Being Unemployed is Hard Work: A Stream (of consciousness) Style Saturday Summary

Clearly I've been posting less this month as I've been subbing. It's good that I'm actually bringing a little money in (I have a grand total of $27 in my bank account and $27 cash, ooooh yeah.), but, like with The Internship from Hell, I'm too tired to do anything else.

I actually fell asleep downstairs for the first time in...I can't even remember the last time I fell asleep downstairs. I imagine it had something to do with mono. Not only did I fall asleep downstairs, come to think of it, I fell asleep during The Big Bang Theory, and that's serious. I haven't seen the boyfriend Herbert since the end of June, so TBBT is like having Herbert around a little bit.

He's kind of Sheldon-ish.

Rather Sheldon-y.

In his, and my, defense, the only character on TBBT that I would consider dating would be Sheldon. Maybe, maybe Leonard, but only after Sheldon rejected me. And that's not just my Reverse Gay-dar for Jim Parsons talking because, like I said, Herbert is rather Sheldon-y.

In fact, I found a word today that explains my affliction. Not the reverse gay-dar affliction, but my attraction to intelligence: sapiosexuality, or "being attracted or aroused by intelligence and its use." So that, plus my affinity for the tall and thin, adds up to my attraction to Sheldon and, of course, Herbert.

What was I talking about?

Right: fatigue and its impediments to productivity. I've got surprising amounts of work piled on my head for someone so unemployed...being unemployed, itself, is an incredible amount of work, as it turns out.

--I need to write a letter to the director of my high school's spring musical to offer my costuming skillz and beg for any amount of money I can get-- at least enough to cover supplies, I absolutely have to be able to not lose any money on this deal because, obviously, I don't have any money to lose. I can't get further into debt on another costuming whim.

It hurts to call it a whim. To reduce it that way...but it makes it easier to give up a dream.

It hurts to know I can't live the life it requires to do the work.

Sister-in-Law Janet suggested I start a website of children's costumes or pageant dresses, but, of course, the problem is the start-up capital. So I get a cheap domain and my brother Arthur does the site design/creation thing, where does the money come from for the fabric & etc.? Where do I get a model or advertising?

It's kind of funny how you need money in order to make money.

-- I need to look for jobs. Which is hilarious. I'm unemployed, but I'm too busy working, or tired from working, to look for jobs.

There's another layer, too, where that now that the school year has started, the in-school or about-school-somehow-vaguely jobs have been filled and therefore taking out a large portion of where I was looking (the possibility of getting state employee health insurance makes my mouth water) which is a major shame but my only income and only possibility of income began with school starting.

Yeah, figure that one out. This is my life now.

-- I have work to do online. Work on this blog (I missed my own launch of Wednesday Weigh-Ins, augh), I have Chandler's half of our Lion King review/analysis to work into mine, advertising this blog to find some more readers, and working on the launch of the second (more professional, far less personal) blog...which I had an excellent idea for last night that, while awesome, opens up whole new doors of work. Of course.

That blog will have ads, so maybe it will bring in a little scratch...but how do I advertise? Augh. Work.

-- Offline work: novels. I had breakthroughs on two of them and have hit a very hard wall on the third.

Plus, I need to do something about my bedroom...it really hit me the other day that I'm not going anywhere any time soon (you'd think I would have figured it out already...)...I know I mentioned it the other day but...damn...I really do need to do something about that. It may help my mindset.

Like those people that are like, "Messy room, messy mind."

It's funny how I get more and more normal as my health improves. I'm less whacky than I thought, as it turns out. For example, I got up this morning at 9:30 a.m. and I just feel more productive without actually, you know, being more productive. I really haven't gotten anything more done but it just feels good. Honestly, more normal.

Oh, AND I need to apply to grad school, but I can't afford to apply to a bunch and get screwed on application fees plus what it costs to take the GREs...damn.

...

