Still on the dole

Yes, it's true.  Santa did not give me a job for Christmas, nor have I found one on my own.  But I am still looking, applying to jobs that would be a perfect fit as well as applying to jobs that I am not really qualified for.  I am becoming very practiced at the art of creative resume fabrication. It's amazing how many ways one can describe mundane office duties and make them seem like advanced brain surgery. Actually, the resume doesn't change too often but the cover letter certainly does.  As I mentioned previously, I now make the cover letter as personal as I want, disclosing some small job years and years ago that might almost relate to the position that is being offered.  It's sort of like saying ".... yes, I have extensive experience with veterinary medicine..."  because I own a dog.  But hey, anything to get someone to read the letter. 

Often job postings ask you to put the job title in the subject line of your email.  I usually comply with their instructions  but sometimes I change it a bit.  Instead of putting "Office Manager" in the subject line I write "Orifice Manager" just to see if they are paying attention.  Or instead of "Administrative Assistant"  I will write "Administrative Ass."  Gives them a little chuckle, which hopefully will encourage them to read my resume.  So far I don't think it is working too well, but I refuse to give up.

One must keep up one's sense of humor in all this. After 15 months of being out of work (not counting the under-the-table jobs, of course) it is easy to get depressed about the future.  Jobs are plentiful, or so it seems if you read craigslist and monster.com.  But so are unemployed people, so there is a lot of competition for good positions.  Also, many of the jobs are part-time, temporary or contract jobs.  A contract job would be acceptable but part-time and temporary, not so much.  Giving up the unemployment check for a part-time job that doesn't net the same amount of money seems foolish. A temporary gig that will mean being out of work again in the foreseeable future is more than foolish, it is idiotic.  Sure, a nice chunk of money for six months sounds fine, but once they let you go you are totally screwed because you haven't worked long enough to accrue any unemployment benefits.

But still, I am optimistic about it all.  I continue to apply to jobs every day and now and then I get a response.  In my heart I know that someone out there is almost desperate enough to post the perfect job for me and the stars will align, the fates will conspire and I will see that job posting immediately, send my newly polished resume and my snappy cover letter, and that job will be mine.  With benefits, with a decent salary and with free parking.  I am counting on it.  And counting the days until that job posting appears.  And counting the dwindling dollars remaining in my bank account. 

Still here

However, I have nothing to say.  The holidays have taken their toll.  Perhaps more verbage tomorrow.

Are sleigh bells ringing?

Happy Holidays to all.  I have been remiss in blogging this week but will make up for it soon.  I hope you are all enjoying family and friends or if you are alone, you are having a good, quiet weekend.  If you are reading this, you have something to be grateful for (having a computer, if nothing else) and we all need to remember the good stuff this time of year.  We are inundated with the bad often enough.

Just one comment on the job front.  I applied to several jobs postings this past week, casting my net further and further from home.  I stopped writing traditional cover letters, opting instead for a more chatty, personal version.  Oddly, that seems to be working because I got calls from two of the businesses that I applied to.  I honestly think it was due in a large part to the witty banter in my cover letters.  I haven't connected with either company and therefore I was probably just one name on a long list of applicants.  But at least it was some action, a positive sign.

Time to drink some Christmas Eve champagne.  I am hanging out with my son and daughter-in-law and looking forward to a relatively large quantity of good champagne and good food.  I miss Jenn hugely but will be seeing her in a couple of weeks, in Texas, and we will all have another Christmas eve then.

Peace and love to everyone. 

Turmoil?

Maybe chaos is the wrong word.  Maybe turmoil is better, or pandemonium.  Or simply confusion.  Whatever the word, a lot of us are experiencing it right now.  If you believe astrologers, last night's lunar eclipse was the culmination of a planetary shift that has brought incredible disarray to the cosmos but promises huge spiritual and emotional changes in the future.  Well, maybe.  I think it is more the real world we live in instead of the cosmic one, but I could be wrong.

