A Long Time

If you had told me any of this on June 11th, 2009, I would have scoffed heartily. I mean, I knew that we were in the throes of the worst economic meltdown ever, but I was sure that, with the help of members of the Albuquerque congregation, I would find a job somewhere doing something. The pay rate or the tasks expected of me were not an issue. Distance was an issue but not an insurmountable one. If I found a good enough job that required me to buy a car, I would have bought a car.

So a year went by. I was an extra on Breaking Bad for a day. I was an extra on Crash 2 for a day. I was paid a stipend for my work on White Christmas at Albuquerque Little Theatre. I worked two days on a museum exhibit for the Albuquerque Museum of History and Science.

Then I had my deep vein thrombosis - five days in the hospital, a month on oxygen - and then it was February. There were five months left in Albuquerque before we moved again. I was an extra on In Plain Sight. I was paid a stipend for my work on The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. Then in June I was able to work two days, with the company I worked for in Ocoee, Florida for nine years, doing an installation at a TV station in Albuquerque. That's it for one year.

In mid-July we came to Meadville, Pennsylvania, where the house we bought required a LOT of work. But once that work was pretty near completion, I poured on the steam to find a job.

Today I begin my new job, starting work for the first time since June of 2009. I'm a little nervous about it. Is that normal? I forget.

Thanksgiving

My boy didn't wake me up until after five this morning (yesterday it was 2:30.) I fed the kids in our new style. Before Yin died, I used to feed Remus in a separate room, to prevent him from bullying Yin out of the way and eating her food before eating his. For a couple of months we got used to feeding in the regular food dish location. Yesterday morning, Lucia (Aunt Karen calls her Pickles) came nosing around the canned food distribution operation, so I scooped out some for her. She gobbled it up, then went after Professor Lupin's dish. He cast me a wounded look and walked away. I grabbed his dish from Lucia and put it in the separate room, and here I am again with two separate feeding stations, for the opposite reason. The good part is, Lucia doesn't take very long to eat, and neither does Remus. I let the boy out and went back to bed for a few more hours.

We awoke to thundering hoofbeats. Lucia and Remus were chasing each other from one end of the house to the other, up the stairs, one end to the other up there, back down the stairs and around again. They really seem to have fun together when they are both in the mood to play.

My next gig was to get the percolator going and make breakfast - 0atmeal for her, peanut butter sammich for me - then start cleaning the kitchen. We have company coming from western Massachusetts tomorrow. Then we called and talked to my mommy and daddy in the Georgia mountains while I loaded sixteen more Lucia pictures onto my computer and posted them on Facebook.

A shower and a change of clothes got us ready to drive ten miles north to Cambridge Springs for Thanksgiving dinner at The Riverside Inn there beside the river. It was good, and somebody else cooked and cleaned up which made it even better. So now the kitties are fed for the night, and my Neal Stephenson book is calling my name.

That is what I am thankful for today.

The Whole World Is A Toy

I knew this. It has always been thus. A kitten comes into my life, and suddenly everything in the house is swatted, nudged, pounced on or bitten to see what caliber of toy it is. Lucia has swatted the floor to see if it will skitter away for chasing purposes. Furniture, windows, doors, cabinets - none of them make very good toys.

We did have one calamity this morning. Even without claws, (her previous humans had her hands ruined) she can leap up onto the high backs of our dining room chairs. Fifteen pound Professor Remus John Lupin saw her do it and tried leaping up there his own damn self. The resulting crash of the chair careening over backward scared the living crap out of all four mammals in the house early this morning.

Yes, Remus has stooped so low as to actually play with our new little girl on rare occasions. She chases him through the house, attacks his tail, and plays the chair game with him between naps. With her boundless energy and his massive bulk, I can see how walking into the house after work is going to be an adventure every day for a while.

Back To Basics

"Confessions Of A Cat Juggler" started out with stories of my cats and our cats, and kind of evolved into just an online public diary. W e e e e l l l l. . . as of an hour ago, we begin a new chapter. Her name is Lucia.

When Yin died, she left a big empty space in our lives, especially Carmen's. With Remus as our only kitty, Carmen could never have a lapfull of cat, because, for whatever reason one might conjure, Remus just doesn't like her very much. People heard about our loss, and many knew people with kittens to give away. We resisted for a while, but then last week it was time. When we went to a parishoner's birthday party last Saturday, Carmen met a woman with a kitten she had rescued at three weeks old and nursed to robust health. Problem: she and her husband are going south on a sailing adventure until spring and don't want to take ten week old Lucia along.

