the cold, yes, that one

I have "the cold" again. I fought with this thing all god damned Fall it feels like and finally, while I was totally unemployed with no interviews or even good looking jobs to apply to, I was not sick with it.

Now, this week, I have two interviews. One is a job that I really really (really) want. And last week, I got "the cold" again. Today, I woke up 3 hours before my first interview (at the job I don't really really want but can't afford not to interview for) drenched in sweat and feeling like someone filed all around the insides of my trachea and pharynx. "The cold" is not your typically stuffy head blurg thing, it's unique in that it is, more than anything else, quite painful. I can hide a fairly large amount of pain for short times, however, the cold - since it is a cold - includes sniffles and gurgles and coughing. This makes it harder to hide. My instinct when sick is to not go out, thus there is no need to hide anything. But man, I NEED a job.

Since developing a few chronic health problems, I find that I have a sort of smoldering resentment for people who bring their nasty cold out in public for all of us to share in. Sure, some of them might be in a crappy position - no sick time or some other compelling reason (like desperately needed job interviews) to be out and about showering the populace with noxious bacteria, mycoplasms, or viruses. But I know there are people out there who just get up and go with their cold for really no good reason whatsoever. Explicitly, I doubt they give a second thought to it. Implicitly, I suspect these people are waiting to get an award for perfect attendance.

E.g., yesterday, I was at the public library checking out a new (for me) book. There were quite a few people there including a woman with two kids. The woman wrapped up at the check out desk and after standing around looking blank for a few seconds, the kids started to move on to follow her to the exit. The boy paused though then turned to face the rest of us waiting in line and let loose several big coughs at us.

Not only did he fail to cover his mouth, I saw that there was no evidence at all of even a half hearted attempt to appear to cover it. You know, the slightly raised arm or hand that doesn't make it to the face but that comes up nearly reflexively in someone who was at least taught manners. When I see this shit, it's all I can do to not say something. The only thing that stops me is that I am well aware of the weird social approach we as a society have to illness and sick behavior and I know that in this context, I'd be the nutjob who is "paranoid" about germs while they'd be the normal people who don't let being sick stop or even slow them down enough to cover their fucking mouths.

I emailed my first interviewer this morning to let him know I had the cold, tell him I was still interested in interviewing today, but offered to reschedule if he didn't want to share in my cold. This is not a move I was happy to be making (as I said above, I know my views on public health and cold sharing are minority at best) but truly, I cannot go sit in what will probably be a small room with someone for what will probably be at least 45 minutes and quite likely share this wretched thing with him. Sure, odds are he's one of the masses of idiots who march around sick waiting for the perfect attendance medal. But what if he's HIV positive or otherwise immunocompromised? What if he has a spouse, kid, or parent he cares for who is on chemotherapy? What if like me, he just had some really important things to do this week, things that could affect his life in a very significant way?

searching

On with the job search. My temp position has ended, both blessing and curse. Really it's more of a curse but with a bright side. The bright side is of course that the people I worked for/with were the sort who can't get the hell out of their own way. K-cop and her buddy, Queen B (with all that B stands for) were chronic thorns in my side. They were each causes and embodiments of much that was wrong culturally with that office, however I can't say the "big boss lady" didn't hold some responsibility in the mess that was the office climate and overall philosophy of "let's just assume everything will go according to plan". I don't get that mentality. It doesn't fit with my own experiences in any domain and I can't imagine running an office like that. Sure, sometimes you can't cover all the bases. It might be impractical or impossible. Time constraints, personnel allocation, and budget may conspire against preparing for possible outcomes. And some shit is just straight up unpredictable. However, at this past job I witnessed some seriously blatant head in the sand, grossly shortsighted behaviors which left me simply stunned and left everyone scrambling when the shit inevitably hit the fan.

And so I am somewhat happy to be done there. I am very unhappy to be unemployed though. Another day on the internet, surfing the job boards and updating my online resumes and candidate info sites (think PeopleSoft but worse). I just rewrote a cover letter, my entire resume, and revised my work experiences on this god awful hosting site called Taleo. Holy crap that thing was a pain in the ass....speaking of the link between poor business culture poor business practice, it seems Taleo sucks in ways beyond my limited job seeking perspective.

While I am off and in need of projects, I've decided to look for cat food alternatives for my cat Max. Max has IBD, probably some food intolerances. For some time now, he's been on a limited ingredient/novel protein diet. We had him on Hill's prescription diet D/D, rabbit, venison, and duck. He tends to eat only one kind, then after some time, he refuses it and we need to switch to a different flavor. A few years ago now, he stopped eating the D/D altogether so at the advice of our vet, we switched him to Royal Canin's limited ingredient/novel protein diet. He ate that happily for a while and with less good (but still not horrible) digestive results than with the Hill's. Then he started getting bad in terms of digestive symptoms (as a friend calls it, "Pandora's Cat Box") and also constitutional symptoms. We took him to the vet and he had some funny blood chemistry values. So back to Hill's, which he ate as if it were new and which agreed with him better. But now he's refusing the Hill's again to the point where he's losing weight. He's hungry, he wants food, but not that food apparently.