But whatever the cause, one wonders what the fix might be. At one end of the spectrum is the truly chaotic mind, one that cannot stop jumping from subject to subject, one that feels like it is a wire away from shorting out.  What to do, where to go, how to get there, why bother? Why not just bury oneself in books and read for the next six months?

The other end of that spectrum is the person who is focusing very clearly on how to overcome this messy mind syndrome.  Signing up for classes, reading self-help books, making early new year's resolutions to change everything in one's life, dieting, exercising, walking, running, anything that feels like forward movement instead of wallowing in the stagnation.

Then there are those of us in the middle territory.  We know we should be doing something but we are taking baby steps to find out what that something is. Personally, I have sent out more resumes to on-line job postings in the past week than I have in the past month.  It isn't much, but it's at least something proactive.  I was offered a job last week that many people thought I should have taken, but it would have meant continuing to live with my son and daughter-in-law for the foreseeable future because it didn't pay very much and had zero benefits.  I turned it down because I firmly believe that there is a job out there that I actually WANT to do.  I just need to find it. Or it needs to find me.

So that's my current level of activity to try to reduce the effects of my unsettled mind and unsettled life.  That and the decision to take an on-line French language course. Heck, if I can't get a job, at least I can whine about it in another language.

I hope some of you caught the lunar eclipse last night.  I saw bits and pieces of it through major cloud cover, but what I saw was eerie and mystical and very cool.  For a great video, check this out.  http://www.vimeo.com/18046748

Au revoir for now.

Chaos

A short post.

Yes, I will be traveling again, after xmas, and for those of you who prefer me to be blogging from the road instead of from the comfort of a warm home, you will be rewarded for your patience.  For those of you who don't care, and who loyally read the blog no matter where I am, thanks.

Everyone I talk to these days, with the exception of a couple of my brothers who (dare I say it?) actually like their jobs, is experiencing what I am calling Internal Chaos. It's that churning feeling inside, that definite physical sense of unease and everyone seems to be aware of it.  No one likes their job but they keep it because to quit is folly right now.  Everyone I know is acutely aware of the economic and political climate and that contributes to the growing sense of personal unrest.  It's as if nothing is settled, everything is up for grabs, everyone is slightly miserable but can't really figure out what to do about it.

Internal Chaos.  At odds with everything. No one is really looking forward to a "happy holiday" but many people want  to be with people they like because there is safety in numbers, it feels better to be with someone instead of no one.  Or else they want to be alone because they can control that environment  and therefore control any angst that comes barreling towards them.  Again, it's as if everything is up in the air, as if we are all just balanced on the brink, waiting for a shove.

More later.  Remember to breathe.

Credit Card Mania

A couple of weeks ago I was strolling (virtually) through some Parisian travel sites, obsessing about not being in Paris, and I came across an ad for a United Airlines Mileage Plus credit card.  It offered a "no fee for a year" Visa card with some sort of sign-up bonus.  Years ago I had a United Mileage Plus Visa card and it was my main credit card.  Because of a purchase dispute with United, (they were wrong, I was right) I cancelled the card.  But this free offer was intriguing, so in the spirit of the Credit Card Nation, I signed up for a new card.

However, I was not totally honest when I filled out the on-line application.  I did not list a job other than "self employed" and I put my yearly income at something around $12,000 a year.  Poverty level, yes, but I was curious to see how easy or difficult it was nowadays to obtain a credit card.  We have read about the crack-down on letting people have way too much credit card debt so I erroneously assumed that getting a card might be a bit tricky.

Not so.  Today in the mail I received my brand-new, shiny Visa card from United's Mileage Plus program.  With my $12,000 stated income, I now have a credit limit of $7,300.  In other words, they issued a card to me and the limit is almost three quarters of what I ostensibly make every year!  This is so amazingly irresponsible that I want to go out right now and buy something on credit!  Or perhaps I will finally buy that first class ticket to Paris I have been jonesing for.

