More Bad News

As if not getting the full-time jobs I applied for, the two expensive car repairs and my as-yet unsuccessful attempts to get the State of Arizona to pay my unemployment claim aren't bad enough, I've got more bad news. Times two, in fact.

One: an insurance company wants to total John's car after he was rear-ended again a week ago. I don't know whether he'll be able to keep it, or get enough money to replace it. We can't take on a car payment right now. Even if we qualified for a loan on John's income alone, we'd be crazy to add to our monthly obligations. John wants desperately to hang onto his Alero, which despite its bent frame is drivable, but I doubt that our insurance company will allow that once they hear what the other insurance company said.

As for me, I remember how this worked when the kid in the 1965 Ford truck totaled my Saturn. The settlement was almost enough to pay for a car three years older, my 1994 Eagle Vision. And yes, that's the car I've spent $1100 on this month with two loans from my dad and one from Citibank.

Two: I heard a mosquito-like whining coming from the den just now, partly muffled by the sound of the room air conditioner in there. Thinking the a/c had overheated or frozen up or something, I turned it off. The whine continued. It was coming from our decade old ONLY television, a Magnavox that was rather good in its day and has never given us any trouble. Now it has no picture, no channel changing, and the only sound it makes is one we wouldn't want to hear.

The tv, back when it used to work.

"One by one, everything we have is breaking and we can't replace it," John said.

We have a Commodore 64 monitor in the bedroom, which is tiny and has the wrong aspect ratio. But it still works, bless it, after a quarter century. It will be interesting to see whether it's possible to run cable tv through it via our little seven-year-old VCR/DVD player or our $30 DVD player.

If the unemployment money finally comes through this week, maybe we'll get a modest tv of some sort. Otherwise, we'll have to made do with the Commodore and John's computer. My laptop doesn't have the RAM for multitasking, and I'm not at all sure the DVD drive is working reliably these days.

And this week we somehow lost Disc Two of Doctor Who: The Complete First Series. We've both been searching for several days, to no avail.

Please, God, I'd like some good news now.

Karen

Stuck

In theory, the local office of a well-known charity was to make a decision earlier this week about hiring its new staff accountant, who would do billing and act as liaison to their regional accounting operation. I interviewed for the job a few weeks ago. To date the recruiter who got me the interview has not given me a word of feedback - not in response to the interview itself or my call to her afterward, and not in response to the phone message I left on Monday this week.

It's nice to feel valued and wanted and appreciated. At the moment, as far as the recruiters are concerned, I'm none of the above. But I do think I'm entitled to a returned phone call, even if it's to say, "You didn't get it," or "They haven't made a decision yet."

It's likely at this point that I didn't get it. Drat. I'm back to being without so much as a nibble on a job, as stuck in place as the old soccer ball that someone jammed into a tree at the dog park a couple weeks ago. I'm still plugging away at my Auditing seminar and that's going well, unlike the Financial Accounting and Reporting one that I dropped a couple of times and will ultimately need to tackle again. But it will be a while before I even register to take the CPA exam. And even once I pass all four parts of it, I still won't be certified as a CPA, because for all my experience I've never gotten a piece of paper signed by a CPA I worked under for a year or more. I could have gotten one at First Magnus had I known. Ah, well. So actually becoming a CPA will have to wait until I'm employed again. Whenever that will be.

I recently got a letter from the Arizona Department of Economic Security, dated March 5, about a change in my unemployment compensation due to the economic stimulus bill passing. According to the letter, my benefit will go up $25 in Federal dollars as of the end of February. I checked, though, and as of last week I was still getting the same $240 as before. But I read the letter more closely today, and it says it will take several weeks to get the system updated to include the money. It will then be paid retroactively. Thanks, President Obama! I really do appreciate it.

One additional worry, though. The DES web page that tracks how much unemployment I have left is showing me just a few weeks away from it being all gone, 26 weeks from when I got the ball rolling after my last temp job (aside for the tax service debacle) ended. According to another page, it gets automatically extended if the state unemployment rate is over 6%, which it is. But I worry whether I read it correctly, and whether it will really kick in. I need to face up to researching it further.