We have been punting with just feeding him meats he can eat "au jus", mostly consisting of shredded pork with water and fish oil since he has a demonstrable intolerance to chicken, turkey, and beef. But this is not going to give him the nutrients he needs, moveover, he's still losing weight. I took some time on Monday and Tuesday to research cat food that meets the following criteria:
Has no chicken, turkey, or beef
Has no glutten/wheat or corn products

The first we tried was California Natural salmon and sweet potato. This was a bit of a risk since I suspect the cat doesn't do well with salmon. However, it wasn't clear if his past salmon problems were a result of salmon alone, salmon in combination, or were simply due to some other product in the salmon based food he'd eaten in the past. Yeah, well, turns out that salmon is apparently a definite part of the problem. So no more of that. This morning we are on to Nature's Variety Instinct for cats. The one I've selected is Lamb. It's in no way a limited ingredient formula, nor does it have a single source of protein, however it has none of the items I know or strongly suspect Max to have an intolerance to.

So far, he's had most of a can and not pooped it all out. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one.

thanks

Thanksgiving. I ate too much, not just turkey and sweet potato puff and mashed potatoes and apple almond stuffing but also pies, more pies, birthday cake, and french toast casserole the next day. This practice continued for most of the weekend. Ah...food, I love you but my gut does not. The price started this morning with a wicked stomach ache which has continued all damned day.



Food and my gut aside, it was overall pretty nice. Family stuff, but this is a constant so we can factor it out for now. A___ and I went to Provincetown on Cape Cod (MA) to spend it with my brother and my sister.

The traffic didn't suck too much and it was a good day for a drive. A___ had never been to the Cape. PTown is on the very tip of Cape Cod and getting to it kind of screws with your sense of direction (if you have one). So although you're on the east coast, you can watch the sun set over the water on account of having spiraled around to face the mainland. It's a nice place to visit in the off season - a bit chilly but still not outright cold and quiet in that nearly spooky but mostly contemplative way.








So I am thankful for having had nice long weekend before my last week at The Job. I hope you all (those of you in the U.S.) had a nice holiday.

It's Thursday

Today is officially "Don't take shit too seriously" day. It is for me at least. I was hoping to try this earlier in the week, but the hormonal storm that is my period on progesterone made it impossible to take anything at a level lower than very, very seriously.

My arms hurt, my job is ending, one of the few people I like at work has been told to stop talking to me (long story, I'll write later when I actually know more about it), the holidays are coming, I dislike christmas on a less bad year but this year I think I'm really going to want to drop kick some lawn ornament Santas. I can feel all this stress over things which are largely out of my control building in me. And so today I've resolved to try to let shit go, and what can't be let go, I'm going to try to laugh off. I don't have to take the job too seriously because now that I know there's no way in hell I'm going perm because they have a bias against temps, my work consists of not fucking things up too much. This is liberating if approached correctly. E.g., most if not all of my problems with K-cop result not simply from her being her but from me being me too. I want to assume that people have logical reasons for doing shit. When I discover evidence that they don't, it just blows my mind so completely. Moreover, when I believed that there was even an eensty chance of this job being permanent or longer term temp (or of these people being good connections to find another job), I cared more about not following K-cop's effed up reasoning.

The big problem with this kind of reaction is that I have the anti-poker face. I can't keep the look of what I imagine is shock tinged with outrage and/or disgust and/or contempt off it. This does not help matters because even idiots like K-cop can read that level and type of emotion when it's displayed right there at eye level.

So if K-cop is in my face with her moronic crap today, rather than start down this path to horror at the largely unexamined self serving idiocy, I'm just going to laugh at her.

To get me started on not taking shit too seriously day, I thought I'd share this video.

revenge of the lazy

Been scorned? Dumped, duped, hurt, or treated in a way that made you sob not just from the hurt or harm but the utter injustice? Then you've probably had a revenge fantasy. (Not necessarily an endorsement of the entire content, here's a free online article from the American Journal of Psychology on (compulsive) revenge fantasies in psychotherapy)

The kind that is most compelling for me is the idea that I will get a front row seat to the object of my vengeance's trauma at the hands of fate. I think this appeals most to me for several reasons.
1. Low investment for me.
2. Low risk of me getting caught or hurt in the process or of me causing hurt to someone else who doesn't deserve it.
3. The feeling of cosmic justice that comes from it. Whether you chalk it up to a higher power, fate, furies, or simply the great wheel spinning its way back around, the sense that - yes sometimes the asshole gets what's coming to him is (for me) life affirming in some small way. The article I linked to above calls this "pride at being on the side of some spiritual primal justice".

