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Down and Out

the outside lane

I was unemployed twice in 2009.  I had a six week spell between a layoff and finding a job, and then went nearly nine weeks between leaving that job and finding another.  I think once you’ve been unemployed, you live with that fear breathing down  your neck.  I do, anyway.  I am constantly terrified of making a mistake because I know what that mistake could cost me–cost my family.  If it was just me, I wouldn’t be so worried, but that kid likes to eat.

Gawker has been running a series of stories from the unemployed and under-employed.  Like me, a lot of the writers express shock and disbelief at finding themselves out of work.  They had jobs they thought came with security, and believed that with their educations and experience, if they lost a job, they’d be able to find one quickly.  One writer put into words a side-effect I experienced during my second stint at job hunting:

But the material losses weren’t the hardest. In less than ten months I experienced the complete eradication of everything I’d worked for in my career, along with my confidence, my dignity, my identity, my optimism, and any hope I had for the future. I started tanking my (elusive) job interviews. The pressure of knowing the opinion of a perfect stranger was the deciding factor in whether or not my life improves dramatically or just keeps careening off the rails began to manifest as overly self-deprecating humor and compulsive joke telling. I used to be great at interviews, confident and easygoing, suddenly I’m Rodney Dangerfield. Except I wasn’t funny. I was raw and desperate and completely gutted, and now I can add makes other people feel uncomfortable to a growing list of unemployment side-effects.

It didn’t even take me ten months to get there.  I went to one job interview where I was perfectly qualified.  I made it through the first round and was asked to stay to talk to the hiring manager.  By the time I got to see him, I was fighting tears and started overcompensating with–ugh–okay, the front desk girl joked with me that they called this man Big Poppa.  I actually threw that into part of my interview.  I knew when it was coming out of my mouth that it was horrifying and wrong, but he had just asked me why I wanted a job with his company and the other option was for me to burst into tears and tell him why I had really just left the last job, and how afraid I was that I would never work again because because because.  Instead I said I found the company interesting, and I liked how the office called him Big Poppa.  His face…horrible.  Then, I did go sit in my car and cry.  I still had to go home and try to be positive about my prospects.

P.S., I did not get that job.

I think the Gawker series is important because it reminds us that not everyone unemployed is there because they are voluntarily unemployable.  There are millions of stories out there right now, and most of them are worse than mine.  I did find work.  Yes, I started at the very bottom again, but I found a job with a company I really like, and I’m slowly working my way back up the ladder.  I have a working partner who is excellent at managing our finances.  I have two parents and a set of in-laws who would have made room for us in their homes–we would never have been homeless.  I remind myself that while I may have lost a huge chunk of pride, and I could have lost a lot more of that, I was never in any danger of losing a place to sleep, or of a way to feed my family.

Bottom line, I suppose, is that I’m preaching compassion again.

Taxes are probably about to go up, and that means we’ll all be tightening our belts.  Keep an eye out for people whose belts aren’t even keeping their pants up anymore.  Let’s help each other where we can, even if it is just through sheer consideration without condemnation.  You never know.

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Monday

the outside lane

Tis feeling like the Season, finally.  We woke up to temperatures in the 20s this morning, and a dusting of snow on our rooftops and car hoods.  My yard flamingo had a patch of platinum “hair” on his head.  I should have taken a picture, but I am killing all my FB friendships with over-sharing photos as it is.

I am the person who is always grabbing the camera.  I know there is a school of thought that we should spend less time documenting moments, and more time enjoying them, but I find that I am fully able to multi-task, which leaves me with mementos to enjoy for years to come.  How Baby Thor looked in a grocery basket?  I wouldn’t necessarily remember the exact fit.  What B looked like the night we met?  That I could have told you, but it’s nice to have record of it.  My mom sharing a milkshake with my son?  My dad cooing to him?  My grandmother holding him on her lap?  Those candid moments are priceless to me, and I would photograph them again and again.  I would take more pictures.  I am the photographer of My Life magazine, and I am awesome.

I sat through a viewing of Mean Girls, last night.  It was showing on MTV, and I will always stop and watch that like I will always stop and watch The Breakfast Club.  Once again I looked at Lindsay Lohan and thought, “Where did you go?”  It made me think about the families of the Cowboys’ Jerry Brown and Josh Brent.  I thought about all kinds of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and children who are without someone they love very much because of poor choices with alcohol and drugs. 