Meanwhile the tax refunds have come in, and today is the day Pepper gets her first professional grooming since we got her. Cayenne, meanwhile, will get her nails trimmed. So I have something to look forward to, sort of.

Karen

The Purple Season

I've been sitting here all night, trying to think what to tell you about all the vague ideas that have been swirling in my head. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, so I didn't eat much all day. I worked at St. Michael's in the afternoon, and was one of only two acolytes serving at Mass in the evening. Lent has begun, that season of repentance and abstinence, of taking stock of one's life and amending it for the better. Everything at church gets covered up with purple cloth, signifying (as some religious book I had as a kid put it) sorrow for sin.

Well, in theory that's what Lent is for. We prepare for the memorial of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and review and renew our relationship with him. Traditionally that involves going to church a lot and not eating meat on certain days, confession of sins and so on. The most famous manifestation of it all is the idea of "giving up something for Lent." Father Smith at St. Michael's has argued against this concept for years. Instead of giving up chocolate, which doesn't accomplish anything spiritual, one should do something positive that brings you closer to God.

But...how do I do that? Every year I try to find a way, but somehow Lent always ends up seeming like a missed opportunity to accomplish something meaningful.

So that's one track of what's been on my mind. Overlay onto that the continuing discouragement of no job interviews - not even a nibble! - and the suspicion that I won't get a job anytime soon, and what is wrong with me, and how can employers know without even picking up a phone that they should pass me over for all those jobs that they list that seem to fit my skills perfectly? And the CPA review thing is a longer and harder slog than even I expected, let alone John, who is restless over what seems to him like a lack of progress on my part. And yes, I should put in more hours each day on the studying. There, I said it. But doing it won't be that easy. There are no quick fixes here, no magic way to prepare for the CPA exam as fast as John wants, even if I do the diligence of eight hours a day studying. There's too much material I've forgotten or never knew. It will take months and months to get through it all. Even if it were all relatively fresh in my mind from school four years ago, it would still take months and months. Sorry, John.

Sorrow for sin. Yeah, I've got that. The sin of despair. The sin of giving myself a break, or not trying long enough or hard enough, of not washing the last dirty pan or getting the last bit of dried food off that section of counter. The sin of being stuck.

Yeah, I'm sorrowful. Okay, I repent. Now what? Now I try to do better, right? Except John would echo Yoda, "There is no try." Phooey on that. I can and will do better, but I know it will never be enough. That's human nature. When I worked for Buzzard's Nest Records all those years ago, I used to say to myself, "I have to be perfect this week," because anything short of that would be pounced on. But it's an impossible standard. Nobody can be perfect this week, or any other week.

On the other hand, who says I have to be perfect now? What John is looking for is visible steady effort and noticeable results. Well, okay, let me recommit to the effort. But I can't guarantee the results.

Karen

How Do I Know It's Christmas?

One of the Christmas boxes is finally off the top shelf of the laundry room.

You remember A Charlie Brown Christmas, don't you? Charlie Brown spends the first-ever Peanuts special feeling alienated and depressed as he tries to find meaning in the Christmas season everyone else seems to be enjoying. Snoopy is celebrating by entering a Christmas decorating contest, and the other kids are dancing, skating, and eating early winter snow as it falls. Charlie Brown eventually goes in search of a Christmas tree, and finds himself empathizing with a small, scrawny one whose needles are falling off. At the very end, Linus recites from the Gospel of Luke to tell Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about, and the other kids decorate his lowly tree and sing Christmas carols at him. This display of religious and community feeling and inclusiveness finally cheers Charlie Brown up, and he sings along.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling especially Charlie Brown-y this year, disconnected from the rituals and culture of Christmas. With no job for over three months now, I can't justify buying presents for anyone except my dad, stepmother, brother and husband. Even those gifts will need to be cut back. John claims not to want anything, and we've agreed to buy each other only one gift and whatever goes in each other's stockings. "No candy this year!" John warns. Fair enough, but what do I buy him? The only thing he seems to want is a new iPod, and if I get him anything that extravagant he will probably return it. It's happened before.