6 days until my next appointment with Dr. S., so maybe we can take another step towards straightening me out. I think the Lyrica is helping (Say what!), but it's not at the level it needs to be...not yet. So I need more. We'll talk about that.

We'll also talk about the Mystery Diagnosis that hasn't seen much of a change...maybe a little dullness, but it's all still there. Le sigh.

AND, to top it all off now, I need a nap. Of course I do. Damn it.

Hang in there, everyone.

Another Day in Hell

The past few days have been brutal, and as such I'm terrified of the pain that's coming...since this thing changes with my cycle I know I've got a little over a week before it becomes excruciating again and there's nothing I can do about it...from now til then the discomfort's going to grow incrementally until the day comes when it's unbearable. Considering that it's been getting worse with every month that goes by and last month it was so bad I cried I'm really, really scared of what's coming.

I haven't heard from the GYN about my ultrasound results. Chances are that since the CT scan didn't show anything that the ultrasound won't show anything either, but it's still nerve-wracking-- especially since they wouldn't let me see the images during the test so I don't know what the doctor is looking at, I can't be sure there's nothing.

I keep going over the CT images, making sure there isn't anything that the doctors might have missed being too focused on my stomach and intestines, any blip of anything, but there's nothing there.

So then I think maybe the ultrasound got a different angle or something...but if there was a cyst or tumor the doctor would have called right away...but maybe he hasn't even seen it yet?

So then what's next after that? An MRI? Surgery is coming as long as these things keep coming up negative.

I don't know what to do. Do I keep applying for jobs? What if I get one? Can I handle it? How can I be reliable when I know I've got semi-random crippling pain several days a month?

So if I can't work, then what? Disability? That's barely enough to live on...how would I pay my bills? Medical, credit card?

And if I went on disability, would I still be able to write? Like if I open the new blog with ads, or by some miracle I get an agent interested in me?

I'm stressing myself out now. I'm going to go knit and pretend that I'm normal.

Unemployed Saturday Summary

Jobs for Smart People: I'm getting a strange number of visitors coming from a site called "Jobs for Smart People"-- anybody know why? Is it some kind of publicity stunt of theirs, to make me curious and use them to find a job?

The job search is continuing, of course...one goose egg after another. My mother was talking to her hairdresser about her search for a receptionist and she said that she was getting all these applications from people with crazy amounts of experience, but she couldn't hire them because as soon as something better came along they'd leave and she'd be left without a receptionist. I already have two resumes (and a million cover letters...), one for educational jobs and one for craft jobs, but maybe I need a third for the secretary jobs I'm applying for, and make another set of cover letters that include a line about sincerity and loyalty for positions I'd stick with. Couldn't hurt...I mean, things couldn't possibly get worse.

The upside is that school is restarting so I'll be able to sub again...it's not great money but it's good enough for now. It'll make for some interesting posts, anyhow.

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In a similar vein, a friend of mine-- with a master's degree-- has gotten a job in cable installation. Another friend, also without gainful employment, is going to grad school, like I'm probably going to do. Blanc got a job in a call center.

I never wanted to go to grad school. In fact, the reason I didn't go into Library Science to begin with was that I didn't want to go to grad school...now there's no choice. I know I brought this up last week but it's all sitting on my head...I'm starting to get tension headaches again. I need to go lay down.

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Upcoming Posts: The Story of Joanna: The Worst Best Name Ever, Movies Based on Books, and Ultrasounding Off.

Living on a Prayer

I have a weird sleep schedule. I suspect my days and nights are flipped as the most natural thing for me to do is sleep all day and stay up all night. I fight against this so I end up going to bed around 3ish and sleeping until noonish, so I end up showering around 1 or 2 in the morning. 

