Interview with a Social Worker

I have been frantically applying for/ interviewing / being rejected by future jobs, and when I began this process I googled "Interview Tips". My thought process being,
"I have been out of the job market for a while, perhaps I should brush up on some basic helpful hints". I was surprised to learn that while I have taken my little 6 month sabbatical, the job force has apparently been inundated with slutty apes.
Here are some examples of interview "tips" I found: (paraphrased of course)


-Wear enough make-up to look like you give a shit, but not so much that you look like a prostitute.
-Men are sexist, so if you are interviewing with a man, wear a skirt and show some leg, but not so much leg that you look like a prostitute.
-Don't chew gum (Not being much of gum chewer, I was surprised that there were enough people out there smacking their gum in job interviews to necessitate this "tip")
-Look the interviewer in the eyes. (Because some applicants confuse their future employer with an aggressive dog)


I was feeling pretty confident about myself after reading the advice that was being given to job seekers. Until I went to my first few interviews and received the condescending rejection calls, or better, no calls at all. If you saw me in the flesh, the least you can do is be an adult and pick up your phone and let me know that I am inadequate.

Which of course would lead to me crying to Seth about how I will never find work, and him reminding me that I have only been looking for work seriously for the last three weeks. The good news for Seth is that I was offered a position yesterday working with chronically homeless veterans in a housing complex in Salt Lake. I am so excited to start putting my education to good use, and more importantly, feel less like the succubus at the bottom of my mom's stairs.

F*%$ Up

Seth and I have seen two movies in the last month that I related to more than I care to admit. Two weeks ago we saw Bridesmaids, I would worry about spoiler-ing it for you, but it has been out for three weeks and if you haven't seen it yet then I cannot possibly be the first person you've encountered to flap their gums about it.
Annie is struggling with her finances, love life and friendships, her business went under, her boyfriend left her, and her best friend has a life that is moving in a direction further and further from her. While Annie's situation is comically tragic, and her friend with benefits is Don Draper, her life also mirrors mine in that she is forced to move in with her mother, is broke and drives a car that eerily resembles the 1990 maroon tracer that I drove through my last year of grad school. While I know that I am married, and Seth has no choice but to stay with me unless he wants to move into the guest/Zoe's room and sleep in my day bed from when I was ten, you try having a picture perfect marriage while living under your parent's roof. Of course the movie has an almost Hollywood ending in that she ends up with the cop she meets in the first act, and makes up with her best friend just in time for the nuptials, it was still refreshing to have a protagonist that was flawed, and flailing.
Yesterday we saw Everything Must Go.
Nick has lost his job, his wife and home, and has recently fallen off the wagon. He lives in his front yard and sells all of his belongings in a five day yard sale. I know that I have yet to hit this kind of bottom, I loved how the creators of this character loved him even though he was almost despicable in his wallowing self destruction.
While these movies would fall into differing categories in my Netflix queue, they are both stories of recovery from life's follies and F*%$ ups. And right now, I need the reassurance that all is not lost, that I will rebound, that houses and babies and jobs with full benefits are on the horizon. It is also comforting to know that we pay to see the stories of lives that are not on the linear path.
So, if anyone would like to use my likeness for some sort of Eeyore type character, let me know... I retain animation rights.

Lucky 7

I ate seven cookies today.
I am pretty sure the number of cookies I consume daily directly correlates to how I feel. Today was hard, yesterday was worse. Last week was THE worst. But instead of drowning in self pity and in the true spirit of my religion of doing whatever Oprah tells me to do (Thanks Liz Lemon), I will regale you with what I did to make myself feel better, or rather to make tomorrow look like a four cookie kind of day.
1- I called my old practicum to offer my time to volunteer with Neighbors Helping Neighbors. It is an organization that I find remarkable and selfishly satisfying to work with.
2- I signed up to take drum lessons, something I have always wanted to know how to do, and now I will.
3- Thought about how on the scale of universal suffering 1 being hangnail 100 being genocide, I fall somewhere around 3. ( I mean, I do have a hangnail).
I did berate myself for not keeping a journal today, but when I look back on all of my journals they are just pathetic notebooks whose pages consist of petty jealousies and teenage longing, but I do have this blog to at least keep my future self appraised of the highlights of this time in life.
Oh and there won't be any pictures for a while because as luck would have it, feeling sorry for yourself and eating 7 cookies in one day results in adult acne.

