It's a small thing, really...

So I had my interview at Sears today. Let me start with what I wore: black dress pants, black dress flats, a white shirt under a tannish-cream blouse. Sounds benign, right? Yeah, well I bet it wouldn't sound so benign if I told you I nearly tore my foot off wearing those damn shoes. See, I was on a pretty tight budget when I bought the pants and shoes - two items I didn't have but needed for interviews - and whilst in Payless, these shoes were the only ones not designed for a cocktail dress that didn't cost more than I could spend. However, the only ones available with the little "Sale: $11.00" sign on the box were 1/2 size too big.

I was really stuck between a rock and a hard place: do I buy the too-big shoes and run the risk of blisters or do I not buy shoes at all and look like an asshole with black dress pants and cheap brown flip flops from Old Navy? Blisters, it is.

They were so frickin' comfortable when I got them home and wore them around the apartment! I loved them for about 10 minutes. The next day, I walked three city blocks in them in Oakland (this was a week ago, by the way, for another interview) and then another three blocks back to the car. I tore off about 1/4" worth of skin that morning. I vowed to never wear them again.

But then I got the interview at Sears. So I emailed Diana, who works in retail, and asked her if I should go uber dressy or uber casual for department store interviews. She told me dressy was my best shot. I trusted her instincts, she's been in retail for years.

So back to those blasted shoes. Luckily, there was minimal walking today but if I'm going to wear those scalpels with straps ever again, I have got to buy some booties for them.

Cute, right? Yeah. Cute like that creepy dinosaur in "Jurassic Park" that killed Newman.



Anyway, I go to my interview. I sit there for half-a-damn-hour waiting for my interviewer. Then I find out, halfway through the interview, that they don't offer full-time AT ALL and then, in my second interview (yes, I had the pleasure of being interviewed twice), that I'd only be making $8.00 an hour - not that unexpected but still a bit of a letdown when, in your last job, you made $10.00 an hour - and that I wouldn't be eligible for benefits until I'd been employed for a solid year. I need health care for my kids, like, NOW. But I have to take whatever job I can get for the time being, just to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads. I just hate being without health care. That's when shit will go wrong, you know? Someone will fall off the couch and break an arm or they'll get an ear infection and I won't be able to help it.

This sucks. I hope one of the million office jobs I've applied for recently calls me soon!

What A Loser.

Now, don't laugh, but I watch "The Biggest Loser." Okay, I guess you can snicker. Or maybe let out a guffaw. But seriously, it's a very inspirational show and once we get our gym memberships in February, you can all kiss my ass. Anyway, let me tell you about Vicky.

What a petulant little bitch! She's been out to win the money, plain and simple, weight loss is just a pleasant side effect. If you watch her during the challenges, she puts out minimal effort. Just enough to get it done, really. She always comes in last or just plain gives up. If you watch her when she talks to Bob, she rarely looks him in the eye or she'll roll her eyes and you can tell she's just providing lip service; she means nothing of what she says. She's playing the game.

And that wouldn't bother me on any other reality show. Hell, that's what competitions are about in most cases. But TBL is different: it's meant to change lives overall, not just monetarily. People apply to be on this show because they've discovered that they can't do it on their own. They need support, guidance and resources to learn from. And this bitch rolled into town and went from sweet, southern-drawl Vicky to a hateful, conniving bitch whose ass I long to kick.

RAWRRRR!!! Rarely do I let people on TV get under my skin like this but it's really stuck in my craw this time. I don't wish for her to gain her weight back, I think she's done a hell of a job losing it, but I wish she were in it for the right reasons.Here's a good piece that can say better what I'm trying to convey.

Two, Please.

Interviews, that is. Yay! I applied to Sears online today and at the end of the application, it scheduled me an interview automatically. That'll be Thursday. My other interview is tomorrow with Sports Authority, who called at 6:30 p.m. to talk to me. Who calls that late? Anyway, I'm excited. I know it's just a sporting goods store and plain ol' Sears but it's work. I'd prefer an office job of course, but hey, it's paying the bills, buying groceries, keeping the roof over our heads. I swear I'll never complain. Much.

