nina turns 60

unmoored

Hard to believe, but today marks the beginning of my sixth week of unemployment. I've had two organizations ask me back for second interviews, but after that they ended up choosing someone else. It's odd to be competing against unseen rivals. It's odd to have this space of relatively unstructured time, but to still have the responsibilities of home and parenthood.

Being November on the Quimper Peninsula, it is windy, rainy, dark, and cold. I get a bill for what I think is a simple lab test that could buy my groceries for a month. I don't want to lose my house. My house, which isn't even mine. I wonder if I'd be having an easier time of it if I were younger. I try to ease Hijo's fears that we will have to move away from this place he loves.

I write cover letters. I keep a log of all my employment search activity. I think of who I might ask for leads. I wonder how long I can last.

Of course I'd be remiss, this week of all weeks, if I did not acknowledge my great fortune despite the current circumstances. Of course I feel lucky, and yes, grateful, that I do have this house, I have my smart, funny, remarkable boy, I have my incredibly supportive family. I still have some cushion between where I am now and disaster. I have so much.

I will incant my thank yous to show I am worthy. I will take nothing for granted. I hope that will be enough.

 

 

the rendering

I want to thank everybody who stopped by to check out my poems during OctPoWriMo. It was really enjoyable and sometimes challenging, and I'm glad I did it.

Meanwhile, I am looking for a job. I was unexpectly rendered* unemployed just before my 50th birthday last month. It's been an odd thing, a new thing for me. Anytime major life changes happen to you rather than you being the agent for them coming about, it's disorienting, but can also be liberating. I am trying not to panic.

The main thing is, we want to stay here. We're not ready to uproot again and move back to the city. When Hijo's bff came over and they went trick-or-treating last week, I remember thinking how awful it would be to take Hijo away from this friendship. But we will do what we have to do to survive.

I have a job interview later this week. It would be a good job for me. I am hopeful. Wish me luck.

~~~
*I always think of the culinary use of this term, like rendering lard or something and it makes me smile to think this happened to me.

clueless

I'm sitting in the dental chair with the horrible dental dam and the unbearable shriek of the drill and the dentist is getting so deep that he's realizing he's going to have to do a root canal on that tooth, and this root canal, and other dental work that he knows I'm going to need, will cost me thousands of dollars, even after the insurance pays whatever it will pay. And I have told him I can't afford it. After a while he says to his dental assitant, "I'm buying a condo in Aspen, Colorado. Just as an investment. Some forclosure deal." He should be glad he was the one with the sharp object in his hand.

much obliged

 

Hijo's dad hasn't been doing so well. The poor economy has affected him a lot more deeply than anyone else I know, which is not surprising given that he is an uneducated brown man who, although a citizen, still speaks English with a heavy accent and has a penchant for crazy ideas. 

He's been sketchily employed for the last few years, getting hired for temp jobs or as a contract worker if he's lucky, but then getting laid off. For awhile he attended a local community college, seemed to be gaining some good skills, but he dropped out before he completed the program, his benefits had run out.

As far as I know right now, he has a job, but no permanent home. Hijo has seen him less this summer than at any time in his life.

Like most parents I make many sacrifices, big and small, for the sake of my son. But just how far is one expected to go?

What, exactly, do I owe Hijo's dad?