Is it small to feel that way though? Maybe sometimes, if what was done to you was a small or slight offense. But what about when it wasn't?

I have absorbed the socialization that it is petty and mean to experience a happy warm feeling of knowing someone who hurt you is hurt. I know this because I do have that momentary flash of something like guilt when I enjoyed, say, hearing that a faculty member was getting divorced*. When I heard about his divorce, I smiled. Then I thought "gosh, am I a shitty person for enjoying this? Maybe I shouldn't be enjoying it" I tabled the guilt and got on with enjoying it more or less quietly and have continued to warm myself by the glow of the thought now and then when I encounter this man directly or indirectly, and remember that he so casually invalidated so much suffering I had gone through, however Bubblewench recently held a contest which has provoked me to return to the issue.

The responses could be thought of as a continuum which runs from the episodic little schadenfreude moments to revenge fantasy to actual revenge acts. I'm not sure they are all of a piece emotionally or societally, but culturally, my experience is that we (especially women) are taught that all of the above are bad because nice ladies don't do or feel things like that. Underlying that message is reasoning along the lines of nice ladies don't get intentionally hurt, raped, hit, or oppressed, so if this did happen to you, it's probably your own fault and you've got no one to blame but yourself so stop "playing the victim card"/"grinding an axe"/"holding a grudge", etc.

I vehemently disagree with that reasoning. Also, I take issue with the notion that all feelings of vengefulness are all bad, although I do so cautiously. I do believe that consuming vengeance is not healthy for the person who is consumed. What's more, for me personally, the thought of my moving from a revenge fantasy to actually committing a deliberate, premeditated, and for lack of a better term, large vengeful act makes me feel a bit discomforted (I'm not talking about not holding the elevator or stuff on that level). Is my feeling due to internalized cultural norm, fear of getting caught, or does this really go against my principles and morals? Now that I put it out there, I have to say I think it's mostly pragmatics for me. Either that or just serious laziness.

With most things, I weigh cost with product, or risk of cost with promise of product. I could be high minded and say the gain is restoring the balance, taking down a villian, etc. Sometimes my desires for vengeance are born at least partly of this but it would be absurdly arrogant to say that is the entirety of my motivation. Truly, the (desired) product is also in no small part that feeling I described in (3) above. That a bad guy didn't get to make me feel bad or hurt me without getting hurt him or herself. And to be certain of that, I'd either have to do something really expressly bad to this person or I'd have to do some serious homework and legwork to calculate a specific torment which would, to anyone else, not be a big deal (best example: My brother says when our father is old and in a nursing home, he will be sure to drop by at least once a week and force the man to watch Three's Company reruns for hours on end). The former is likely to violate my morals, and the latter is, well, work. It's time and energy and possibly cost I could spend on something else that might make me feel good without being about this asshole. With most cases where someone's gotten a chunk of me, if I take the time to think about it, I find I don't want to give that person MORE of me. Plotting is time, and so even if I have the desire to wreak vengeance on someone in a wily and well executed way, I peeter out as time passes and I realize I'm letting this asshole take up more of me and my time.

But if I stumble across an opportunity which is not a lot of effort, isn't horrible, and has a pretty good chance of making that person's life difficult even for a minute without screwing someone else over in the doing, I am quite likely to jump right in and do it. Low cost, low risk (to me and to unimplicated bystanders), high probability of result.

* This was a faculty member who just one year previous, while I was recovering from a second surgery for endometriosis, had trashed me to other grad students for what he saw as my lollygagging my way through a PhD program. Lollygagging is not what I'd call getting divorced, needing 2 surgeries for extrapelvic endometriosis, having undertreated neurolyme for a year before a month of PICC IV antibiotics (the placement of which line was a disaster and a half), developing what looks to be an autoimmune disease and all that comes with it, "breaking up" with my toxic parents, and dealing with a dear family member who has life threatening substance and medical problems.

inihibit

I'm not blogging too much these days. First it was from lack of time. Now that I've finally slipped into a groove with work, it's pain. My hands and forearms are SO damned sore. Did I do something to make this happen? This is the first thing I wonder and it's actually more about self empowerment than not in that if I did it, I can undo it. At least this is how my not very explicit reasoning goes with things like this.

