School?

Over the last few days after realizing that the probability of me getting the kind of job I want and the kind of pay I need is low, I thought perhaps going back to school might be the answer. It might not. I am currently exploring education to get certified in a few different fields all the way through to a master's in some things and a PhD in another. Of course financial aid for the older student is unlikely, but there has to be a way to do something like this right? There has to be a way to transform your life for the better right?

How do people start over in mid life? Do they know other people who pave the road? Are they somehow just more astute and know what needs to be done? How should I choose my next career? What if I choose poorly? Choices. That's what life is all about isn't it?

So I'm unemployed again...

After 18 months of no job I finally get one for which I am overqualified and underpaid, but HEY it's money and boy did I need it. It's not like the job market is really hot for me right now. I was happy to have this job.

Now I don't even have that anymore. I could tell it was coming. I said several times to family around me, "They don't need me." They wanted to fire one woman and replace her with me but they were trying to keep her to train me on her job before letting her go.. sounds worse than it is. She knows she needs to go. They are afraid of having to pay unemployment for her. So I was let go before the legal unemployment time line kicked in. Nice huh? So I won't even get that 'cause I exhausted my old claim already.

So now it's time to think about what I can sell. My house? My car? I certainly don't need a car since I'm not going anywhwere and gas is ridiculous. Perhaps I can sell my old nice clothes and my old nice jewelry on Ebay? Would it make a financial contribution big enough to be worth it? Myself? Unfortunately I'm past my "purchase by" date. Maybe I'll sell off some of my newer furniture. I won't get near what I paid for it but It will be money, right?

Just when I thought we were getting a handle on finances and cash flow this happens. Now what? What will I have to cut out in addition to selling things? Maybe no cell phone. They are a nuisance anyway. Cable/internet? Well I'm going to need that since I'm sitting on my butt watching TV while looking for a job. That has to stay. What other luxuries? Heat? Nope, winter is coming. Electricity? Nope, need that. Water/garbage pick up? Hmm that could get nasty without it, so it's staying too. Food? Ah yes there is one place I can cut back personally.

Dog food? Yes I can give my dog regular dog food and take him off his special vet food which helps with his issues. Poor thing has allergies and chews his paws, but can I ethically make him suffer for my loss of a job? The dog is doing his job, right? He should still be paid. Keep ridiculously expensive dog food. Check.

At least I can have the surgery I need on my hernia now without it interferring with work. Of course I will need a 4 week recovery period too so I wouldn't be able to go look for a job during that time either. Surgery. There's a happy thought.

I'd take up drinking or drugs right now but I can't afford it.

Tuesday ramblings..distant loved ones

Tomorrow, assuming all goes well and fate is not a crueler @#*& to me than she has already been, I get to see my husband for the first time in 2.5 weeks. He's been away for work in Connecticut and we both don't like it. He's been packed for 2 days. I guess that means he misses me or his own pillow. Maybe the pillow more.

Anyway, I keep thinking how much the 2.5 week absence has seemed like years. OK so I exaggerate but it does seem like a long time and much too long for my taste.

Hundreds of years ago women had to endure months and perhaps years of missing husbands who went off to war, or even away from town or overseas for business. I guess since marriages were based on convenience and needs for enhancing one's standing in society, loving your spouse wasn't an issue and the absence of a spouse often a blessing.

Back to my point. I thought a lot about families whose husbands and sons and fathers are overseas at war. I personally am completely against this war and think it's been one of our biggest blunders. But that doesn't matter.


What does matter is all the children who have lost fathers; all the husbands and wives who have lost spouses and all the parents who have lost children. People will say that those who are serving made the choice and knew the risk they were taking by serving in the armed forces. Maybe some did. I bet many of the younger ones were looking for a way to pay for college or to support their young family. I suspect they never really expected to be sent to war. Certainly some of the people away at war wanted to be there and are in their element.

I guess I'm just glad that I personally am not dealing with a husband at war. I suppose one day my son could be sent to war, or perhaps the government could try to send him to war. I guess I'll be blogging from prison or Canada, or somewhere else. if that happens.

BLACK IS BACK!!

Need I say more? OMG! Maybe we need a blackout EVERY game.

Did I really witness this?

I was at a deli/sub place tonight eating soup and my sub for dinner. Remember all my fine food choices and you'll know why I was there. Anyway, while I was eating another person came in with her sons and ordered dinner and was about to pay for it. I was sitting nearby and overheard her conversation with the cashier. Apparently her debit card wasn't working.

