It's not about the house.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Fasten Your Seatbelts

 Where's EGE?

You may have noticed that I stepped away from my computer for a while. Well, mostly. Those of you who are Facebook friends were privy to my lamentations on the state of toiletry in the AssVac as of late – unless of course you did the responsible thing and hid my status updates from your feed. But facebook isn’t writing. It’s not computering. It’s more like running out to check the mailbox and announcing to the neighborhood what you’ve been up to while you do.

“I broke the toilet!”

Ooh, two letters!

“I hope Obama passes health reform!”

Ooh, three letters!

“I’m having SpaghettiOs for lunch!”

Nuthin.

This is all very gratifying, especially when you can make someone laugh two minutes after he posts that his dog died (it was a joke about Celine Dion in my underwear – you had to be there), but it still is not the same as working.

Speaking of which: I haven’t been working in a while. Officially unemployed now for a day short of a month, I spent the first two weeks frantically revising the Big Project I thought I’d finally put to bed, then another week or so polishing my Florence Nightingale impression (for this go-round I added elements of tuna casserole and a dash of apple pie). Then I got sick myself and went to bed for more time than was strictly necessary, hauling my ass out just in time to throw a party for what was supposed to have been 25 but turned out to be just 15. That was Saturday. Yesterday passed in a leftover-appetizer haze, and now here we are at this morning, which I have decided to call my First Real Day of unemployment.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I'm a Lady of Leisure. I really can’t afford to take time off. There’s an almost 100% chance I’ll be regretting it in a monumental way, and very soon, but my decision was arrived at as rationally as I am capable of arriving at anything these days – by which I mean to say: feet first and skidding. But I do have reasons, and I’ll present them here in decreasing order of importance. Which is, perhaps not coincidentally, inversely proportionate to their potential for entertainment value.

#1. I have a lot of wounds from this past year that still need licking, and my psyche simply can’t handle an intense job search right now. I’d wind up using my interviewer’s necktie for a hankie if he so much as asked me why I left my last place of employment, and since I did so without so much as a letter of recommendation, I’ll need a bit more time to get my story straight about the twelve-year gap in my CV. Which brings us neatly to...

#2. I’d like to wait and see how the Big Project pans out. I’m under no delusions that it’s going to fund my immediate retirement, but I’d like to wait and see if I’m going to be a janitor at Wal-Mart who does Big Projects on the side, or if the whole idea of Big Projects will get shoved under the bed so I can be the next CEO of Morgan Stanley. I wouldn’t think they’d care too much about the twelve-year gap in my resumé, seeing as how the last time I had a Real Job the economy still made some sort of sense. Which sets us up nicely for...

#3. If I started looking for a Real Job tomorrow, the chances are slim to none that I'd have any luck. And there’s a lot of little things that should be done around the AssVac in case we have to sell up and move out. I haven’t put any thought into the old girl for a while, but she is still, for example, sporting a wood-paneled dining room, two poo-brown linoleum bedrooms, and a giant pile of assorted shit in the backyard, all of which could be productive uses of my leisure time. And all of which, I’d like to think, would pay off in the end. Perhaps not handsomely, but at least as well as mopping floors for Mr. Walton, anyway.

So I’m giving myself another month or two. I intend to get the house in order, stitch my soul together, and (hopefully) get something tangible to fill that twelve-year gap. After that, who knows? But in the meantime, you – my dear, sweet, and almost certainly slightly deranged readers who have stuck with me through all these fevered ramblings and recent blank spots – will get dragged along through the mud for the entire bumpy ride, if you should be so foolish as to accept the invitation.

It’s a dirty job, I know. But if you can't make a person laugh when his dog dies, then what's the point of writing, anyway?


Right, boyo?


Right!  
I missed you, EGE!

9 comments:

oldgreymare said...

Glad you're back- no pressure- but you kick start many a bleagh day for me.

Suzan

Anonymous said...

I was wondering where you'd gotten to (not that I can talk, having been a slack updater myself of late).
Enjoy the break. Sit around in your PJs for at least a week scratching yourself and drinking before noon and doing not much else.

Shana said...

Hey, you could always say you worked for me. I am sure we could come up with some feasible sounding small company. Maybe a production company that specialized in very small unknown indie films. Or a marketing firm--oh yeah most of our clients were in Guam and you probably never hear of them either.
I don't know but I am sure we could put our two over-educated MHC minds together and come up with a scheme or two.
Who knows, I may need to turn-around that favor in the near future as it looks pretty bleak that I will ever get another teaching job in this horrible economy.
Hang in there.

Sashimi said...

Speaking for myself, I have great hopes from your Big Project. I can do a lot of 'word of mouth' publicity for it if you like

EGE said...

Hey, thanks, everybody! It's nice to know I was missed, that I have permission to drink in the mornings, a ready-made resume thanks to one willing-to-lie friend, and a word of mouth campaign all set to go in the far east. It isn't morning, but I do believe I'll have myself a drink!

Janice said...

can you see nana's big smile all the way from New Zealand! you're back!

Benzo Jones said...

For the record (as the dead guy dog) she did make me laugh, and for that I am eternally thankful.

Jen said...

Blogger ate my comment from yesterday. It was something semi clever about seat belts on a triple looping twisting coaster. But today, I forgot.

EGE said...

Nana -- I can! I can see it!

Benzo -- I just realized I said "two minutes after" when I really meant "two days." But whatever. You said "dead guy dog" when I'm pretty sure you meant "dead dog guy."

Jenni -- Blogger sucks this week! I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!