Last week, we put our dear cat, Algie, to sleep. Every day since has been long and empty. Yesterday I brought his ashes home. And the house still feels wrong.
To the driver of the brick red, convertible Seabring Touring driving west on state Route 169 around 1:30 p.m. two Mondays ago – I was in the car directly behind you from Southeast Wax Road to Cedar Grove. It might have been longer, but I really had no reason to notice you until we stopped at the intersection in front of O’Reilly’s. You got out of your car, in the middle of traffic, to rummage through your trunk.
Jules: “Do you know what I heard on NPR today?”
Travis: “NPR? I didn’t think you listened to that anymore.”
Jules: “I don’t. But I was channel surfing, and I heard this. You’re not going to believe it.”
Travis: “The BP oil cap broke again.”
Jules: “Nope.”
Give me grammar, give me code, give me project management – I’m your gal. But baking isn’t one of my strengths. In fact cooking isn’t one of my strengths.
Enjoying our first Fourth of July at home in years, Trav and I spent the holiday having barbecue and street fireworks with our many friends and neighbors. It was a fantastic time in which I was asked lots of questions – which I may or may not have entirely gotten around to answering.
Well, I still don’t have a job. Technically. Although it’s sadly true that I haven’t been hired for a full-time position, my freelance business is – finally, thankfully, wonderfully – becoming another story.
Last time in this column: My cat, Algie, went back to the vet. Again. Some more. They gave him shots. He got a little better. Then he got a lot worse. He started lying around like he was going to die. So we spent all day saying goodbye. Then we took him to the vet for the final time. And we cried. A lot.
Previously in this column, I described how Algie, our cat, developed a mysterious demon illness last year that culminated in a week-long, sleep-deprived Marathon of Grossness. Ending up in critical care, they ran very expensive tests. Which provided very few answers. (As in, none whatsoever.)
Maybe it’s the inevitable result of realizing I’ve been unemployed for five months now. Or maybe it’s that comment from last week about job postings as smoke screens for referral-hiring that I just can’t get out of my head. But I’ve hit the point at which this job search process not only feels like a colossal waste of time, but is beginning to chip here and there at the edges of self-worth.
Just so you know, I was properly admonished for going MIA on y’all in last week’s paper. Travis (my husband) was packing the car for a drive to Mount Rainier on Saturday when a neighbor pulled up to say hello. No sooner did I walk out of the house, than he gave a friendly wave and called out from his truck. “Hey! Where were you this week? I didn’t see your column! What, did you get a JOB or something?”
Everybody’s got a card they could play. Be it race, age, ethnicity, sexuality, economic or – as I did last week – gender. I’m not a fan of playing those cards. Especially if you do it because you didn’t get what you wanted. I’ve always believed people should be judged by their work or their character. So I can’t say my last column was a proud moment.
So. Women in technology. As in: women who work in IT or digital media. Women who write code and run databases. Women who test servers and fix bugs.
I had three interviews last week. All for the same position. One over the phone; one with the contracting agency; one with the client. For a Web Producer role in which I’d be publishing web pages all day long.
It was, in a word, my very vision of perfection. No sooner than I got off the phone with the recruiter than I began dreaming about a clean, quiet cubicle space in Kirkland – one with a little sunshine, a spot for a plant and a photo of my husband.
So today I thought I would interview myself, because A) few of you wonderful folks have sent me job-hunting related questions, B) I’m up against my deadline and C) I just finished watching “Interview with the Vampire” and the dialogue seemed scarily apt.
Things to do when you’re unemployed.
• Sleep.
• Get up.
• Go to the kitchen to make coffee.
• Remind yourself that the cereal goes in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard.
On a recent afternoon, five of my friends came over for an evening of Risk, beer and chick flicks. I don’t play Risk, and I don’t drink beer; but the boys of the group had decided it was time for an evening of world domination, so the girls of the group decided we needed movies that didn’t have to be heard over the yelling.
Tuesday afternoon I went to a job fair at the Seattle Center. Even though I ‘pre-registered’ two weeks ago, it wasn’t until that morning, while rewriting my resume for the third time, that I decided to go. On the one hand, it didn’t seem like the place to find the kind of jobs I was looking for. On the other hand, it didn’t seem like my online application strategy was finding me any jobs at all.
I’m not sure what I expected when I walked into Workforce Renton Tuesday afternoon. Actually, that’s a lie. Considering the description of the class I was attending ended with a thorough explanation of their first-come, first-serve policy, with no seating allowed five minutes before the start and a strong recommendation for being at least one hour early, I did have a vague mental picture involving Department of Motor Vehicle-proportion lines full of zombies just waiting to snap me into a pair of shackles and a shredded checkered fleece.
Cheating on your spouse is a deal-breaker. I’ve seen the shows and read the articles where certain couples were able to forgive their partners and continue on in a life together, and every time all I could think to myself was, “Where is your self respect?”
For Presidents Day, my husband and I decided to go to Bellevue to use the last of our Christmas gift cards on some good old home entertainment. Gift cards are one of my husband’s favorite things in life, right next to hockey and Xbox on the list of mankind’s greatest recent inventions, so we have a lot of them. He loves to give them. He loves to get them. He loves to give them to me for safekeeping.
If you ever happen to be 2-1/2 months overdue for an oil change, please – do not try to squeeze in a quick trip to the post office seven days before Christmas. Especially if it’s our post office. And especially if you park up front.
Applying for unemployment benefits last month was one of my least favorite experiences of all time, ranking right up there on my list of things to avoid like the plague between certain Newcastle City Council members and elective nasal surgery.
Facebook and politics do not mix. Anyone who’s spent time on the social network will probably recognize this scenario very well:
