By The Numbers

To summarize the past four months of my life:

I permanently withdrew from the graduate program I was slated to begin in January. I applied to 72 jobs: 11 in September, 16 in October, a whopping 39 in November, and just six in December. I was offered 10 interviews and made it to eight. I had four second round interviews. I had one infuriating third round interview. I had one faux job offer which dissolved into nothing when I left a message accepting the position, called five more times that day without success, and finally got through to someone the next morning who gave me an attitude, told me they were “still deciding” and never called back. I met with four staffing agencies. Two of them laid off my original recruiter. None of them were able to find work for me in a span of almost four months. So, you see, it’s been a rocky third of a year.

And absolutely none of it matters now because I was offered a job this past Friday (this time with legitimate paperwork!) which I gleefully accepted. I’ve learned an important lesson, which I think my father was right in saying that I’m lucky to have learned at this age when I have so few financial obligations. But even in my euphoric state last Friday, I had one last lingering concern. I worried that this phase changed me as a person, made me a somber, antisocial downer unable to even write a funny blog anymore. So I did the only thing I could to test the waters: I got invited a dozen of my friends over for a Christmas party, got shit faced drunk, spilled a rumndietcoke down the front of my shirt, and needed a team of people to help me overcome the hiccups.

I'M BACK BITCHES! AHAHAHA!

Close Only Counts In Horseshoes & Hand Grenades

I just… I don’t even know where to start. I have spent the past five days trying to decide where to start. I’ve started and then stopped and erased everything because it was not to my liking. I take my blogging very seriously. In short, some things happened on the trip and those things were surrounded by a lot of…. quiet. I don’t know if those events were actually eventful or just seemed eventful because they were not, in fact, cornfields. So, before another week goes by and my relations in New Jersey get their collective panties in a twist over the lack of posting, I’m going to go ahead and just start at the beginning. If you don’t mind.
Our wagon ride occurred mostly without incident which goes against everything I know about the Oregon Trail. There was no typhoid or blocked mountain passes or bear hunting (not yet anyway… that’s foreshadowing, folks. You gotta pay attention to my foreshadowing. T, are you paying attention??) We managed to fit almost every one of our worldly belongings in the barely-existent trunk of an Audi TT. Then we drove five hours west with four pit stops because seriously, at any minute we were about to fall off the face of the earth and I was reluctant to pee on a farmer’s front yard. Also, Beau needed tater tots in Troy, NY.

Finally, we approached our destination in West Bumble. We zoomed past the farmstead (going entirely too fast, eh hem) where Bologna was standing outside frantically waving her arms. That made me start flapping my own arms and squawking. Beau, probably because he was going entirely too fast, was one step ahead of me and was already turning around in the driveway of someone who might have run out of their home with a shotgun. Instead of an angry yokel, we next encountered a loose cow that proceeded to race the convertible for a short distance. It’s as if we went to the zoo and found a tiger walking around outside its enclosure. These things aren’t supposed to happen. Tigers are supposed to stay in their cages, and cows are supposed to stay inside their fenced pastures.

We spent the remainder of the day wandering around cornfields, taking pictures of deer poop, and getting acquainted with the holiday’s cast of characters. In addition to the family, we met two cats, Sweet and Pooh, so named for their individual temperaments. Sweet was particularly awesome. She’s twenty years old and noticeably blind. When she looks at you, it’s like she’s looking through you directly into your soul and reading your inner most thoughts. Then she would go and wreck my theory of feline wisdom by walking into walls and meowing peevishly at them as if it was the wall’s fault. According to Mr. T (T, that is your dad’s official blog name. I just wrote it with the intention of circling back and writing something more clever, but then I was all, “Mr. T?! YES.” These things just come to me) Sweet still goes outside and hunts. AND ACTUALLY KILLS STUFF. So, yeah, she may be a little clumsy and we may have found her standing in a toilet one night, but it’s all a part of the cosmic feline wisdom that I detected in her spacey stare.

Thanksgiving morning, before I woke up, the menfolk (T [Hi T!], his dad, my dad, and my Beau) went into the woods with guns and tried to kill things. Real guns. With like, real bullets. My boyfriend and my father with his iffy hearing and his poor eyesight went deep into a secluded forest, somewhere south of the Adirondacks, with loaded guns and little supervision. But happy times! They all came back alive and empty handed. Apparently, a few shots were fired but, as Mr. T told us, “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” They should have brought Sweet with them. She would have felled a buck with telekinesis and plaintive mewing.