Be careful out there, Friends.  Don’t drink and drive.  Don’t get into a car with someone who is drinking.  Drive especially defensively this time of year, watching out for the people whose judgment has turned them into vehicular weapons of mass destruction.

 

Beauty, Career, Uncategorized

What Would Happen if my Milkshake DID Bring all the Boys to the Yard?

the outside lane

I was emailing with a friend and wrote, “I want to get paid to just look good.”  And then I had to follow that up with, “Of course, that requires work of its own, and would mean hitting the gym/pavement/pole dancing class, avoiding carbs like my life depended on it, and (let’s face it) botox or bangs.  Bangs are cheaper–but I just grew mine out!”

There really isn’t a free lunch.  Jennifer Anniston works hard to keep it tight, and that’s why people are still interested.    Looking good is her job.  You look good enough (Jessica Alba) and no one even cares if you can’t act–as Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, and Veronica Lake lamented in their smash hit A Sweater, a Sarong, and a Peekaboo Bang (see? Bangs.)  Looking like Hollywood is a full-time job.

I already have a full-time job, so you won’t catch me looking like Hollywood.  But I wonder what would happen if I treated “Looking Good” like a part-time job?

Part-time work is generally under 20 hours a week, but I am also a parent, so adding 20 hours to my current 40 isn’t feasible.  What if I took a 5 or 7 hour a week “part-time job” at the offices of “Looking Good”?  What would happen?

Conceivably, I would get paid more.  I should see an increase in my incentivized full-time pay based on how much people wanted to look at me (like Jessica Biel does, bless her heart), and the better I look, the more I should see my incentivized pay increase in my full-time work (like how the prettier your leading lady is, the more people go to see the movie.)

But how would I calculate that?  What factors would I need to consider? 

Well, it takes a while to get good at any job, so I shouldn’t expect my work at Looking Good to start making an impact for between 60 to 90 days.  It takes at least a year to be fully grounded in a job, and to have experienced a sampling of the seasonal issues one might encounter, so it would take a 12 month period before I could really start to make calculations.

After a year, though, working at “Looking Good” for 5-7 hours a week, I should start to see enough significant difference that I could account for it in my full-time job, and note the intangibles like better service, free drinks, and getting out of speeding tickets.

However, I have to take into account my age and some factors I cannot manage without paying to have them fixed.  I am always going to be whiter than a Trace Adkins concert–I can’t tan, and my skin is fish-belly white, so my ability to Look Good is relegated to a pasty subgroup.  I am relegated to further subgroup by merit of being (almost) 42-years-old–gravity is doing her work.  There is also the matter of fact that at my thinnest, I’ve still got child-bearing hips, massive thigh and calf muscles, and broad shoulders.  I have freckles, thin hair, and discolored teeth.  Factoring in all that, my Looking Good pay scale goes from, say, $10 an hour, right down to minimum wage of $7.25.  And that’s if, in the course of Looking Good, I drop about 60lbs.

But, the better a job I do at Looking Good, the more my confidence will increase, drawing people to me, and the less I will need to do to maintain it at a certain plateau.  I should be able to divert some of my Looking Good job hours into workarounds for the factors set above, so that after two years of my part-time job, I should see an increase in pay of somewhere around $1.50.  And more offers of free drinks.

Of course, I have no intention of doing this.  I can buy my own drinks.  The most workout I am interested in right now, is the one my fingers get while I’m typing.  It’s just the idea that if I devoted myself to it, as though it were my earning potential, Looking Good would be a lot more important, and perhaps easier to do.

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Rock Monsters

the outside lane

I posted this anecdote on FB yesterday.  Thor and I were talking about something and it came around to behavior.  I reminded him that bad behavior landed kids on Santa’s* Naughty List, and that the Naughty List kids got lumps of coal in their stockings.  Rhetorically, I said, “And what would you do with a lump of coal?”

Thor shot back with a huge grin, “I’d make ROCK MONSTERS!”

This is the blessing and curse of the intelligent, resilient, imaginative, self-confident child.  You can’t threaten them into good behavior.  You have to actually work to get it out of them because if you give them lumps of coal, they are going to make rock monsters, so why worry about getting coal? Coal is just as awesome as anything else.  Rock monsters rule.

We learned this about that child when he was barely a toddler.  I was attempting to threaten him into eating his vegetables by saying I would take away toys.  When I had to make good on my threats, he watched me, stone-faced with tears in his eyes, and he said, “I didn’t really want that anyway.”  And how do you deal with a toddler who has already learned the importance of counting the cost before he’s made a stand?  We had to go about it a different way–and I’m not saying we got the right answer after one or two tries either.  We had some embarrassing meltdowns of patience before we hit on what works with him.

