I didn't get either job

I had two interviews "out there" with no information. I found out that I didn't get either one. The help desk job for the very big law firm was arranged through a headhunter. Apparently, my discussion of the stressful nature of help desk jobs, meant to indicate that I had experience at the work and that I knew what I was in for, and wanted the job anyway, was interpreted differently by the interviewer. And the job in Gretna went to somebody else, but apparently I came in second.

Like Vegas Joe says, maybe I just talked myself out of them.

On the upside, I went to the library and got a Tai Chi video and a book. I bought some two books and a video from Amazon, which is always fun. And only seven days after I turned in the Rx, my insurance company agreed to pay for medicine prescribed by my MD that will hopefully keep me from thinking about what to write in my suicide note. I took the first dose this evening.

What I bought from Amazon: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Tai Chi,Ten Days to Self-Esteem, a cognitive behavioral therapy workbook recommended by my therapist, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season One, for the little boy. Really!

Tai Chi

I took my first Tai Chi class tonight. It was interesting, and I think it will be useful. DH asked if it was fun. I told him I don't think that's the right word, but interesting and useful will be good. The instructor is a minute Oriental woman, lithe as a cat and strong. The class of a dozen people came in all shapes and ages. Most of us were beginners. I received a flyer about Tai Chi in the park, being held once a month between now and the end of the year. Free, which is just my style. I think that will be fun. I would love to be one of those people who does Tai Chi in the park at lunchtime every day.

My MD prescribed the generic form of Wellbutrin, which requires prior authorization from my insurance company. The pharmacy has called twice to tell me the Rx is ready, but they have not yet received approval from insurance to dispense the drug. I can pay for it myself, but it's $80. If they don't get the prior authorization within a week after dispensing, they can't refund the money. I called the MD today to see if they had faxed in the documentation yet, and the woman on the phone didn't know anything about it. I asked her to call me back and let me know what was going on, but nobody did.

It's kind of frustrating.

Last Day of Vacation

Yesterday, I drove up to my daughter's house to spend the night.  My granddaughter and grandson are doing great.   I couldn't get over how big the baby is!

Last night my daughter and SIL went out for an hour after the kids were asleep.  About 30 minutes after they left, granddaughter woke up.  Since DD had said that once granddaughter was asleep, she wouldn't wake up until morning, we hadn't discussed any details:  where are the diapers?  Where are her extra clothes?  Where are her wipes?  Fortunately, she wasn't wet or dirty, just restless.  She fell asleep with me bouncing her on my knee, but every time I tried to stand up to put her back to bed, she woke up.  So I just sat in the comfy chair until DD and SIL came home.  Fortunately, they have a remote!

This afternoon, I was helping around the house to get ready for guests.  I made my grandson's bed.  He watched and coached.  After I got it all made, he said, "Let's do it again!"  He then ripped all the blankets and pillows off the bed.  I thought that this was a game I wasn't interested in playing, so the bed stayed unmade.  He didn't seem to mind.

Granddaughter's baptism was lovely.  Mass was very nice.  The baptism was between the Homily and the Offertory, during Mass, rather than before or after.  I thought this was a nice touch.  The baptism was not only as a sacrament, but a welcome to the community.

I took communion, because I can (I received my First Communion when I was seven, and am a very ecumenical sort of Mormon).  I was holding my granddaughter, and when I went to the front, the woman passing communion put her hand on her head and said "Bless you."  I was taken aback by how much this affected me...a woman, acting as a representative of Christ, blessing my granddaughter.

I go back home tomorrow.  It was a nice visit, but I'm glad to be going home.

My interview and my flight

My interview was brief. The company is located in Gretna, on the West Bank. It's actually not a lot farther from home than the CBD, and the location is just cute as can be, in a lovely building. They have interviewed many people who want to do just one of the three things they need done. I can do all three of those things. They will make a decision by Friday. I'm not holding my breath.

The job was originally advertised as part-time or full-time, but was described as full-time. I didn't want to give the impression that I'm not interested in full-time work, so I did not ask what had happened to the part-time option.

