Middle of Nowhere Calling

So mom sends me a job posting today, for a pharmaceutical company. The job is about 40 miles from where my parents and brother live--meaning it's way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, meaning I could live in the middle of nowhere or have a hellish commute by car every day from a very small city. I'd have to buy a car either way, because there ain't no public transportation in that part of the world. And I'd have to move, which would be a few grand, too.

I'm trying to see how this would be a good idea, especially since it's a job I'd hate (it would be similar to my previous position, and I've told my mother I'd rather slit my wrists than do that job any more). It would be moving away from all my friends and support networks (which my mother cannot seem to recognize, because they're not in the form of Husband and Children), moving from a large, active city to a small town, and incurring a bunch more debt (car payments) for an item I don't really want to own anyway. And I doubt it pays very much, though, because it's in marketing, it might.

The whole thing just depresses me, if you want to know. I realize that the situation is pretty much outside my mother's ability to comprehend, which makes it both more and less difficult. I'll just hope she doesn't mention it and fake my way through it if she does.

In other news, no pizza this week--because Brad has decided to roast a couple of chickens tomorrow, with lemon and garlic and rosemary. I don't know why, exactly, except that I think he was kind of inspired by my pizza escapades. It's interesting to see how the kitchen operates and to try to figure out how I'm influencing the dynamic (though I don't know that we can really figure that out).

A Science Fiction Tap Dance Opera

Yes, you read that correctly. It's from a poster across the street from the bakery, and, apparently this . . . theatrical production actually exists. It is supposedly based on the music of David Bowie (which, hey, I loved me some Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane in my day), but I am trying to figure out, without breaking my brain too much, just why someone would think that combining science fiction, David Bowie, tap dancing, and opera would be a good thing. And aren't there maybe laws against it? If it were a food, it would be, oh, mango bran beef jerky with tomato sauce, over mesclun greens. Or something.

Fargo, Revisited

There's more to life than a little money. Don't you know that?

"Fargo" was on AMC last night, and I had it on, not least because I really like that movie. In general, I don't usually like the Coen brothers' productions--I HATED "Barton Fink"--but "Fargo" is nearly perfect. The above quote sums up the whole movie.

Flip side, though--and, because it's me, you knew there was one; what else could I do with that undergraduate degree in philosophy?--there is some minimum. I read an interchange today where someone was bitching about not having enough money . . . and she was paying $7,000/month in rent, $2,000/month for eating out, etc. I can't imagine that; I have no idea what position one must be in, or the conditions under which one must have lived one's whole life, to say that with a straight face, not least because she spends in two months what I'll earn this year.

But the ensuing discussion did make me remember what I hate about the situation I'm in now: I constantly think about money. Not fantasies about having more, not resentment of people who have more, but a constant accounting: I have this much coming in; I have to pay that bill; don't forget to leave some wiggle room for the other thing; how extravagant can I be at the grocery store this week. For about two or three years in there, I didn't have to account for every fucking penny, or even every dollar, really. I didn't change all that much about my life, except I went out to dinner a little more and paid less attention to the prices when I did so, and I paid much less attention to how much was in the grocery cart when I went shopping at Whole Paycheck. But now I'm back to my previous life, when I do a running total in my head of the grocery cart's contents, where I account for what I'm spending, where I leave some wiggle room, where I wonder if this or that will tide me over.

And I hate it. I don't care, right this minute, if it makes me sound hopelessly bourgeois and middle-class. Yes, I know there are millions of people living in unspeakable poverty, or in the midst of unthinkable war zones, or both. I don't think my circumstances are somehow worse than those circumstances--quite the contrary. But we all have to play the hands we're dealt. I thank my stars/deities/luck all the damned time that I'm not living in Lebanon, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Congo, or the west side of this city, or Zimbabwe, or any of a number of other places. Given that I'm here, now, though, I just want to say that I hate this penny-counting, I hate how it occupies my mind, I hate how it constrains me (including constraining what I feel like I can give away), and I hate how bad it makes me feel for hating it. It's like an addiction, in the way that an addict spends a tremendous amount of time thinking about getting and using his/her drug, whether that drug is alcohol, cigarettes, heroin or something else. The other approach, I suppose, would be to be all la-la-la about it, but, in part thanks to my upbringing, I'm congenitally incapable of that. At least I know how to do it, and at least I know how to live (relatively) frugally, and I even know how to make it bearable most of the time. Just not right this minute.

