Thornton Strikes Again

My hands are trembling (with fury) as I write this – sitting on the couch this evening trolling the online classifieds I was deep in thought when all of a sudden a black flare exploded onto my laptop keyboard knocking it straight out of my hands.

Helpless, I watched the case close and spin, as if in slow motion, and grabbed only air in a futile attempt to break its fall.

HP – I hardly knew ye.

And Justin Jason at the Democratic National Convention - today alone your cat Thornton broke 2 glasses and a cup and spilled an entire glass of milk on my kitchen floor. Oh and yea, did I mention he tries to trip me every chance he gets.

Obama Stealth Cat - Thornton

This cat is trying to kill me.

I just thought you should know that if he succeeds that is one less vote for Obama.

I am going to slink back to my hiatus which now includes a damaged laptop (update repaired) as well as unemployment, loneliness, depression and heartache.

Give me a V! shaped recession

Why I am praying for an V-shaped recession

Future DIL, who is smart as a whip and who works in the banking industry, and I were discussing sub prime lending, the foreclosure crisis and the economy. She argued, and I agree with her, that sub prime lending is not the cause of the current foreclosure crisis. Unemployment is. The fact of the matter is, no matter what ridiculous interest rate you are paying, if you have a job you pay your bills. The folks that are going under these days are not your typical credit risks. That is not to say that sub prime lending isn’t predatory or just plain awful, it simply is one part of a very complex picture.

She directed me to Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis; I urge you to check it out for a readable analysis of current financial trends. You need to understand to work for meaningful change.

Now for Five Husbands (back) Story Hour

The L word as in Law, Long and Protracted and Lost

I graduated from law school in 1990. The world wide recession that began with black Monday in 1987 had, by then, taken firm hold in the USA.

The catch phrase from that year was “I wish I could help you” as in when my torts professor told me that the days were gone when he could pick up a phone and get a promising young law student a job. I think he was telling the truth, that he couldn’t help me find a job because of the recession, but I have my doubts. This was the self same professor known not so affectionately as “high C Cohen” because of his predilection for giving otherwise high achieving students C’s. He gave Five Husbands, then known as Two Husbands, a C in torts.

It was a devastating blow.

I was a single mother divorced from a seriously abusive alcoholic who never paid a dime of child support. My first year of law school, the year of the “high C,” I was working full time in my previous career, attending law school and raising my boy. This involved juggling work and driving interminable miles to take Son. No. 1 to his Nanny’s so I could study.

Until that time if you had asked me about sleep, I would have told you it is a take it or leave it kind of thing, but after I started law school, sleep took on the élan of a clandestine affair. I dreamed of sleep when I wasn’t sleeping, I yearned for it, I would have sold my soul for a full night of it. I went without it though, because I wanted to be a big firm lawyer. I was driven.

I loved law school; I loved the study of it, the cameraderie and the intellectual challenge. I loved the education, but my decision to go was fueled by a desire for economic security. I thought a law degree would insure a good life for me and my boy. Turns out my C in torts and the L shaped recession decided otherwise.

I graduated with honors, but not summa cum laude, which was necessary, given my choice no choice of a mid-tier law school, to garner big firm offers. Aggravating my employment situation was my new marriage to Husband No. 3 and pregnancy with Son. No. 2, both of which coincided with my third year interviews.

If you think they don’t ask the questions they are not allowed to ask you are just plain wrong – I was asked whether I planned on having more children, and even though I did not disclose my pregnancy, I didn’t get any offers.

Graduation passed. Son No. 2was born and the Gulf War was starting. There I was an honors graduate, newly admitted to the bar, with a a beautiful bouncing baby boy and Son No. 1 who hoped the long hard years of mommy always being busy were over. Husband No. 3 wanted me to work, after all I had the credentials, but there were no jobs, good or otherwise. A fellow law graduate was delivering my newspaper – it was that bleak.

After about 10 months of Husband No. 3 doggedly asking every other lawyer he knew if they had a job for me, I found work. And it was work – I toiled in a windowless office day and night for fifteen dollars an hour. My boss was an old school lawyer who told everyone I worked “part time” because he afforded me the flexibility to stay home when my baby was sick.

I billed 2600 hours of part time for him that first year.

My first job dictated my second job and each job thereafter. For me, and for many of the folks I graduated with, the experience of that recession has had a long term effect on earnings and employment stability. So today, as a I do piecemeal work for other lawyers who are fortunate enough to have stable practices, for an hourly rate not much more than what I earned all those years ago in my first job, I hope that the experts are right and that this is a V shaped recession.

