Sick and Sad

I finally got a job, started it, was doing well enough to be offered extra hours and -- after I accepted the etra hours, I got sick. I went to the Emergency Room and got medicines and went back to work for those extra hour days.
Not the best plan, but I had said I would do it, so I did it.
But by the time the time was done, I was dragging, and went to the doctor.
Who put me off work for the next five days.

Who gets sick like that? Babies? Old people?
I am neither, although I often feel very, very old.
Being widowed, losing my caretaker role, being unemployed (maybe unemployable) are all aging factors.

Being free of caretaking, being employed, I hope will be freeing. Will restore some youth, some joy, some energy.

So, I got sick.
Boo!

Seems to be a family thing going on. A curse upon our house, or something bad written in the heavens. A  curse upon us!

One sister had bleeding issues back at Thanksgiving and ended up with a hysterectomy in April.
She is doing much better these days -- even has energy to take walks for fun.

Another sister, more recently, fell and hurt her back. It has just come to light that she actually broke a bone in her back. She's still walking and stuff, although it's been painful for her -- but the broken bone isn't even the cause of her pain and discomfort!
She is, ever so slowly getting better.

Bronchitis, even the ever-lasting kind, looks like a walk in the park (for fun) after those experiences.

I'll get better, too.

After all, it's in the stars.

The Working World: adapted from Facebook post.

I hate the job.
I hate the hours.
I hate the work.
I have to see straight lines and color variations. I can do neither of those things under the best of circumstances. And they make me wear safety glasses over my glasses -- y'all can maybe guess how exactly helpful it is to have an extra lens over your lenses when already your vision cannot be corrected to 20/20.

Plus my feet hurt, and my back twists (not as part of the job) I have muscle spasms in my back, in my butt, in my fingers. Comfy shoes are against the rules. We must wear steel toed shoes. They aren't too uncomfortable, but 12 hours and concrete floors are hard, even if I were walking on air.
My hips feel as if they are going to just pop out of their sockets, and that scares me.
I spend my breaks in the bathroom so I can just take off my shoes.




I really wish I didn't have to wear the safety glasses. That extra lens has my vision all discombobulated. But they don't have the side pieces to slip onto glasses, and it's unacceptable to buy my own and wear them. I asked.

Of course, two days doesn't equal a fair chance, so I will be going back tomorrow as I'm scheduled to, but I have to tell you -- it's really really hard, and really really painful. I hope/wish they would find me another job. there's too much waiting on the next person or the last person on the job I am doing. It would be much easier if I could stay steady busy.

But I'll keep trying. Who will come and roll me to the car when mu legs won't support me as I roll out of bed one fine morning? I wish we were having the blizzard. But too much rest may be just as bad, so maybe I'll just roll out in the morning and roll on in

The Job Search

Who ever knew that finding a job, any job, would be so difficult? I may as well be hunting for unicorns or the Loch Ness Monster. If I were doing the latter, I could probably get sponsors and a budget.

I never completely dropped out of the job search. I regularly would put in applications, and there are a few online places that, if they used paper, could paper a room with my monthly re-apps. But while Rex was alive, he was my priority. Although he was not, until the last few months, so bad he couldn't be left, he was edgy and fitful about any work I might find -- not wanting irregular hours and preferring no driving at night, and all sorts of impossible conditions in a tight job market. Plus having to work around his Dr appointments and the days when he couldn't be left. (Of course, he thought he could; he'd be all right. He'd just not eat or drink until someone came home again.)

Anyway, I never completely quit looking, but I wasn't aggressive about it, either.

Well for not quite three weeks, I have been aggressive.
The result has been the same -- I remain unemployed..

I am surprised. I don't want any executive type position.
I don't want a specialist position.
I don't want a licensed position.
I don't want a certified position.
I just want a job, any job. I will be there, on time if not early. Any time, day, night, or in between. Overnight. Back when I was working, that would have been a bonus. Someone to be depended on. They were treasures, the Old Reliables.

I want to be an Old Reliable.

