Unemployment, Day 1: The Things That Happen While I'm Gone

Day One of my unemployment has been fairly quiet. I slept in, got up at 9, and went to the clinic to get the weekend's methadone. Normally I make my payment on Fridays, but I thought maybe today might be a good day to put that off. I went to the store to cash in the contents of my change jar at the CoinStar machine, then decided "hey, if you can't treat yourself when you're jobless, what's the point of treating yourself at all?" And I drove to Krispy Kreme.

If any of you have never experienced a hot, freshly-glazed Krispy Kreme donut, stop reading now. Stand up, turn off the computer, and find your car keys, and remedy this situation immediately. If you have never had one, you are missing one of the great sensory experiences of human existence. There are people who don't like Krispy Kremes, and I guess that's their prerogative, but if you've never tasted one, then you can have no comprehension of why I would drive several miles on a cold, rainy morning to spend money I technically don't have.

However, I wasn't aware til this morning that the Krispy Kreme people are trying to kill me.

I rolled up to the speaker and asked for half a dozen glazed. And through the speaker a crackly voice informed me: "Half a dozen would be $5.87, but a dozen would only be $6.24...did you want to get a dozen??"

"Well, when you put it THAT way..." I said. When I got to the window I said "You know, that's not right--You get 35 more cents, but I get thirty-five MILLION more calories!" The girl smiled. "It does come out cheaper, though," she said. "Yeah, everywhere except my waistline!!!"

My dozen donuts and I came home, and I ate two of them, standing over the sink to catch the sugar-shrapnel that invariably comes with the territory. I believe I made happy-noises, as well, or possibly did the Happy Wiggle Dance. I am not proud.

The rest of the morning and early- to mid-afternoon was spent, predictably, job-hunting. I've got about 30 resumes/applications out there already, between last night and today, all with well-crafted cover-letters, references, all the requisite bits and pieces asked for by each employer. (And yes, Spins--I also put three or four agencies in there, too.) A few of the jobs I applied for are a little below where I'd like to be as far as salary, but then again, so is $0, which is now my current salary. I'll cross THAT bridge when I get there.

It was while I was applying for jobs that I began to realize that life does not stop in my house when I walk out the door in the morning.

All day, I watched BadCat and Snick--chasing each other, washing each other, napping...crawling into the trash-can...eating random items off the floor (and in one case, responding poorly to my finger wedged into his mouth and my shouted command of "Drop it, NOW!" Snick is like an infant when it comes to floor-particles: if it's there and he sees it, into his mouth it goes.) I also got to watch him stalk, kill, and eat a millipede--my reaction to that was "I'll think twice before YOU lick my nose again, buster!"...watched him nest in an empty wastebasket (he left before I could get the camera, alas)...and experienced for the first time a phenomenon I had only heard in legend.

I've heard the phrase "strange as a cat fart", and I've had a couple cats who occasionally emitted odd aromas--though they were always silent, and they always looked so innocent afterward that I was torn between blaming them and blaming the roomie, the trash, or the litterbox. But until today, I had never HEARD a cat fart. This afternoon, after a nap, I came downstairs to check my mail, followed by my nap-buddy, Snick. He jumped up on the couch to pounce on BadCat, and as he did so, he let one rip. I mean, this was an actual, honest-to-god FART, not some quiet little kitten-sized "poot!" --a loud, quacking, carpet-frog of a fart. I think he startled himself, but he recovered quickly enough to bite BadCat in the ear before he took off running. I didn't know WHY he took off, but I soon learned; I was nearly knocked-over by a wave of funk before I could reach the can of Oust. No WAY was I gonna blame anyone else for THAT one. Besides, he looked so proud of himself afterwards that there was no way to pin it on anyone but him.

I wonder what else these two have been doing while I've been at work...somehow, I suspect some wild parties may have been thrown in my absence.

Incidentally, to all of you: thanks for the encouragement. I appreciate the offers of networking, the moral support, and the exhortations to WRITE!!!...which I would gladly do if I had six months of severance, but six weeks is a little skinny to produce anything consequential, even with the aid of Krispy Kremes and Pepsi. The hardest part of being fired is over, anyway; I told Mom last night. She went into that "oh my god" reaction that just barely conceals the question "Why did you give them a reason to fire you?" and I stopped her dead in her tracks. "Mom," I said. "I am NOT going to feel bad about this. I am not going to beat up on myself for something I had no control over. I tried to stop it, I tried to work around it, but it happened anyway and I'm NOT going to blame myself." Particularly not in light of the info she gave me the other night, about my dad having EXACTLY the same thing happen to him--how the hell is anyone going to say that it was willful behavior on my part? Seriously now. She didn't seem too ready to accept that interpretation of events--I'm sure she still thinks it was my fault, and to a certain extent I wonder whether, if I'd been an outstanding employee, would they have found a way around this problem? But then again, I'm talking about a company where the owner's whole family is on the payroll, including one son-in-law who is considered a "product line manager" despite the fact that since we moved to the new building back in early June, he has come to the office ONCE--and spent that day tying up Information Tech resources so that he could work on his grad-school project. Somehow THAT passes for productive behavior, whereas I got caught losing consciousness for periods of less than 30 seconds, totalling maybe 15 minutes out of a full 8-hour day, and I get fired. Hey, whatever, you know?? THIS is why I hate corporate America! But of course, if I say that to Mom, I'm being impractical, a radical. Well, yeah....and???

I haven't told LJ yet; he hasn't called in nearly three weeks, so I'm not going to bust down the phone lines to get a hold of him. Again: hey, whatever, you know? Somehow now I feel less-bad about kicking him to the curb. If I was feeling REALLY mean, I'd pack up all his stuff for him and deliver it to his mom's--but then again, I don't feel like doing that much work on his behalf, either. When he does call, I fully expect a non-sympathetic reaction, probably one which touches on how MY loss of employment will affect HIM. (If he does say something like that, protocol be damned--I'll dump him over the phone right then and there.)

Since it's only my first day of unemployment, and a Friday to boot, I'm not going to get discouraged by the lack of phone calls flooding in; instead, I'm going to crawl under my blankies, watch "Meerkat Manor", and hope that Monday brings better news. Oh--and defend the donuts from Snick. He loves pastries.