My parents sleep with the door open (don't get me started) and our bedroom doors are separated by a 2 square foot bit of carpet at the top of the stairs. The main part of our house, our bedrooms and the living room and kitchen beneath them are over 100 years old and were part of a farmhouse before the area was made residential. People that have been in my house would think this is weird considering that my house, along with a few other houses both on my street and in the surrounding area, is a duplex. The interesting thing about that is that all of the other duplexes are laid out exactly the same way, exactly the same as my neighbor's side of our house and Herbert's a few blocks away: a basement, 3 rooms downstairs, 2 upstairs with an upstairs bathroom, and an attic. 

But my house isn't laid out that way, and it's the only one not-- so basically things were built up and around these four little rooms. The point I'm trying to make is my house is old, and the stairs between my bedroom and my parents bedroom are old and creaky, and I have to go down them to get to the bathroom because our bathroom is tacked on to back end of the downstairs because our house was built without a bathroom. That's how old it is. 

So the point I'm trying to get at is I often wake my parents on my way downstairs to shower, so it's not unusual that I wake them, then they have to use the bathroom because they're really old and always have to go to the bathroom (Hi, Mom!). 

The other night this happened, so I wasn't surprised to see my mother in our living room on my way back upstairs after my shower. I was surprised she didn't need the bathroom...and I was even more surprised that she was crying. 

Like so many others, we're struggling right now, financially. We're only getting a fraction of what we should be because my father was forced out of a job when he retired from his union and they threatened to take away his pension and benefits if he took a position having anything to do with plumbing-- which is ridiculous and illegal and we can't afford to press charges. I'm not going to go into the levels of sick there. 

So now we're trying to find me a gynecologist, but since New Jersey raised the doctors' malpractice insurance rates to the highest in the country a lot of specialists left the state, so only the really wealthy could afford to stay, which means they're all at least twenty minutes away in the "old money" section of the state or in Pennsylvania- so I can't find a male gynecologist within a half-hour of my house that takes our insurance. Yes, male. I'll post about female doctors one day, but not today. 

And I have to leave my regular doctor. I stopped seeing a pediatrician when I was 6 when he almost killed my brother Mick. So I started seeing our family doctor, so now it's been-- what, 17 years? But my insurance no longer takes out-of-network doctors so I have to leave him. There aren't any in-network doctors nearby, so we have to go to an out-of-network doctor that at one time was a business partner of my now-ex doctor but they split up their practice after they got caught taking bribes from a  lab to only use that particular lab and then not claiming it on their taxes. So they broke apart the practice. Anyway, so we have to go to the other guy, but he charges 3 times his usual rate for the first appointment and we all need to go see him because our prescriptions are no good because they were written by the other doctor, so no longer covered so we'd have to pay full price for them. 

Full price for prescriptions. To put this into perspective, I take 11 pills every morning, and 11 pills every night. 

That's 77 pills a week. My stomach medicine alone, with insurance, is $50. Without insurance? $1500. 

The good news is if I do have endometriosis (that's the good news!!) I can stop taking those and go on a cheaper stomach pill-- but I'm going to need more medicine for the endometriosis. 

So you see why my mother was crying?  And why our family's theme song is "Living on a Prayer"?

God, I need a job. 

Saturday Summary!

Sorry to start this post with a downer, but my comments on facebook to the contrary, what happened to Amy Winehouse is a tragedy. As with what happens so often with talented people, Amy lost her battle with mental illness and drug addiction (here). I hope she finds peace now, wherever she is. While I agree with the philosophy that you can't be helped if you don't want it, I do think a successful intervention can make someone want it. Like I said in My Story, the consequences of continuing must be worse than the pleasures of continuing in order to get through to the addict. Unfortunately for talented, famous, or powerful people it's too easy for them to find people willing to enable them (like Michael Jackson). The human body can take an incredible beating as it's main objectives are to remain alive and procreation, but eventually enough is enough. It's terribly sad, and a real shame that the world has lost another incredible artist.

--

On a lighter note, I just saw a commercial for Papa John's pizza and I just want to say that Papa John's was the worst buffalo wings I ever had. When I'm sick or ill I sometimes get random food cravings and late-ish one night I had to have buffalo wings and my favorite place to get wings wasn't answering their phone so I had to find someplace else open and willing to deliver. Papa John's fit the bill and I figured, how bad could they be?