**** NEWS FLASH **** It was NOT a debit card but her regular ATM card. The poor guy had to explain why her card would not work. She then went one driveway over to the Walgreen's ATM and came back with cash.

So now I'm left to wonder. Who, by now, doesn't know that ATM cards and debit cards are completely different animals? Was this woman, who appeared to be 35, at most, seriously not exposed to this kind of payment device ever in her life? Was it simply stupidity on her part? Would someone in a large city like Chicago EVER have this kind of conversation?

I left there tonight wondering if she represents the "typical" Jolietan. I hope not.

PS If any Jolietans read this blog, please tell me if I'm missing something here.

Time Life Music Infomercials...

sigh* My package finally arrived today. About 2 months ago, during one of my sleepless nights, my regular tv programming ended and "paid programming" was just about to start. I was making some smart ass comment to my niece about how she had come downstairs just in time to watch garbage with me.

So..... we started watching the infomercial, fully intending to make fun of it. I must be getting old - shut up out there already! Time Life was shilling their rock ballad CD's. A few minutes into the spiel, I realized I really really REALLY wanted these CD's. Really!

After spending several minutes on line at the Time Life website where I looked through the song titles on all the CD's, I went from really wanting these CD's to believing I NEEDED these CD's.

Do I really need to say the rest? Yes, I ordered them. Now, what floored me was that these CD's were out of stock and took 6 weeks to get to me. So I'm left to wonder if they ever were in stock, or, if the informercial was there to entice people to order and if enough of us did not order then the CD's would have conveniently never come into stock.

I don't know. I'm just suspicious like that.

And, since my car has a 6 CD player, you can bet I will have 6 of them loaded up to play at random. I can just imagine having all that cool music in my 20 hour car trips to Texas. Even better if I were ever to drive cross country to some place like, oh, Portland, (yes that's a comma) Oregon, they will be my companions on that trip too.

Smug people irritate me..

Especially those who live in Portland, Oregon.

9:30 F@#%*&ING RANT

EVERYTHING out here closes by 10 PM. Maybe not everything but MOST everything. I just got back from trying to get some late dinner and the family restaurant that is open til 10 closed at 9. Who knows why. So I made it to a Subway nearby which closed at 9:30, cool except it was out of the meat AND the bread I wanted. There is a Subway with a DRIVE-THRU that's open "late" or so I'm told and it was close by too. So I get there, the kids inside clearly do not want to wait on me cause it's late and they are cleaning up blah blah. It's 9:14 and the drive up is open til 10 pm, which is NOT late. Um hello? So I get my subway and go home.

So there is ONE 24 hour restaurant but it's what you'd expect from a 24 hour pace in that it's noisy and busy at night with young folks who have nothing to do and it has a wide variety of food choices. More importantly the one time I was there it didn't seem dirty but I didn't get an impression of cleanliness either. I haven't eaten there since even though the food was good.

Food is important to me and since I choose not to cook, I need to eat out a lot. It's not like I have a live in chef like some other relative who lives far away. So perhaps I don't need a gourmet chef but if I left the cooking to other people who live in my house like my mother, we'd be eating ground beef and pork a lot. I tend toward chicken. Occasionally a nice piece of steak but my meat of choice is chicken.

The husband is not allowed to cook having once made cinnamon flavored rice to add to the beef stew I had made earlier. Let's just say that I didn't know there was cinnamon in the rice until after I put the spoonful of rice and stew in my mouth. Don't try this at home, really.

Back to the rant. The point is that I have to drive at least 15 miles to place I like to eat. These are the same places that I could get to easily when I live in the city of Chicago. I love Flat Top. It's 18 miles away now that the new one opened. 24 miles before that. There are no interesting restaurants nearby. There is little variety. I can't go to my local Filipino restaurant because there isn't one. I can't get Indian food. Ethnic food is sorely lacking out here with the exception of Mexican food. I can get that, plenty of it, and it's very good. One plus.

I like space in the new house. Isn't it cute?

It looks exactly like this too, colors and all. One day maybe I will take pics of the inside and let you see how I decorate. I think I do a nice job. It's not everyone's taste but I like it. I digress....

