. Or maybe I'll stay here and read a book. I already sent out a resume today, so I feel like I'm covered. I was advised that I should indulge my need for sleep by not forcing myself to get out of bed at 8 in the morning (I go to bed at midnight), just because I Can, and Why Not? Except I haven't worked on anything arty yet, and I need to. Luckily I have all of tomorrow and Friday free. (And next week, and the week after...)

Anyway, my point is: no panic, no vomiting, no sobbing. And yes, I do think I'll take that walk now, thanks.

Doing the internet personals thing is weird. I've mentioned this before, right? What with all the actual old-fashioned going-out-on-dates one has to do? It's like getting set up on a blind date by your cousin, except your cousin is a poorly-designed web portal who asks a lot of lame questions. At least having to try to explain to a stranger who I am, in an hour or less, has made me much more comfortable in job interviews. And that's a skill I'll need, since tomorrow is my first day of official unemployment.

My to-do list for Monday:

Wake up sobbing
Buy cat food
Apply for unemployment
Have panic attack
Do laundry
Go to Post Office, mail off eBay items
Eat nothing but egg rolls
Look for jobs on craigslist and mediabistro
Stare at the boxes of crap taken from my office
Drink
Make more shrinky-dink earrings for dandie
Water plants
Vomit

And so on. Tuesday should be a little less grim, since a group of recently-canned coworkers are gathering to watch Ugly Betty and eat take-out all day. After that, the future opens up before me as an endless black void. And it's cold out there. So very, very cold.

Getting laid off due to downsizing is kind of nice in the way that getting to be at your own funeral is kind of nice. Sure, you're dead, and therefore no longer an active player in the story of your life (or career). But if you're lucky, like I am, you hear a lot of people saying a lot of genuinely nice things about you that you wouldn't have otherwise heard. You may be surprised at who comes to the funeral; there might be people you thought had forgotten about you. A few people you thought you might see won't show up at all. For the most part, I've felt incredibly supported, both with words of wisdom and with job leads. I still haven't used all of my networking contacts. I might feel differently when my severance pay is about to run out (late January) but for now I feel great. Terrified, but pretty hopeful, and determined to make the most out of this time of forced semi-retirement from the working world.

I am packing up my office. It's weird how little I feel. I mean, I am constantly worried I won't find a job, and that it will be a cold winter, and people will forget about me. At the official farewell party last night I was making jokes about networking with the homeless people who hang out under the railroad bridge, you know, just in case that's what I end up doing. But I'm not yet at the point of despair. A few more weeks of failure has to happen first (I'll let you know, I'm sure). Right now it feels likely that I'll have to take a job that pays less than what I'm getting now, and I'll have to scramble to make extra income to pick up the slack. I don't have an extravagant lifestyle, so it's difficult to find things to cut out of my budget.

Anyway. Onward and upward. Goodbye squarehouse, goodbye mouse. Goodbye people I've worked with for 11 years. It's a lovely day outside and I need a nap.

Hey, look at me! I joined BlogHer. Which means I now have a beautiful, life-giving advertisement over there on the right. Isn't it great? And shiny? Don't you want to click on it, and then tell all of your friends to come to this blog and click on it too? I thought so. Get to it, people!

I just came from Isabel Baker's 90th birthday celebration. She's been living in Laurel Park for 40-something years, and has been active in the life of the community the entire time. She's one of those elderly people you want to be when you grow up. She's warm, friendly, sharp, has a lot of self-awareness and a sense of humor about herself. I hope I am half as loved as she is if I get to be 90.

After we'd all eaten potluck lunch, the mayor of Northampton (also a resident of the Park) read an official proclamation declaring today Isabel Baker Day. And the current president of the Laurel Park Association (not the same thing as the homeowner's association... it's complicated) presented Isabel with a brass plaque thanking her for her service to the LP community; the plaque will be installed in the Tabernacle. Then Isabel spoke. She thanked all of us for coming, and introduced a woman who had come all the way from Japan -- when the woman was in college, she traveled around the U.S., and bumped into Isabel's husband, who made her come over for dinner. Her English wasn't good, but her French was, so Isabel brought over a friend to translate from French to English. They stayed in touch over many years. Isabel told some stories about the old days of the Park, and ended by saying that whether she'd known us for a long time or a very short one, we were all very dear to her. Then we sang and had yummy cake.

I was also fortunate enough to sit at a table with Harry and Priscilla, a couple who met as kids at the Methodist summer camp here. They just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. As a child, Priscilla may have even slept in my house, back when it was a dorm (there were 2 or 3 similar dorms). So cool.

The whole experience filled me with gladness, and made me more determined to keep this house. I hope I can do it.

I no longer have any actual work to do, in these twilight days of my job (officially unemployed in 12 days!). And I have never been so busy. I have a gazillion people to contact and ask for advice, get names and email addresses and phone numbers of other people to contact, and they send me to other people, or tell me about jobs to apply for... It's amazing how much I've managed to keep on top of, what with my lack of any sort of personal organizational system. I've only let a few things slip through my fingers, mostly by choice (my hairdresser urged me to call her niece, who works at a web company; haven't done it yet). I have a couple of interviews coming up, which is awesome. I have a good pitch idea in mind but I haven't gotten around to writing it yet. Our off-site editor people are coming tomorrow, and we have dinner and drinking plans both Wednesday and Thursday evenings. I am also getting advice on applying for unemployment, and using COBRA vs. one of the cheaper MA-provided plans, etc. In between all of this, I am sorting all the stuff in my cube.

