Workin' It

Where I live, there is a restaurant that specializes in Mexican cuisine. In an effort to drum up business, they have hired someone to dress up as an ass and stand on the side of the road and wave to passing traffic, while holding a sign with the restaurant's name in the other. Perhaps this was a successful technique to improve patronage, because the Japanese restaurant on the other side of the parking lot has now hired someone to dress up as a Sumo wrestler (diaper and all) to stand curbside and wave at passing traffic while touting their sushi bar. TWO jobs I am thankful I do not have...

Fender Bender

So I am coming home from the store a few days ago, driving down my street about to turn into my driveway, when a car coming the opposite way drives into me. Our side view mirrors sort of collided - mine just folded in and was fine. His mirror (which serves him right because he turned out to be a real muffin head) sort of just DANGLED AND HUNG off the side of his truck like a broken arm on a Barbie doll (ooooh I can be so cranky, can't I?). I pull into my drive and this guy (after parking on my lawn, dammit) charges out of his truck ranting about the damage to his vehicle and starts fiddling with the broken mirror. He gets it to sit properly, but continues to fuss, whining about what he was supposed to do if it was still broken. I suggested that he could always place a claim with his insurance company, and he went ballistic. He said that the incident was all my fault, and that it could be really expensive to get his mirror repaired. Seeing what was coming I shut him right up by offering to call the police to get an accident report filed so he could make his claim. I went into the house to make my call, and he drove off. I hope when he got to that big pothole at the end of the road, it jarred his crummy mirror right off the side of his truck! Bozo!

Stress

I am having trouble focusing on much of anything these days...even my fishing has suffered. I am waiting to hear about a job I applied for. I got some positive feedback last week - my application was forwarded to the person who will actually be doing the hire...I almost fainted when I found out. But now, every time my phone rings I panic.

Just in case it happens, I am trying desperately to get prepared for an interview...I have spent hour after hour reviewing pertinent changes to legislation...reading page after page of technical material...trying to cram some USEFUL knowledge back into my brain...

I am so beside myself that I missed the Steinmart 12 hour sale, gave my son eggs for dinner a few days in a row and washed my white bathing suit in the washing machine with a load of dark clothes. I put expensive gas in my truck by mistake, and bought LOW-FAT ice cream (also by mistake). I have called my husband by the cat's name, the cat by the boy's name...

I have bored total strangers with my story, and gotten words of encouragement and blank stares alike...my friends are beginning to avoid me - that frenzied wild look in my eyes is enough to scare off the best of them...in short - I am a mess! But, maybe by this time next week, I'll be the MESS with a JOB!

The Big Head

Archaeologists have unearthed a massive red granite head of one Egypt's most famous pharaohs who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced Sunday. The head of Amenhotep III, which alone is about the height of a person, was dug out of the ruins of the Pharaoh's mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor. It is speculated that the purpose of the big head was that maybe it was part of a temple or other structure of religious significance. I wonder if the archaeologists who have found the big head are missing the point - maybe the pharaoh’s mother got carried away when the head making people came to her door and asked if she wanted a “picture” of her son, for example. Maybe they even had a set of massive heads done for the pharaoh and his sisters (where in the pyramid did they put them, I wonder?). Or maybe it was just a novelty item: a bit of roadside art that got mixed up in the dead pharaoh’s tomb somehow.

Now, I know the real story behind The Big Duck, and when we were kids, we used to pass it in the car all the time. Did we ever stop and get out? Heck no - it was a gimmick created by one of the big quackeries to sell ducks. Have you ever SMELLED a duck farm? Nothing quite like it. Anyway, in the late 1970’s The Big Duck was sold and relocated and is now used as a store that sells souvenirs and touristy stuff. You see where I am going with this? Maybe that massive head was just a spot on the Nile where visitors could stop and get a cold drink, or buy some beads or something. Maybe, instead of kids clamoring at their parents to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop the car at The Big Duck, Egyptian children tugged at their parents hands on the reins of the chariot and begged to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop at The Big Head.

Job Seeking 101

So as you might have guessed, I pretty much gave up looking for a job. I began to feel that if anyone wanted me, they could just come and find me because, by golly this job searching stuff was just taking up TOO MUCH of my time. But just last week, three killer jobs opened up which I absolutely positively have to apply for. So, since I am now technologically savvy enough to apply for these jobs with ease via my home computer, I decided to also re-do my resume in honor of these job openings; a sort of 'fresh start'. And in doing so, I am very happy to report that I have finally resolved the issue of how to address my past 13 years of unemployment. I have simply removed any reference to my life since 1997. Perfect. I don't know why I agonized over this for so long! Prospective employers will hopefully just think that the really spectacular parts of my career are detailed in some elusive cyber-bits that have gotten misplaced, somehow. No way would they think that someone would deliberately neglect to include such a large block of time. How convenient to blame one's shortcomings on computer error! Of course, should anyone actually ask about that time period, I am out of luck. But, I will worry about that when it happens.

A Glimpse Into My Future

It's odd that I wasn't ever aware of just how much my child took over every facet of my life. I had a chance over the last week or so to not exercise any parenting skills as my son was away at a school event some 900 miles away (954 miles, to be exact). And, I got a peek at what my life used to be like before I spent most of my time requesting that teeth be brushed, bedroom floor detritus be somewhat minimized, re-assuring that neither Santa Clause nor God considered it a truly grievous sin to hide the cat's toy from the cat, cleaning play-doh out of the trumpet, de-coding cryptic messages scribbled in permanent 'Sharpie' ink on the door to his room, drying tears cried in earnest because of a mean kid at school, explaining that of course there is dancing in heaven, and probably golf and fishing, too, et cetera. With my parenting limited to a three-minute phone call peppered with monosyllabic yeses and noes (his contribution to the conversation), I was forced to compare what my life as a parent and my life as a non-parent is like. This is what I came up with:

• As a parent I must wait until the child is in bed ASLEEP before drinking alcoholic beverages of any kind (including strong cough medicines). As a non-parent, I can start cocktail hour whenever I want.
• As a parent I need to be sure the child has clean clothing. As a non-parent I can exercise the practice of leaving dirty clothes in the hamper for so long that the dirt molecules actually break down and go away without water or soap. Similarly, the heat generated by the dissolving dirt also IRONS the clothes. Pretty nifty, huh?
• As a parent, I cannot neglect the child long enough to spend 14 hours a day in bed reading, 8 hours a day on the boat, or 16 hours a day sleeping. As a non-parent I can.
• As a parent, I need to feed the child nutritional food on a regular basis. As a non-parent, I can revert to my former preferred diet of artichoke and gouda cheese sandwiches and pizza when I am hungry.
• As a parent, I realize there is no greater and wonderful challenge and gift than being the child's mother. As a non-parent I missed him like hell!

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that even though it felt like the end of the world for me when my son was away, there are some definite benefits to having your child grow up. As people way more experienced than I with this parenthood thing have probably already figured out, your life doesn't actually end when your kid grows up. I have seen the future...and I think it's going to be okay.

Roomies

I read this article about a guy who did not know that there was a person living in one of the closets in his house. She lived there for a YEAR before he noticed her. He found out about his uninvited housemate when he began to realize there was FOOD missing from his refrigerator, and installed a camera system to solve the mystery. Now, I find this news story entirely plausible, given the state of the closets in my home. One could easily overlook a person because of the plethora of CRAP in the closets. In my house, the closets are simply dumpsters with doors.