I love my deck and my bucolic setting. I am still a city girl at heart and at least once every few months I start to wonder why I moved out this way. I know in a few years there will be a lot of shopping and eating option nearby and construction on at least 2 of them has already begun. But my problem is I want stuff now. I don't know how long I can do this. I wonder if in 5years I'll be going back to the city? All this doubt and anguish because I couldn't find dinner at 9pm. *sigh*.

Legal issues to follow. If I can copy a pic off the web to my pc then is it OK to use it in my blog here? I already did but just checking. Yesterday when I talked about the mole on Amada, I did have a picture of her but then I wondered if I pulled a pic of her off the web if I'd be violating something. Worse since I said she looked like a witch I wondered if my opinion of her looking like a witch was opening me up to liability, or even more so if I put her face to the name of Amanda something. Oh well.

Random deep (?) thoughts on a Monday...and The Swan

I should have gone to medical school and become a doctor.

If you tell me not to do something because it's against the rules, it only makes me want to do it more. However, I really am not a radical.

I feel sorry for my only son who has a highly developed sense of anti-authoritarianism and a harsh sarcastic humorous side. As a young person, those are things that get you into trouble. I don't know where he got either of those.

I wonder if 25 years from now we will remember 2008 as the year of the second great depression? A poll I read about said the average American is not really concerned about his/her money in the bank. Hmmm.. Last week, I was ready to liquidate all my assets, however limited, then buy a safe and a shotgun and and become my own bank. No FDIC issues there.

I don't believe the government should legislate morality. Interpret that however you will.

If I said a third, or even a tenth of what I thought about things I see and experience, I'd either be hailed as the next great mind of our century or a raving lunatic, perhaps both.

I wonder what it would take for me to turn into a problem drinker? Currently I drink one or two glasses of wine or a strawberry margarita once a month.

I watched "The Swan" all day yesterday on Fox reality TV. I was mesmerized by it and I am still speechless and dumbfounded. The only thing I can say is that all the women seemed to get a hair makeover that left them blonde or blonder with very long hair extensions. Hmmm no stereotyping there eh? I can't even begin to address the rest of the show and their surgeries and the whole premise of the spectacle. Maybe I will leave that for another blog, maybe I won't waste time on it after this comment. I wonder if I will wake screaming in the middle of the night replaying what I saw. OMG! OK Maybe I will spend just a little more time on this show.

Apparently what I saw was a marathon showing of season 2 ending with the Swan Beauty Pageant. I happened upon this thing by accident and could not turn away. Almost like the driving by an accident phenomenon. You know it's going to be ugly and gruesome but you have to look. Anyway, let's start with the hostess, Amanda or whatever her name was. Could she have gotten some of that makeover magic to take that awful mole off the lower part of her lip/chin. The mole was too large to be considered a beauty mark and she was not so attractive that I could overlook it. I was distracted by it each and every time I saw her, fixated on it if you will. To me, she had a kind of witch's look about her.

On to the "contestants". My heart went out to each woman on the show who asked for a makeover. I can relate to feeling inadequate and unattractive in your own body. What I objected to was the sheer number of procedures each woman had to endure. It was as if the goal of the program was to enhance or change every single feature that had a surgical, dental or cosmetic fix and then subject the women to those procedures. One woman had teeth that were a little large for her mouth but that were distictively her. They didn't need fixing. Did she get to say, "No I don't want that?" I don't know, she got veneers in the end. Was is that the doctors got to do whatever they felt you needed regardless of what you wanted? Again I don't know, but it seemed that way.

In the end, the women looked great and they appeared to be happy with their change in looks. Oh and yeah there was weekly therapy and coaching, HA! Ok that's off my chest. I don't know if there will be a season three, and I don't know if I am way late in discovering this abomination of a show. However, my thoughts will live on in this blog.

With all that is wrong in this world, is having 4 or 5 plastic surgery procedures and risking your life for beauty really worth it? Perhaps. Perhaps I am the one with mixed up priorities.

Maybe my next blog will be about why I believe Jesus was a hippie.

I or me

I know my grammar is not perfect. Heck, maybe it's even poor, but we must stop people from using I as the object of a sentence! When I first heard I used that way I didn't think much of it. Now, years later, hearing it has become a major pet peeve for me. What really frightens me is that people who consider themselves educated are using I when they should be using me. It's almost as if people think that using I sounds more educated or upper class. To me, it sounds horrible and it sets my teeth on edge each time I hear I misused.

So let's hear it for sending the report to John and I, or for talking to Karen and I about whatever!