Wake up and smell the basement

I feel that the last few months have been lived in a sort of alternate reality. It is as though I have stepped into the life of someone else, and am more of an observer, than actual participant. Yesterday it struck me, I need to stop doing this. While it may protect me from some unpleasant emotions, it deprives me of actually living my life. One of my yoga instructors called this "facing the truth". We may not like where we are in life, or our bodies, but that is no reason to ignore the facts. If I view the next 3-5 months as a life hiatus, I will float through this time like a pile of poop, wasting time that I could spend being alive right now. This post is taking a more new age-y route than I had originally intended, but the message is clear none the less, I will stop wasting precious time wishing for the life that I should have, and start involving myself in the life that I have right now.
Still no word from the remaining six schools to which Seth has applied, and I am trying this new method of communication called, "being supportive without whining about your own petty problems". I feel better already.
And now just because I haven't posted any pictures in a while, Maybe's most charming feature...

The Final Countdown!

Week three, slightly better than week two as far as craving nothing but sugar and fat, the struggle really lies in the lack of variety of your options. But halfway through the week, I realized that it wasn't junk food that I was craving, it was oatmeal, artisan bread and fancy cheese, and true to my senior citizen form I crawled out of bed this morning and made plain oatmeal with bananas and it was the most delicious breakfast I have ever had. The last few days of the Detox were made rough by the terrible cold that hit me late Friday night, the thought of spending an hour to prepare my lunch was enough to make me want to cry, and I just could NOT chop one more butternut squash for soup, so we cheated a little and picked up soup from Whole Foods, vegan, but mine had tomatoes, and it was heavenly.I was so excited to emerge from this cleanse a normal human being, ready to eat and drink and be merry, but alas that will still be a few days until I get over this affliction that causes me to sound like Christian Bale's batman when he went through puberty.
Weighed in this morning, and am down 10 1/2 bs, now if only I can avoid the the blocks of cheese that have been coming to me in my dreams the last three weeks.

The entire country of Egypt is in turmoil, and all I can thing about is grilled cheese

Along with detoxing my body, this diet has also cleansed what little fun I was having before out of my life. You never realize how much socialization revolves around food and drink, until you are forced to stop drinking anything fun and delicious, and stop eating anything that wasn't ripped from it's roots and set on your plate. As one who has never restricted what I ate ( I actually like all of the healthy stuff, my problem is that I like all of the unhealthy stuff too) this comes as a shock to your system. I was talking to one of my friends trying to set up a time to hang out, when he asked me if we could meet up last Saturday for drinks. We can meet you I replied, but we can't eat or drink anything. I have never been a huge sports fan, and as one who cares not for the outcome of a football game, this event is made even more banal by not having chips and beer to stuff down your gullet. Week two is supposed to be the hardest, and while the time is going by faster, the urge to bail is much stronger. Oh, and did you know those bastards at Costco have chocolate covered strawberries in BULK, because they do, today I watched as people put donuts, mini quiche and fresh bread on the conveyer belt, as the cashier asked me, "Do you need anything else?", I scanned the baby greens, frozen berries and kiwis, thinking if only you knew. Seth is talking crazy about eating burritos the day after the cleanse, which he is is free to do, but will not get any sympathy from me re: the terrible stomach aches and diarrhea that will ensue.
As far as how I feel, good. I was grumpy and unusually hungry yesterday, and it was all I could do to choke down another bowl of soup for dinner, but I am amazed at how well I am able to handle feeling hungry without resorting to tantrums and throwing up. I credit this to the diets design to keep the glycemic levels in your body stable. I haven't noticed any real difference in my skin, but it certainly hasn't gotten worse, and I just keep telling myself, think of all the garbage that would have passed through you had you not done the cleanse? Which is proven by the 5 1/2 pounds I lost last week...
In other news, I keep getting turned down for jobs that I am over qualified for, resulting in more time spent in the basement. I should just start playing Dungeons and Dragons now, and save myself the slow and steady decline into leech status. I am really not as depressing as this post would depict, I am grateful that we are near family and friends, and that there is a basement in which we can crash for the next few months. Oh! and Seth passed his drug test that had originally come back, "negative dillute" and is starting his orientation back at the U on Monday. He will be gone all day Valentines day, but it is not as though we have anything planned, I guess I could try and be cute and make some sort of "red soup" concoction.

