Hey! In all the life upheaval I forgot to tell you guys about my new grandnephew!
Month: January 2009 (Page 1 of 2)
Howdy, Livejournal Land. Greetings from the Land of the Unemployed. The weather here is stormy, but the future outlook is partly sunny.
Thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts. I’m feeling mostly optimistic. I know it’s sappy, but I’m a firm believer that when a door closes, a window opens. The last time a company laid me off, it was my opportunity to go back to school and finish my degree. I still have to find the window this time around, but I know it’s there, somewhere.
So yesterday, I went to work knowing it was going to be a horrible day, regardless. Even if I got to keep my job, I was going to have to watch good people go. When my supervisor stopped by my desk and whispered to me that I needed to be at the 10:00 meeting in the conference room, I knew. After that it was just going to the meeting and listening to the management speech about how the economy sucks, and the clients’ businesses are sucking, and it’s making our business suck, and they’re so very sorry, and when things pick up they’ll offer us our jobs back. Then it was signing papers. Then back to my desk, where there were moving boxes and tape waiting and I had already been locked out of my work account. Then packing, packing, packing–I accumulated a lot of personal crap at my desk over two and a half years–interrupted by tearful hugs and goodbyes and promises to stay in touch and reference letter offers. Then I came home, unloaded my three boxes of office crap from the car, and sat on the couch with Matt, where we cuddled and held hands and then looked at each other and asked, “Now what?”
After taking an hour or so out to rest and let it all sink in, I got to work. Filed for unemployment benefits (I’m eligible for half of what I was earning at my job), got in touch with my old temp agencies, updated and submitted my resumes, applied for a part-time job. Once all of that was done, I didn’t know what the heck to do. The ice storm had started by then, and the house was dark and freezing, because now saving energy is more important than ever. So we got in bed and took a nap and then just forgot about it for the rest of the evening.
My plan to start today out with a disciplined schedule was thrown off by the ice storm knocking out the power for a few hours, but once I got up and around, I made a massive To Do list. It’s so massive that it’s overwhelming, so I’m not sure that helped me any. Anyway, next on that list is to create a new budget. We’ve still got a month’s worth of pay from my job coming in, and we need to tighten things up and make that last as long as possible.
After that, I don’t know. There’s so much I need to do. So much I WANT to do. I don’t know where to start.
The only thing I do know is that, right now, the possibilities are endless. And also that I love you guys.
I would very much appreciate prayer from those who pray, and good thoughts from those who don’t, about my job. There are going to be more layoffs by the end of the month, and everybody is under the microscope to see if they can be let go. Word is they’re starting with those who aren’t working on anything billable, and I still am, so maybe the axe will pass me by. Still, it’s going to be a stressful rest of the month. And by the by, their severance package sucks. So, yes. Job-keeping vibes and prayers would be awesome. Thank you kindly.
*Note: All entries on Ficlets, including mine, are posted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. All unattributed writing is by me. All otherwise-attributed writing is [sic].
Two Sizes Too Small
“What the hell is that?”
It was all she could do not to drop the thing in her hands, it wriggled so much. Unfathomably, the look on her face was pure delight. “My new puppy. Isn’t she adorable?” Her voice was one octave short of a squeal.
“That is not a dog. To call it a dog is an insult to dogkind.”
“Not a dog yet.” She held it close and let it lick her face. I almost dry heaved. “Granted, she won’t get much bigger. Chihuahuas stay pretty teeny.”
A chihuahua. Great. Cheese on crackers, I hated tiny dogs. Anything smaller than a beagle was a waste of space and fur. And this abomination would fit in my shirt pocket.
“Here, hold her.” She thrust it at my face. I just stood there. It looked like it belonged in a rat trap.
Except, rats didn’t wag their tales, nor become so happy at the sight of you that their entire bodies wiggled. A strange sensation warmed my chest. I didn’t like where this was going.
She sneezed. Aw, shit. That was cute.
“Put her in my pocket,” I sighed.
She was a perfect fit.
*Note: All entries on Ficlets, including mine, are posted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. All unattributed writing is by me. All otherwise-attributed writing is [sic].
This is one where I cheated and kept sequeling myself to write a longer story. It’s actually a pared down, revamped version of a longer story I wrote years ago.
UPDATED because I can sign into Ficlets now.
One For the Angels (Conversations With Dead People Challenge)
*Note: All entries on Ficlets, including mine, are posted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. All unattributed writing is by me. All otherwise-attributed writing is [sic].
Roommate Tactics
*Note: All entries on Ficlets, including mine, are posted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. All unattributed writing is by me. All otherwise-attributed writing is [sic].
Fairytale Ending
*Note: All entries on Ficlets, including mine, are posted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. All unattributed writing is by me. All otherwise-attributed writing is [sic].
WAITING
There she is, in the coffee shop window. She stares out—not at you, but toward you, not really looking at anything. Maybe at the odd snowflake drifting down from the sky.
She has all the appearance of waiting.
For someone, maybe. Her Valentine. The jerk who stood her up. A love she has yet to know.
You.
Maybe. Maybe, you’ve been waiting for her, too.
So you go inside. She looks up. Smiles. Stands, ties on her apron, picks up her pad and pencil and asks to take your order.
She was just waiting for her break to end.
So Ficlets is shutting down as of Thursday, and the kind folks over at AOL didn’t provide any way to archive or import entries other than “Cut & paste and get off our lawn!” Fortunately, other folks have kindly taken it upon themselves to import all unlocked entries into their own archive, but I’ll feel better if I know they’re safely stashed here for posterity (which is kind of ironic, considering LJ’s current state of financial affairs, but at least now I’ll be able to archive them with the rest of my journal).
So I’ll be posting them here over the course of the afternoon. I don’t really have that many, relative to the rest of the community, at least, and I’ll group them in threes so as not to get too spammy on y’all.
And if you’re wondering where to get your super-short story, community collaboration fix, despair not — the same folks behind the DIY archive are busy creating Ficly, aka Ficlets 2.0. Hopefully, this new version will address all of the problems with Ficlets that AOL refused to spend time or money to fix, because apparently they were too busy getting ready to kick us off of their lawn.
Phew. Things are finally calm and quiet around here again. Things have been so rushed and hectic and crazy for so long now that I’ve forgotten what free time feels like. I think it was long enough to break some bad habits, though, so now I’ve just got to train myself to use that free time to write. Right after I’m done catching up with you guys, who I still miss.
I’ve started reading over my first draft of Hero Factor, and it’s going to be quite a bit longer before it’s ready to start posting than I thought, not that there are more than maybe five of you who care. That’s actually a blessing, because I don’t feel the pressure that would otherwise make me insane and spur me into posting before it’s ready to be seen.