We rounded out our visit to the middle of nowhere with a trip to the closest town which was a thirty minute drive through the woods and fields and farms. And at that, it was still the middle of nowhere. We wandered and visited a used book store and looked at Christmas decorations. All very peaceful, pleasant activities but you don’t want to read about that. You want to read about Beau pitching a hissy fit at a bakery which was really slow in that not-a-Starbucks-in-Boston way so we left before he got a cookie and complained about it until we got him a beer at a dive bar on the edge of town instead where he nearly got us all shot by loudly announcing that “those guys really suck at darts.”

That night we had an Oregon Trail style send off. Mr. T made us a bonfire in the backyard and sharpened sticks so we could roast cocktail wieners and marshmallows. We were having a merry ol’ time setting things on fire and stuffing our faces, when a mile down the road, the dogs at a neighboring farm began barking. Hysterically. The T’s all looked at each other and were quiet for a moment before forcefully starting conversation again. I was not so easily fooled so I asked what all the racket was about. They told me it was nothing to worry about. The dogs probably just smelled… something. Something? Yes, something. Like a coyote. Nothing to worry about.

I’d already been worrying about that for days. Ever since Mr. T said that the coyotes were originally introduced into the area in order to keep the deer population at bay, but they weren’t big and mean with drooly fangs enough, so local officials introduced a coyote/timber wolf cross breed. How is everyone ignoring the wolf part?! That’s like ignoring the part of me that’s Polish. Yeah, I’m mostly Italian, but that doesn’t cancel out all the Polish qualities. You should see me try to do simple common sense tasks like open a box of frozen chicken nuggets. The Polish is in there, festering, and it makes a difference. Except, generally speaking, those genes don’t make me snatch unsuspecting city folk from camp fires and feed them to my young.

Needless to say, despite attacking a bush with my pointy stick in self defense and nearly soiling myself twice, the predators stayed at bay long enough for us to wrap things up and return to the comfort of the indoors and the protection of Sweet.

Truly, this was a proper Dangerous holiday. I was nearly run down by a cow, pitch forked by angry locals, and eaten by a coyote in the span of 72 hours. Oh, and my dad almost shot my boyfriend which would have been a particular inconvenience because there was absolutely no room left in the trunk of the car for a body.

Real Pioneers Caulk It and Float

In the time honored tradition (which began last year) of the Dangerous Family, Thanksgiving simply cannot be held in a reasonable location. Why would anybody want to have dinner in front of a roaring fireplace at their father’s house in temperate South Carolina where one could still at this time of year feasibly walk on the beach? Thanksgiving must be an Adventure. This is to test the family loyalty. Sure you’ll help a relative hide a body, but will you drive cross country to stay in a roach infested motel?

Much to Beau’s disappointment, we won’t be returning to the Liki Tiki in Florida this year. Instead, we’re taking a relatively short drive of five hours to upstate New York, home of T’s entire family. Entire. Like going back a dozen generations to the Mayflower era when people were called hominids and ate ants with sticks. Yes, we’re going to eat Thanksgiving with the descendants of real life pilgrims. To do so, we just need to drive through an area that’s been blanketed with snow for a month to a place that Google informs me is nestled snugly between the Catskills and the Adirondacks. We will be frontiersmen in our own right as we forge through this wilderness where there may not be public restrooms, acceptable fast-food, paved roads or cell service. In just two days, we begin the exodus of The Slightly Abbreviated Oregon Trail.

Culling knowledge from the computer version, I know that the first step involves packing the wagon and similar to the ways of my overzealous ten-year-old self, I am already over packing. But instead of bringing fifteen pounds of cornmeal and twenty chickens (each with a name and an elaborate personal history that was explored in detail via the journal feature which chronicled every time a hen wandered off or had to be killed for food), I’m taking a number of supplies that Beau and I are concerned we may not find at our destination. Among these items are cilantro, comfy pillows, rum, and freshly ground coffee as well as a full arsenal of allergy medications since I’ll be cohabiting with multiple felines, which, though adorable, make me sneeze uncontrollably and my throat swell up in an unattractive and life-debilitating way.

