They Just Use Your Mind, And They Never Give You Credit

This job thing? Not going as well as I'd hoped.

But it doesn't matter anymore, because I will no longer have it at the end of next month. Yep, that's right. As I so cleverly wrote in the cover letter I sent with my resume yesterday, my position has been eliminated. This is the nice way of saying that I've been screwed. This isn't because of anything I did or didn't do, it's just a cost-saving measure on the part of the person who hired my company to provide services (and they hired me to provide them). Gosh, that sounds slightly, I don't know, dirty? It's not actually, though I certainly feel like Julia Roberts when Richard Gere threw that money down on the table in Pretty Woman after he reminded her that she was a really just a hooker. Except I'd be happy to take the money.

From day one I felt as if no one wanted me to succeed. Not counting my direct supervisor, of course, and I'm not saying that just because she reads my blog. She hired me because she thought it would be a nice, easy job, a reward for all the crap positions I have taken in the past. It reached the point last week that an employee of the man who hired my company, someone I have to work with every day and who is supposed to take orders from me, threatened to sabatoge the place if I called his boss because he couldn't get the work done. His boss's initial response was, "Well, I wasn't there, I didn't hear him say that".

So while I'm not really thrilled to be starting over, I can't say that I'm particularly heartbroken to leave this particular place. Never in all my life have I worked with so much hostility around me, and that includes the place where I got sexually harrassed on a regular basis (I was 18, and it never occurred to me that it was wrong, as it was the way men treated me normally), and the place where I got physically threatened by people involved in an attempted murder (this was not my fault, I just happened to be the authority figure). Of course, that makes it sound like perhaps I an deluding myself regarding my ability to get along with others, but I swear I'm not. My father was a divorce lawyer, and as a child I had to learn polite ways of dealing with some of the very angry people who would call him up at home demanding he solve a child-custody dispute right then and there. "Um, I'm only eight" didn't tend to dissuade them very often. My first job was in a collection agency, and all subsequent jobs have involved customer service in one form or another. I generally get along with people that I work with. Do your job, and I don't really care what else you do, unless it's gross or something. So these last few months have been a bit of a trial.

Anyway, I sent out a resume, I will send out a few more, and I have an offer to stay with my company that I am considering. I have tried to figure out any possible way I could just stay home again, but it's too late in the season to grow all our produce in the backyard and start raising chickens, so I guess I'll keep working. Unless somebody wants to pay me to write this blog daily... trust me, you can't pay me much less than I make now.

I won't even get in to the family stuff. I am related to some complete loons, mean ones, and that's all that can really be said.

The good news is that Peanut is doing very well. Her follow-up visit to the orthopedic surgeon was positive, and he continues to be pleased with the results of her surgeries. Her speech therapist thinks she is right on track, with as many words as you would expect her to have between her signs and her vocalizations. Just when I thought I was going to have to buckle down and start teaching her to count (several of the kids in her playgroup can, and one kid could sing the alphabet song at 20 months), she started counting the blocks in the stack she made (7--that's as high as she can reach). She has a stander* that she is in each day for 20 minutes or so, and she's getting stronger each time. I started taking her to swim lessons, and while she's terrified of the instructor, a very nice man from San Antonio with a long black ponytail, she is loving the water. I wish we could get out and see her friends more, but we'll work that out soon, I hope.

So how are you all doing?

* Not quite like hers, but it will give you the idea