From Wit’s End

A couple months ago, I got a first interview with an aviation hydraulics company, but didn’t get a second interview because of a hiring freeze.

Today, I found out that I won’t even get a first interview at a military contractor because of a hiring freeze.

Despite this bad news, I’m in a fairly good mood. Because now I know for sure that the fact that I haven’t gotten out of this weird career situation I’m in is not anything that I can control. That’s something that I intellectually knew, but I hadn’t really felt until now.

It’s quite a relief.

Oh, and can we blame the members of a certain political party for bad-mouthing the private jet industry and planning to slash the military budget of the United States?

Can we blame this certain political party’s union thug supporters for the fact that for the foreseeable future I will be working for a company that supplies parts to two automotive companies that are going bankrupt and will probably be outright nationalized?

Why, yes. YES, WE CAN.

Job search heartbreak of the day: A recruiter called me today…

“I’ve got good news and horrible news… The good news is that the company that interviewed you by phone earlier this week liked you and wants to set up a second interview with you on site. The horrible news is that just as they were making arrangements to do so, their corporate executives handed down a company-wide hiring freeze.”

Would it be too petty of me to blame the socialist-democrats directly for demonizing certain industries in the news recently???

This was my first day back to work after Nora was born. I went to an associate’s desk to catch up, and he asked me if I had heard about the All Hands meeting that was held the other day. Another one? Yep. This one outlined the NAFTA-wide austerity measures that the corporation will be rolling out starting March 1st:

• an across the board 5% cut in pay for everyone,
• a termination of 401k matching for the rest of the year,
• and the company is telling everyone when to take their vacation days. If one’s PTO gets used up, then the mandatory days off will be unpaid leave.

So that was nice to hear on my first day back. I was kind of thankful that I had only come in for a half day.

In the afternoon, I drove Rachel and Baby Nora to Baby Nora’s first doctor’s appointment. Jack fell asleep in the car, of course. Instead of wake him up, I carried his entire car seat into the doctor’s office, propped it back against the wall with some seat cushions, and let him sleep comfortably while I filled out Baby Nora’s doctor paperwork, fiddled around on my iPhone, and generally tried to not reel from the bad news of the morning. I pulled my health insurance card out of my wallet so that the office assistant could make a copy of it, and then stuck it in my pocket when they gave it back. Jack slept the whole time Rachel and Nora were with the doctor, and also while I carried him back to the car. He only just stirred as I was pulling out of the medical center parking garage.

When we came home we all assumed our newly-typical positions. Rachel nursed Nora on the couch, Jack was playing in his room, and I sat down to the computer. I think I may have thought about buying something online, but when I felt for my wallet, it wasn’t there. I got a little frantic, and after a while Rachel called the doctor’s office. They hadn’t seen a wallet. When it occurred to me that I could possibly have dropped it in the parking garage somehow, I decided to drive back to the medical park (Yes, without my driver’s license. I did the speed limit the whole way.) I checked the parking garage floor, walked into the doctor’s office, searched to no avail, and the office lady called the medical park security officer, and I filed a report with her. I went home feeling pretty bad (but still doing the speed limit), and I decided there was nothing else to do but cancel all my cards and figure out how to get a new driver’s license. Thankfully, there is a DMV office open in Lexington on Saturday, and my Mom offered to drive me over there the next and take Jack with so that Rachel could feed Nora undisturbed.

So yes, it was a pretty bad day.

We woke up to gloomy rain coming from the sky and doomy news coming from the radio this morning. Jack is almost potty trained, but not quite, and managed to sol his underwear this morning. Poopy.

I came home at lunch to pick up something and found a nice dogpile that Katdog left in the kitchen. Poopy.

I got home from work in the evening, and Rachel told me that Jack had gotten his pants dirty two more times that afternoon. Poopy.

