The 2010 unemployment garden - a raised bed built from fencing remnants and something I had been meaning to do for….hmmm…5 years. Pretty much since we moved in. I’ve been gardening in planters on the patio, and still have a bunch of plants and herbs there, but finally branched out into growing from seed. Building the garden, tending to the seedlings and now to the plants has been one of the most satisfying parts of unemployment.
I had an odd tumblr-related dream last night, which was odd mostly because no one follows my little shitty musings, and I only follow a handful of people whose tumblrs made me sign up for one in the first place and who I don’t know in the least bit.
Anyways, in my dream (and in life!?) everyone on tumblr knew each other and used the site like a second facebook in which you only friend/follow people who you know now, from a career-related place, instead of, like, family members and 2nd grade school classmates that you had been eager to escape knowing back when you actually knew them And there I was, on the outside of this. Some weird chick that doesn’t even live in NYC kind of peeping in on all this interaction.
And the interaction seemed to be focused primarily on a type bracelet that came in a set and seemed pretty simple - just kind of beaded with pretty everyday common place beads- bigger than seed beads, and a little more irregular, but less sharp and chunky than those coral types of beads or puka shell kinds of beads. The bracelets came in a set of 5 different colors and all everyone could do was talk about some aspect of the bracelets. The feel of the bracelets, how they jingled just a tiny bit when you walked down the street, and most importantly, how they helped you write. Like, made the whole process just so easy and almost thoughtless, and everyone congratulated each other on being this young, new york-y writer/media set, part of the generation who had discovered how to make writing easy.
Perhaps I’ve got just the slightest bit of hostility there. Hmm.
It’s officially been 6 weeks that I’ve been unemployed. In that time I’ve gotten on unemployment, almost kicked off of unemployment, been reluctantly reinstated, taken up yoga, quit smoking and oh, yeah, maybe (probably?) gotten pregnant. Also watched a lot more reality television than anyone of sane mind and/or body should cop to.
So the pregnancy thing. At this point, I’m just way too nervous to even consider a pregnancy test, and am hoping that my utter exhaustion is due to weird weather patterns and my pets waking me up super early this morning, for some reason that they have declined to share. I figure I’ll know soon enough, right? These things have a way of revealing themselves and I am far too self-analytical to be like on of those women on TLC who just kept buying bigger sweatpants and figuring that they’re dying of some strange liver cancer or something until the intern in the ER pulls a baby from them. Like I said, too much reality tv.
I kind of feel that the worst part of this whole pregnancy thing, or the part that seem the hardest to me from the outset, because if I’m not pregnant now, I probably will be soon - my partner’s long-dormant biological clock has started ticking really loudly and he is going to be 38 in a month, and I think he’s counting on a baby to be on his ‘things I did that were good’ list for personal review on his 40th birthday - is the telling people about it. I’m both a hopeless sucker for positive attention and really, really shy. I have a pathological fear of asking too much from people, of being needy, of asking for help, of attracting too much attention or for the wrong things. I have a problem coming up with facebook status updates that don’t come off smug or weird or judgey or lame. I’d much prefer that people just magically sense my needs and desires and recognize those things that aren’t uncomfortable or weird or icky in a tasteful, subtle way. Because that’s healthier.
I mean, I think a good reason that my aforementioned partner and I aren’t technically legally married is that it seems to invoke a great deal of telling people something that feels like a decidedly private choice. I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed and although I totally appreciate how many people felt like it was a tour through someone else’s first-world high-class neurotic crazy, it also felt a lot like a tour through my head. But for me, it’s kind of the telling people about it that makes it all icky. And the asking people to travel long distances to come and stand in a crappy Florida courtroom to witness something that feels so personal and vaguely embarassing. Kind of like asking your family to come and attend your doctor’s office for a pap smear.
Anyways, while walking the dog in the crazy windstorm today, I was busy working myself up into quite a lather at the prospect of talking to all these people about my sex and home life and the fact that yeah, we kind of chose now as a great and perfect time to have a baby despite the fact that I, as the family’s main breadwinner, am unemployed, and it kind of seems absolutely insane in this economic and political climate, and I’m sure so many, many people are just aching to hire a pregnant woman out of the many unemployed in this recession not to mention that finding a job in my field in this sleepy town may be impossible and we’ll likely have to move cross-country or to a new country for me to be able to find a suitable ‘next career step’ kind of job and oh shit, if I’m pregnant I have to tell my yoga teacher because maybe I did some weird pose that fucks up a fetus although it probably doesn’t matter because I haven’t been taking folic acid so the fetus’ neural tubes or whatever are probably already fucked. It was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Then my neighbor, Miss Verda, a home-daycare operator and neighborhood watchdog and grandmother came out and started talking to me about various tidbits and goings-on on the street and my mind just….stopped. I think that’s what they talk about when they talk about grace. Or at least it was good enough for me today.
Oh Sean, baby. I think I like you.
So. I quit smoking about a week ago.
We spent this past weekend in Lauderdale by the Sea, a sad, paved collection of vaguely refurbished low-rise mid-century motels and desolately empty low-rise bubble-era spanish style condos. The beach bars were playing Jane Says. I guess a kite-boarder had been eaten by a Great White about 40 miles to the north of where we were staying, so people were mostly staying away from the water.
Something about the other occupants of our motel - leathery snowbirds drinking from red Solo cups from sun up to sundown (we never saw anyone else after sundown, despite sitting out on our ‘deck’ which faced the center court of the motel) stole the desire to smoke from me. I guess that was my snobbish way of refusing to find even a smidge of addictive commonality with them. That and I really didn’t want to share an ashtray with them for the weekend and wind up having to play cards, or whatever it is you do with drunken older motel co-occupants before the sun goes down. They seemed to be either sitting and watching the ocean or glaring at the kids playing in the pool.
Driving back Sunday night, Tex had a panic attack while driving over a bridge around the Ft Myers area and I had to take over the driving while he chainsmoked the entire way home. Then I just didn’t smoke again. It’s now Thursday. I didn’t really mean to quit, but I will be so pissed with myself if I start smoking again now. I mean, the first few days is supposed to be the hardest, and I’m not going to have it get any harder than it currently is.
it’s the small things. like free fucking yogurt.
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Why has every yogurt I’ve bought in the last few weeks been grainy? Greek yogurt, organic yogurt, small container, larger container, non-fat, 2%….it’s all been the same. Is there some giant USA-yogurt conspiracy going on? The only good thing about store-bought yogurt is that it doesn’t have the tendency towards grainy-ness that homemade yogurt almost invariably does. This better not be a sign from the universe that it’s time to go full-hippie and throw off the shackles of the yogurt-industrial complex, because I’m just fragile enough right now to pay attention.