Jacob's box.

So I haven't bought a single present, and time is running out. The only saving grace is that I was finally able to pack up my godson Jacob's birthday and Christmas gifts. One of them I bought in mid-2007, when the local Discovery Channel Store was going out of business. The other, an autographed photo, I got at Gallifrey One in February. Jacob comes from a family of Doctor Who fans. I sure hope he likes this particular actress, and that the robot that's been sitting on my office floor, mint in box, for a year and a half doesn't seem too babyish to him now.

In looking for the right size box, I came across one with the dregs of stuff I carried home from First Magnus the day it went out of business and we all discovered we were out of a job. In it were a few things I was able to give Jacob as mathoms.

The box is packed. Now what?

Today is the last day to turn in an Angel Tree present at church for a prisoner's kid. I'll still do that, especially considering we haven't even done Toys for Tots yet. We always do Toys for Tots, no matter how broke we are. I hope it's not too late.

The vintage tree in a happier year.

And there's Christmas decorating to be done. If I put up the aluminum tree in its usual place by the sliding class doors in the den, it won't even be visible from the couch behind all those boxes. I'll have to get John to move those somewhere. A live tree is out of the question this year.

And what about Christmas music? It's been two years or more since I last found the Christmas CDs. No Robert Rheims, no Chipmunks, no Nat King Cole and Sinatra and Jingle Bell Rock. If I start going through boxes now, what are the chances of my finding the CDs by December 25th?

Yes, yes, spirit of Christmas. Jesus in Bethlehem, midnight mass, peace on earth, people smiling at each other on the street. I will try to find some feeling to go with my half-a-mustard-seed faith. But you probably won't see me smiling at strangers much except at the dog park, and my only contribution to the peace on earth part came on Election Day. Still, I'll do my best.

Okay, okay. I'm over it. On with the day.

Karen

A Few Words About Depression

I had an email today from a Tucson Citizen reporter - not the one who interviewed me for an article on unemployment in Tucson, a different one. Having been interviewed on my jobless state, was I now willing to be interviewed about seeking therapy for unemployment-related depression? Ummm....

There are two problems with my agreeing to the request. The first, I'm sure you understand, is that the role of Tucson's Famously Depressed Deadbeat, er, Unemployed Person isn't exactly a flattering one. Who knows how being Famously Unemployed in the local paper, picture and all, coincidentally on the same day as my second job interview in three months, may have affected my prospects? Did someone in HR give me a thumbs down for grandstanding? Probably not, but I'll never know. The second problem is, I'm not someone who has sought therapy for depression. Well, maybe a little. Back when my parents were first divorced in 1976, I met with a completely useless, Rogerian student therapist once or twice at Syracuse University, and visited Father Ed at St. Patrick's Church for tea and sympathy. But recently? I think I entertained the notion for two minutes once as an option for the future, when I happened to be in the same building as my mom's old therapist. But other than that, no.

But being obsessively confessional and overly fond of pontificating (not to mention humorously self-deprecating!), I answered the email anyway, with written answers to the reporter's questions. I said that my depression is very minor, more situational than clinical, and that I couldn't afford therapy even were I so inclined.

The reason I'm mentioning all this here, aside from the aforementioned confessional tendencies, is that the reporter's other questions got me thinking about coping mechanisms and the extent to which they help me. That subject seems sufficiently interesting, and possibly helpful, to sustain a blog entry, so here we are.

Things that seem to help:

1. Distraction. In a way, this sounds like a bad idea. We're supposed to confront our problems head on, not turn our backs and pretend they don't exist. That's denial, not coping. Yes, but. One thing I've noticed many times over the years is that it's even more harmful to spend all your time thinking about how miserable you are. Of course you're going to think about that sometimes, if you're acutely or chronically depressed. How can you not? But don't indulge it. If you're having a bad day, then it can be very therapeutic to compile a fixed assets depreciation entry, read a book, prepare for a class, watch a favorite tv show, listen to the Beatles, or do almost anything else that takes your mind away from feelings of helplessness or hopelessness or worthlessness. Six years later, I'm almost grateful that the University of Phoenix made no provision for missing class due to bereavement, and that I consequently had to make a PowerPoint presentation nine hours after my mother died. I probably didn't do a great job of revising my final paper for that class; my concentration wasn't that good. But having something annoyingly irrelevant to do that night probably helped me get through that day.