Or maybe I will just send the card back to Chase Bank with a little note explaining how insane their card-issuing policies are.  But then, they won't care, will they?  There will always be another sucker coming down the road that they can scam into debt.  Let me be clear here, I truly believe it is up to each individual to monitor their own credit card purchases and it is each person's responsibility to not get into credit card debt.  But when access to such a card is so damn easy, and when so many people right now are struggling with bills and loss of jobs and mounting monetary pressures, getting a card like this might seem to some to be the answer to their prayers. 

Unfortunately, it's more likely that it is the answer to Chase's prayers:  another candidate for late fees and interest charges.  Ah, the good old American way.

Half a Hallelujah

Today, no thanks to any effort on my part, I was fortunate to get a pass to Davies Symphony Hall (thanks, Tom) to see the SF Symphony rehearsal of Handel's Messiah.  It has always been one of my favorite pieces of music, not just for the Hallelujah Chorus but for almost all of it.  There was a large crowd in attendance, all of whom (except for me) had donated money to the Symphony this year.  The rehearsal was a "thank you" gift for those donations. 

Never having attended a symphony rehearsal, I was delighted by the entire process.  First we heard a short talk about the oratoria which was funny and informative.  Then we had coffee and doughnuts, yumm. Finally the musicians and the chorus came in and rehearsal began.  Everyone was dressed in street clothes, quite a change from the standard black outfits you see when the symphony performs.  It was a real rehearsal, the last one they have before their first performance tonight.

In a rehearsal, of course, the conductor is trying to correct all the small flaws he has heard over the course of previous sessions with the musicians and the chorus.  Some parts were repeated several times until the conductor, Ragnar Bohlin, heard the music played the way he wanted.  The chorus was stopped a few times as well, and they repeated bits until it was perfect according to Bohlin.  The strange thing is that nothing is every played completely.  The work has many different sections and we, the audience, heard various parts of those sections but we never heard any section played completely.  This might have been disappointing (it is always lovely to hear the entire Hallelujah Chorus, for example) but how could anyone be disappointed getting to hear even part of the work.

I loved it.  They played for more than three hours and I could have stayed a lot longer.  For the benefit of the audience, they played about 2 minutes of the Hallelujah Chorus, just to placate us all, I presume. 

Being at Davies Symphony hall at 9:30 in the morning is an interesting scene.  Most of the people were considerably older than Tom and me, and we are definitely not young. While we were waiting for things to begin I commented "I wonder how many of these people are unemployed?"  Probably none or just a few who were there as guests, like myself. As we were eating our delicious free doughnuts, I heard the woman in back of us say to her companion "My largest expenses these days are what I spend on donations and travel."   Hmmm.  Donations and travel, larger than rent or mortgage or food or insurance.  Quite a statement in these dire economic times.

But Davies Hall was beautiful, dozens of tall Christmas trees, each decorated in a different manner by various organizations or schools.  The day was sunny and cool, the sky was blue, the music was outstanding and for a couple of hours, all was right with the world.

For a rather entertaining and definitely different version of the Hallelujah Chorus, check out this youtube video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU&feature=related

Be aware:  only nine shopping days til Christmas.  Still plenty of time to give a donation in someone's name or drop a toy off at local fire stations. 

Food, Glorious Food

Spoiler Alert:  this blog may piss some people off but I am not trying to offend.  After all, it is just my opinion, worth a couple of grains of expensive sea salt.

This past weekend I had the need for a couple of specific food items that one cannot get at Trader Joe's so I made a pilgrimage to Whole Foods in the Potrero district in SF.  I do not venture into Whole Foods very often, mainly because I have never lived near one.  But this particular store is less than 15 minutes from where I now live so a Saturday morning jaunt seemed in order.  OMG.  It was early, the store was quiet and almost reverent in that sort of church way, people speaking in soft voices, bowing down before the meat counter, quietly touching some of the produce, rapturous looks on their faces.  Oh wait, that was me.  Yes, I loved the market.  Yes, I could easily live there.  When Gabe and Annie tire of my presence in their home I will look for a small back room and take up residence in the Church of the Holy Food.