This afternoon they brought Lucia over, complete with food and her dish and her large complement of toys. It was obviously very hard for them to give her up, but they stayed with us for a half hour or so and were assured Lucia had entered a cat-friendly household.

Soon after they left, Remus J. Lupin came out to investigate this new arrival. Overcome with curiosity, he slowly approached this tiny little girl. She let out a growl that sounded like a foghorn, followed by a hiss, and Remus backed away. I guess she showed him!

We were hoping a kitten would knock our bratty little boy off of his high horse. I think Lucia has already done it.

YAAAAAAAY ! ! !

YAAAAAAAAY ! ! !

Sherwin called at 2:55 and offered me a job. A year and a half later.

The Limbo Rock

Today is the fourth cold and rainy day in a row, welcome to northwestern Pennsylvania. The Meadville Tribune classifieds sported zero jobs which I might conceivably fake my way into. The CWDS (Commonwealth Workforce Development System) website has had nothing that I haven't already applied for. The plastic mold assembly/cleaning entry level jobs I applied for last week have been filled, leaving the geezer high and dry. Craigslist has nothing. I even tried the Tribune's employment partner Monster again, despite repeated disappointments at that site - disappointed again. Just like last year, many places advertised UPS seasonal driver helper jobs available here, but just like last year, I jumped through hoop after hoop to the end of their gauntlet only to be informed that there are no positions open in my area. What else can I do? Go door to door in the rain begging for a job? Can you spare a dime?

Yesterday I made myself useful by getting the toilet and vanity as ready as possible for the plumber to do her/his thing and doing a little cosmetic finishing on the throne platform. Last week I did the chicken wire sculpture of my annual ox head for the Christmas play, now waiting for a half gallon of glue for the papier mache skin. I could install plastic over the outside of the french doors, trapping rain water in tight spaces until May or June, but my Spidey sense tells me that drier is better, so wait for a non-rainy day - in May or June?

Limbo. Come on, Sherwin Williams! Rescue me from limbo!

Stronger

My Friday interview with Diane at Sherwin Williams went really well, as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping to know how she thought it went by the end of the week. I told her I'd bug her Friday afternoon if I haven't heard anything by then.

Meanwhile, we hosted the UU Church of Meadville Search Committee part two Friday night - five guests for dinner. Once again, Carmen cooked! What the hell?! Anyway, they were all properly impressed with our funky house and the monstrous bookcases.

Saturday we cleaned up the place for our Sunday event while we had the chance, because we went to a 70th birthday party for a church member Saturday afternoon. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store for supplies for our Sunday event, put them away and went to the church "Dinner of Thanks" until late in the evening.

Sunday morning was the church service, which I recorded as usual, and then I walked home while Carmen met with her committee. I did some more cleaning and rearranging for our open house for everyone involved with the pledge drive. Forty people RSVPed that they were coming. We were ready for them, too. But it turned out to be a cold and rainy afternoon and evening, and only ten people showed up. The last one left at 9:30. We put the food away and crashed.

So our much-anticipated weekend has come and gone, and it didn't kill us. Did it make us stronger? I guess it did.

Today I spent pretty much the whole day washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, then Carmen called wanting to go to the Humane Society to look at kittens and cats. She didn't see any that called her name. Believe it or not, we came home empty handed! That never happens!

So now it's back to job hunting, in case Diane takes leave of her senses and hires somebody else.

A Breakthrough!

Carmen asked me to let this be known to my vast readership. I have not mentioned this before in this forum, but our boy Remus J. Lupin is my cat almost exclusively. He spurns Carmen's affections regularly, unless she has the bag of cat treats in her hand. This was not a biggie when Yin and Yang were around. She could always conjure up a lapfull of kitty. Since Yin died, Carmen has poured on the steam trying to win over this Mozzarelly Belly brat - who is, at this moment, perched on my desk, hoping to convince me that it's two hours later than it is (four thirty feeding time.) She has the electric blanket on on her side of the bed, but he sleeps on my unheated side. She tries to pet him and he runs away.

Last evening I was busy fixing supper and the boy was following me around like a puppy (our little dog Remus) so I picked him up and put him in Carmen's lap. He stayed there for a long time. So maybe her hard work is paying off. I hope so. This cat adoration is definitely a double-edged sword!

Woo Hoo

The nice lady at the local Sherwin Williams store has been too busy to look at my application and resume, therefore she did not call me yesterday as promised, therefore I called her today. Harried and hurried, she made an appointment for an interview Friday morning - my first interview since Marshalls in Albuquerque a year ago, and my fourth since leaving Massachusetts a year and a half ago. Here's hoping it leads to actual paid employment. It's part time and within walking distance, and it doesn't get any better than that!