"Things like this" is the uneloquent term for a lengthening list of physical ailments. To say that it brings me down to add a new sometimes disabling habit of my body to the list of sometimes (or always) disabling habits of my body is the understatement of all understatements. Here's the latest impact. While this pain was at its peaks (there were several), I could not hold a book to read let alone type or push a pen to express myself in writing. I have been literate and writing for so long that this feels like taking away my air.

Ah crap. As with so many other difficult things in my life, I find anger is safer. Yeah, how's that? When you can't fall apart, anger is safer than desolation because anger can impel you to action where as the more sorrowful feelings don't (usually). So who am I pissed off at? I'm going to go with the insurance company for canceling my refill of pain medication in the middle of the very badly needed refill this weekend. I berated the pharmacy staff into giving me three free pills (see, anger is useful) but now I have to call my GYN doctor to have him do the authorization and he's going to be like "?" because who the hell is he to comment on the GI stuff that makes this particular pain med necessary? In my idealistic view of things, he could and therefore SHOULD be able to comment on it what with him being a fucking MD and all, but I know better than to expect this. The division of labor in the practice of medicine has the effect of treating the patient as if s/he were a set of disembodied parts, thus my gynecologist won't comment on the need for me to take a selective COX2 inhibitor rather than the old school NSAIDs because there's nothing about my lady junk that makes this necessary.

Ok, so I can add pissed off at my doctors to the list of how I'm going to deal with these feelings. But that was a freebie. I'm pissed off at my doctors any time I have to stop and think for more than three minutes about them or certain intersections of my health and my support.

Shit, time to go to work.

potty snackers

Nastiest thing I saw yesterday:
A young woman came through the door to the restroom while I was washing my hands at the sink. She was eating what looked like a mini candy bar or a cookie. As she pulled open the handicap stall, she was still munching down on the food she held in her other hand.

Now when I hear about sudden and severe outbreaks of things like Norwalk Virus that are passed from the "fecal/oral route" no more will I wonder "what person over 2 should be susceptible to that?" Instead, I'll think of this young lady.

Elections, they aren't just for presidents

While we wait for the results of the California vote on a state gay marriage ban, I am heartened by other election day news:

US House and Senate
Senate Democrats edged closer to a supermajority by ousting Republicans in North Carolina and New Hampshire and adding three seats held by retiring GOP incumbents to a fragile 51-49 majority in the Senate. Four other races involving Republican incumbents were too close to call early Wednesday.

In the House, Democrats captured GOP-held seats in the Northeast, South and West, adding at least 15 seats to the 30 they took from Republicans in 2006. With fewer than a dozen races still undecided, they were on a path to pick up as many as 20 seats. Going into Tuesday's election, Democrats controlled the House 235-199 with one vacancy.

...Those wins bring the Democratic Senate majority to 56, but that number is anything but final. Four races remained without clear winners early Wednesday in Oregon, Alaska, Georgia and Minnesota.
(Democratic majorities stronger, tougher, AP, November 5, 2008)

State Governorships
At the end of an Election Day in which 11 governorships were decided, the Democrats won seven....Tuesday's races were a prelude to 2010, when a majority of states will elect governors who will help preside over the redrawing of legislative and congressional districts.
(Democrats win 7 of 11 contested governorships, AP, November 5, 2008)

Civil Rights/Medical Access
For the abortion rights movement, it was a day of relief and celebration. A first-of-its-kind measure in Colorado, which was defeated soundly, would have defined life as beginning at conception. Its opponents said the proposal could lead to the outlawing of some types of birth control as well as abortion. The South Dakota measure would have banned abortions except in cases of rape, incest and serious health threat to the mother. A tougher version, without the rape and incest exceptions, lost in 2006. Anti-abortion activists thought the modifications would win approval, but the margin of defeat was similar, about 55 percent to 45 percent of the vote.

Elsewhere, the marijuana reform movement won two prized victories, with Massachusetts voters decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the drug and Michigan joining 12 other states in allowing use of pot for medical purposes. Henceforth, people caught in Massachusetts with an ounce or less of pot will no longer face criminal penalties. Instead, they'll forfeit the marijuana and pay a $100 civil fine.

The Michigan measure will allow severely ill patients to register with the state and legally buy, grow and use small amounts of marijuana to relieve pain, nausea, appetite loss and other symptoms.
(State ballots feature hot-button social issues, AP, November 5, 2008)

Voter Turnout
In terms of turnout, America voted in record numbers. It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country's precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.