I turned in applications to Office Depot and Lucky Supermarket. Between the two, I'd prefer Office Depot just so I could get high off office supply fumes (I'm an office supply store junkie, I can't get enough of pens, paper and collapsible folders), but Lucky would be much more convenient since I could walk to work every day.

Overall, I hope none of these interviews is just for seasonal employment. In the interest of paying the bills, I'll have to accept the job but I really need something long-term. So keep your fingers crossed! I forgot how much I hate looking for jobs.

Rob and I had a bit of a fight this morning over the whole issue. He found an ad on Craigslist for me last night that he thought I should apply for. It was from a head-hunting company - Dialogue Direct - who hires any Joe/Jill Schmoe off the street to work in teams to convince wealthy corporations and such to sponsor Children International. Now this isn't to say that CI isn't a wonderful organization, it absolutely is. What I couldn't stomach was the idea of public speaking. I HATE IT. Vehemently. It makes me panic. Sweat. Shake. Stammer. Feel faint. The whole nine yards of a panic attack.

But I applied. Because I'm a pushover like that.

This morning, I got a system-generated email asking me to come in for an interview tomorrow afternoon in San Francisco to see "..."if Dialogue Direct is the right fit for me..." Let me save them and me the time and, in my case, $14.00 to ride BART into the city: Dialogue Direct is definitely not the right fit for me. Job duties aside, my hours would be from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. That means I'd have to get on BART before 8:30 a.m. to get to San Francisco on time and I wouldn't be home until 8:30 p.m. or thereabouts. I would never get to see my husband and kids, plus I'd have to hire a babysitter in the evenings between 6:30 p.m. and whenever I got home, when both kids were sound asleep. Totally not worth it.

But when I explained most of the above sentiment (the not-seeing-the-kids-and-husband part didn't occur to me until two minutes after the argument), he got all belligerent and upset, saying "I guess we'll just start turning down interviews and job offers, [blah blah blah]!" I stopped listening. I did, however, start bawling and locked myself in the bathroom.

How could he not understand the pressure I'm under? We have, like, no money, bills are due, Christmas is coming, rent is just around the corner, and it's all on me to start making money A.S.A.P. I'm experiencing a large quagmire of stress right now, the last thing I need is a heckler. Not to mention a heckler who, in a moment of lapsed judgment, completely disregarded his wife's feelings. Rawr.

But we're over it now. He apologized in his patented, not-actually-saying-I'm-Sorry kind of way and I stopped crying. Temporarily. Ha ha. I've been crying a good bit lately, mostly due to stress, partially due to seeing the excitement on my daughter's face at the prospect of Christmas and knowing that although Grandma Betty, Grandma Lynette, and Papa and Yaya will be buying her presents, Santa Claus may be MIA this year. She probably won't know any better, she is still very young. But we know and it sucks. But whatever. It's about new beginnings this coming year and I swear, if it means I have to knock off a liquor store, they'll have a kick-ass Christmas next year!

Need help Christmas shopping?

Then go visit Debateur Debates and enter her giveaway to win one of two Amazon gift cards valued at $25.00 each! I know we could certainly use the help this year. I'm new to her site but I'm always up for debates so I'm sure I'll be back there!

The Friday Chronicles

We caught this commercial on TV today and I was, to say the least, floored. Lisa Kudrow's doing commercials? Really?? Is this what she's reduced to? Or am I missing a key piece of Hollywood news?



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We're pulling out all the stops with my job search, not just looking at professional/career-type positions but ones in retail too. It's a temporary thing to create a bit of a stop-gap until something more, um, financially rewarding comes along. So today I tried like hell to apply for a job at Wal-Mart and of the three different stores I went to, NONE OF THEM had working kiosks to apply. Love that craptastic Wal-Fart. I did manage to put in an application at Target.