2. Change the Script. Have you ever seen the film Agnes of God? Meg Tilly plays an innocent, deeply disturbed young nun who gets pregnant and dumps her baby, and yet is a holy, naive, virginal figure who fasts and abases herself and (if I recall correctly) even gets stigmata. Jane Fonda plays the cynical, chain-smoking, ex-Catholic therapist who tries to get to the bottom of what happened and grows to care deeply about her patient. In one key scene, Fonda's Dr. Livingston tries to teach Sister Agnes to fight back against the belief in her own worthlessness that her mother instilled in her. Playing the role of Agnes's mother, Livingston calls her "ugly" and "stupid" and "a mistake," and encourages her to refute these descriptions. (Against the "mistake" charge, Sister Agnes cries out, "I'm not a mistake! God doesn't make mistakes!") I think of this scene often when talking to a depressed friend, or when my own Inner Weasel is trying to tell me nasty things about myself. Nobody is perfect, but telling yourself that you're stupid or ugly, useless or wicked or worthless is not the way to make yourself a better or happier person. Still, we often do what psychologists sometimes call playing tapes, letting negative thoughts replay themselves endlessly in our heads, tearing ourselves down even further. It's important to recognize this behavior and correct it, refuting exaggeratedly negative descriptions of ourselves and replacing thoughts of "I can't" with the knowledge that "I can." Which leads us to the next coping mechanism:

3. Move forward. The essence of depression is a feeling that things won't get better, that you're stuck in the morass of a bad situation and can't get out, and perhaps don't even deserve to get out. If you're feeling hopeless and helpless, a good way to pull free of the mire is to prove to yourself that there are things you can do after all. Maybe I can't magically order up a new job right now, but I can apply for the ones for which I'm qualified and hope. And more important, I can work to make myself more employable. That's what the courses for professional certification that I wrote about last night represent to me: a way forward, to exert some control over my situation and improve my chances of a better outcome in the long run. It should also make me feel better about myself in the meantime, knowing I'm not just shlumphing around waited to be rescued from my fate.

That all seems to help me, but it's not a panacea. Sometimes I'm still fairly miserable, and it's all too easy to reach for food, a coping mechanism that's a short-term mood-lifter but detrimental in the long run. Nor am I suggesting that someone who suffers from chronic or severe clinical depression can solve everything with Sgt. Pepper and being productive. I am, after all, only mildly depressed, and it's not really a chronic condition for me. There are certainly people for whom psychotherapy, with or without appropriate medication or supplements (look into TMG!), is a necessary part of the solution. But these three strategies are worth a try, I think, for just about anyone who suffers from depression.

Do I hope that the Tucson Citizen writer will use me in the article? Not really. I'd just as soon not be Tucson's Designated Unemployed Person. But if I am mentioned, I hope I'm the minor figure in the last paragraph, the wise soul who gets the last word.

Karen

Update: John expressed a preference that I not be in a newspaper article on depression, so I just begged off in an email. Ah, well!

Ya Gotta Have Heart!

I've had two competing songs in my head today, the last day of my employment. The second one, ascendant at the moment, should be familiar to anyone who was ever watched the old tv series Hee Haw, voluntarily or otherwise:

Doom, despair, and agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive misery.
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.
Doom, despair, and agony on me.

Y'know, I worked for Worldwide Travel for 12 years. Then, accounting degree in figurative hand, I went to work for First Magnus, which suddenly went belly-up 27 months later as part of the mortgage crisis. Since then I've worked two temporary positions, separated by a permanent position that wasn't. And now even Worldwide Travel has shut down. Each of these has taken a toll on my confidence, even though I know I didn't personally cause the travel, mortgage and recreational vehicle industries to crash and burn, or gas prices to rise, or create this recession some people don't want to admit exists.