And then there's all the stuff at home I want to do. I bought the supplies for baking my own bagels; I want to finally refinish this coffee-table thing I've had for awhile, plus repaint my metal patio set; I need to do some all-around cleaning (always); and sew some fancy scarves in addition to the cool t-shirt ones I made for dandie. There's the big-ass quilt still unfinished, too. This weekend has a trip to the Big E, plus the Laurel Park matriarch's 90th birthday potluck lunch.

I enjoy being busy and all, but this is getting a bit ridiculous.

I kind of love Kathy Griffin. Not many people know this, but I am a regular listener of a couple of hilarious, vulgar, NSFW and very, very gay podcasts (PNS Explosion and Daily Purge, can I get a what-what!). And Kathy fits right in to that genre. Yes, she's had too much plastic surgery, but there's something about her that totally charms me. So I was thrilled to read about her acceptance speech for the Emmy she just won:

In her speech, Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!"

Predictably, the Catholic League of Eternal Disapproval or whatever the hell it's called has condemned the speech, and now they're going to edit the "bad" parts out of the telecast. Lame.

I'm using a new template! The old "classy" beige/tan was getting a little dull. List of links has been updated and refreshed as well.

If you call someone and he texts you back saying he can't talk just now because he just got out of the money machine, which would you assume?
A. He somehow became trapped in an ATM vestibule and needed rescue.
B. He won big at Bingo and got to enter the Money Machine: a glass cabinet full of swirling wind-blown money, where he had 45 seconds to grab as much cash as he could.

"A" is the more reasonable choice, right? It's Occam's Razor, people. But no, the true story is "B." And it's not my tale to tell, so you'll have to hit up Henning next time you see him.

Speaking of seeing people you know, next time you're in a check-out line and you see a copy of the October 2007 issue of Disney Adventures magazine, pick it up and turn to the first page.

After a short period of rallying, by television now appears to have turned the darkened corner towards actual tube-death. On Saturday I decided to turn the TV on after a couple of hours of listening to my iPod on shuffle (the best part: "Johnny Thunder" [Kinks] and "Hold Back the Rain" [um, yes: Duran Duran] coming on during a brief thunderstorm) and I couldn't get the picture to show up for more than a few seconds. I tried slapping and hitting it in various spots and with varying degrees of strength, but it was futile. I only wanted it to be on as background while I did a mindless sewing project, so I ended up listening to a Hallmark Original Movie starring Shelley Long and Patrick Duffy. I lasted a half-hour. Still, the experience didn't make me loathe myself and everyone else, like watching "Rock of Love" (a.k.a. "Strippers Fighting," thanks Scott) does. I have a problem with that show. It's a car crash from which I can't look away. I need a personalized V-Chip that blocks that show from my life — plus "Flavor of Love," "Parental Control," "Cheaters," and "Intervention."

I might need to add that new show about the lobster boats... I watched one episode recently, and it started off with an airlift rescue of a cameraman who went into shock after being violently seasick for three days. They kept showing the guy, looking pale and awful and semi-conscious, unable to swallow a sip of water as he lolled on the bed in the cabin of a pitching, rolling boat. I have a surfeit of empathy, so just typing that is making me feel like I need several Bonine and a nap somewhere very very still. Even while I watched it I was thinking, "Shit. More raw material for my nightmares." And yet, I had to see the guy get rescued and healthy again. At least he made it out of there ok... Which is more I can say about the poor "Rock of Love" girls.

Someone at the sing tonight asked me where I worked, and I had to say, "Well, until the end of the month, I work at ..." She was a college senior, and so I acted hopeful about my job prospects, not wanting to crush her tender, optimistic soul. I'm still in the planning and plotting phase of my job search. I did send out one cover letter/resume via email last week, and have another position a friend is encouraging me to apply for (excuse me: "another position for which a friend is encouraging me to apply;" gotta have the perfect grammar if'n I want a writin' jorb). I hope to send that out tomorrow, after I get my new "professional" blog going. I bought a domain name (which is my name, .net, since some asshole is squatting on my name .com) and everything. The site will just have my clips online. I don't have the web skills to make it look amazing, but I'd rather it not look quite as amateur and "web 1.0" as it does right now. Sigh.

My garden is in the last frenzied throes of productivity. I can't even keep up with pinching off the basil flower buds. The tomato vines are beginning to brown and wither but there's still plenty of fruit getting ripe every day. I've blanched, peeled, and frozed a bunch of the smaller variety of tomatoes, and I've been giving away some, and I have been trying to eat a tomato a day. I'm trying to really savor them because the season is short, and you just can't get good tomatoes in a store... But it's tough when there are so many tomatoes in the garden you feel guilty when you go a day without consuming one.

My god, this post reads like I have the life of an old woman. I'm exciting and with-it, I swear! Once you get to know me! And after I've had my arthritis medicine, and there's no rain in the forecast, and I've taken my Centrum and Ensure...