Speaking of bodily weakness, remember how pissed you’d get when Amos, the quote-on-quote doctor, would come down with cholera somewhere in Wyoming and you’d have to rest for two weeks? Like Amos, I am also diseased. The inexplicable disappearing zit that hid before I got to last week’s interview has resurfaced on my chin and it is ANGRY. It looks much less like a pimple and much more like a second chin jutting out to the right. For thematic continuity, we’re going to call it mumps.

So, this is how I am required to prove my loyalty to the family and renew my membership for the coming year. With cornmeal, dysentery, and mountain lions. Pray for us. And Godspeed on your own travels!

A Comedy of Errors & Illustrations of Said Errors

Hello free blogging hobby! I had an interview this afternoon that very nearly went horribly wrong, but happily, did not because I apparently have good karma.

My chief concern this morning was picking between two completely different interview outfits.

I brought this quandary to Beau’s attention because he works with Conservative Types and therefore, would be able to best answer whether the bright blue shirt ensemble or the white shirt/coral necklace outfit would be most appropriate for an interview at a Conservative Type Place. Beau picked option #1 which secretly pleased me because that meant I didn’t have to iron the horribly wrinkled white shirt. Yay one less thing to do!

Instead, I ironed my hair to make it less poofy and more straightish while watching reruns of Golden Girls (and, yes, I know this goes against the cardinal rule of my last entry but I gave myself a break since I was going to have an honest-to-God interview and I needed something to calm my nerves because going into public gives me agita now that I rarely leave the apartment and when I’m nervous I start defecating because nervous pooping runs in my family. When my cousin got married a decade ago, all the bridesmaids had to crowd into a bathroom stall to help lift her dress so she could pooh without obstruction. Ahh, longest parenthesis interjection ever! How much longer can I make it?! Ok I’m done).

Next, I ironed the skirt part of my suit so it could match my hair in its lack of wrinkles. I looked down at my project while I chortled at Sophia’s antics and noticed that the first pass of the iron had done more than just de-wrinkle. It left a white chalky residue which I lamely swept at, still calmly chortling. But it did not go away and I began mentally freaking out: “What the fuck?! The iron came on the fuckin’ black skirt that I have to wear to a Conservative Type Place?! What is that?! OH GOD!!”

I ran to the sink and began scrubbing just hard enough for the Iron Jism to really set into the fabric. Then I upgraded to wet paper towel. Then to Mr. Clean Magic Eraser which has saved articles of clothing in the past. Then in a moment of temporary insanity, I turned the faucet on full blast and dunked it in. Then I realized I had an hour to pull myself together and dry a now soaked “dry clean only” garment. Then the nervous pooping started. Then I only had 55 minutes to dry the skirt.

In a full set of penguin-print flannel pajamas, I tore down to the basement, ignoring the electrician working in a corner, and threw my shame into the drier which I cranked up to the max. Back up in the apartment, I simmered down slightly and began searching through my closet for other skirts I could wear with the suit jacket. The first thing I tried on looked ridiculous but not because the pieces didn’t match into a real suit. They looked ridiculous because the jacket looked like a sack. I checked the tags, assuming I grabbed one of Beau’s suits, but unless Beau has started shopping at New York & Co, then it was mine. Turns out being poor is making me skinny and for once in my life, I was not thrilled with this.

I gritted my teeth and dug to the depths of my closet to pull out my very first suit which I bought right out of college and made me look like a sausage the last time I put it on about a month ago. Granted it was still snug today, but a much closer fit than my newer suit. With mere moments to spare, I ironed the white shirt which is Iron Jism resistant by nature of already being white, slapped on some make-up, and looked in the mirror before running for the train. Here is what I saw looking back (except for the letters floating around my body; those are for explanatory purposes only):

Now I will use those floating letters to explain everything that was wrong with my appearance when I walked out the door this morning:

A) Entirely too much eye shadow applied by a girl who reads every issue of Glamour but still can’t figure out cosmetics.
B) A giant underground zit that popped up somewhere between nervous pooping and make-up application and is now hiding under a thick layer of concealer which actually conceals very little.
C) Pin stripe suit that I bought OVER TWO YEARS AGO (on second thought, I’m going to give that one a silent fist pump)
D) Scab from scratching at dry skin. Ew. Do you even want to know these things about me?
E) Elastic lines from the fuzzy argyle socks that I wore all morning
F) Mystery bruise from mysterious source. Possibly obtained during Mouse Hunt.

