Correspondence File: 2/15/09

Dear Large Companies Posting Jobs on Monster:

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am overjoyed in this terrible recession economy that you have so much as POSTED a job. These are troubled times. I am troubled. You are troubled and the news tells us that everything is going to hell faster than we can imagine and our representatives in Capitol Hill don't have a clue and are losing their grip on the handbasket. But let's look past that, shall we?

I have a favor to ask: Please don't make me submit my resume and cover letter through your bullshit, bug-ridden employment software. I upload and it auto-fills everything wrong. I cut and paste and painstakingly reformat, and then the goddamn site crashes and I lose everything. Even in these troubled times, if your posting says apply only using our online system, I say Go Fuck Yourself.

I've been sitting here for three days doing this and your site has crashed 17 times. You may attract patient candidates that way, but none of them will have the wherewithal to open a can of corporate whup ass (when necessary, or slightly indicated) the way I do.

I Need to Have Standards, But Don't Hold Me To It,
Salome

I've applied for a few more jobs, and today was a good searching day, in that the available jobs looked interesting. I read the job postings and I thought, Yeah I'd LIKE to do that! Of course, I would have to give up my current job of being suckled on and barfed on and peed on, which would strip me of the benefits of baby smiles, baby laughter and that feeling of a sleeping baby in your arms, but still, some of this stuff I can not only do, but I actually kind of want to.

I am debating on whether or not to post an honest birth story post. I've invited a few more people to read this heretofore anonymous blog (which was being furiously ignored by everyone except four of my friends) and it is making me think twice about writing what I feel like writing. Like gross analogies and swear words.

But do you think Pat Conroy ever dithered about and didn't write something? I think not. He published Beach Music, did he not? I'll give it a shot. I could always remember that there is a save as draft button, so I don't need to vomit words and immediately share them with the internet. Probably won't but could happen.

Resuming

I have sent out six resumes in the last few days.  I am starting to really worry here about how we will provide for our daughter.  There is nothing, and I mean, NOTHING out there for my husband at the moment.  

There are a ton of property management jobs, but I read the job descriptions and it makes me want to reach for the bourbon.  Commercial property management can be so incredibly high stress, and I become such a crappy person, all jangled nerves and irritation.  And believe me, added stress to my already irritable nature does horrific things.  I don't have much patience anyway, but under duress I actually have negative patience, sucking the calm out of those around me.  I even can stress the Pope out, and he's well, pretty mellow, all things considered.  

Besides which, if I go to work, I will miss the opportunity to throw this on the kid and take pictures:  

Ooh, that reminds me:  I have moved the computer.  After nearly 5 months of cramming my brain into a too small space, next to the refrigerator and sharing space with the home phone, I have spread out on my old desk, which has been in our bedroom holding cat fur and dirty clothes for the above referenced 5 months.  

This is a look at what you'll see in the background from now on.  In various states of cleanliness and general upkeep:

Ps, I wore that shirt two days in a row and she threw up on me each day.  I forgot from one day to the next.  Tonight, when I realized it, I changed into clean pajamas.  We've done the cry it out method and she is actually going to sleep in her crib and staying there, asleep!  

I miss her.

You know, I really need to get more interesting.  I have just sufficiently bored myself.  I'm going to go wander the house while I wait for my baby to wake up so I can hold her.

New Parent Smackdown

While things are getting clearer, and we're both getting more comfortable in our abilities with the baby, I still find that the clocks in the house blitz through the hours, and each night I'm stunned to realize it is night, and the world is again asleep.

I am suffering from some insomnia, made all the more harsh for the early hours my daughter wakes up.  Luckily my husband will take her at any hour, even very very early hours.  He does so with no protest, and talks to her so lovingly that it melts my heart.  

Breastfeeding has not gone well.  We supplement with formula and even though I am thankful for some extra hours of sleep or freedom that this affords, I just opened a box and found breastmilk bags in the bottom, items I will never need, because I do not make enough breastmilk to have any extra to store.  My throat closed up and the tears started.  I can't control the surge of shame and disappointment I feel when my failure as a functioning woman is revealed to me in tiny ways throughout the day.  

I will be sending resumes out tomorrow, and I am devastated.  What if I get a job, and have to take it??? Because I would have to take it.  I didn't want to return to work this early, not when she is learning something new every day, and not when I still have a glimmer of being able to give her some benefit of breastmilk, however little I can.  Once I go back to work, there is just no way.  She is two months old next week, which seems so old but is really so little.  In that odd paradoxical way that babies get so big and yet remain so tiny and unbelievable.

I just remembered that a urine soaked diaper fell facedown on the floor by her changing table, so I'll go clean that up.  

Then I'll go to bed so I can lie there, unable to sleep, wired by the joy and the hurt and the worry and the love that shakes my mind awake.