"That would be the highest turnout rate that we've seen since 1908," which was 65.7 percent, McDonald said early Wednesday.
(Obama makes history; turns to sobering challenges...AP, November 5, 2008)

Fall back

Daylight savings is messing with my head. First off, I never know if we start or end daylight saving time in the Fall. Second, is it "saving", "savingS", or "saving'S"? And then there's the effect it has on my body, my internal clock. My internal clock is a bit whacky anyhow. I've tried to retrain it, with some reasonably ok results. I.e., I don't stay up until three AM without feeling wiped out now and I am not as sick when I get up before 7:00 AM most days. Still, I can't help thinking that if my internal clock were to be made manifest as an actual time keeping device, it would be a somewhat off kilter cuckoo clock - the kind that have little figures which come out and perform a mechanized play on the hour, or in my case approximately every hour. A little mechanical figurines doing various things like doubling over from wrenching pelvic pain or hobbling haltingly up and down tiny little flights of stairs. What would your internal clock look like?

Saturday

Well Thursday wasn't too bad. I was on campus, did what needed doing, and got my tooth filled. Turns out I have another filling due next week - gah. But hey, fillings and not root canals, so there's a bright side.

On the down side, I've been feeling like shit lately. I mean physically. I don't post too much about that stuff here anymore but weeks like this one make it impossible to write about me without this coming into it. I am in pain and feel sick every frikkin time I eat. Aside from losing weight again (yeah, this is why I dread buying expensive clothing...the yo-yoing weight issue), I'm feeling drained and angry. The anger come from exasperation, a lack of validation, and too many limitations. This anger is potent and it's in the form of a blank check, just waiting for some fool to stumble across it and write his or her name in the "Pay to the order of" line. Currently, I'm fighting to keep my primary care's office out of that line because I don't need to be any more surly with them if I want to maintain functionality of my relationships there. But it's not easy. I had an ultrasound on Thursday and was told by the tech they'd have results that day. No calls. No calls on Friday either. I had planned to give them most of Friday and then call around 4:00 but I forgot about it until about 20 minutes after I ate dinner Friday night.

Ok, enough of that. Thursday was good. I was energetic despite eating so little (no food for two hours after the filling and only being able to chew on one side of my mouth kept my food intake, and thus pain and nausea, down). One of the prof's whose house we were at offered for A___ and me to get married there. They have a nice place and it was a nice offer. But knowing him, I told him he should make sure that weekend works with his wife. Come to find out that no, it does not. So we're back to the justice of the peace at someplace pretty and then out for dinner/lunch somewhere plan. This isn't too bad, not just because it was what we had originally figured we'd do but because having it at the faculty home was starting to put it into the more formal category. I wanted to avoid that for some good reasons that will nonetheless sound jaundiced and jaded to some. Then again, most of that kind of person doesn't read my blog so fuck it. The reasons have to do with the fact that once you open that door, it's like you invite in all the expectations about "real weddings". E.g., my brother's reaction after I told him we might have this at the faculty house, which he's been to and knows is pretty and a slightly more formal venue.
"Do you have a theme?"
"Ah, a theme? Well we were thinking everyone could wear hats."
"..."
"You know, like I was going to get one of those ridiculous sun hats they sell at the drug stores in the summertime and A____ can wear this plastic party hat bowler thing because it will go with his tuxedo t-shirt."
"Oh no no no. He needs to wear a suit. We'll go shopping."
"We don't have money for that. Plus, A____'s wearing the tux T, we already bought it. He wanted to get one for you but I said you wouldn't wear it.
"I'm wearing my Calvin Klein suit."
"Go right ahead."
"What about cake? Are you doing cake?"
"I was thinking of asking our sister to make one."
"No. No no no. I'll go to my bakery (my brother has a bakery?). We'll get something, I won't say wedding but lots of flowers and a cake topper. You're having a cake topper."
"If you must put something on top, can it be a unicorn?"
"..."
"A___ would love a unicorn."
"A unicorn?"
"Yeah...oh and rainbows. Put a unicorn leaping over a rainbow on it."

Personal lies

Bubblewench has asked "What are your personal lies?" That is, lies you tell yourself to get you through your day. Here are some of mine.
- People find me more charming than abrasive.
- My cat is going to live forever.
- Someday when I live near real doctors at real hospitals and I once again have good health insurance, I will be given a diagnosis of something which explains all my daily physical ailments, is readily treatable by eating something q.i.d. that tastes remarkably like candy, which has a 100% cure rate, and which has any or all of the following side effects: boundless energy, an unshakable sense of happiness and belonging, increased intellectual efficiency, and multiple orgasms.
- I do not have an autoimmune disease.
- The real reason I haven't found a job yet is that all of these jobs I've applied for are crap. The excellent, just right job for me is still out there waiting and will make itself known ANY DAY NOW, but certainly before I run out of health insurance and money.
- My fella is not getting fed up with my seemingly endless stream of illnesses.
- My family are not getting fed up with my seemingly endless stream illnesses.
- I'll feel better tomorrow.

summer cold?