However, as I meandered through the aisles and stared in awe at the beautiful displays of every kind of food, I was also a teeny bit uneasy.  Not uneasy enough to leave, mind you, nor uneasy enough to change my mind about wanting to live there but uneasy because I realized that this sort of market is beyond the reach of so many people.  Yes, one often gets great value for one's dollar in WF because the quality of most of their merchandise is above average.  But if I was a run-of-the-mill unemployed woman who questioned every nickel spent, there would be no way I could shop at WF ever.  No matter how great the value.

This leads me to today's observation:  food has definitely become a class object.  The well-off can afford to shop at places like Whole Foods and Molly Stone's and go to farmers markets and buy organic, sustainable, seasonal food.  The poor cannot.  The huge wave of obesity that our nation is now experiencing is not necessarily because so many people are ignorant of the fact that fast food and processed foods are bad for you.  It is because so many people cannot afford anything else.  This week I read an article about the elite nature of good food and the writer commented that big, rich corporate farms grow food for the lower class people while small farmers, who are often financially strapped, grow food for upper class people with money. 

The whole concept of organic, sustainable, locally grown food is a great concept but for many people it is just that:  a concept.  Not a reality.  Simply put, that kind of food is more expensive and less available.  If you are a regular working person with children you often do not have time at the end of your working day to stop at a grocery store and pick up fresh produce.  You might do a big shopping run once a week, on the weekends, at a big store like Costco or Target (which now carries food) and rely on the corner store for things like milk and eggs during the middle of the week.   You stop at a McDonald’s on the way home from work and pick up dinner not because you think it’s nutritious but because it is easy, cheap and your family likes it.  They would also like a free-range roasted chicken but that would cost $15.00 and take more than an hour and it is already 6:30 and everyone is hungry.  Fast food serves a purpose; the problem is that it is served too often.

There is no quick solution to this problem, just as there is no quick solution to the obesity epidemic.  The solution lies in making food costs (and production, of course) more equitable.  It means making good food, not Tyson Corporation chicken tenders or frozen green beans, more affordable.  It also means making food less of an elite, designer object.  Why can’t we have government subsidies for organic farmers, if that’s what it takes?  Why do the corporate food producers get the tax breaks and the small independent farmers do not?  (No, I am not all that naive, it is a rhetorical question.)  But to pretend that eating locally, seasonally and organically is possible for all Americans is foolish, shortsighted and selfish.  And it’s a joke.  We occasionally are treated to articles in the SF Chronicle about folks who sing their own praises because everything they eat is produced less than 100 miles from where they live.  These people are pathetically out of touch with the rest of the world if they really think that is something that everyone can do.  Forage for food?  Sure, in the Western Addition in San Francisco, or in the Tenderloin.  There foraging for food means digging in the dumpster.  Now that’s really local food.

Living in West Marin at the height of this food craze got to be disturbing for that very reason.  I worked at the Palace Market, the local grocery store in Point Reyes Station, where they carried organic produce, organic Strauss milk and free-range chickens and many organic food items.  Even though I got a discount on my food purchases I still could not afford the organic products.  More than $2.00 for an organic grapefruit?  You must be kidding.  Pay $3.49 for a can of tomatoes or $1.29?  No problems making that decision.  And if I had been feeding a family, as many people in Point Reyes do,  it would have been difficult enough to just buy bread, eggs, milk and bananas, let alone organic anything.   It shouldn’t be this way.  But it is.  We live in an inequitable society and this is just one symptom of that.

I won’t start on my feelings about the term “locavore.”  That’s a topic for another day. 

Friday Night Cocktails

Some of you are well aware that during my sojourn in West Marin, on Friday nights I usually had cocktails with my very good friend Tom.  His place or mine, didn't matter. It started about 15 years ago when my husband (he who cannot be named) of that era was working in Southern California and thus I was home alone a great deal of the time.  Tom was putting finishing touches on the inn and trying to get guests and I was starting the Inns of Marin business and procured lodgers for him (I was sort of like a pimp, now that I think about it) and we gravitated towards each other because of those reasons and many others.  One was that we both had (have) wicked senses of humor and another was that we both liked to drink (still do.)  And thus the inception of Friday Night Cocktail Hour.