Somehow, in some magical, cosmic way that I will never EVER understand, points A, B, and E resolved themselves between the train and my arrival at Conservative Type Place and the others suddenly didn’t look like an issue. Furthermore, I had a lovely interview with two charming ladies who appeared to like me, genuinely laughed at my jokes, and made allusions to a second interview next week. On my way home, I thanked the universe for pulling through for me on the big day by emptying the contents of my change purse into the collection pot of a very surprised looking Salvation Army bell-ringer, despite being dirt poor, despite not having had a paycheck in almost 80 days, despite having sworn off Crystal Light Iced Tea which was a major addiction and source of happiness that cost me an unjustifiable average of $4/week without providing nutritional sustenance or inebriation.

So, thanks Universe for throwing me a bone and letting me have a good interview today. Here’s $1.08 in nickels and pennies for your trouble!

S&M Rodents

**Written Sunday, November 16:

Silently mouthing “Help me” at my laptop does not seem to be improving my current situation. I am being held hostage in my bedroom with the door barricaded by an animal in my sitting room. And it is most certainly not Ninja Mouse. Allow me to backtrack for a moment.

Saturday night, Beau and I held one of our increasingly popular dinner parties in which he gets to show off his gourmet cooking skills and I get to socialize for free. Everyone wins! After plying our guests with an Italian feast and plowing through several bottles of wine, we retired to the sitting room for board games and the Top Gun soundtrack and additional wine. I was in the middle of what I’m sure was a very urbane, witty joke when people began yelling and jumping out of their seats and pointing emphatically at the baseboards. For a moment, I got very defensive. I spent a lot of time dusting those baseboards and if they weren't clean enough for my friends then maybe they should try staying home all day scrubbing and sweating over a hot stove and not buying me nice things.

That was when I saw it: a very small gray mouse streaking across the floor. A miniature version of Ninja Mouse. One might say a baby version. It was immediately apparent that my arch nemesis has spawned and sent a legion of offspring to continue the reign of terror. Adding insult to injury, this implies that Ninja Mouse has not left my home as suggested by the past quiet month of poopless counters. No, she’s been shacked up behind my kitchen cabinets fornicating. Who knows what sick, sick acts were perpetrated mere inches from my collection of holiday appropriate dinnerware.

I climbed to the safety of the back of my couch as chaos erupted in my apartment. Our guests assembled into a cohesive regiment and began brainstorming an attack plan. Battle supplies in the form of umbrellas and large wooden bowls were quickly procured as the rodent continued to run willy-nilly around my sitting room and I began shrieking in my most helpful manner. It occurred to me that the super-genius gene seems to have skipped a generation, evidenced by the offspring’s willingness to leave the safety of the mouse hole for a brightly lit room filled with very large, loud, drunk beasts.

Large, loud, drunk beasts

During an eerie moment of quiet, I was shooed off the couch and forced to put my feet on the floor where they remained briefly as I ran to the safety of the bathroom and climbed on top of the toilet. Someone generously collected a bottle of rum from the kitchen and handed it to me in my ivory tower from which I alternately moaned in anguish and called, “Don’t hurt it!”

Next to cowardice in the dictionary

But they didn’t catch it, let alone tie it to a chair and pull out its toenails. They managed to chase it out of the apartment and continue to not be too skeeved when the second littermate appeared to check out the commotion. While Loaded Questions is still my favorite party game, I can safely say that Mouse Hunt has its own merits. Though, when you lose at LQ, the game pieces generally don’t get up and chase you around.

So, now, while Beau is out purchasing Starbucks to ease my thundering red wine headache, I am a captive of Seed of Ninja Mouse who may still be hiding under my coffee table waiting to shank me on my way to the refrigerator.

**Update from Tuesday morning: We’ve been (theoretically) mouse-free since Sunday evening. The apartment looks like a scene from Home Alone. There are half a dozen traps set with peanut butter and three plug-in devices that supposedly make an inaudible high-frequency noise that drives rodents insane but actually also make a faint buzzing noise that is quickly driving ME insane… and paranoid, because I’m fairly certain that these gizmos are part of a Beau plot to get me out of the house more often.

I’m onto you.