More Nothing Much

I've been neglecting you all, haven't I? Not in my heart, but you can't read my heart. Today I got home from work, turned on the Tour de France (which is what I've been doing when I get home), and pretty much fell asleep on the couch. I'm exhausted, perhaps because I've been treating Friday like Friday, even though it's really my Thursday. Friday at the bakery is a grind, even though I've managed to organize and streamline the production as much as possible; I end up putting out about four and a half racks of croissants (which is about 80 dozen). Saturday is much less of a grind, so it doesn't seem so bad, even when I'm tired, and I don't generally have anything more exciting to do on Saturday night than sleep.

Tomorrow will be equally thrilling: yoga in the morning, followed by a festival of sporting events (two car races plus the final stage of the Tour). I'm hoping to see a medical student friend, so I can trade a ride to Whole Paycheck for some editing for her. I have to sit down and hack through the piles of paper and bills, too. Monday I'm seeing my doctor at 7:30 am, and then it's time to do some editing (provided the doctor visit isn't too eventful/painful).

It's becoming clear that I have to figure out what I'm going to do--how I'm going to reinvent myself this time. There are myriad things I would like to do: bakery owner, programmer, writer, editor--any or all of those would entertain me. I'm not qualified for at least one of those, and the others don't exactly pay much. (Entertainingly enough, one of the jobs for which I couldn't get an interview, which led me to become a pastry chef, is apparently open again; I should probably reapply, just for the hell of it.) I really don't want to abandon the whole pastry chef/baker thing, especially as I haven't repaid the loan yet, but I have to figure out a way to do it that results in a life I want to live. Hell, I have to figure out ANY job that results in a life I want to live.

I'm Melllllttttingggg

but I don't covet ruby slippers, so there's that.

Yes, I know, it's hot everywhere, but I have no air conditioning, and I work someplace that is even hotter than where I am right now, so I won't get any relief by going to work tomorrow. (Jefe said when they had ovens on opposite walls it was screaming hot in the bakery, and I believe it.) I'm going to have to go to a Harbucks this afternoon for some iced tea and iced air (and I have to go to Harbucks, because I have a $5 gift card and can therefore do it for nearly free).

I saw two old friends this morning, which was short but wonderful. One of them saw me through the last bout of Emma Reinvention, and he was very encouraging in his doesn't-say-much way; the big hugs he gave me said it all. Everyone is sympathetic--not just to me, but also toward Dave, even though he's not usually present, so that's helpful. I cleared up the unenjoyment crap--they kept thinking I actually cashed my last check, when really I returned it--but I still have to pay them $70 in taxes for money I never got. But, hey, I'll get it back next year from the IRS! I got to talk to my doctor, who made room in his schedule to see me next Monday morning early (I explained that any other day meant losing pay, and he had the other doc's list of Life Stressors in front of him--aren't computers wonderful?--so he could see that that would be a problem for me); let's hope it's just menopause. I also sucked it up and asked my parents if they could help cover health insurance, I put my Netflix account on hold, and I'm canceling the YMCA membership that we don't use (which means no chance of handball for awhile longer, but neither of us can see spending that money right now). Dave said he's making calls and networking at a furious pace, so I'm hopeful, but even if he gets really lucky, these things take time.

Luckily, I have experience with living on a budget--it's not fun, and I hate it more than I can say, but I know how to do it. I can cut back my expenses--except for health insurance--so I can almost (but not quite) get by on what I make. I can't help Dave out, but at least I can limit my own stuff, and, since he didn't give me any money for June or July, he should have at least a little surplus. It won't last long, but there's just nothing I can do. If his old company would pay him the money they owe him (me, really) for travel, he'd have a little more cushion, but they've owed that money for 18 months, so I'm not hopeful. (Or they paid him and he never told me, but I don't think he'd have lied about that.)