(Interestingly, a poll on one of my job sites shows 49.58% of people saying the economy will improve if a Democrat is elected, with just over half as many saying the same about a Republican. The rest think it either will improve or won't improve regardless of the election results.)

Job Seeker Survey

Will the presidential election improve the American economy and job market?

Thanks for taking this survey
Yes, if a Republican President is elected		(26.25%)
Yes, if a Democrat President is elected		(49.58%)
Yes, it will improve regardless of who is elected		(10.00%)
No, there will be no improvement		(14.17%)

So yes, I know that times are tough, and this isn't my fault. But I was up for a permanent job and didn't get it from one temp employer, and had to take a pay cut from the other (and no, I'm not going to tell you about it). And although more than a few executives left Famous Vehicle Dealer before my departure, I was the first person "laid off" as such in my particular department. (My boss had resigned, and one peer had just been fired outright.) And suddenly the good employee who had worked for one company for 12 years, had gone back and gotten her degree, who seemed to be in such demand, is an aging temp who has had so many jobs in the past two and a half years that any job lasting longer than nine months has fallen off the job application I filled out tonight for one of the recruiters.

Yes, my self-confidence is at low ebb at the moment. But there's another song in my head, fighting to get me back on track:

You've gotta have heart!
All you really need is heart!
When the odds are sayin' you'll never win,
That's when the grin should start!
You've gotta have hope!
Mustn't sit around and mope.
Nuthin' half as bad as it may appear,
Wait'll next year and hope.

When your luck is battin' zero,
Get your chin up off the floor.
Mister, you can be a hero.
You can open any door.
There's nothin' to it, but to do it.

You've gotta have heart!
Miles and miles and miles of heart!
Oh, it's fine to be a genius of course!
But keep that ol' horse before the cart!
First you've got to have heart!

Yeah. I think I'll go with that one.

Ready for my interview? That grin, starting.

Karen

We Need a Little Christmas

Emphasis on little.

Coming down to the wire here, and I've bought gifts only for co-workers. I've shopped for John, but haven't bought. Somewhere near my feet is a robotic gift to my godson, whose birthday was today or tomorrow or Sunday; I forget. Between work, the dog and frankly, the mild depression that's gripped me since Tuffy was diagnosed, I haven't managed to get it sent out. I'm going to have to do Amazon, and tell his parents that the other gift will be about a week late.

See, I wasn't kidding that my entire shopping list this year involves Amazon.

Except for the co-workers and John, that is. I had plans to replace John's old iPod, which has had glitches and compatibility issues for years. But when I got to Target, half the models were sold out, and I couldn't quite remember which kind he had mentioned possibly buying next year. Was it the almost-iPhone with touchscreen and video but not much storage, or the Classic with ten times as much storage? If the latter, then 40 GB or 80 GB? Only one of the two was in stock anyway, and only in white. So I put off buying it.

Then tonight I had the following conversation, more or less:

Me: I have to go back out shopping tonight.

John: No you don't.

Me: Yes, I do. I haven't bought your main present yet.

John: Then don't buy it. I can make do with the old one.

Since he obviously knew what present I was talking about, I asked him which one it was he'd liked. He wouldn't even tell me. He sincerely doesn't want us spending the money on that right now. He's gearing up to work on redoing the plaster and the tile on both bathrooms, and a roof over a section of patio, and would much rather spend the money on that.

But he's still one up on me, even considering our five gift limit. He's gotten me "a few little things." I've gotten him nothing. There is one item he's mentioned wanting a couple of times, but beyond that I have no clue.

What he really wants is the house fixed up, cleaned and cleared out, repaired and decent looking. I'm going to do a bunch of dishes in a few minutes, and tomorrow I'll finish cleaning up the kitchen and start on my office and do the bedroom. John's got most of the rest of 2007 off from work, and intends to spend most of it working on the renovations and repairs. And we need to decide which fake tree to put up, as I'm graciously giving up my real tree compulsion for this year at least.

Meanwhile we have five boxes and counting from Amazon, courtesy of my dad and Ruth. We have a few little gifts from my office, and presumably the usual gift card from my godson's parents. We'll have things to open, although John keeps saying that brown cardboard boxes are the new wrapping paper.