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We laid a fish to rest this morning. You remember the fish? And the Moor? All of yesterday, he kept floating his way behind the return ramp for the filter and getting trapped. I kept having to take the lid off, pick up the filter/motor contraption and wait for him to frantically swim out. Then, just as I fed them for the evening and was going to turn out the light, I noticed a lump on his lower abdomen. I did some research online and found out that it was probably one of two things. It could have been a) a tumor which, unless you want to take your goldfish to the vet, is incurable; or b) some kind of worm which, if it gets too big and it bursts out of the fish (effectively killing the fish), can be swallowed or otherwise absorbed by other fish in the tank and will eventually kill them. I didn't want to explain six dead fish to my daughter. Rob insisted we take a look at it the next day and this morning, the lump was not only still there but some of it had turned white and clearish stuff was making its way out. Gross, I know. I tasked Rob with removing the fish and giving Beth her first lesson in death via a trip to the toilet. She seemed to take it well. We went with the lesson of: sometimes animals - and people - get sick and they don't get better, and then they have to go away. I imagine it'll be a bit harder when a grandparent passes away, but hopefully she'll be much older.

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And finally, my baby turned into a little man today. He got his first haircut. His curls were getting wild on the back and it wasn't a cute kind of wild. It was a, "Wow...his parents must never comb his hair. He looks like he just got out of bed!" Initially, we tried to just use scissors but when he wouldn't hold his head still - and when Rob took a HUGE chunk off the back - we had to get out the clippers. The first guard we tried was the 1", which trimmed it down but still looked weird because he seems to have a natural mohawk: thick up the middle and down the back, but thin on the sides. So we used the 1/2" guard and he went from this...

to this...




*sniffle*

My Weekly Writing Assignment

I'm doing my homework this week, too.

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Tag! Post and write about the 6th picture from (the 6th folder of?) your Flickr account and then do the same for the 6th picture of the 6th folder on your computer.



This was taken in June of this year. That orange sugarsicle you see my daughter eating is the first one she ever had and she loved it. It was about 100 degree at 10 a.m. that day and shortly thereafter, we decided to go to the beach. That resulted in a trip to Terror Beach but an otherwise lovely day.



Okay, so the 6th picture in the 6th folder on my computer was another picture of Beth. That didn't seem fair. So I went to the 7th folder. But there were only four pictures in there. I checked the 8th - this is picture #6. It was taken in January of this year at Valeta's place with her daughter. A playdate, if you will!

So I'm Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

Alright, alright. Enough people have noticed that I've not been blogging daily like I used to. You might say I've been busy, preoccupied, harried, aggrieved, distressed, or fretful. I've been troubled. Excited. Nervous. Excited but nervous.

Here's what you know: Rob was laid off the Friday before Thanksgiving.

Here's what you don't know: His last day of work was November 7th. He got his "severence check" on 11/26 for two-week's pay. I air-quoted "severence check" because although it may be company policy, two week's pay as severence for five years worth of loyalty and hard work seems a mere pittance. But what do I know?

Anyway, the check just covered the rent. I got paid for one week of babysitting. Things. Are. TIGHT.

It's been decided throughout the last month, however, that Rob is going back to school. We talked and talked, and since it costs next to nothing to go to school when you're a resident of California, he would enroll full-time at Chabot for night classes with an unofficially declared major of mechanical engineering. After he earns 60 credits at Chabot, he'll apply for transfer to UC Berkeley! He should be done with everything in about 5-6 years.

Initially, he was also going to work full time while going to school. Then we had a brilliant idea: send me back to work. I wasn't too keen on it at first. I have no clothes (why do women always go to that first? "I have nothing to wear!") that aren't stained, fading, or growing holes in them. I haven't worked since early 2004 - who's going to hire me? Will I really want to spend 9+ hours a day away from the kids I've spent every day with for the last four years? Am I even cut out for the professional life anymore?

But I put my nose to the grindstone, pulled together my resumè and a generic cover letter, and pulled the proverbial trigger. I've got about 30-or-so resumès out. It's only been about a week and a half and although I've had no call-backs yet, we're hopeful!

So that's what I've been up to. I didn't want to say anything officially but I'm becoming more and more comfortable with the idea. If you know anyone in the SF East Bay area who needs an administrative assistant, please let me know! Or you can contribute to the Keep Mommy on the Edge's Family Afloat Fund!

Please bear with me. I plan on getting back to blogging on the regular but it's hard; I spend my evenings looking for jobs and sending out resumès and it kind of cuts into my blogging time. I do miss writing and I miss all you lovely people.