My flight from Gulfport to Atlanta, on a propeller plane, was longer than my flight from Atlanta to Columbus, which was not on a propeller plane. It was also much louder.

I had an aisle seat on the Columbus leg. Before the plane took off, every time somebody walked back toward my section, I closed my eyes and chanted silently "please don't be in the middle seat, please don't be in the middle seat." I chatted briefly with a pleasant young man sitting by the window, explaining to him my methodology for keeping the middle seat empty. He joined me, and our combined psychic energy influenced the seating gods in our favor.

Interview Today

I have an interview today for a job that sounds really good. I e-mailed them my resume yesterday at 12:52 and they called at 1:25 to set up an interview. Since I'm going to be out of town for a few days, I set it up for today. This is probably just a screening interview; she is only allowing 25-30 minutes. So, I will have just 10-15 minutes (tops) to be low-key, yet dazzling.

DH produced a spontaneous "you look good!" today, which earned him a very large kiss before we left the house. He almost never compliments me on my appearance without prompting, which is one of his few faults. I have, on a couple of occasions, reminded him of Heinlein's statement: "Frequently tell your wife how beautiful she is...especially if she isn't."

My flight leaves at 4:00 p.m. today. I'm flying out of Gulfport, which is a much more accessible airport for us than New Orleans. We live across Lake Pontchartrain about 35 miles east of the city, and the airport is in Kenner, about 20 miles (or so) west of the city. Gulfport is also about 40 miles away, but it's mostly through Mississippi bayou...hardly ever any traffic. It was worth the $30 extra airfare to fly from there.

I will be back home on Sunday. I'm so excited to see my daughter...and my grandkids!

Road trip (again)

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon to visit my daughter and my parents in Ohio. My granddaughter is being baptized on Saturday evening. She was three months old yesterday. As my friend Craig said, "Wow, the age of accountability is a lot lower in Ohio!"

I haven't seen her, or my grandson, in a couple of months, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I saw a therapist last night, and I see an MD today. I'm feeling better than I did this weekend, but I'm not going to just ride that along.

Depression

I came out of my most recent depressive episode, sort of, during the recent Hurricane Ivan activities. I was just too worried and apprehensive and busy to have the luxury of being depressed. The first day or more after getting back, I was in a mild state of euphoria brought about by the relief of finding my house intact, my kitchen clean, water and power available, and the air conditioning in working order. Whew!

But now that's worn off, and I'm back where I was a week ago. That is, with lots of negative scripts running through my head, and wishing I was dead.

I had an appointment with a therapist scheduled for last Thursday, but I cancelled it because I was evacuating. I will try to reschedule something for as soon as I can.

Efforts at positive thinking and self-exhortations to "snap out of it, woman" have been fruitless. I'm sure this is mostly situational, but I can't see the situation changing unless I can get over this sense of hopelessness. Hopefully a few weeks of talk therapy (and maybe some meds) will help.

I'm Home

Meridian turned out to be not such a smart evacuation point. Maybe I would not be thinking that if Hurricane Ivan had hit about 100 miles west of where it actually made landfall. Or maybe I would. Being a hurricane novice, I was not really aware that being on the northeast side of a hurricane is Bad. Meridian had high winds and rain last night. The power went out at 5:00 a.m. A building in the historic area of downtown collapsed. Turns out Ivan's eye, while still a Category One hurricane, passed within about 80 miles of where we were staying.

I phoned Older Son's roommate's parents for details about things here at home. They are neighbors, and they stayed put during the storm. J. (roommate's mom) told me that there were no problems locally at all. While we ate cereal in our hotel room, we listened to Mississippi Public Radio for storm news. When the MEMA folks said people from Hancock County (the county next to my parish) were free to go home, we cancelled our last night at the hotel and started packing.

It was really windy and rainy for the first fifty or sixty miles on the way home. Once again, traffic was moving really well. There was a lot of leaf debris on the freeway, and a couple of fallen trees. About Hattiesburg, we started seeing pieces of blue sky peeking out from the clouds.