The evolution of that hour is a story for another blog.  Suffice it to say that it is Friday night, Tom is out of town, I am in Daly City and one must keep up traditions so I am having a cocktail.  A Manhattan, to be precise.  (I considered devoting a blog to my energetic alcohol consumption these days but decided it would be embarrassing to my children, friends, family and possibly even the dogs so I squelched that idea.  For the time being. It would definitely not be embarrassing to me.)

The above is nothing but filler. There is no segue here, but what I really find amazing and so totally cool is the fact that Bill Clinton took over Barak Obama's news conference today, took it over to the extent that Obama left the briefing room to attend to some holiday event with his wife!  Is this unprecedented or what?  Name me another President who let one of his predecessors take over for him in a news conference.  Granted, it was an impromptu news conference, but still, how amazing is it that the leader of the free world and the leader of most of the unfree world just stepped aside and let a former leader take the reins and drive the chariot?  Come on, who out there, raise your hands, would vote for Bill Clinton in 2012?  I will, of course, vote for any Democrat even if they make me shake my head in dismay and I truly hope Obama is not a one-term lame duck like Carter (whom I love, just so you know) but seriously, Bill Clinton again?  I would go down that dark and stormy path.

The fact that Clinton got to chat up the news mongers while President Obama was out doing something with Michelle gives my weary soul solace.  Out of all the crap we are dealing with right now, and everyone of us is dealing with crap right now (see the list at the bottom) that was a press conference I would have liked to have seen.

Crap We Are Dealing With Right Now: 
In no particular order:
Friends in the hospital
Mother (90 years old) in the hospital, pacemaker being inserted
Friends getting nervous about their jobs
Friends dealing with the death of their mates
Friends and siblings dealing with divorce
Children dealing with loss of jobs
Everyone dealing with the lack of the Christmas Miracle

Good stuff we are dealing with right now:
Daughter from Texas is visiting
Son and Daughter-in-law are letting me live at their house
Dogs making me laugh
Friends and family giving love
Life

Feel free to add your own to the list.  Whether you do it here or just in your mind, it's fine.

Thursday news

My first inclination was to write about babies, since I spent yesterday in the company of a nine month old but I thought that a discussion about babies following a discussion about dogs would be too cute for most of my blog followers so I nixed that idea.  My next thought was to tell you about my daughter who is in town for a visit and whom I have not seen in ten months but that topic would fill several volumes so I changed my mind on that as well.

That leaves public outrage at the Republicans and personal embarrassment at the Democrats and to tell you the truth I just can't find enough energy to discuss either one so I am leaving both of those parties alone.  But why do we have a word - party - that has at least two distinct definitions that are the antithesis of each other.  There is definitely nothing about the Democrats or the Republicans that comes anywhere near  "a social gathering especially for pleasure or amusement."  

Maybe I have writer's block, but since I am not really a writer, more a transcriber of my day-to-day thoughts, it would have to be something like doodler's block and that sounds inane.  So I turn to the source that on a regular basis makes me think:  the New York Times.  On-line, of course.

Now, I know there are many people who do not read the Times, do not trust the Times and do not trust or believe any mainstream media.  In part I agree with them because mainstream is just that, for the middle of the stream.  Often controlled by lobbies and censored by law, most news media is bland and biased.  When it comes to NYT, I don't care.  The writers do not write on a fifth grade level, the front page is not pandering to local issues and the depth of subjects is, well, really deep. 

On the front page right now you can read an excellent and frightening article titled "The Worst Bathroom in New York."  Read it and then try complaining about where you live.  Then we have Nicholas Kristof who opens his editorial this way:  "California may be about to execute an innocent man."  The article is chilling and if our lame-ass (oops, I mean lame-duck) governor does not stay this execution and perhaps review this case and pardon this man, he should be the one serving time.  Scroll on down the page and you can read about movies, war, food, books and even trite nonsense. 