So Christmas will be sparse on the ground, by mutual agreement. Really, 20 presents at this stage wouldn't make me happier than five. I worked out today that Tuffy has cost us about $4000 in vet bills since September, and the Museum of the Weird is stuffed to the gills with our collections as it is. If the combined gifts and gift cards from all sources yield a few books and videos, perhaps a sweater and a pair of slacks, and (longshot) a Doctor Who Magazine subscription, I'll be more than satisfied.

And the we'll have the new Doctor Who Christmas special to watch as well. From the reviews I've read so far, that may be the best present of all. And today I switched over my clock radio at work from my Doctor Who CDs to all-Christmas programming on a local soft rock station. Several of those songs had me in tears. I wasn't subjected to The Christmas Shoes, but some recent artist had the original sad versions of the opening and closing of this song from Meet Me in St. Louis:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas;
Let your heart be light.
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight....

Someday soon we all will be together,
If the fates allow.
Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Karen

Thanksgiving for Two: A Rant

This is the time of year when people gear up for the holidays. In the U.S., people are planning their Thanksgiving dinners. How many people are coming over? Is this turkey going to be big enough? Does everyone like creamed onions (or yams or rutabagas, or raisins in their stuffing)? What time do I tell them to get here? When does his flight get in? And so on. Alternatively, people are on their way to other people's shindigs, visiting Mom or daughter or maybe just a close friend who likes to cook.

And then there are the rest of us. Time and distance and money and death preclude travel "over the river and through the woods" or, far more likely, across the country via ORD, DFW or ATL. Nobody in town is going to feed us unless we pay them to do so, either making reservations ahead or standing in a buffet line or both. So we go out or we cook in - not for twenty people, or ten, or even five, but for one or two. And when friends and co-workers mention their big annual shindigs, we nod with frozen smiles and pretend that our Thanksgivings will be equally splendid. But the truth is, they won't be. Those big family gatherings are a lot of work and highly stressful, but almost certainly worth it. The one-or-two-person Thanksgiving simply can't compete, and ends up being kind of depressing. Or is that just me?

Case in point: the turkey in the first shot above is from Thanksgiving, 2004, probably the last time I made a full-blown Thanksgiving turkey. Even at that it was heavily compromised. See the carrots? I had attempted to stuff the turkey with scallions and carrots and celery instead of stuffing, because John was Atkinsing. It really didn't make for a very satisfactory meal, but at least I got my rutabagas in as well, just for me.

This year I've got what I've been calling a "turkey roll," based on a 40-year-old memory of something my mom cooked once in the summer and it was horribly dry and awful. But the real name of what I'm cooking is a Butterball Boneless Turkey Roast, White & Dark Meat. These are kind of hard to get, so when I saw them at Safeway a week ago I bought two. (I've already cooked the first one.) I'd really rather get the whole turkey, but sometimes one just has to do the slightly depressing, sensible thing. In a choice between a lot of work and a lot of leftover meat vs. slightly less work, considerably less expense and not enough meat, I know John prefers the latter. And really, these white-and-dark roasts tend to come out pretty well, not too dry, no awkward bones or gristle.

Again this year, John is doing Atkins. I'm not, but should be. So I'll make my one rutabaga and one yam and maybe one potato, and probably cook carrots or zucchini or something for John. No bacon, but I may try for a mini-portion of sausage stuffing if I can figure out how to do it. And I'll spend hours working in the kitchen for a meal John doesn't much care for, trying to recapture a tiny piece of my childhood by eating certain high-carb foods. Oh, yes. A merry time will be had by all. Except you know what? If I don't do this, I'll be thoroughly miserable. That's how it is.

One thing is going to be different this year. St. Michael's is having a Thanksgiving pot luck after the 11 AM Thanksgiving mass. John said he didn't mind my going, so I'll be there, with Kevin and a bowl of rutabagas. It will be interesting to see who else likes them - and who else is willing to spend part of their holiday with their church family in lieu or (or in addition to) their real family.