I don’t mind telling you that this is one of my favorite things about him.  He knows his own mind.  He knows what he does and doesn’t want, and he has always pre-considered what it is worth to him.  Fortunately, we’ve discovered that the one thing he hasn’t been willing to risk is our disappointment.  We’ll see what happens in those teen years, but right now, what I see is a kid who is going to do okay in saying no to all the right people.  I hope he will.

Life is a lot harder when  you say yes to the wrong people, and when you say yes to the wrong people as a young adult, you have an awful lot of life left to live with those decisions and regrets.

 

*I’ve always tried to be honest with Thor about invisible things like Santa, and God, and what makes weather happen.  We play at Santa, but when he’s asked if Santa is real, I’ve told him that the spirit of Santa is real, but not the mythology of the man in the sleigh.  Every year, he asks me.  Every year, I answer.  Every year, so far, he has said, “It’s okay that you think that, Mama, but I know Santa is real.”  So…Santa is real here.  And that’s fine with me.

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Best of Songs, Worst of Songs

the outside lane

I am a captive to constant Christmas music, which is better than being captive to “It’s a Small World,” as my family once was when the eponymous ride broke down while we were halfway through it, but which is still grating after about three days.  My pain is your entertainment.  Since I am hostage to this limited catalog, I thought I should put it to use.  Follows, my 5 Favorite, and 5 Most Hated Christmas Songs.

Let’s do the Faves first, because one of them is on right now.

5.   Wonderful Christmas Time  I know a lot of people hate this song by Paul McCartney, but I love it.  It is whimsical and sweet, and any song that uses “ding dong ding dong ding dong” ad naseum as lyric has to be great, right?

4.  Silver Bells was my grandmother’s favorite Christmas song, and she would ask me to sing it to her over and over again.  It is also the first Christmas song I can remember connecting with.  I was 8 when my parents got me a little Donny & Marie radio/microphone set.  If you aimed the mic antenna at the radio antenna just so it would sound like you were singing on the radio.  Silver Bells was the first song (and one of the only songs) I ever managed the mic magic with.

3.  Do They Know it’s Christmas  Duh.  I mean, I know I’m way too old to love this song and that none of my imaginary boyfriends look anything like they did for the Band Aid video (or the Live Aid shows), but this is a sentimental favorite of mine.  I hear it, and I am transported to Junior High and my favorite day-glo orange sweater and Life Saver candy earrings.  That’s not a bad thing.

2.  Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas  Only the Judy Garland version of this will do for me.  It makes me feel warm and happy, and for just a couple of minutes, I can imagine that I live in a world of snow, and fireplaces, and homemade pies.  The pie figures in heavily.  It is cherry pie.  A la mode.

1a.  Mary Did You Know  As far as actual CHRISTmas songs go, this one tops my book.  If you want a “reason for the season song” this is it.  It’s also a lovely, haunting melody, especially this version by Michael English.

1b.  I’ll be Home for Christmas  *sigh*

 

My Most Hated list is actually more difficult since I like most Christmas songs, but I’ll manage, and having just heard one of those…

5.  Trans Siberian Orchestra Carol of the Bells  I don’t really hate this one.  I feel like this is the My Heart Will Go On of Christmas songs.  It’s a great song that’s just gotten way too much play, and it is dated and tiring.  It sounds exactly like a guy I went out with in college, who was also great in very, very small doses, but who was wearying with the gesticulation and dramatics.

4.  Feliz Navidad and Meli Kalikimaka  Speaking of tiring.  I’m lumping these two together because they are basically the same song, and neither is good enough to merit its own whipping.

3.  Any Amy Grant Christmas song.  I had my Amy Grant phase, right alongside my plaid jumpsuit with the massive doily collar and enormous hairbow phase.  No photographic evidence exists of either.

2.  Santa Baby  I don’t like the idea of Santa as a Sugar Daddy.  Just…yuck. 

1.  The Christmas Shoes  This trick.  I could not hate this song more if it grew legs and kicked a puppy.  I already hate it more than Frankenstein’s monster hated fire.  It is the worst song in the world–and I’ve heard Amsterdam.  This song should be drawn, quartered, and dragged through the streets of London while Henry VIII looks on, eating a giant turkey leg.