I am convinced that if you spend even 20 minutes a day reading one good newspaper, one that covers the world thoroughly and is thoughtful and intelligent, you will never be bored.  When traveling in Europe, in the past when I had an income, one of the best papers was the International Herald Tribune. It might not be one of the best papers in the world but it is one of the few that an English reader can get all over Europe. With a cappuchino in a small cafe, it makes wasting a couple of hours seem like a very learned thing to do.  Plus it has a great crossword puzzle and it still, the last time I looked, runs Calvin and Hobbes comics!  That alone is stellar.

Read and jot down words or events or names and places you are not familiar with.  Look them up on your computer. I am convinced it increases  your brain size. Plus the small bits of esoteric knowledge  you gather makes you a hit at boring dinner parties.

Tomorrow:  back to serious business.  Really. 

Dogs

Today we are not discussing the failures of our world. We are turning to a happier topic:  dogs.  Specifically the dogs that Gabe and Annie and I are living with.  Our dogs.  My little Cooper and their lovely Hannah.

Every morning, without fail (unless we have been up very, very late the night before) Hannah and Cooper wake up at 7:30, give or take a few  minutes.  Cooper sleeps on my bed so he is sometimes awake a bit earlier but he knows to bide his time until Hannah appears.  Hannah sleeps upstairs with her Gabe and Annie but because of some internal alarm clock, she gets up at the correct time, comes to my room, noses the door open and tiptoes (I swear she does) to my side of the bed. By the time she is near me,  Cooper is sitting up on the bed, or on me to be precise.  Hannah comes very close to my face and breathes on me.  Dog breath is not something you want to spend a lot of time with, especially first thing in the morning.  It has the intended effect:  I groan and get up.

The dogs spend the next few minutes doing their stretching exercises on the rug and sniffing each other, saying "hello" in their doggie fashion.  They wait patiently for me to put on jeans and a sweatshirt but once I pick up my shoes and socks, they make it clear that their patience is almost at an end.  They jump around and make small squeaky noises while I tie my shoes, get their leashes and start our morning jaunt around the neighborhood.

It astounds me that they are always on time.  Sometimes they are early, not often, but if it is before 7:30 I simply say "not now, too early" and they retreat to their respective corners, reappearing at 7:30.  As I mentioned, if we have had dinner guests and a lively evening and we go to bed late, they will wait politely until 8:30 on the dot, no later. 

The really odd thing is this: if I am  not here and they both sleep in Gabe and Annie's room, they are never in a hurry to get up.  And if Cooper and I are sleeping in a hotel somewhere, he never wakes me up, nor does he want to get out of bed until I do.  This ritual of the 7:30 wake-up call only happens when I am in the house. 

I know there are cat people and there are dog people and every now and then there are people who like both dogs and cats.  I do not pretend to understand cat people but I find it difficult understanding how someone could not like dogs.  They are friendly, loyal, happy, goofy and fine companions.  They do not poop in a box in the bathroom and they do not spit up hairballs.  Yes, they lick their butts, but so do cats.  Dogs are much more amusing than cats as well.  Kittens are incredibly fun to watch but once they are over the kitten thing, not so fun anymore.  Dogs stay funny until they die.

However, that's just an opinion from a dog person, one who does not care that much about cats, and I don't want to defend my position against all dog haters and cat lovers out there, so I will close with a couple of photos of the dogs.

Here is one of Cooper looking like a slug on the dogbed in front of the sunny window and one of Hannah looking like a dog on the human bed in my bedroom.

Monday, Monday

Yesterday I was at a party in SF and unlike my usual party persona, I actually talked to people I didn't know.  The fact that I was wearing my black chef's coat helped, of course.  It makes me look sort of official and it helps me feel like I am someone other than my reclusive self.

It seemed as if everyone I spoke to had a story.  You know how it goes, you say hello to someone you don't know,  there are a few awkward seconds until one of you asks something inane like "How are you connected to this family?" and then the conversation moves a small step forward.  Since it is the holiday season, everyone initially seems in good spirits, talking about the rain and wind, how they had to circle the block ten times but then they got the perfect parking space, how lovely the lights look on the house across the street.  Just chatter.  After a few minutes of this, however, the conversation took a different turn.