Karen

The Curse and Promise of Change

Weekend Assignment #191: Show us, or tell us a story about, change. A before and after picture of the street where you grew up, a story about meeting an old friend after many years, two pictures of yourself separated by a number of years, a tale about changing your life, or showing or tell us about something in the process of changing itself. Any of these is good. And doesn't have to be a negative, because sometimes change is a good thing.

Extra credit: Do you feel that you are changing in some way right now?

Tcha. Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis know that I've been living in "interesting times" for the last three months at least:

Thursday, August 16, 2007: I found out from a newspaper headline outside McDonald's that the company I worked for had just collapsed. Ten minutes later I was officially unemployed.

Friday, August 24th, 2007: I accepted a temporary position at the business office of a regional retail chain, with a reasonable expectation of a permanent position to follow, for significantly higher pay than my last job. By that time I had been all but offered a job in Nogales, AZ and turned it down due to the hour-plus commute each way.

Monday, September 17th, 2007: my boss told me that the company owners hired someone else instead, and my temporary job would end within a week.

Thursday, September 20th: I have a job interview with a large vehicle retailer, and am hired on the spot. At more or less the exact same time, my vet is finishing surgery on Tuffy for three benign epidural tumors, and taking a biopsy of her tongue. When I get home, my rejected manuscript of Heirs of Mâvarin has arrived back from DAW.

(Dang. I changed tenses starting with the third entry. Not gonna change it now. Live with it.)

Monday, September 24th: I start my new job. It is an extremely stressful day, due to the large number of unfamiliar concepts and industry or company-specific terms and abbreviations. The person I'm replacing shows little interest in helping me learn. If she were teaching me to fly, the lesson would have been something like this: "This is a jet plane. This is the joystick. Be sure the DPQs match the RVMs. Here's a page of incomplete notes on how to fly. I'll check with you tomorrow to see whether you landed safely." Let me make it totally clear that the company, my boss, and everyone who is still with the company has been great, and even the person who was supposed to train me probably did her best in the time she had. But it's been tough to learn this new job under somewhat unfortunate circumstances.

Our little stress generator.

Wednesday, September 26th: I learn from a voicemail that Tuffy has cancer on her tongue, specifically a squamous cell carcinoma.

Monday, October 1st: We take Tuffy to the oncologist, and leave her there overnight for surgery. They cut out a section of her tongue, assuring us that it will still work just fine once it heals.

Tuesday, October 2nd: I bring Tuffy home. She is wobbly and miserable.

Tuesday, October 16th: I'm stressed out at work because I think it's my predecessor's last day. Turns out her last day is the 17th, but I barely see her that day. Tuffy's oncologist calls. The pathology report has come back, and they didn't get all the cancer at the microscopic level.

Monday, October 23rd: we are given a list of options for Tuffy, none of them good. We learn toward a third surgery, but it sounds horrible - a seriously impaired tongue and possibly a feeding tube. We take Tuffy home and start to think it over.

Friday, November 2nd, 2007: our regular vet helps us break the stalemate in our consideration of Tuffy's options. We decide to do the palliative radiation, hoping to buy her two more years of life for $2,000.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007: Tuffy has her first radiation treatment. She seems to do great, and is even hungry afterward.

Tuesday, November 14th, 2007: Tuffy has her second radiation treatment. She trembles in the car all the way over, and the whole time she's at the vet's. I buy her fresh chicken strips to try to tempt her to eat.

Thursday, November 16th, 2007: John asks me to call the oncologist about Tuffy's severe reluctance to eat, but after she eats a hardboiled egg, she says he's willing to wait and see over the weekend. We both think she's worse this week. Is she hurting, or are we reading in more than is really there? I catch myself thinking, "We're going to lose her." Also, John gets a raise.