I believe they call this "crawling back"

Well, we are officially back in Salt Lake City, we left Lafayette on the 20th, to start our 5 day road trip across the country. The weather co-operated for the most part, and there were only a few treacherous roads that we needed to maneuver, and by we I mean Seth ( I volunteered to drive, but he wouldn't let me, less out of chivalry than martyrdom though..). First night was spent in Chicago with Maribeth, unfortunately for her, we had spent the day finishing up the packing and cleaning that makes for some very lazy house guests. As we were leaving Chicago the next morning, our widows immediately frosted over, and the thermometer read 0. Proof that the Midwest is uninhabitable. Maybe was very well behaved in her crate for the entire trip, and only barked occasionally at other guests at the hotel in Sioux Falls. We stayed with my mom's former co-worker Sarah in Rapid City the next night, and while stuffed full of wax grilled cheese sandwiches from the small town diners, I agreed to try a three week vegan cleanse diet. Today marks my first day, and my stomach is presently reminding me that I have not met my carb and cheese quota for the day. More on this in a minute.* For the last leg of our trip, we stopped in Billings to visit my Grandma, who graciously gave us her bed for the night, and stuffed us full of pie. We arrived in Salt Lake on Monday to news of a new pseudo niece, Yvette Redman who arrived that morning on her mother's birthday. She is quite squeezy,and has the most beautifully round head of any new born to date, and did I mention that she is absolutely adorable? I would post pictures, but Kellie likes to keep a low internet profile, and who knows how many weirdos out there read my blog... Right there are six of you. I can see you on my sidebar. Congrats Kellie and Joseph!
We have unpacked and settled back into our lair living as trolls in Mom's basement. Seth is going back to work at the U for the next 5-6 months, and I am making a complete circle and applying for seasonal positions at local nurseries ( the job I had in High School ten years ago before I undertook 7 total years of higher education so that I didn't have to work in low level temporary seasonal positions for the rest of my life). Think about the irony. But hopefully we will be onto bigger and better things for the latter half of 2011, Seth received his masters diploma today, and confirmation of his American Board of Radiology application fulfillment, so that he may take his boards in August to start his official board certification. And once we know where we are headed for the PhD part of his scheme, then I can start studying for my liscensure test to prove that I memorized all of the correct theory, that is never applied in everyday practice. In the mean time, I will concentrate most of my energy on not feeling sorry for myself, at least I haven't worn out the welcome at moms...yet.
* The vegan cleanse is part of the CLEAN diet which is used to help you feel less like a pile of turds, increase energy, improve digestive function, and help break the sugar, fat, salt addiction that I have been feeding for the last 26 years. You have liquid meals for breakfast and dinner, no crazy lemonade concoctions here, just a smoothie with fresh fruit and nut milk, and then soups for dinner, this is supposed to be really easy on the digestive track, and then you have a real food meal for your lunch. The diet restricts anything that can cause irritation, which happen to have been my staples of vegetarian eating for the last 9 years, wheat, dairy, soy. I will update to keep you six informed of my progress, and of course to keep me honest.
And now, a reward for reading through all of my terrible grammer! Pictures from our move!

This New Year I resolve to become an adult.

I actually have a resolution this year, and it's a good one. I am going on a clothes diet. No clothes shopping for one year. In an effort to save money and the world, I am giving up on my favorite past time, spending what I don't have to buy more gray and black sweaters. This is also a great excuse to not resolve to loose any weight this year.
We have been in Salt Lake for the last two weeks, celebrating the holidays with our families and friends. It is so strange to be back, mostly because I know we will be hopping in the car upon our return to Indiana and making a b-line back to this very basement, but also in how I feel as though I never left. We spent Christmas morning with Dad and Sue, Chris, Candice, Zoe and Luc, having brunch and watching Zoe tear into presents. Oh, and holding baby Luc. And by holding I mean smothering. I had a hankerin' to hold that baby, and that is exactly what I did... for the next five hours. We spent the evening with Mom, making the fanciest of Christmas cocktails, and of course more food and baby holding. The rest of our time has been divided between Eric and Holly, and Kellie and her soon to be baby, who I will also smother. We spent New Year at Eric and Holly's with some of their friends, ringing in 2011 with plenty of Champagne, and a little self control, we are after all closer to 30 than 20. And Kellie and I are back to our old ritual of thrift store haggling and eating mexican.
Overall, it's been a great two weeks, here's hoping it is a foreshadow of the next five months.