People at parties often ask where you live, if you live in the city or somewhere else.  That question was the real conversation starter.  For me, it is a tough one to answer.  I don't feel like I really live in Daly City yet, but it is where I reside for now.  Saying I recently moved from Marin County to Daly City prompted the next inquiry:  "Why?"  Responding that I moved in with my son and his wife because I have been out of work for 15 months and could no longer afford to live in Marin caused many people to nod knowingly and begin to tell their stories about the same kinds of situations.

I talked to young families who moved back to the Bay Area from other states and could not afford rent and were therefore living with their parents for the short-term.  I spoke to small business owners who had laid people off because of lack of business and who were obviously still grappling with the emotional and psychological effects of doing so.  Many people were in the same situation as me, unemployed and looking for work but luckily had husbands or wives or mates who still worked and they were just barely making ends meet.  Two different people were living with an elderly parent, acting as the caretaker.  One woman was caring for her mother in the final stages of cancer.  Another was dealing with a son who had, eight weeks ago, been in a terrible motorcycle accident and no one knew yet how much his brain injury would be permanent or how much function he would regain.

Story after story.  There were people who had good stories, too, people who finally sold their houses and were able to get out from under that financial burden or a person who finally, after nine months, got a great job.  There were several kids running around the house and the sound of their uninhibited laughter was a story all on its own, one of innocence and freedom.  That was one of the best unspoken stories, of course.

But I was struck by how almost every person I spoke to was dealing with something tough or had just overcome a huge hurdle.  Almost all of these difficulties were directly related to the economic mess our country is currently in.  Whether it was unemployment or housing or health or business problems, almost no one was unaffected.  

We read in the newpapers and we hear on the evening news all about unemployment, health care, the economy and how nothing will get better in the near future.  But we don't often talk directly to people who are in the midst of dealing with these issues. We know about them and we read their stories but we simply do not hear their voices out loud often enough.  I heard those voices yesterday in a city where houses still sell for millions of dollars.  If I can hear them in San Francisco, where the unemployment rate is around 10%, think of how loud those voices must be in places like Merced and Stockton, with rates near 16%, or Yuma, Arizona, with unemployment rates over 25%.

More to follow.

Saturday night

It dawned on me this morning while taking a shower at my Mom's that it is three weeks until Christmas.  The shower and the dawning are not connected in any way but I must say that it is a really terrible shower.  It is like the showers in cheap European hotels:  instead of water flowing out of the showerhead, it sort of drips quickly and in three or four streams of drips.  It takes about 3 minutes just to get your hair wet and another 7 minutes to rinse the shampoo out of your hair.  By the time you have finished washing your hair (10 minutes) you are lucky if the water has even gotten your feet wet.  Needless to say it is a frustrating experience and every time I get in that shower I wonder why I just didn't go dirty for the day. 

But I digress.  Back to Christmas.  Three weeks until we celebrate the birth of Santa Claus.  I was never a very good shopper but when my kids were little it was easy.  Go to Toys 'R Us and buy things and that was it.  When they were teenagers it was all about gift certificates.  Now I am on the dole and I have made the statement that there will be no gifts from me this year.  Everyone agrees, everyone (aka my kids) acknowledges that we are all over burdened with "stuff" and need nothing else.  So, ostensibly, we all agreed to not get gifts.

But you know it isn't going to go that route.  You know, I know, they know that come present-opening time there must be something to open.  Some box, bottle, or bag to gleefully rip apart and admire the contents.  So it leads me to the dilemma:  should I adhere to the "No Gifts" rule or should I do as I am sure my kids will do:  buy something.  Some little thing, something under $5.00, some item that will make the recipient smile or laugh or groan. 

