Mama's got a brand new....

The following exchange (which actually took place) represents how things are going for me in terms of diet and exercise this holiday season:

JTM: *rummaging in fridge looking for butter*

Me: I must have bought at least ten pounds of butter for holiday cooking and baking over the last month.

JTM: I know, I'm wearing a lot of it around my waist, AND I've even been working out!

Me: *looking down at pants that actually fit properly three weeks ago * Uh, yeah....well, I've got a new camel toe.

Filling the Hole

Laid Off - Day 35

One of the things that really surprised me after I was laid off - because I honestly had never given it much thought before - was the lack of calls and emails from my former coworkers -  Not every single one, but most of them - people I saw and spoke with every single weekday -  just completely disappeared from my life a couple of Wednesdays ago, without so much as a "good luck" or "take care".  I mean, I guess I could have done the walk of shame through the building saying goodbye to everyone - there was no security guard escorting me off the premises or anything - but I guess I didn't think I needed to - thought they'd still be in my life

Now maybe there is a lot of survivor guilt, or maybe (eeps!) they were glad to see me go.  But most likely they all just went on without skipping a beat.  Because for them, I only existed in their lives between Monday and Friday, and when I wasn't there, the space I took up in their lives just closed over or filled up with the next person.

It's a little lonely here at home sometimes, and the quiet was nearly deafening the first week or so, but really I'm not missing my workday people, or my workplace that much at all anymore. And for someone who others would say is very, very sociable, I really do dig spending hours hearing nothing but the courtyard fountain and the dog scratching himself.  I guess my hole is closing over too!

The Middle School Bake Sale

So in between lunching and job hunting and spinning in circles, I've been doing a lot of holiday baking (of the "from a mix" or "five ingredients or less" variety), mostly for the various holiday concert bake sales that are an inevitable part of the December schedule for the average North American household with kids between the ages of 3 and 16.

So last night I was working the baking table at the middle school band thingy when a woman came scurrying up, quickly scanned the wares, and then executed a smooth forearm sweep of the table, including most of the stuff I'd brought (ahem! quaintly and festively bagged, tagged, and be-ribboned in single-serving portions) into her open backpack.  Shamelessly, unapologetically said "This is how I'm doing my holiday baking this year" as she handed over about $20.

I had a very brief moment of "hey that's not for YOU to pawn off as the fruit of your own efforts, lady," but then realized we were in a win-win situation here:  I help the school by doing the baking, and other people help the school by buying it.  And, bonus: I get to be all smug about my civic-mindedness and my fine, fine treats; and some other woman gets to tick another item off her already unmanageable to-do list.

And I was impressed as hell by her brazenness in letting someone else do the work for her. All this holiday business is already so overburdened with expectation and obligation, and pre-primed for a generous application of guilt and shame,  I could really learn something from people who refuse to let any of that stick to them.

Days Going Downstream

Laid Off Day 19-ish


It's alarming to me the way the days are going by. Time is dripping like water out of my hands and flowing away into a whole river of yesterdays, and making me feel like a wastrel.

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly three weeks since I stopped working, and I STILL don't have the spices alphabetized, the grout cleaned or the leaves raked up (okay listen, the leaf people aren't coming till DECEMBER 29 - I have lots of time to get that done, really I do. They aren't going anywhere, except maybe over onto the neighbours' driveways...). And I still haven't lost that "five pounds in a hurry" that I was going to get on right away (made four kinds of shortbread last week - kind of counterproductive to the weight loss effort).

The awareness of time's relentless flow only really comes when there is an abundance of it. When I am busy,  I don't worry so much about time, except that there never seems to be enough, so I just do what I can with what little I have. But now there is a big river of time before me,  and if I don't DO something real with it, it will just dribble away.

I guess that's why we're all about the to-do lists and the calendars  - anything to containerize our time - to create and preserve an illusion that we have some mastery over its inevitable flow downstream.

So today I'm going to write down a bunch of things to do, and then I'll climb out from under the duvet and actually attempt a couple of them.

Dreaming of Work. And Mayonnaise.

Laid Off-Day 8

So I've been feeling remarkably zen-ish about this whole layoff thing, especially now that I've got most of the paperwork out of the way.  Basically what happens is that your former employer agrees to give you some money (and my understanding is that it's generally an insultingly small amount) to go away.  Really go away.  Like, you have to sign something that says "I'll eff off and not bother you anymore, about anything, ever again.  And thanks for the minuscule amount of severance pay. I promise to tell nobody how much money you did or didn't give me to eff off."  And of course in our society it's ALWAYS personal when it comes to money. So even after what you think has to be the final insult - the actual layoff- you then have to deal with the "severance package". Another judgement, another blow to the fragile ego. And another reason to freak out about the fact that You. Don't. Have. A. Job.