All in all, I'm just wading through the crap. What else can I do? I've realized that I have about three real options: (1) continue at the bakery and get enough writing/editing gigs on the side to get by reasonably well, with health insurance from Dave's new new job or my parents or some cheapo plan that either my earnings or my parents can pay for, (2) find a bakery job that pays more and has benefits, and/or has reasonable enough hours that I can do some writing/editing on the side, or (3) find a job outside the food industry. That last one means giving up my dream (fantasy?) of owning my own bakery--and before I even paid off the loan, fer chrissakes!--but it would also mean enough money to live on and maybe save some, because I'm not going to do that for a job that doesn't pay much more than I can make as a baker. Those are the three real options, though, and the next few weeks will determine which of them I choose; the deciding factors are work on the side for me, a new job for Dave, and health insurance (it completely sucks that that has to be such a huge factor in this--what the hell kind of country are we running, anyway?). A friend from grad school might have some grantwriting for me, and that would be great; I've figured that I need about 15 hours a month of some kind of side work, which isn't all THAT much.

It's true that I'm battling my own demons, as well--I've been through this reinvention thing before, several times, and, as I've whined below, I really don't have a lot of energy to do it again. The thing that's so discouraging is that I feel like I reinvent myself, manage to build something, and then . . . it falls apart. You could argue that I shouldn't have loaned Dave all that money, for example, or that I should have left the company before they owed me quite so much money (I tried to do that, but couldn't find a job), or shouldn't have borrowed another $15k for pastry school, or or or. None of the decisions seemed terrible at the time, but they're pretty much all biting me in the ass at the same time right now. Eh; what's done is done. All I can do is figure out what the next thing is and do that.

Pizza Pizza

On a whim, I made pizza dough and pizza for my coworkers today. Jefe sprung for the cheese and sauce, Charlie picked them up (along with some spinach, mushrooms, and pepperoni; plus I grabbed some roasted onions from the walk-in) on one of his deliveries, and Brad gave me some advice, and there you have it: pizza. The spinach/mushroom/onion was more popular than the pepperoni/mushroom/onion, and one coworker requested some black olives on the spinach next time. So, hey, no problem--pizza every Saturday, as far as I'm concerned. If Jefe springs for the cheese and sauce and other stuff, I'll whip up the dough when I come in on Saturday.

Meanwhile, either I (a) have cancer, (b) have a hormone imbalance caused by stress (unlikely, if you ask me, given that stress hasn't caused that before), or (c) am galloping into menopause. I'm betting heavily on (c), but it's a pain, people, let me tell you. Who really wants to have a period every other week? And the fibroids I had embolized two years ago are still around--smaller, yes, but still around--and they probably don't help matters, either. Apparently I am not bleeding from quite enough places, so I managed to cut myself yesterday, too.

And, yes, Dave did, in fact, lose his job. He has a lot of contacts in his field, several of the businesses in his field are in or around this city, he has a lot of experience and talent (a tremendous amount of both, actually--he's done a LOT of stuff), and there are lot of people who know him and think highly of him (and rightly so), so here's hoping someone is smart enough to hire him.

Fear

My fear, this time.

It's overwhelming me. On top of wondering what the hell is happening with Dave (much to my surprise, he didn't even email or leave a voice mail wishing me a happy birthday--that isn't really like him), on top of wondering how I'm going to get by financially, my body has decided now is a FINE time for extra bleeding. I keep trying to reassure myself that it's just random, that it's nothing serious (and I went to the doc on Wednesday), but that only goes so far. And do I have health insurance? Dunno.

The other thing that scares me is the Black Hole: I've been there before, I lived there for a couple of years at the end of and after grad school, and I just don't want to go back. I don't want to summon the energy to crawl out of there again.