Last day of work and the first student I met with had the sniffles. I didn't think much of it, until this morning when I woke up with my ears crackling and my head feeling stuffed full of achy tightness.

Bright side? Um....my current boss invited me to lunch sometime this or next week. This is nice although possibly only that. The issue is I need a job, they have an opening (it just opened up), but I don't think lunch means anything more than lunch. I have a few reasons for thinking this. One is that I've dropped several rather pointed hints (her: "Let me know if there's anything I can do for you", me: "Ok. You can give me a job") and she's not picked 'em up. The other came yesterday, when the topic of job searching came up a few times (several of my co-workers are looking for jobs or looking to change jobs right now). In response to hearing about two positions I'd applied to most recently, my boss said that I probably wouldn't get a call. She said this about each job and it made me feel this big.

cozy

I'm at home after the post-last official day of work semi-mandatory work party at the house of my boss. She's fun, but it was an outdoor event and the outdoors in the backwoods of CT scare the hell out of me since I caught Lyme in 2002. Lest I forget how much that sucked and how much the physical symptoms I have had since contracting Lyme continue to suck, my left ankle's been hurting a lot the last two days. (I blame the wacky weather. It's been overcast, warm, and humid all week. Today's nice weather comes courtesy of a front that moved in yesterday, hence more joint pain.) It was fairly throbbing earlier. I thought about wrapping it but then remembered my bad luck with such things and bagged it, opting instead for medication.

I went to the party today covered in DEET and spent most of the few hours I was there sitting away from the grass, trees, ornamental shrubs, and other tick-havens. While my choice of seating left me a bit removed from the rest of my co-workers, I did have fun chatting with another woman who wouldn't come out onto the grass either. "Holy shit, so basically we're going to a fucking Tick-nic!?" she had asked last week when told about the location of this get together.
On the way home from the party, I started feeling really gross, probably on account of being drenched in DEET for going on four hours. I got home to find A____ making food - some kind of mexican beef thing which smells great now that I've had a shower and a blueberry muffin and shook off some of the ick feeling.

It's nice and quiet here right now, just the sound of the fan, some birds, and a faint but comfortingly familiar, specifically non-rural traffic hum from the highway about 1 mile to the south.

Like the sore ankle, my anxiety over not having a job yet is still lurking around the edges but it's such a pretty day and I'm so happy to be home early and to be able to have some down time with my fella later this evening that I'm determined not to let either of these bring me down right now.

cranky

The cat woke me up at 5:30 (a half hour before my alarm was set to go off) for food. He's been crying on and off throughout the night most nights these days. So up I got, and stumbled out to the kitchen. I bent down to get a can of cat food from a low shelf and smacked my head off the corner of the counter.

My day followed in a similar vein at work. No injuries, but it was not a good day. Lots of fuckery, some preventable and some not. The latter I can accept with some grace. The former however, tends to push my buttons, especially on a day that started out as unpleasantly as this one did.

Today was my last official day at work, and I don't have a job or even an interview.

My siblings, who were both just down for my sister's birthday, are both cranky right now too. And my fella's in some kind of semi-depressed or possibly sick state so he's sleeping a lot and feeling like shit.

On the plus side, I've never been a fan of July. Aside from my sister's birthday, the month generally is one of my less favorites. Too hot and lots of stagnation. So this July sucking already, well, it's not like it's wrecking a month I love and that's a little sliver of a bright side.

Out of the tower

I've spent the last few months doing a good deal of repackaging as I try to make a less than rocky transition out of an academic, teaching/research career path. There are several challenges in this, some unique to me and my situations and some I believe shared. Given my health status, any direct consideration of career involves evoking that anxiety producing question "what CAN I do?" I'm not talking what kinds of jobs will I be happy with or what kinds of work do I have the skills to do. I'm talking at a basic level - what do I reliably have the energy, physical fortitude, and emotional and cognitive resources to do? But that's me and my health, which is an issue I do try to save the in depth discussion of for a different blog these days.

Shared among myself and anyone who is at or considering approaching such a boundary are the more general questions like "how does all this experience I've racked up in the traditional academic track translate into a less traditional or completely non-academic career?" "Do I need to start at entry level in a new job (say, in human resources) or can I reasonably expect to be attractive to employers seeking experienced, mid to upper level workers?"

Probably this is a topic I will return to as I am in the throws of another job search. My current job ends in about two weeks and so far I've sent out resumes but haven't heard back from any prospects. My brother assures me this is in no small part due to both the crappy economy plus the post-graduation resume flood - and he says that as summer wears on and hiring managers work their way through the stacks of replies to job postings, I will probably hear something. Of course, that doesn't address the economic problems and the tight job market. Still, I have no choice but to try to be an optimist, to keep going and to keep looking as much as the process sucks. While I wait, and keep searching, and keep sending resumes and cover letters, I intend to post here about some of it. Well, what I can stand to anyway. For now, I present a nice article on translating your CV into a resume, again from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dump day

As you can perhaps surmise from the title of this post, today was not a good day. The list is just sort of depressing crap, some trivial and some not trivial. While I'm a fan of venting, putting it all down here isn't going to help right now. I know because I just started to and realized it was only winding me up more. So here's the abridged version.