But we're all sorted out now and, as promised,  I'm focusing my attention on properly effing off. Not physically, cause I've settled in fairly nicely here at home. But properly gone in my own head, which seems pretty good during the day about the whole "I don't work there anymore" thingy and the part where I threw all my in-progress projects (and hours, days, weeks of work) in the recycling as I walked out the door last Wednesday.  And the conscious me is cool with the half-jar of Hellman's Light I left in the lunchroom fridge.  And I'm only faintly irked (more puzzled actually) to learn that some random guy from some other random department is sitting at my former desk, and has assumed something vaguely resembling my former job.

But at night I've been having fever-dreams about my work. The work itself. Wanting to give it to people who refuse take it.  Being forced to hand it off and not wanting to give it up.  Trying to explain what needs to be done to people who don't understand or who won't listen. And people I only vaguely recognize are making sandwiches, filling my emptied file folders with assorted meats and cheeses, and generous dollops of reduced-fat mayonnaise (okay, I made that part up, although one particularly bizarre dream did feature tiny Scottish TV nutritionist, Gillian McKeith, in a cameo role).  Just frustration after frustration, all night long.

The Part of Life's Rich Pageant Where Mary Gets Laid Off!

Laid off – Day 1

I guess this I my first “official” day of being laid off, although I did have some practice yesterday since it was Remembrance Day and everyone was off anyway. 

I’ve been preparing for this day for a while now, although part of me (the part that made, packed and brought lunch to work on Wednesday) was hanging back.  To be honest, that hanging back part was the part of me that said “who cares if you are totally miserable at work, and that the company is imploding, and that nobody has either known or cared how you were spending your workdays for months now, it would just be wrong to WANT to be laid off.  I mean, what kind of person besides a total slack-ass would hope to be let go from their job? What kind of fate-tempter would go to work on a Wednesday without a lunch, just so they didn't have to schlep it, embarassingly, back out of the building when they were escorted off the premises?” 

So it was that part of me that got out of bed this Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, put on appropriate clothes, did the hair (but did go VERY easy on the eye makeup in case of tears, of which there were none, by the way), packed the lunch, worked on the projects (meaningless or not), returned the emails and phone calls, and smiled and chatted with everyone.  And waited to see which way the axe would swing.

My way, as it turned out. And the way of 36 other of my friends and colleagues. My former employer is practically halved from what it was less than a week ago, and about 75% smaller than when I started with the company nearly four years ago (did you notice the part earlier where I mentioned “imploding”?).

So welcome to a brand new scene in Life’s Rich Pageant.  I do hope you’ll  join me as I explore the exotic new land of the unemployed.  Cause I think it might be just a little lonely here at home with just the dog for company. And I’ll be much more likely to shower, dress and brush my teeth each day; and much less likely to lace my orange juice with vodka if I think someone is watching.

Oh, BOO!

So we didn't get any Trick or Treaters last year, so this year we "only" got about 200 little chocolate bars "just in case".

They're mostly gone now.  And there haven't been any kids by (except ours, who were certainly very helpful in culling the Crispy Crunches and Mr. Bigs from the basket before they headed off to mystery venues to engage in secret activities with un-named acquaintances.)

Have spent a very large percentage of the weekend driving young people to and from party after party after party. I really dont' mind; I spent a lot of my youth feeling (rightly or wrongly) bored and lonely, so I am really happy for them that they have plenty of friends and things to do (OMG!  At one party there was an actual WEENIE ROAST! I'm totally not jealous.)  But on a weekend like this, I do feel like I've done very little but drive around and around. And eat little chocolate bars.  Lots and lots of little chocolate bars. Next year I'm making myself a chauffeur costume with a special built-in pocket for my, uh, "recycling".

On a more positive note, I hit it out of the park with the kids' Halloween costumes this year.  JP's could hardly be called a "costume" - I made him an iron-on applique of the "Fe" symbol from the Periodic Table - he was "Iron Man".  Cam went as a member of the local high school football team.  Not a lot of football in this part of the world, so the local team is somewhat of a legend-slash- object of gentle mockery from the granola-crunching-soccer-playing-hipster-douchebag youth in the neighborhood.  Anyway, I rigged up a jersey from a massive men's undershirt, some iron-on letters and acrylic paint, and it looked great.  And I got him a pair of cheap, ghetto sweats from Zellers for pants.  Then (and I'm really not sure HOW I feel about this) I sewed a cellphone pocket into the pants for him...  I could pretend that I did it to "keep him safe" but really I did it because he has a serious texting habit and I am a total enabler.


Happy Halloween!