As I said to J yesterday (and may I also say that she forced me to go out to dinner with her last night and we had a lovely time), the thing that's so discouraging is that I make a decision that doesn't seem completely crazy and it turns out so much worse than I could have imagined that I'm beginning to doubt my ability to make any decisions at all.

And it depresses me that this blog has become, instead of a place where I can actually try to work out an idea once in awhile, a kind of Whining Central. (And thank you all for your kind wishes yesterday.) I barely pay attention to the news any more--in part because that just depresses me, too, and I really don't need any more sources of depression. I realize that's completely self-centered, and I'm disgusted with myself on that score, but there it is.

Feh.

Happy Fucking Birthday

Yeah, that's right--today's my 48th birthday. In the last year and three weeks,

• I got married
• the company for which I worked went out of business
• the company for which Dave worked closed their offices in this city
• I went in debt (again!) to change careers
• I started a new job that does not offer benefits and does not pay me enough to live on
• Dave started a new job
• Dave confessed to major lies, particularly about money
• Dave moved out
• I moved to a new apartment

And that's just the stuff I'm telling you about--there's more, but it's Dave's to share or not as he sees fit.

I've also decided that Dave's lost his job. He went out of contact for a couple of days (not answering phone calls or email), and he's changed the message on the "office" answering machine so it has no mention of his job. I could be wrong, I suppose, but who knows when I'll find out. I'd sure like to be wrong about this one, but I don't have a good feeling about it.

J and I separately developed a rating scale for when bad shit goes down, and it turns out we developed the same scale. It's really not a scale, given that it's binary--that is, when things seem like they're really, really bad, we say (when it's true), well, at least no one died. In my case, I used my sister's death as a kind of marker of badness.

It turns out, however, that the binary scale really isn't adequate to the task, as I discovered during the year-plus I was unemployed after grad school, being forced to change careers, blah, blah, defucking blah. Even though someone had, in fact, died, that had happened a couple of years earlier and wasn't the immediate cause of the shitstorm (a contributing factor, yes, but only one of many). That time was, in some ways, worse than when my sister died, primarily because I had no clue how I was going to get out of it, and everything I tried didn't seem to work. (I will always have a soft spot for recovering junkies and alcoholics, because they're the only ones who were willing to take a chance on me.) That is, when someone dies, there's a certain grieving process. It isn't fun, and it's not as though you get some kind of gold star when you "complete" the process--really, you never complete it, you just incorporate it into your life. But you can either do that, i.e., go on somehow, or you can effectively stop living your own life, turn it into a shrine of some kind.

In any case, the binary code I (almost unconsciously) started using when my sister died has turned out to be inadequate again. No, noone has died. But look at that list above and find the fun part, because I sure as hell can't. I've also realized recently that there isn't any way out of the mess I'm in that is going to be easy or pleasant, and there's even the potential for serious ugliness, though I hope that can be avoided and I will work assiduously to avoid it.

The other thing I realized when my sister died, though, is that everyone has problems. It's not as though I've got a shit sandwich while everyone else is eating caviar and sipping fine champagne, and there is always someone who is worse off. So even as I'm depressed and feeling sorry for myself and that kind of whiny shit, I really don't think of myself as worse off, somehow, than the people around me. In some dimensions, some of the time, yes, I could make that argument, but in general, no; I'm just bemoaning the particular shit sandwich I have in front of me.

So, yeah, happy fucking birthday.

Needs

Larry raises an interesting point in his comment to the previous post, and it fits with things I realized about myself a long time ago. One of the things I realized was that I wasn't going to be Normal. I didn't know what I would be, I didn't know how I was going to do it, and I didn't particularly want to be Not Normal, but it seemed like I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Part of what that meant, for me, was that it seemed unlikely I was going to find a Partner. I'm a pain in the ass, along a number of dimensions, and, despite my willingness and ability to accommodate and get along and negotiate, I'm not the sort of woman that men particularly want to be with. Yes, there are all kinds of caveats to that--I have an exceptionally long list of male friends, along with several on that list who might have been More Than Friends if the geography had been arranged a little differently--and I'm not complaining, merely observing.