- A____'s parents can't afford their house and are moving under less than exhaustively planned circumstances next week. Everyone's sick, so A____'s doing a very large amount of the work. Just what he wanted, another move. He's so damned busy and stressed over this (understandably) that he probably can't go to the wedding this weekend with me, which makes for the not super pleasant prospect of going alone. I tried calling some pals, but no one is up for it, or more to the point, everyone's out of town, chronically unreliable, or sick.

- Along the everyone's sick theme, my cat Max is sick. The only thing that was odd in his bloodwork from last week was an elevated calcium level. The vet told me today that this can be a sign of a particular kind of cancer that attacks or affects the intestine, which his symptoms are consistent with. We were really hoping it was thyroid, not because that would be great but because it would be less bad.

-In about two weeks, I will be unemployed and nothing (zero) has come of all the applying I've been doing. Last night, between the cat and the prospect of joblessness, I couldn't get to sleep. This hasn't helped my mood. Not one bit.

So it's officially Dump Day here in Connecticant.
I'm hoping tomorrow is better.

R.I.C.E.

Stands for
Rest
Ice
Compression and
Elevation

Why this snappy acronym today you ask? Because we finished moving. We ended our move on the hottest day(s) of the year, although this is not a record high for PFG moves since my move in 2005 was also on the hottest day of that year as well - both with temperatures around 92°F and fairly dripping with humidity. Last weekend we moved the bulk of the stuff. I say "we" but I mean my fella and two extremely excellent people. That was the end of the help. We were expecting more but this move was whatever the opposite of serendipitous is. Thus we struck out early yesterday intending to push through and get all the stray bits out of the old place and then clean. It's a big place to clean.

I learned some new things about my body and what it now affords me. E.g., I discovered that dusting 3 very large rooms with a long and flexible duster followed by sweeping and mopping said rooms is quite bad for the wrist (literally "unwieldy"), hence my cleaning came to an abrupt end late yesterday afternoon and it was R.I.C.E. for me last evening. A____ went back over while I RICEd, before the monsoon started. He managed to finish an embarrassingly large amount of cleaning by himself. I iced and elevated and then put an ace bandage on my wrist. It felt so much better that I started doing stuff around the new apartment - mostly unpacking kitchen stuff, discarding the "R" part of the equation. After some time, I thought "wow, my hand feels way better. I bet I can take this bandage off now..." and I gave a test wiggle of a finger. Numb. I quickly removed the bandage.

So when you are doing R.I.C.E., remember ice only for 15 to 20 minute intervals and don't try bandaging your own right hand because odds are you won't be able to wrap it properly and it will either be too loose or too tight. Too tight and you're numb (which happens to rhyme with "dumb"), resulting in either
Dumb
Ice
Compression and
Elevation
...or if you're a real winner like me and you go and use your too tightly wrapped hand as a lever to heave up heavy kitchen items for over an hour, D.I.C.K.

I am sincerely hoping that the next move we make, we can afford to pay people to help. It's done and I'm happy for that, but this was not a great move. Not the worst (which was 2002 - I caught lyme disease right at the start of it, had to deal with Tom's evil family who were pointedly not helping, had to help a friend re-claim a cat she had given away in the middle of the move, and then at the end went up Amherst way to look at apartments with my sister who was starting college out there that Fall - all of which was just plausibly tiring and ache inducing enough to have masked the start of the lyme symptoms), but definitely not something I want to repeat.

May

What happened to my May? What the hell?

School ended, work started, we found a new apartment (have to move from the lovely place we're in now because the landlord is becoming a slum lord), and life life life.

Work's good. It's necessitated a change in schedule though - I've gone from being an evening person in all ways to needing to be at work (over 15 mostly country miles from my place) at 8:30 AM. Ugh! But I'm proud to say I managed to do it, mostly. I overslept a bit today but made it in on time with some rushing about. I had been expecting this to be just a short term summer job but I guess they like me because my boss mentioned that she was looking into hiring me "during the semester". I need to follow up on that. At the time, I was on my way off to do something (work related) and so all I had time for was a quick "Oh that'd be great....especially since I am in need of employment".

I like and am good at what I do, which is also a relief.