Trying to help out a little bit after dinner, I advanced the laundry from hamper to washer and another load from washer to dryer. When I pulled the laundry out of the dryer at about ten o’clock, I found brown streaks all over the clothes and the inside of the dryer. Poopy?

It turns out that when I had moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer, some of it fell on the floor. When I picked it up to put it in the dryer, I accidentally picked up a pair of Jack’s soiled pants that Rachel had hurriedly left there in the afternoon. Poopy!

I told Rachel about it, and we figured out what happened. She graciously offered to clean out the dryer with bleach water, and I reloaded the spoiked laundry back into the washer with an extra soak cycle. We finally got to turn out the lights at eleven o’clock. I can’t say for sure, but hopefully tomorrow won’t be quite so… Poopy.

…and they will return to you. Wouldn’t you know it, I woke up with a sore throat again this morning. I gave my cold to Rachel and Jack, and one or the other of them mutated it for me and gave it right back to me. It’s going to be another rough week, I guess.

Well, it looks like Rachel and Jack got the cold that I got over about a week ago. And Jack just started teething, too, which is making feeding him interesting. He’s hungry, but it probably hurts to swallow sometimes, so things go pretty slowly about half the time, with much wailing and gnashing of … um … gums. We’ll make it, I guess.

To counter-balance the bad news, I’ll put up some pictures and a video or two this week, barring any paranoically-foreseen circumstances. (I’m feeling slightly better about things, having put away a certain amount of provisions against hardship. Whatever happens, I’ll definitely feel better on the 23rd, I’m pretty sure. Yeeesh.)

I got some kind of chest cold last weekend, and it’s been with me all week long. Heartburn, a sore throat, and a wicked cough were on tap for me this week. And it set off my asthma pretty badly, too. So I was “addicted” to Albuterol and Advair all week. And the propellant in the Albuterol gives me headaches when I take it all the time. And I’ve only been getting 6-7 hours of sleep every night.

I went to the Young Men’s Bible Study held at the church by Dr. Ferguson and Duff James on Tuesday morning, and since it was for young men, I brought Jack. They’re going to be skimming through Proverbs, and the first one this past Tuesday was pretty good. It was supposed to end at 7:45, but it went a little long.

So i was running a little late to “Aunt Ellie’s” house to drop off Jack, and I got pulled over and given a ticket for going 38mph in a 25mph zone. She gave me a break and made it out for just a little more than half the maximum (Probably because I had Jack and was trying to get him to Ellie’s) But I was pretty late for work.

Speaking of work, someone from our team is moving on to another job in about a week, and I’m taking over most of his duties after he leaves. So in my aforementioned condition I had to try to absorb a lot of information this week with only limited success.

All this, and Mercy has been relieving herself on the livingroom rug all week, probably out of jealousy of Jack.

So yeah, it has been a hard week. But today is being particularly nice to me to make up for it. I’m feeling a little bit like I’ve turned the corner on my cold — I think the Zinc lozenges I bought on Thursday evening helped in that respect. And it’s raining softly outside, so I don’t have to mow the lawn until later. And Rachel made muffins with blackberry filling and fried eggs for breakfast. And my music is playing, and it looks like I might have time today to buy a new pair of slacks, and/or try the video capture box I bought a few weeks ago, and/or continue to catalog my coin collection.

It may be going crazy out there, and the world may or may not be about to irrevokably change, but there’s a cool breeze blowing outside in the middle of August in South Carolina, and that’s a miracle. And if one miracle can happen, why not another? And if miracles can happen, then Love exists. And if Love exists, then everything is going to be all right eventually.

Zonkered. Dead Tired. Running on Fumes. Plumb tuckered out.

It’s been a fairly bad week. For some reason, even though Jack is sleeping about six hours a night, something about our sleeping pattern this week has drained me of all my gumption. It’s been all I could do to keep from slipping into a coma at work this week. My boss noticed, and I told him that I would try to do better. I guess we’ll see.