Everything was fine here at home. There are some twigs and small branches down, but we have power, sunny skies, and pleasant temps with low humidity. I think Ivan sucked all the moisture out of the air.

An Oral Account of an Ivan Evacuee

Last Written Entry for a Few Days

I'm shutting the computer off and sticking it in a closet. We're all packed and ready to go. We're going to have a quick supper, and then we're out of here.

Wish us luck.

Running Away from Home, Part II

This morning, DH made a final Walmart run. He was surprised to find that it is not busy at all.

We cleaned up any debris outside that could turn in to flying projectiles. We cut some large branches off a tree that looked like they might want to go through our roof. The branches are now in smaller pieces and stored in our garage, which has a leafy smell.

I removed all the screens from the windows. It seemed like it might be a good idea - if they are in the house, they will not blow away and become flying projectiles.

We are going to put plastic sheeting over the only thing in the house that we really treasure and can't take with us - our bed, which my DH made when we moved here from solid cherry.

Little boy is trashing the family room. This is making me anxious.

We are probably going to go quickly through the list of things yet to do, eat some lunch, and leave today instead of tomorrow. I've exchanged phone numbers with our neighbors, who are also leaving.

If any potential looters are reading my blog, don't get any ideas. Many of my neighbors are staying put, and this is a gun-happy crowd we're talking about here. I'm not much of a gun fan, but I'm happy for law-abiding citizens who are NOT emotionally unstable to be able to protect themselves and their property from scum who would take advantage of a natural disaster to enrich themselves at others' expense.

I will audio blog from the road as I get a chance.

More about local campaigns, and running away from home

In an earlier post, I wrote about a phone conversation with a worker for a local candidate for City Court Judge. Saturday, I got a brochure from another candidate. It was very different from the other brochures I've read. She actually talks about her work experience that qualifies her for the position - seven years as public defender for the exact same court.

What a concept. Instead of talking about how she's pro-life (how will that affect a court that is 80% juvenile criminal cases?) and pro-marriage (ditto) she talks about her experience and strong, positive working relationships with the people on the staff. Here's a quote: "I am the only candidate that can win the election on Saturday and report to work on Monday without missing a beat."

Maybe I'll call her campaign office and see if they want me to put up a yard sign.

In other news, we are almost all packed up and ready to run away from Hurricane Ivan it's a category five, heading into the channel between Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula. The prophets at the NHC can't really say where it's headed beyond the next 24 hours or less. We've booked a room in Meridian, far enough inland that we won't be bothered by hurricane-force winds or storm surge. We probably won't leave until Wednesday a.m., if we go at all. It just depends on what the Hurricane does later today and tomorrow.

I was pretty frightened this morning. DH and I have both told Little Boy that he doesn't need to be afraid, and so he's not. Oh, to be five again! But then I e-mailed my pal R., a long-time resident, and he told me that they're getting ready to go, too. That had a very calming effect on me. Thanks, bud. You rock.

Houseguests good and bad

My older son is coming for a short visit. I'm so excited to see him again. I normally don't cook on Saturday, but today I'm making his favorite, Chicken Stuff (I use sour cream instead of mayo & lemon juice, and skip the cream of chicken soup, and serve it over rice). That way, I'll be sure he'll be home for at least 15 minutes at some time today. Maybe there's something good on HBO he'll want to watch tonight.

The other houseguests are not so pleasant. They're kind of gross. OK, they're really gross. Cockroaches. Since we thoroughly cleaned the kitchen and dining room a few months ago, and put poison and traps in the space between the laundry room floor and the garage floor, they are a lot fewer and further between. Yankees (like me) associate cockroaches with filth. Well, that's just not so, here in the deep South. If you have a mild winter, like last one, the suckers never get killed off. It takes a hard freeze to reduce the populations, I think, and we haven't had one of those since 2002-2003. So even the cleanest of houses will get occasional invaders.

DH is the designated cockroach destroyer. A couple of times, just hollering his name, he has thought one of us was severely injured. So, we've changed our call. When we see a cockroach, we just yell "Cockroach!" And then he comes and kills it.