The answer is really bad. I don't know if they forgot to fry them or what, but they were plain water boiled-- the skin was soggy and the meat had no taste and the sauce was essentially ketchup.

--

I differentiate between "sick" and "ill" because...because it makes sense to do so. "Sick" is an infection, bacterial or viral, like a sinus infection or mono or a cold and "ill" is the fibromyalgia or depression (and lately the IBS/Endometriosis drama).

--

Tomorrow we're celebrating my father's birthday so I probably won't post. Mickey, Debra, and Manny are coming, along with my mother's cousin Truly. Truly is short for "Truly Awesome"-- she's one of my favorite relatives. She's my mother's age, but she's a motorcycle-riding, church choir singing, jug band member (literally) with a million stories to tell. She's a good time.

Best part of my father's birthday, though, is the pecan pie. It's his favorite and we only ever get it on Thanksgiving and his birthday so we have to enjoy it while it's there. Yum.

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The Great Job Search!! Update: I've applied to so many places I'm losing track. I wanted to start putting "biracial" on the applications but it turns out Slavic doesn't count as a race, it's just a subset of Caucasian so I'm stuck being white.

I thought I might be able to get away with it because we don't claim a nationality because the area has been so turbulent. When my mother's grandparents were still over there they were living in Austria-Hungary, but then after a war (probably WWI...I'm not good at geography) the area where they were became Czechoslovakia, but that's not there anymore either. People without a country.

Herbert makes fun of me because when I talk I do that Mid-Western "O" thing where you elongate the long O sound, like in "toast". I noticed my mother did it, too, which lead to me researching the origin and it turns out that because so many Slavs immigrated to the Mid-West their accent became or influenced the regional accent. He still thinks it's funny.

--

Why is it that at 4 o'clock I can't stop yawning, but then at midnight when I want to go to bed I'm wide awake? Stupid body.

--

Coming posts for next week will include The Story of How I Broke My Leg, Our Culture of Awesome, and an update on Eva & Hitler & Me & Herbert.

Harry Potter and the Stomachache from Hell

Update on the Great Job Project: haven't heard back from anyone but applied to a fucking fantastic job with the state so keep your fingers crossed for me. 


My stomach is killing me. I think I was right with my initial thought of endometriosis as the pain resurfaced again during ovulation and my stomach is still freaking gigantic. How gigantic? My waist is generally 32". It's now almost 40". The new pain pills, dicyclomine (generic Bentyl), are doing nothing. I wish I could talk to my regular doctor, but he's out of my insurance network now and I can't see him until my insurance changes from either my father getting a promotion or I get the fantastic job with the state. 


I wish I hadn't taken The Internship from Hell...there'd still be cash in my checking account and room on my credit card. All I have right now is my box of change and that's only half full, and barely enough to even go to the movies. 


I still haven't seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II yet and it's killlling me, even though I know what's going to happen and I know I'm going to cry my eyes out. I cry all the way through the end of the 6th book to the end of the 7th-- it all just slays me. 


Interesting story, actually, I never wanted to read the HP books. In fact, when they were spending so much time at the top of the Bestseller list my parents would ask me repeatedly if I wanted them to get them for me because everybody liked them so much, and I said no, I just wasn't interested. 


Granted, I was 10 at the time and on the precocious side and was reading Little Women and Gone with the Wind, or The Secret Garden AND I was truly obsessed with the Anne of Green Gables series- I honestly had no interest. 


Then in 7th grade my reading teacher said we'd be reading HP and the Sorcerer's Stone and I didn't really care until we actually started reading it- one chapter in and I was hooked. Then some parents complained and they took the books away so I made my parents go out and buy them for me. 


I live in a very Catholic area, though, so that could have something to do with it. 