I told the guy at Career Concepts Staffing Service that I feel like I have fourteen strikes against me, and I haven't even been up to bat. Number one: thare are always many many applicants for every job I've applied for; two: I'm the old guy they can eliminate quickly; three: I gots no eddycation past high school; four: I haven't been employed since June of '09; five: I had four employers from '05 to '09, although two of them were during a Mystic layoff; six: I've moved four times in five years, covering four states; seven: my career during the past twenty two years has been in an industry that does not exist in or near Meadville (maybe Pittsburgh?!) eight: I have "benign essential tremor" which causes my hands to shake, which I believe is perceived as a drinking problem, of which I have none (although I do drink a heavily spiked egg nog at least once every December;) nine: I have no vehicle, which was an asset in Boston but is perceived as a severe liability in Albuquerque and Meadville; ten: I am overweight, which is a consequence of a) not working and b) quitting smoking; eleven: I have applied for, probably two hundred jobs during the past year and a half, and had replies back from about six of them, which makes me angry that these companies will make me (us) jump through so many hoops to submit an application to them, but can't be bothered to call or email a notification that they've even received it! twelve: I am very disheartened by all of this, and I fear my cynicism might show. Ya think? So that's twelve. I'm sure at least two more will occur to me as soon as I publish this.

So that is why an interview is such a big deal. I hope I can go in there and calmly convince her that I have the physical and emotional durability she is looking for, even if I am an old geezer!

This Masquerade

I'm sequestered here in my office (wow, can you believe I've got my own office?!) while Carmen continues to work on her sermon for tomorrow. Good thing the clock is falling back tonight, because it's midnight. That extra hour will come in handy. Anyway, I've got, I don't know, maybe a thousand of my all time favorite songs on my computer, and headphones so I don't disturb any sermonics.

George Benson is playing - one of my top ten favorites - and once again I was gobsmacked (one of Neal Stephenson's favorite words) by a song, written by Leon Russell, I first heard by The Carpenters in the early seventies, and done very differently by Benson on his "Breezin'" album in '76. It always makes me melancholy because it was the (Carpenters) song that forced me to realize that my first love with the girl who used to live next door was - stick a fork in it - done. The line "Thoughts of leaving disappear every time I see your eyes" was the lullapalooza, because that was the thing I couldn't reconcile with the "Searching but not finding understanding anywhere" part of the situation. Being lost in a masquerade is a hard thing to face up to, but I did it and I ended it. That was the trigger for the deepest, blackest depression ever, spiraling down from April 1974 to Christmas Day 1976. Coming out of it was nothing short of miraculous. I was lying in bed, tired after working all day, and a strange feeling came over me. I didn't recognize it for a long while, but slowly it dawned on me that...I felt good! That hadn't happened in a long long time, like ten years. If I was going to make up a story to explain it, I'd say it was "This Masquerade" by Benson on the radio that snapped my head around that late December.

I consider myself something of an authority on depression. My brother was plagued with it for fifty years or so, and spent that whole time blaming our parents. I came to realize that it's a chemical thing more than anything, and the best way to fight it is to let it come and go. I spent ten years clinging to it, making it worse by succumbing to it and eating a lot of crap.

Anyway, when I hear that song it reminds me of lost love and a whole lot of lost time. I've enjoyed my life so much during the past thirty years, it makes me sad to remember the many long years of making myself miserable. I won't do that again.

Library Bound

I haven't posted in a while because I've been determined to do two time-consuming things - find a job and finish volume three of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I got the first book, "Quicksilver" for my birthday in January, 2009. I read it and "The Con-fusion" during my weeks of unemployment that January and February. "The System Of The World" I have been checking out of libraries and trying to read ever since then. While living the life of a minister's spouse, I've been vacating the minister's study (742 Chestnut Street) for whole days (such as right now,) spending many hours reading (and using the computers) at the Meadville Crawford County Library, finally arriving at the two hundred fifty page climax of the many intertwined stories last week. I checked it out on Monday night and finished it (!) yesterday, between applying for and calling about a half-dozen or so jobs within walking distance of 742 Chestnut Street.

The best looking job in a year or more is a "Sales Associate" position at the local Sherwin Williams store. The one guy who works there tried to scare me off with the strenuousness of the work, lifting cases and buckets of paint, loading the van for deliveries. He's obviously never seen me work! The manager says she'll call me on Tuesday. Fingers crossed!