And that's OK.  While we all have way too much stuff and we definitely do not need more, we also need the tradition of giving gifts.  We need to recognize the holiday in the accepted holiday manner, and giving gifts (along with drinking champagne) is in that holiday manner.  What those gifts will be remains the mystery and it might remain that way for another two and a half weeks.  But as much as we talk the talk, we will probably not be walking the "gift-free" walk come gift time.  Something small (diamonds are small, right?) and something cheap (OK, no diamonds) wrapped tastefully.  I think that's the ticket this year.  And any money left over goes to one's favorite charity.  Let people with too little stuff benefit from our overload.

But I still remember those pilgrimages to Toys 'R Us fondly, getting a babysitter, wandering the toy aisles, laughing at some of the options, excited at others.  We probably spent too much money but the payback was Christmas morning, watching the kids open the packages.  Too bad a new box of Legos no longer does the trick.  sigh.  

Get to work!

I was planning on leaving the unemployment woes behind today but an article on the front page of the on-line NY Times makes that impossible.  The article, entitled "Unemployed, and Likely to Stay That Way" discusses those of us who have been out of work for more than six months.  The bottom line is that the longer you are out of work, the longer you will stay out of work.  Employers do not like to see gaps on resumes (well, who does?) and are much less likely to hire, or even interview, someone who has been unemployed for more than six months.

Well, now, this is a fine kettle of fish!  Not surprising since this has been a hot topic lately, but it does smack of discrimination.  Perhaps there is a lawsuit here, just waiting to be filed.  Discrimination because of economic lethargy is something that none of us out-of-work slackers can change and it is most definitely not our fault.  You would think that employers might want to hire us first because we would be so, so grateful and we would do a really, really good job and we would hardly ever complain.  (Well, at least not for a few months.)  The HR people would earn a lot of good karma, we would earn some money, the economy might become less indolent and everyone would benefit!  The people recently laid off would get a chance to collect their share of unemployment and all the benefit extensions would cease because all of us who are needing the extensions would already be back at work!

It could work.  Sort of a revolving door of unemployed folks. Instead of so many out of work for so long, everyone could have a shot at a short period of lassitude.  Share the joy, as it were. 

Tomorrow, I promise, I will move on to another topic.  It is now time for another dog walking experience.  Thank god someone is benefiting from my unfortunate state.

Unemployment blues continued

Don't be surprised if the title of this blog changes from "Julie Travels" to something totally different, like "Julie Would Like to Travel But Can't Because of Lack of Funds"  or "Julie Stays Home"  or some such thing. I am probably one of the few people who wouldn't mind getting the over-zealous pat-down from the TSA people because at least it would mean I was getting on a plane, going somewhere.  Touch me wherever you want, do the full scan of my fat body, I care not.  Just give me an airline ticket and let me actually travel somewhere.  It is obvious that the original title of  "Julie Travels" was wishful thinking.  Hopefully another road trip is in my future, but after yesterday's posting about being unemployed I now find myself pondering that great gorge of darkness.  How utterly useless and unproductive I have become!  Well, other than walking the dog a lot.

I have been reading other blogs about being unemployed.  Seems all of us go through the same steps, the elation of having some time off, the hard work looking for another job, the depression that comes when the new job does not materialize.  Denial, anxiety, depression, elation, the list goes on and on.  It sounds self-pitying and whining and it probably is.  But still, it is tough to be out of work for so long and since no one else really feels sorry for you ("be positive, something will happen!") one must feel sorry for oneself.  Hey, I have been working fairly steadily for 45 years and I have always been able to find another job when necessary.  The fact that now I can't is not just surprising but deflating and frightening too.

Ah, yes, but still.  One must keep the the positive attitude going, no matter what.  That's what everyone tells me.  But in the middle of the night, wide awake, the question floats above me like the sword of Damocles:  What happens if I never get another job?   Really, answer me that, Mr. Wizard.  What if I never get hired again?  I can't live at my son's house forever, that is unacceptable to me and probably to him as well.  But what's next?  Think about it.  If you were unable to live where you now live because you could no longer afford it, if there were no income for you at all, if your meager savings carried you only so far, what would you do?  Scary stuff.