Figured out how to set Georgia as my default font- what what! I'm getting all computer literate and stuff. 


I think my mother is making my favorite dinner- fettuccine Alfredo- for dinner. Nice of her, considering I'm not supposed to be having lactose. 


Oh, well. At least with endometriosis I can enjoy lactose while dealing with the crippling pain. 


Back to HP- I read Emma Watson has been cast in Guillermo Del Toro's retelling of Beauty and the Beast (here). Is it too early to get excited? Pan's Labyrinth is one of the best movies ever made- can you imagine what he'd do with Beauty and the Beast? I'm stoked. 


I've had this brutal headache all day...I'm going to go lay down until my mother tries to murder me with cheese. 


Edit (7:32 pm): I was right- we had fettuccine alfredo for dinner. Heavy cream, butter, and cheese. If I were lactose intolerant I'd be dying right now. I'm not lactose intolerant. It goes to show you: stomach doctors will give you a stomach diagnosis- looks like I need to go to the gyno. 


Oh, well. At least I can have milk again. 

Dan, the Fireworks Man

This morning my mother had a colonoscopy (I had one last month, they're not nearly as bad as they seem, really-- and incredibly important. Early detection saves lives.) and my father was in the waiting room and talking to a guy he used to work with. Another woman in the waiting room says to my father (after the guy he used to work with left), "I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhearing you're a plumber."
And my dad says, "Yeah, well, I was but I'm retired now." 
She goes, "And you're reading The Grapes of Wrath?"
So my dad says, "Yeah. My daughter got me a book on the Dust Bowl for my birthday, she knows I'm a history nut, so I was curious about this." 
She says, "And you shoot fireworks?" 
And he says, "Yeah, I do." So they start talking about fireworks and stuff and my dad notices she's taking notes, and she says she's an author, and this is a great background for her next book- so they start joking about royalties and stuff and my dad asks if his name could be in the book and she says, "Absolutely- Dan, the Fireworks Man.  A plumber/pyrotechnician I met in a doctor's office while he was reading The Grapes of Wrath." 


My dad says it's not believable. I think it's awesome. 


SO. I also had an appointment with my stomach doctor today...turns out I lost 12 pounds in a month, so I have the Internship from Hell to thank for that-- so maybe there was some good in there other than experience. 


Unfortunately my doctor wants me to try lactose-free so there goes 75% of my daily caloric intake...maybe I'll lose some more weight from that. I just hope that either the lactose-free or the new pills he gave me will take care of the pain and stomach distension. I mean, really, I'm down to 185 and my clothes don't fit because my stomach is so huge. It's supremely annoying. 


Ooooh, new feature on Salami & Orchids: The Great Job Search!! The unemployment rate in New Jersey as of May 2011 is 9.4% (See?), so good freaking luck to me. I haven't really been applying since the Internship from Hell because I've been recovering my body (sleep and food are delicious...), life (renewing library books, forbearing student loans, sending my TOMS back [just a wee bit too small! I got a receipt confirmation, though, so I should be getting ones that fit before August], etc.), and confidence (I lost $400 dollars on the deal with travel and stuff. I soooo don't want to get burned again, and I certainly can't afford it!). 


So yesterday I applied to a photography studio, a local arts and crafts store, and a local pharmacy...more today, and there's a few I'm going to have to mail in resumes for, like a clerical thing at the courthouse. 


I really love the word courthouse. 


Also, another aspect of the Internship from Hell coming back to bite me, my Kindle's all fucked up...here's hoping it just needs to be charged. But maybe it got knocked around while I was taking it to New York? The trains and stuff were awful crowded, and who knows what happened to my purse while it was in the office when I wasn't...augh. 


Speaking of annoying, you know when your system updates and you get those pop up messages, "Your thingy will restart in 15 minutes...Restart Now or Restart Later" and it keeps coming up every once in a while? Annoying as hell. 


So now I'm off to send in more applications...anybody want to be a reference?