All that aside, I didn't seem to find someone when I was in my 20s--or my 30s, for that matter--and it seemed to me, during that time, that I had better learn to make friends, get along, and live happily by myself. If someone did come along, well, all the better, but living my life in expectation of that struck me as foolhardy at best. I also assumed I'd be supporting myself, which I don't think all women assume, and one of my biggest regrets about my current situation is that I decided to trust someone else to support me for a little while. That is, part of my current fear and panic is that I'm in a situation where I can't support myself right now--I don't make enough money, and, what with the money I'm owed in back pay, most of which I'll never get, the money I've loaned Dave, and the money with which I paid for our wedding, I don't have savings any more.

So, really, what I've done instead of expecting to find A person who knows me that well is to cultivate a lot of people who know me pretty damned well. They may not all know how I smell, but a fair number of them can finish at least some of my sentences, and some of them get my jokes (even though I of course miss the private jokes between me and Dave), and they all take care of me (and I them) in a variety of small, significant ways.

J and I were talking about "needing" people last week. I don't "need" any particular person, which is something that bugged Dave terribly and made him insecure when we were first together. We humans are social creatures, and we do, in fact, need to create and build and nurture all kinds of relationships with each other, so don't misunderstand me--I DO need people in my life, and there are friendships, like my friendship with J, that are transformative and transcendent and deep. We (or some of us) may even need to have the kind of partnership that Larry poses (or that my parents have maintained for 50+ years)--but then where does that leave someone like me? That is why I had to conceptualize a life where that kind of partnership might not happen--because otherwise I was relegating myself to unhappiness and incompleteness, and that struck me as not terribly healthy. In the end, I think that conceptualization has broadened and deepened the kinds of relationships I can have and have had and have now, and would even deepen a partnership, were one to come across my path.

But I do understand how it doesn't make much sense to my mom. It never has, really, and it frightens her, despite the education I've tried to do over the years. Still, she's my mother, and she's allowed to worry about me, even if it's in ways that make me crazy.

Now with more chores!

So far today I've:

• purchased a monthly transit pass, which involved a trip to the currency exchange
• done the laundry (including getting quarters at the currency exchange, a roll of which cost me a quarter, which is bogus but unavoidable)
• bought milk--turns out the grocery store nearby is actually not half bad, as a coworker had said; they've got the organic milk I like (though only 2%, not 1%), and a wide variety of grains and such from ethnic
• done a bunch of change-of-address details
• called about a rebate for my phone, and found someone at Circuit City who was extremely helpful and enabled me to avoid printing crap to get the rebate (I now have a printer from my old job but no ink cartridges and no idea whether the thing still works)
• swept the floor, albeit in half-hearted fashion
• sorted crap in the hall closet
• got the answering machine portion of the phone/answering machine to actually record messages (no idea what was wrong or how I fixed it, but I think it's working now)

The only chores I still want to accomplish today are cleaning the bathroom, finding the Phallic Monuments postcards, doing some yoga (which isn't a chore, exactly), and sorting through the various money-related bits of paper I have in piles. The whole subject of money is sending me into a panic these days, but I'm hoping that resolves a little soon.

I had an interesting conversation with Mom this morning, who informed me that she hasn't told anyone about what's happening with me and Dave. I'm glad she's done that--or hasn't done that, as the case may be--because, really, most people simply don't need to know. She's also worried, it turns out, that I'm "alone again," but I reminded her of all of the people at the wedding who are my friends, and I think that actually made her feel a little better. The problem for her, of course, is that she can't conceptualize a life without a husband as anything but "alone." I recognize that my life is difficult to sort through for someone with her background and experience--hell, it's not as though it's obvious to me how to make sense of my life--but she's learned how to take the bits of reassurance I offer, at least some of the time. Okay, time to get back to that list of chores.