But, but truth be told, I feel like I have been living an L one since 1987.

Deus ex machina

But we also need the possibility of cataclysm, so that, when situations seem hopeless, and beyond the power of any natural force to amend, we may still anticipate salvation from a messiah, a conquering hero, a deus ex machina, or some other agent with power to fracture the unsupportable and institute the unobtainable.

Stephen Jay Gould, Questioning the Millennium

I wake from dreaming of disappointment to begin anther day searching for work. In moments of optimism I look for meaningful work; work that would challenge my mind and heart and support my family. Most days I look for anything that fits. I read article after article on the best way to search; I read story after story on how to stay focused and positive during the months years it can take to find a new mid-life job. I draft what I believe to be good cover letters, tweak my resume and send them off into the ether directed to nameless email addresses (no phone calls please is de rigueur) or fill in legthy online forms and press send. Occasionally I get a thrum of hope; very occasionally.

Meanwhile, resources are drying up. Dollars are dear, I look for quarters in the seat cushions. I factor in my head how long I can survive without income. Shampoo, toilet paper, laundry detergent achieve luxury item status. Talking with friends becomes a chore. Normal banter about going to see or do, or going out to eat or making plans for the future makes my heart pound and my mouth dry. “How are you doing?” I choke out “Fine, I’m good.”

There is no way I can say what my life feels like at this moment. All the fine words and thoughts and feelings I used to be able to express so easily turn to ash when I try to speak.

I try to explain to my mother how this feels; she tells me she knows. When I was an infant, my brothers 18 months and 6 years old and my father in the mental hospital she tells me they had to go to the Red Cross for help. Memories of childhood despair flood my already depressed brain. I remember this. Even from infancy, I remember. I remember my mom’s sadness, my parent’s voices arguing at night, the way the relatives looked at us, the way my mom mixed instant milk with real milk to make it last longer. I remember the plastic taste of government cheese and feel of never enough and never enough.

Work hard; don’t want to much. Don’t be too happy. Don’t expect too much. Why didn’t I listen? Except for the hard working part I never got it. I wanted to be happy; I expected love to be returned and hard work rewarded. For decades, in spite of spectacular disappointments, I still believed.

It is only now, after Five, that my brain and my heart say no more. Don’t want to much. Don’t be too happy. Don’t expect to much.

Time Moves On, Things Change

It seems a lifetime ago that I watched my mom agonize over the decision to put her mom in a nursing home. Today my mom is the one in a nursing home. She fell over a week ago and fractured her pelvis. Since she has severe osteoporosis, she is not a candidate for surgery and must simply wait for the fractures to heal. She cannot walk, or stand, so she is either in bed or the wheel chair with short periods of physical therapy.My mom is a fighter. Not a knock down, drag em’ out kind of fighter, rather a lay low and let it flow kind of fighter. Being in a nursing home is hard though, and I wonder if she can lay low enough to survive the hundreds of little indignities she will have to endure before she can return home.

I visited her just hours after she was transported by ambulance to the “rehab center.” I walked in and was assailed with unmistakable smell and sounds of a nursing home. Most rooms were dark with tiny forms under white blankets. It was only 9:30 PM. I made my way to my mom’s room. She was in bed and they had removed her teeth so she looked, for want of a better word, awful.

My mom is a night owl; she didn’t want to be in bed at 9:30PM. She was happy to see me but embarrassed about the teeth thing. She was in pretty good spirits but had already slipped into the role of a good nursing home patient.

She referred to herself as “we” and the staff as “they.” It was necessary to refer to the staff that way since no one, please read that carefully, NO ONE, took the time to introduce themselves to her or to me. She had been there a few hours when she finally gave into her need to use the bedpan. She pushed the call button, we heard it ring in the hall, but no one responded. We waited and waited and waited. After 10 minutes or so I went into the hall and flagged down a nurse. A few minutes later someone came in to assist. I stepped out into the hall to give my mom privacy.

It was interesting, there were nurses and other staff in the hall, but no one would made eye contact with me. They seemed to make a point of not talking to anyone except other employees. I left that night about 11:30 PM. It was hard to leave her there.

Here is the difficult thing – I live 75 miles from the nursing home. I am between jobs so I have all the time in the world to spend with my mom, but for one thing, the price of gasoline. Even with my economy car, one tank is approximately 2 1/2 trips. Last week the cost to fill my tank was $40.00. This makes for a very hard choice – food or gasoline?