Rachel has been having mild contractions since about 6:30 this evening. It’s been really hard for her to get comfortable, because of her kidney infection. She’s been alternating positions all night so far, and not able to get much rest. Please pray that her infection would be healed in Jesus’ name, so that she can have the strength for Jack’s delivery. The nurses are saying that this isn’t quite real labor yet, because she hasn’t dilated past 3cm yet.

So we haven’t actually been moved into a Labor & Delivery room yet, but we are on the Maternity Ward. Feel free to leave a comment on any of these posts if you would like to send us an encouraging message.

Today being New Year’s Day, I stayed up until midnight the night before. I woke up at 6:30am to get to the church in time to be an usher for the first service from twenty minutes before the service up through the pastor’s welcome. While the pastor welcomed the congregation to the service, I slipped to the back of the church, changed into my choir robe, and ascended into the choir loft for the rest of the service. After the first service, the choir director asked if I could stay for the second service. I reluctantly said yes, and went to Sunday School, despairing of rest on the Sabbath, of all times. I stayed for the whole of Sunday school, as I usually do, instead of leaving early, as those who sing for the second service are encouraged to do. Because I did this, the director said I probably shouldn’t sing after all, because I didn’t get to practice the anthem or warm up before either service. Some part of my brain felt guilty for getting out of additional choir duties, and the other part of my brain was glad for the same reason. I drove home, crashed on my bed, and slept for three hours. There is something wrong about having to deal with so much harried activity and guilt on the Lord’s Day. I will be doing this for the rest of the month — that is, ushering and choiring in the same service — for the rest of the month. I’ll do it, but afterwards, I think something is going to have to give.

We were up in DC today, and on the way to church, i rear-ended some bloke at a traffic light. A combination of following too closely, wet roads, and possibly even cultural driving differences led to a bashed-out right headlight on my side and a busted rear bumper on his side.

I was approaching an intersection on Main Street in Fairfax and another car was in front of me. The light had turned yellow, and the car in front of me stopped as the yellow light ripened to red. I blinked and didn’t put on the brakes hard enough, I guess, and Rachel made a noise of alarm as i slammed down and swerved as much as i could into the left lane. Our corners still bashed together, and i sat there vexed and stunned. The other guy pulled into the entrance of the housing development to our right, and i did the same. Sometime while i was doing this, Rachel said, “Oh Ben, i wasn’t wearing my seltbelt!” I put the car in park and noticed with amazement the spider in the upper right part of the windshield that Rachel had made. We got out of the car, and i asked the other guy if he was okay. He said he was okay, as i saw that the left end of his bumper had come loose.

A guy and his wife were standing on the sidewalk and he offered the use of his PDA cellphone to call 911, which i did. I called Mom on my own cellphone next, but had to ring off as the police officer drove up. The policeman took everybody’s legal documents, gave us each a small information form to fill out, and while he sat in his cruiser processing those things, all i could do was hang my head and wish that I could start this day over.

The police officer sent off the other guy, and then talked to us about tickets he wrote us: one for me for “Failing to maintain proper control of vehicle”, and one for Rachel for “failing to wear a seltbelt”. His grasp of the finer points of traffic law and friendly voice was strangely comforting to me. We got directions to the nearest hospital, and after he drove off, talked to my parents again, who said that they would meet us after church at the Fairfax hospital. We had decided to take Rachel to the emergency room since she had bounced around a little more than she should have.

I drove the few block to the hospital with my emergency blinkers on, dropped Rachel off at the entrance and parked in one of the lots. We waited the first of many interminable amounts of time in the room of the same name, and then got called back. The more time passed, the better she felt, and the worse she felt about coming in at all. Practically speaking though, i said, she was in a car accident without a seatbelt, so it was only right that she get checked out. We both had our own regrets to ponder as we waited through those hours together. My parents made contact, and came through the curtain with a “knock, knock”, and we split up to do more useful things: Mom waited with Rachel, and Dad and i walked out to the parking lot to assess the damage and report it to the insurance company.