Odds and Ends

I just need to hang pictures, and put away a smallish pile of crap, and figure out what to do with mail and bills, and hang things like the ironing board, and find frames for the Phallic Monuments of the World collection* so I can hang those, and hook up the printer, and deal with a couple of piles of bits of crap. Eventually I'll have to start cleaning again, too. The last bits always take longer, because it's the crap that was laying around with no particular home in the OLD place, too.

*Almost 15 years ago, on a whim that I don't even remember, I started a collection I called Phallic Monuments of the World, primarily by asking people to send or bring me items for the collection. It was mostly a postcard collection, and I encouraged people to be creative and thoughtful, rather than merely obvious, in their contributions. In fact, one of the things I like most about the collection is that most of it was contributed by other people, some of whom responded to the challenge in truly entertaining and amusing ways. I have some three-dimensional bits, too--an Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, the Eiffel Tower, etc.--but it's the postcards that are truly amusing. If I (a) find it and (b) frame it and (c) hang it and (d) find a camera, I'll post a picture of it for you.

Speaking of photos, the camera I got on the way to the anniversary party was kind of a dud. There are some great photos--me with my brother and two of my cousins, and one of my whole dad's side of the family (except a sister and her kids who live in Florida, plus one of the cousins from around here had left already), not to mention photos of me dancing with my nephews. I also managed to get a picture of the needlepoint I did as a wedding gift for my brother before the camera decided to die (with seven pictures unused):

I continue to discuss the World Cup with my coworkers, at least a little tiny bit, such that they now give me updates (today one of them came and told me that France had beaten Portugal). They've all been pitching in to do the massive croissant production, but I've managed to organize things such that it only takes about a half hour to do 14 pieces of dough (i.e., to make about 400 croissants). Friday and Saturday are still Festivals of Plain Croissants, and I can't always get help for that, but I figure it's a good tradeoff.

Okay, time to finish making the tea, watch a little more of the Tour de France, and go to bed.

Some Sleep, Please, with a Side of Don't Wake Me until Six

So despite being exhausted last night, I woke up a little after 4 this morning, putzed around a little, and then headed off to work, even though it's Sunday. Except the second train I need to take doesn't start running until 6:05, and I got to the station at 5:39. I walked to the first/next station, but then decided to take the train. When I got to work, Johnnie let me in (the door was locked, it being 6:15 and all), and Jefe came to find me as I changed my shoes. I had mixed a batch (about 50 pounds) of dough for the cinnamon raisin croissants, figuring Jefe and I could crank them out today for the week, I could load up pans for tonight's and Tuesday's bake, and be out of there by noon or, maybe, with luck, by 11 (i.e., in time to make it to a yoga class). Anyway, the ciabatta dough is usually in the walk-in on Saturday night, but not croissant dough, and the dishwasher, as his last thing, takes it out of the walk-in. All the dough goes in big grey buckets. Alas, there was no ciabatta dough, but there was croissant dough, but he didn't know that and took it out of the walk in, so it was seriously overproofed by the time Jefe came in, meaning . . . no making of the cinnamon raisin croissants today. (He wanted to call me but didn't know my cell number was posted--and I had to put shit on pans, anyway.) It wasn't a total loss, though: I made the dough today again, he'll laminate and freeze it tomorrow and take it out of the freezer first thing on Wednesday. I pounded the butter for his laminating tomorrow and, while I was at it, for the additional 16 pieces I'll be doing on Wednesday. I did some other stuff (put oats in to soak; put all those damned croissants on sheet pans; figured out next week's production runs; helped slice and bag hot dog, hamburger, and dinner buns), and got out of there by noon. Plus, I needed some bread for tomorrow's activities--four loaves to be exact; with my discount it would have been about $20, but he came out as I was paying and said, "Give me $10 for it." Can't beat that.

Meanwhile, today is my baby brother's 42nd birthday. How did it happen that I have a 42-year-old baby brother?

I was supposed to meet a friend this evening, but he forgot and ended up at his advisor's house in Michigan. Much as I want to see him, I'll be happier to see him later in the week when I'm better rested. I've made my linzer dough for tomorrow, and I'm about to make some dinner, and I'd better get some sleep tonight is all I have to say.