There you have it. Three months of major changes in our lives, piled one atop another. Concurrent with all that, Tuffy's been less and less willing to eat more and more of the things we offer her, and it's clear her tongue is more impaired than we were led to expect. I've been having intermittent back spasms, boils, and an outbreak or eczema or something like it on my left elbow from resting it on the arms of chairs while typing. Oh, and look at that! My feet are turning interesting colors as they start to swell up again. John is dieting, but I'm not even attempting that right now. I've slid into a minor case of depression, which makes it hard to face up to things like fiction writing and church webmastering, doing dishes and cleaning my office. I'm sure it's why some of my recent entries here have been a bit perfunctory; I tend to sit here waiting to come up with some idea for a post, until it's way too late to put things off any longer.

I was going to talk about the pros and cons of change, having come up with the pompous subject header to go with it. But it's late again, and instead I've gone for the pitifest. Briefly, then:

Everything changes, from moment to moment. Even the sun.

Change is inevitable, at every level of existence. Subatomic particles move about in somewhat mysterious ways. Cells grow and divide, die and are replaced (or not), mutate and become malignant. People grow up and grow old, and sooner or later they die. In the meantime they meet people, fall in love, fall out of love, make friends, lose friends, make enemies, make up, take up hobbies and lose interest, change jobs, have children, move, travel, have diseases, have pets, win awards, go to jail - in short, experience their own kaleidoscopic portion of the infinite variations of human existence. Species die out, the Earth gets warmer, and new superviruses arise. Seasons cycle past, and no two sunsets are alike. At the same time we moderate our environment, for good or ill or most often both, with new technologies and the same old shortsightedness. And the Earth and sun hurtle along unnoticed, and entropy increases.

Do we really want to get off the roller coaster ride, to freeze the kaleidoscope in place? Some people get desperate enough to stop their participation in change with one final act, the biggest change of all. But most of us actually want change - on our terms. We want a faster computer and a better internet connection, an iPhone and maybe a newer car that doesn't make that awful noise at intersections. We want a better life, however we define it, and that requires change. We want to grow up and finish school, lose weight, get rid of the blemishes, find the perfect partner, stop the war, save the whales, solve the immigration issue, get a promotion at work, sell the novel, have a hit record or tv series, make or adopt a child, fix up the house, fix up ourselves, and sock money away so we don't have to keep working at age 80. Some of these things we'll get, others not. Some are partially under our control, and we have to decide how hard we're willing to work for change. And we have to take all the other changes, too, because that's the world, and everything has consequences. And even the good changes, like my new job, can be stressful. That, too, has its consequences.

I know what changes I need in my life right now. I need to know that Tuffy is going to get better instead of worse, at least for a year or two. I need to know that I can learn the rest of my duties at work, and emerge from this depression so I can get back to my fiction and change the status of my novels from unsold and in flux to finished and published. And I need to change this bad habit of not even starting my blog entries until long after midnight. If I can make that last, simple change, maybe some of the other stuff will start to get better, too - or at least my perception of it.

Karen

Ashes

I remember that I am but dust

Okay, maybe I'm not quite that depressed. But that sentiment is part of the Ash Wednesday mass: "The Lord remembers that we are but dust," (sung repeatedly during Psalm 103) and, at the imposition of ashes, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I'll be fifty years old in a few weeks, but I haven't really been thinking about mortality this day. I'm too caught up in my depression over where I am right now, what happened last Friday and what I'm going to do about it. I need to shake the brooding and move on, move into Lent and the reflection about becoming the Karen God wants me to be, the Karen who is most useful, neither self-destructive nor self-pitying, giving but not in ways that encourage misbehavior, forgiving but not a pushover, moving forward instead of being stuck in old habits and past sorrows. The good news of the day is that Father Smith and a few others will take it from here on the church directory; I'm off the hook for that obligation now that they have my 106 photos to work with. And my dad's birthday was today, and he seems to be doing great as usual at age 80-something. He can't remember ever having his birthday on Ash Wednesday before, and played hooky from church to go out to dinner with Ruth and two other birthday couples. Sounds good to me! Meanwhile, for those who worry, let me reassure you I got almost 11 hours of sleep last night. The alarm didn't go off! When I awoke, I was helping to outsmart the odious (Principal Snyderesque) principal of a magical school. Ah, well. Back to the real world!

Karen

Ash Wednesday Evangelism by Lauren F. Winner (excerpt from Girl Meets God)