That was an unpleasantly common event in the spring. By early summer, it had pretty much dwindled to once or twice a month. But I was reminded of it again when one went crawling across the dining room floor.

Do you suppose they are opening the pet door in the garage, and getting in that way?

Local Campaigning

There is an election for City Judge this Saturday, and I think there are literally a dozen or more guys (mostly guys) running. I got a campaign phone call about ten days ago. Here's how it went. My mental responses in italics.

Hello, I'm calling on behalf of John Wells, running for City Court Judge in Slidell. John Wells is a former Navy Commander

That's nice.

who has been a licensed attorney in Louisiana since 1995.

That's nice, too.

He's married to Janice Burton, and he and his wife are active in Marriage Encounter.

That's very nice. It's good that people want to do things to make their marriage stronger. I think those are Roman Catholic buzzwords, which a Catholic would understand to mean, "He's Catholic," but I could be wrong, and besides, I don't really care what religion he is.

He's in favor of mandatory military-style bootcamps to teach discipline to youthful offenders

Uh-oh.

He's strongly pro-life

Uh-oh.

and favors a defense of marriage amendment to the Constitution.

Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh!

Will you vote for John Wells for City Court Judge?

I responded, aloud: "Based on the information you've just provided me, most certainly not."

Probably not the result the caller expected - or a typical response to that sort of candidate information in conservative St. Tammany Parish.

First Trip to the Dentist

Little boy had his first trip to the dentist today. I was not allowed in during the exam, so that the dental folk could build a rapport with him. He apparently never figured out that going to the dentist is supposed to be unpleasant.

My favorite artifact from the dentist's office (which I didn't get to keep, but will ask for when he gets another in three years) is the panoramic x-ray. Being a little boy, he has little teeth, with lots of bigger ones that are perfectly developed and exactly right in number, waiting to emerge in the next few years. Too cool for words.

The dentist's advice:

1. Floss between the back teeth that are real close together. Check the other teeth, too, in case they start getting close together.
2. Brush his teeth when he's in bed, so I can get to his back teeth at a good angle. That's also when I should floss.
3. Teach him how to spit. I thought this was funny. Apparently, he has trouble with the mechanics of spitting, and it's a Bad Thing to swallow too much fluoride toothpaste. So, I have to teach my refined little boy how to spit. Sounds like fun!

The blessings are just pouring in

Our beater car just died. The engine shows no signs of containing any oil. Clanking noises and smoke from the engine. I think it was fatal.

Sometimes it's good not to get what we want

I had some friends from Ohio come through on their way to Florida. They were taking the long way around. When we had originally talked about them coming, two weeks before, I was glad they were coming through. I hadn't yet met their kids, and we have plenty of room.

But I have been in a funk the last few days. When they called Wednesday night to tell me they would be here Thursday, I was secretly Not Glad. I didn't want to see anyone. I didn't want anyone to come over. I wanted to be left alone.

It was good that they came. We had a nice visit. We went into the city, and took the Lafayette Cemetery Tour run by Save Our Cemeteries, which I often do with tourist visitors because it's a change of pace from the Quarter and fine for kids. We had lunch at a little corner restaurant in the Garden District. It was good to get out. It was good to be with people. They left for the Florida Panhandle this afternoon.

I'm in a much better frame of mind than I was before they got here. I'm glad I didn't get what I wanted.

Unpleasant Experience at the Grocery Store

I went grocery shopping this afternoon. After checking out, the cashier asked me, "Are you over 55?"

I just stood there, mouth agape, speechless. After a minute or so I said, "What?"

She repeated, "Are you over 55?"

I started slowly shaking my head. I started to tear up. She said, "You don't look it, but I have to ask. It's Senior Citizen's Day, and everybody over 55 gets 5% off."

I said, "Well, thanks a lot. I'm going to go home and cry for a while now." And I did.

For the record, I'm 44. I have a couple of wrinkles between my eyebrows, and my smile lines are getting more and more permanent. My hair is about 50% gray.