Well, lots has happened. After over a year of me being jobless and every two months or so being late with the rent, I had finally been asked to move out of my apartment. Not an eviction, no legal action, just a ‘get out now before I kick you out’ type of thing. And on only 8 days’ notice. What could I do? I had to move in with Mom or James and his Dad. James had had enough of working for the two of us (understandably) and was stressing internally about our situation, while being determined to make mountains out of our molehill business when he was working 11 hour days. Ugh. I told him I would keep trying to find a job (a daily, round-the-clock activity I had been doing since last August) and told him to start talking to me about his problems/fears/stresses/etc. and stop internalizing everything, because cartharsis and stress is what burned my dad out.
In any case, I moved back to my old room in Newport, back at the house I grew up in. Sometimes it’s nifty to be close to mom and my sis and her hubby but most times it’s dispicable. Not that I can be too picky. I literally was very close to asking to move in with a friend and her 3 year old daughter. Or it was off to the shelter. Glad I didn’t move in with her. Only because what an inconvenience for her. She already lives in a cramped place and has lots of stuff.
*Sigh* being virtually jobless for sooo long sucks. I finally got the balls to get through alot of interviews and there was a week or two where I thought for sure I’d get an offer or two, I was so anxious I could barely sleep. There is a problem with me. I get so comfortable with the notion that someone might actually offer me a cushy design job, even though I don’t have any kind of experience or degree. Then I get all jerky and twitchy about going on interviews and then have 6 or 8 of them and by my 3rd one it’s old hat and I’ve got no hesitation just up and going on another. Then when I’ve done 4 more I’m like, OKAY someone just shoot me or toss me a paper hat and broom and I’ll clean the mensroom at Burger King. Whatever. Things like this make me crazy. After 2 weeks of this, I got a hair up my ass and went to three temp agencies in one day. I was desperate. I begrudge the shit out of temp agencies just because most of the ones I’ve registered with in the past are just occupied by overpaid bullshit artists armed with Palm Pilots and matching plastic personalities who waste 3 hours of your time by having you fill out endless piles of paperwork, take 4 million tests on the computer (the same ones you already memorized the answers for at Temp Agency X), and be interviewed by someone who just graduated high school the year before and somehow looks and acts like she’s fresh from a year at a Wall Street firm and makes you feel like an old frump.
Then one day a lady at Temp Agency S calls and says she’s got this great assignment for me. It’s executive assistant to a bigwig in the creative department at the corporate office for a huge discount store (not going to namedrop but its the company that uses a bulls eye for its logo) and she says it’s a contract position BUT it’s fifteen dollars an hour and after a trial they are hoping to fill it, most likely whomever does the temp work will be offered the job. Needless to say, I was pretty geeked and took the assigment without hesitation. When I got there no one is waiting for me in the lobby for me as I’m told, I had to go through about 3 security checkpoints like it was fucking Star Trek Voyager for chrissakes. Then, after Big Bubba security guard slaps a visitor badge on me and I go on a seemingly endless walk through corridor upon corridor to find the correct elevator bank, I finally get up to the correct floor (one of the upper ones). Talk about posh. No expense spared. Red, painfully cute, round circular chairs covered with exotic, plushy fabric. Nifty and bright retro-style lighting fixtures poking out from pine wood walls washed in red paint. Striking artwork from recent ads plastered all over the walls, and 6, count them, SIX round video screens on which silent but flashy tv ads for the company loop back and forth. I get to the corner office and am introduced to what looked like a cross between Mary Tyler Moore and Barbie. The chick who I was to report to. Not the big wig but the one who has kissed the big wig’s ass for the last 10 years. She stood pert’near six foot and had a huge noggin, on which obviously she used one of Homer Simpson’s fateful inventions. She had the kind of arching eyebrows that imply that perma-surprise “YOU’RE KIDDING ME!” look and long black hair a’la Clairol #55 which was also then flat-ironed stick straight. The woman had a total ‘manufactured’ look about her that made me nervous and well, grossed out. Grossed out because, being a dark haired girl, she also had the unfortunate curse of being extra hairy. The hairs on her arms were so long they looked as though they had been wound around and around and I was sort of tuning her out and about to tell her about Nads hair removal stuff, when she offered forth a plastic smile and they told me the position had been filled. “But the good news is,” she chimed cheerily, was I was to “sit in for the week and 2 days which we really do need you for,” until the new, permanent chick started. Well yay for HER. The new permanent chick can kiss my ass. She even has a stupid prissy name, Chrissy Ann or something like that. Whatever. The amazon manufactured hairy ape woman, who has a hyphenated last name that reeks of obnoxiousness, winks at me and then shows me around the office and the rest is a daze. It’s about all I can remember. I do remember the last day’s ride home on the bus.
*SIGH* Well perhaps things are looking up. I start yet another temp assignment tomorrow (one that might be better suited to me) and I’ll be there through until the 1st part of October but it’s only three days a week. Have been on interviews here and there and whatnot. We’ll see.
cap closeup