The best laid plans… February 25, 2008

…of mice and men, and blogging, no-longer-employed moms – and all that rot.

So, here I sit, Day 1 of week 1 of the world of unemployment (a state I’m just so not used to…) and in serious move-mode… So many things pressing, and my little, highly organized tendencies are ripped apart by The BF. Ugh. He of the “foreman” type personality. Eek. Thus, my initial plans for how to pack, clean and organize have been slightly, uhm… co-opted. Yeah.

And I’m too damn busy to even take humorous pictures of it!

Meanwhile – no good deed goes unpunished.

The young lady (twit) who was hired as The Replacement was also looking for a new place to live. She and a couple of friends were looking to move. I thought, “Well, our place is perfect. We have a cool landlord and it’s right in their price range.” So I mentioned it, told her about it, and she and the friends seemed excited.

I even did something I had previously refused other potential tenants – I let them come see the place in all of it’s half-packed, messed-up, unclean glory.

I have to explain that here – I keep a neat house, but I have a teenage daughter and a preteen son – their rooms were in need of some carpet cleaning. And some paint. And the rest of the place was simply in upheaval thanks to The BF and I working odd schedules, barely being home, constantly running between AZ and CA, being in the half-packed state and of course, Daisy, TCTBMBFH.

So, I warned the just-out-of-college monsters, uhmm… sorry, young people, that the place was not in its normal state and was an unholy wreck. They all said, “Hey cool, no problemo.”

They came, they saw, they seemed excited. Coolness. The landlord is willing to lower the deposit and keep the rent the same (with no raise) because I know the one young monster, err… lady.  So they put in their paperwork…

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

Apparently, Mr. Man, one of the twit young monsters who was hoping to live here, decided to tell the landlord that before he would “accept” the place, it needed (are you ready for this???)

New carpet (yeah, right – it got cleaned, OK), new blinds (uhhmmm… I bought the blinds, shithead… they didn’t come with the place, I’m being NICE and leaving them, asswipe!), a full paint job (no shit Sherlock – but guess what, I’m doing THAT before we leave as well), new linoleum (whose fucking reality are you living in child???), new light fixtures (hello??? We installed the ceiling fan/light combos in all bedrooms and the upper hall – and they all match – and the remaining TWO light fixtures are the wood-trimmed-matches-the-cabinetry florescent in the kitchen and the vintage chandelier in the dining room – the one that the landlord’s deceased WIFE picked out), new shower doors (uhmmm… I asked the landlord what, exactly, was the reason for wanting to replace the perfectly good ones already there? Apparently, Mr. Man feels every tenant should have NEW shower doors for “sanitary” reasons) and a list about a mile long of other “demands.” (and yes, that was the word that Mr. Man used in his letter to his potential landlord…)

Now, it has to be said – this place is DIRT cheap by market standards, and it’s in decent shape – nothing fancy, but decent. I provided window coverings, and looked the other way to the outdated (but still in good shape and neutral colored) linoleum. I also ignored the incredibly boring light beige carpet. I left the damned chandelier that I really don’t like (it’s a classic chandelier) because I knew his wife had picked it out for the place. The landlord is a great guy, about 80, and really terrific… But…

After he heard this tale of woe from Mr. Man (who apparently made it sound as the place was totally trashed and he would be doing the landlord a favor to even consider living in such a hell hole), he was on the phone with us in a panic.

Reassurances aside, he wanted to come out and see the place… So now I have a visit from my landlord to add to my “to-do” list. Oh goody.

On the good side – he did say, after talking with us, there is no way in hell he’d rent to a bunch of “demanding, ungrateful, whiney, sniveling, spoiled rotten shitheads” like that (and yep, that’s what he called them.)

So, now there is this nagging little brat inside of me that really wants to call The Replacement and tell her that her little friend with his antics (either true stupidity and cluelessness, or a deliberate attempt to get a nice man to lower an already low rent and move-rate – which is just sleazy) has totally ruined their chances of getting the place.

I really, really, really dislike stupid people….

The beat goes on… The beat goes on February 22, 2008

And it’s time for me to roll on out of here. Wow. I’ve been with this company for years now – in fact, that was one of the reasons I accepted the job here, there were so many employees who were “long term” and I was looking for a career, not just a job.

Meanwhile, life moves on and change is inevitable. So I find myself suddenly back in the job market (a place I never honestly expected to be again) and getting ready to move to a new city, a new state.

I’ve done my job so well, so completely prepared for the transition that I actually have nothing to do today. I’ve done my part in training the replacement, all the odd little projects that normally fill my “tickler file” have long been completed and there is absolutely nothing resting in my “in basket” – that in itself is a miracle.

Here I sit, for the first time in years, with absolutely nothing to do. I have no work to catch up on, no “back burner projects” waiting for a slow day, and I’ve transferred everything else to the replacement (and I wish her the best of luck in keeping up with these guys.) My office has been cleared out for the old assistant to move into it, and the replacement has already been moved into her spot at the outer desks. I’m doing what little work I have from the swing station we reserve for visiting writers.

All of which is great – it means I’ve done my job. But, it’s also terrible because it means I’m left with nothing to do but sit and wait. Time drags, and there’s a constant flow of people passing me, all of them making their comments:

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

So, are you excited?

Only a few hours left.

Got a new job yet?

It’s your last day? Really?

And all I can think is all of this, the lack of anything to do, the temporary “office” space, the flow of casual comments, they all make this harder, longer, more painful.

It would be easier if I were busier, if there was the clutter and press of projects to be done, papers to file, stories to write – something, anything, to make time move along more quickly and to take away from the constant knowledge, the ever-present reminders that I’m leaving.

The beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da

Can I get some service here? February 18, 2008

Finally, something to blog about other than my impending move, on-going job search and the training of the replacement…

A Casio watch, a rather outrageously expensive time piece that not only tells the time, but acts the part of altimeter, compass, barometer, and lots of other ometers that I don’t care to think about, as well as some other weird, and totally necessary functions, I’m sure The BF would just insist his watch has to have.

Well, the dang thing busted.

I don’t know what else to call it when the outrageously expensive thing that is supposed to do all those things no longer does them. It’s busted, right?

So, off it goes to Casio for repair. I call the repair dept, get the address and send it in. Weeks later it comes back, with a note. They need a “repair authorization number” before they can do anything to it.

Another call to Casio, assurances that they do not need the number since it’s no longer under warranty and off it goes again.

And it came back, again. Again with the note. It needs a repair authorization number.

I call again. Guess what? It’s President’s Day and apparently, Casio customer service does not work on President’s Day. So I give up on the phone people and switch to the Internet (where I should have started, I guess!)

This time, I find a cool little function called “Elite Service” where you can log on, put in all the info, get your handy-dandy “repair service authorization number” and even print out a handy-dandy label with which to mail your busted outrageously expensive thing back to Casio for, gasp!, repair.

Wow. What a concept. Now, why didn’t one of the multitudes of phone people I talked to over the course of this event ever tell me about this service?

Oh, and it costs nothing extra. Nope. It’s the same darn fee for fixing this no-longer-under-warranty outrageously expensive thing that isn’t doing all the things it’s supposed to do.

Grrrr.

My poor neglected little blog… February 13, 2008

Between training my replacement, trying to wrap up everything here at the office, communicating with (and sharing forwarding info with) all the various industry people I deal with and letting them know my schedule for leaving, who will be replacing me, etc, and let’s not forget the rest of life like packing and cleaning a house, preparing for a move, dealing with The BF’s whacked out schedule these days, job searching, interviews, oh and let’s not forget a little thing called parenting, I’ve barely had time to be online, much less update my poor little neglected blog.

Never mind that the usual fodder for this place – poignant and touchingly worded stories from life, wondrously well-crafted rants and knee-slappingly funny anecdotes (I can dream, can’t I?) – OK, fantasy aside, my usual fodder is built on life. My life. The crap going on in my life. And occasional bits of things I find interesting. What was my point again? Oh, yeah.

It seems it’s become de rigeur for potential employers to do some Internet snooping on applicants, which means my usual grumps and grumbles about the goings on in my life might not bode so well for me getting a job.

I can see it now. Interview with Potential Employer goes well, but involves some humorous thing (or something I can certainly twist into humor) and I walk away from it planning to blog the whole, sordid event. But wait, PE has done their homework and found my little Web home, and now they’re reading all about our little meeting, right here, in black and white (or whatever color I happen to set the text for.)

Oh, that’s not a good thing.

Or is it?

Stories of meetings where the PE promised a “grueling” experience, which turned out to border on the snore inducing will have to wait. (Who, besides an eighth grader, considers eighth-grade grammar “grueling?”)

Shelved until the interviews are over are tales of misspelled advertisements, PEs who can’t seem to put two-and-two together – No, I’m not moving until the end of February. Yes, that means I am not available to start until then. No, I can’t just commute back and forth.

And we’ll not even discuss the rest of it. At least not until it’s all over. It simply wouldn’t do to be poking fun at the company that later decides to hire me, now would it?

A scrapbook by any other name is still a scrapbook… February 7, 2008

Job searching was so much easier when all I had to do was list my experience and skills and then trust those and my personality to get me through an interview. These days it’s a whole different ball of wax. (hm, I wonder why that little charmer isn’t in my Dictionary of Idioms.)

These days, I have potential employers somehow digging me up on the Web. Considering how many steps I go through to keep my real name isolated from my personal Internet presence (ie – this blog, and the other places where I write and participate), that was an act of spectacular sleuthing, and I am sorely tempted to call the gent up and ask, “Just how, exactly, did you find me?”

I also have potential employers asking for samples of my writing, and my (gulp) portfolio. “Oh, sure,” is my blithe reply. “I can do that.”

Let’s be honest here, I haven’t updated my portfolio in forever, and I’ve never really updated it with job hunting in mind. It is merely a simple, clean and very basic showcase of some of my favorite pieces. Sure, I’ve shopped it out a couple of times, successfully even, as a freelancer, but I’ve never really prepped it to be a display of everything I am as a writer, editor, photographer, etc.

I suppose some folks go through the process of making their portfolio into a work of art, scrapbooking in the professional sense. Me? I haven’t had the time to that, and to be honest, even if I had the time, I’m not sure I would.

I prefer to spend my creativity elsewhere. That and I have this basic love of clean, simple lines, uncluttered spaces and letting an object (or article) speak for itself. Yeah, yeah, I also battle the theater major tendency to believe if a little is good, then a lot is even better (it “reads” better to the audience after all). So, I can be guilty of, well… overdoing it.

So, here I sit, flipping through the pages of my professional scrapbook, whoops, I mean, “portfolio”, and wondering, “What does this say about me?” “Does this show who I really am?” “If I didn’t know me at all, and I looked through this, would I like what I saw?” “How can I make this better, crisper, a more effective showcase?”

Oh, and, “Somebody please remind me to go get some good-quality black paper, a decent paper cutter and more page inserts, please.”

And finally I think, “Oh no! I’m scrapbooking!”