Seriously, Eat Asparagus

Earlier today as I was rounding off my fiftieth job application since September 1 (the third one today), I had a moment of passing panic when I realized the job boards probably wouldn’t update until after the lunch hour when those lucky, gainfully employed members of society would return to their suddenly luxurious looking cubicles in the HR department. That meant I would have my first free time of the day which had thus far been spent getting dolled up for an interview, getting to the interview, interviewing, returning from the interview, and sending out resumes in hopes of gaining other interviews. That’s what my life is now. Job hunting and open wastelands of down time. I couldn’t tell you which terrifies me more.

There are countless articles on how to recession proof your job, how to get a new job once you get laid off from the recession-proofed one, how to compete in a market flooded with qualified candidates, how to scale back on your budget to eek out another rent payment, but I haven’t found a damn thing explaining how to deal with the boredom of seemingly infinite hours of unpaid vacation. When I quit in August, I thought a month off would be a peachy sabbatical and it really was for the first fifteen minutes. Two and a half months later, it’s a different story.

If anyone else out there is like me, then you stopped liking sitcoms about a month ago. You got sick of dusting after you found yourself on your hands and knees scrubbing a baseboard that simply refused to stay clean. Facebook has started to nauseate you. And so, I present my unsolicited advice on how to fight the unemployment doldrums and keep you from going any crazier:

Put down the remote, put on a CD that is not Fiona Apple

As that group of radicals that I associated with in college thereby destroying any ideas I had of a political career used to say, “Kill your TV.” It is the single biggest contributing factor to my brain rot. I’ve sworn it off during daylight hours and put on music instead. Anything not written in a dark room by someone wearing black nail polish is generally a safe choice. I like a variety so my current line up includes Enya, The Killers, and Pirates of the Caribbean. The intensity and drama of the last was particularly useful. It made my dishwashing feel ten times more dignified and triumphant.

Stop sitting in a corner crying and take a walk

For me, the worst part of unemployment is that stagnant pond water feeling, so I try to move around a bit. I frequently dance around the apartment and try to venture into the sunlight at least once a day. When I’m physically sitting still, I try to keep my brain occupied with crossword puzzles, reading, writing, taking inventories of what’s in Beau’s dresser drawers, anything keeps my neurons from liquefying and crawling out my nose.

Make shit to sell on Etsy

To keep my brain really distracted, I get creative. For example, cooking. You’ve got to eat anyway and making things by hand is way cheaper than Lean Cuisine. Last night, Beau and I made potato gnocchi from scratch for dinner. Today I made stir fry for lunch and as an added bonus, I threw in some asparagus which means I’ll be doubly amused the next time I have to pee. I've also been crafting like a fiend. Speaking of which, do you think there’s a market for illustrations of beans riding tacos?



Like Enigma said, return to innocence... eiiiiiiiiIIII ohhhhwah wah wahhh (remember the video with the unicorn running through the woods?!)

Lastly, I’ve embraced cabin fever like a kid with chicken pox and allowed some of my craziness to bubble to the surface. I make forts. I talk to cashiers at the grocery store. I pet stray cats. I tackle Beau and try to wipe boogers in his hair. I play dress up in my own closet. I see which pots and pans fit on my head.

It might all sound pretty simplistic and common sense, but honestly, it took me a month to remember how to entertain myself without people around to play with or wads of cash. Now excuse me, I need to use the ladies' room and I am REALLY excited.

This Is My Chin. You'll Note That It Is Up.

There comes a point in life when you’ve been unemployed for two months in a failing economy, had your resume rejected 30 times, been personally rejected after three interviews, and can’t get a certain temp agency to call you back when you think things look pretty bad. Then your insurance company tries to screw you out of nearly $1000 for a routine test. A test to tell you that you don’t have cancer. The disease that’s affected several of your family members. Including your mother. Who it claimed years ago. When you were nine.

And then you think back to you and your mom’s favorite picture book, Could Be Worse by James Stevenson, about two kids who whine to their grandpa about their trivial problems like splinters and lost kites and always elicit the same eponymous reply until one day he conjures up a long, elaborate story to teach them how much worse things really could be.

Then you think well, hey, things could be worse. So what if I’m unemployed with seemingly few prospects and looming medical bills? I don't have cancer. I have oodles of friends and family who I adore. I have the bestest boyfriend on earth who senses bad moods from miles away and brings home flowers to make me smile. I have a roof over my head and cable TV. I have rum in the liquor cabinet. I have a library card and poop jokes and turkeys-gone-wild in my backyard.

You think all that and then suddenly, things don't look so bad after all.