There have been a few -- very few -- interviews.
I believe the "Old" may be the problem. No on wants Old.
Combine it with fat, and youthful hirers see only Losers.
Darned kids don't know anything, do they? Every company family needs a Mom (or Gramma). Every company family needs an anchor, someone that can be called and can be counted on to be there.

It's winter now. I think there may be some learning this hard lesson as weather keeps the inexperienced at home.

But will it be in time for them to hire me?
They can only hope so.

News from the bucket list

There's another story in the news about someone skydiving and checking it off their "Bucket List."http://www.local12.com/news/local/story/Two-Local-Paraplegics-Skydive-From-13-500-Feet/edn9aifvi0ylJxOHi28BHw.cspx


If the media is to be  believed, every person on earth has an overwhelming desire to plummet to earth. News, movies, songs.

I just don't get it. I never will, so don't bother explaining. It's something I truly do not wish to understand. If the epitome of your life is to do something expensive and foolhardy, then I'm not sure I know you at all. Or want to.

I blame the media for a lot of this foolishness. Some 97 year old woman, once upon a time, fulfilled her lifelong desire to jump from an airplane, and the story was an immediate hit.
This was probably in 1934, when airplanes and 97 year old women were rarely paired. There was no instant news, no sharing everywhere, and only her friends knew, even after word got out.

In those days, skydiving was news.
97 year olds were news.

Nowadays, there are skydiving clubs around every city, and 97 is peppy if elderly. Neither item is news.

But, for some reason, this is consistently treated as "NEWS."

You want to know about bucket lists?
Visit a nursing home.
Visit the oncology floor in the local city hospital.
Heck, visit a veterinarian, where pets are freed from pain as loving companions linger near.

None of these people are mourning the fact that they didn't get to jump out of sn airplane.
None of them are regretting that they never jumped from an airplane.
None of them see that as a legacy to be treasured in any sense.

There's a saying about nobody having his tombstone engraved with "I wish I had worked more"
No one has asked that be put in his obituary.
I'm pretty sure no one has engraved, "I wish I had jumped from an airplane."
I'm pretty sure no one has put NOT-skydiving in a loved one's obituary

Please stop treating this as a legitimate news story.
It isn't.

I am my Appliances.

I have to say, there seems to be something to the idea that household appliances last ten years before they need replaced. I've finally owned major appliances, purchased new, that have lasted ten years. And, true to statistics, they have started to break down.

My dryer makes a horrible noise. I don't know if it works at all or not (the drum will turn sometimes), because that very strange, very loud noise makes me afraid to find out. I don't want the thing to explode, after all. Or catch on fire. Or put out power for the whole town. Anyway, that's the dryer.

Then the heating element in my oven went out. This has happened before, and isn't really a big deal, except that it happened. It's frustrating. Last night, one of my burners caught on fire. It's a burner I've used infrequently but regularly, and there was no reason for it to ignite. It was not on high heat. Scorched and burned one of my brand new beautiful red pans, too.

That leaves the refrigerator and the washer. The washer has had problems for a long time. Nothing major, nothing unexplainable, nothing impossible. It cleans my clothes, as long as the necessary adjustments are made.
Haven't had too many problems with the fridge. It wants to freeze everything on the top shelf, or nor quite freeze things in the freezer, and there's a shelf in the freezer that is at the wrong level and it wont come out. But other than that, it cools on. (I hope I'm not jinxing it by talking about it.)

This all reminds me, strongly, of what happened to my body once I turned forty. I started having accidents like stepping in a hole and falling up stairs and smacking the back of my hand into bread racks. After the accidents, the remnants -- the places that I had injured -- just started aching, often for no reason.

But, like my appliances, I'm still here.
I'm still doing my job(s).
There have to be adjustments, there has to be timing, and things may be done differently. But the jobs can be done or got around.

We'll all  work on until completely dead, and even that may not be "The End".

We (me and my appliances) can be harvested for parts when our usefulness as ourselves is over.
That's a nice thought.