The down side - there's always a down side. The temporary negative right now is that we're moving, like NOW. My fella's been awesome, as usual, and so he's taken care of much of the move stuff. His diligence, as wonderful as it is, happens to be taxing my "gimp-guilt" as I call it, which relates to potentially more enduring down side of my post-graduate school, employed life my new smaller life on account of having less than stellar health. I swear to god my warranty ran out at 31. Since then I've had more health shit than you can shake a stethoscope at, none of it fully resolvable (by which I mean "curable"), and some of it only marginally treatable. I hate giving the full list of ailments but the highlights includee the endometriosis/adenomyosis and the shitty immune system which is better at attacking me than it is at doing its job on viruses, bacteria, or even (as I've recently learned) fungi. Now that I've put this miserable body to work for normal work hours and something approaching a full work week (so far it's been more like a 30 hour than 40 hour work week), I am confronting the question which was hinted at by my soon to be former advisor when she asked so casually "are you healthy enough to have even a regular job?" I found this question to be rather insulting for a number of reasons but I knew even then that while the context was fucked up, the content is in many ways legitimate. And the answer is...it's hard to know. Perhaps this is just denial, but for now I'm going to say the jury's still out. What I tell myself is that I need to give it more time to know for certain whether the massive fatigue I feel throughout the day even after plenty of sleep and no strenuous activity is just a by product of changing my schedule or if this is a permanent and fixed aspect of my life post 31. If it turns out to be the latter, then yeah, I'm kind of fucked.

For now, there won't be lots of posts here because I'm either at work, asleep, moving, unpacking, or sick and exhausted. The moving and unpacking should be done by mid June and hopefully, the daily sick and exhausted will let up as I adjust. If not, well, there could be lots more posts later while I chronicle the apparently wretched process of filing for disability.

Monday, again

Yes, I know it does this every week. It's Monday again. This week holds last minute meetings with students (panicking), a phone call or two to my doctor's office (irritating), and looking at still more job postings. The panicking is the typical state of undergrads engaged in research with a public deadline looming. The irritating is that this rash I've been dealing with for over a month now is still not knocked down. The jobs? Well, it seems I have a shotgun approach to job searching. I apply to a bunch, interview, keep applying, keep interviewing, etc. until I get offers. I'm already starting to freak out a bit about what to do if I get a less desirable offer to start with. This happened to me in Ann Arbor. The first job I was offered (and accepted) was with what seemed like nice people but for peanuts-pay and very part time with no overtime or extra shift options. The day I accepted the offer, I got a call for an interview at a better (money and time wise) job. I wound up kind of dissing the former and taking the latter. But in Ann Arbor, it was a slightly bigger job market. Here in nowhere CT, it's not and I'm not sure I can afford to pull a stunt like that out here.

boys part 2

I mentioned I have boys. The infestation is still ongoing. I've had many opportunities to hear and even interact with them because I've been home a lot this week fighting off a steroid enhanced throat/sinus thing. Which by the way, feels fucking awful. What does it feel like? Like a viral infection, on steroids. Get it?

Anyhow, I'm home lots and feeling shitty lots and the kids are here, not lots but loudly when they are. Last night featured kids in the hall, then kids down in the basement. I have to wonder, what possible appeal can it hold for them? Is it a throwback to when they were still living at mom and dad's house, 3 months ago, and they had to hide out in the basement to smoke their weed? I was going to say "to smoke a joint" but I'm doubtful these kids smoke out of anything other than overpriced glass bowls or vaporizers.

I found out this week that my landlord helpfully told the boys that "the people downstairs called the police on them". He told them this, he claims, to try to stress upon them the gravity of the situation (the situation being my landlord's inability to consistently and place screen tenants).

Here's who called the cops on whom. I called on people in the parking lot last weekend. The lady across the hall called specifically on the boys several weeks ago, and either the guys down the hall or the lady in front called on the boys as well two weekends ago now I think (I wasn't here for that one). But it turns out the boys assumed "the people" who called the cops were me and my fella. Why? My best guess is because my fella and I have spoken to them in person when they are being loud. Alone that's not really great reasoning, certainly wouldn't be sufficient for me unless I was 8. I think the rest of it goes something like "and the boys are not very smart thus they assume things like the 50 something year old disabled woman who had the misfortune to move in below them last month would not have called the cops on them for any one of their post 1 AM beer fueled fun-fests. Why would she? Afterall, she never came up, knocked on their door, and asked them to keep it down in the middle of a party".


Tonight's been quiet so far. Aside from some very occasional thumping and bumping, and the sounds of someone running down the stairs, a slam of the door which sounded like it was going to take the side of the house off, and then more running all the way across the porch and onto the pavement around the house and past the window just next to my desk, it's been peaceful.

And hey, my temperature is finally down a bit. I'm going to go celebrate by reading on the couch.