My parents had graciously offered us the use of their car to drive back home to Carolina that day whenever we were done with our self-inflicted tour of the urgent medical bureacracy. So while i called in the car accident to the insurance company, dad switched the baggages of the two cars. After this was done, we went back in to wait with Rachel and Mom.

The doctor came in, and kicked my parents and I out into the waiting room. The Steelers/Redskins game was on the TV, and I had my book, but the wait was pretty maddening. All told, it took us about five and a half hours to get out the doors. We were all frustrated, but relieved that Rachel was okay.

Rachel and I followed my folks to the body shop, and I parked my Corolla, filled out a form and put the key in the envelope, and slipped it through the slot in the door.

We went back to the condo for turkey sandwiches, hugs, and sendoffs. We left Arlington around 6pm. The traffic was pretty awful for the first hour or so coming out of the DC area. Given the events of the day, I was extremely careful to follow that rule taought to all of us when we first learned to drive: for every 10 miles per hour, stay that many carlengths behind the car in front of the car in front of you. And my adherence to the rule did actually come in useful a few times.

We landed on our driveway around 1:30am, accomplishing a sort of mirror image of how we left Columbia. All this and work the next day, too.

And I’m glad it’s over.

1. Rachel was out of town for business training from Sunday night through Wednesday.
2. The tiresome and fake showboating in Boston this week.
3. This is the last week before my infusion, and i’ve been feeling kind of yucky.
4. gapless budget + end of the month = harrowing Thursday

But…

1. I only had to be at work for half a day today,
2. I received that aforemention infusion of grace this afternoon,
3. i managed to hit all three of the Office Depot locations in town today,
4. We both got paid today,
5. and It’s Friday!

So life is good.

Last night and tonight Rachel’s sister Jennifer, her housemate Susan and her housemate’s dog Jessie are staying over due to hardwood floor refinishing going on at her housemate’s house.  I am currently the only male in the house out of seven living beings (one man, three women and three dogs).  Some notes on the experience:

As we were getting ready for bed in our room last night, Rachel listened to all the activity going on outside and commented that it was like living in a girl’s dorm.  This gave me a small but not unpleasant artificial feeling that I was getting away with something…

When we woke up this morning Rachel told me that she had an unpleasant dream last night that she was only one of my many concubines.  The irreverent part of my mind recalled our hospitality situation of these two days, and i laughed and told her, “Don’t worry, you’ll always be my favorite concubine!”  She only partially appreciated that…

Everybody had a bad day today.  Rachel had her annual performance review at work today, harrowing under any circumstances; Susan’s loaner car broke down downtown (her actual car having broken down in the middle of a cross-country July4th vacation), my day at work was a little empty and boring, and Jennifer, being empathetic, was having a bad day because everyone else was having a bad day.

For my wife’s sake primarily, I was on my best behavior.  I made dinner, did the dishes, delivered the tissue box, and tried to help everyone feel at home.  At one moment, when everyone was at the diningroom table commiserating, I walked in with the glass snack-cube, saying: “It is my decree as head of the house that everyone who had a bad day today must eat at least one chocolate-covered nut.”  This was met with general approval and kudos for Rachel from our guests for training me so well.

This afternoon, we both left work a little early to get a head start on our road trip up to Virginia. We set off around 4:30pm with the dogs in the back seat, and took a particular route (I-26W to I-81N) that Rachel’s Dad said was only five minutes different than the one that we usually take (I-77N to I-81S).

Well, it was a comedy of delays this way, and every decision I made seemed to stretch out the time on the road. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Hendersonville, NC, and the Lady at the door told us that there was a 20 minute wait. I thought we could eat sooner than that by just eating somewhere further up the highway. But less than a mile further up the highway, it was full-stop bumper-to-bumper, and it took a while to get to the next exit. Then I figured that I had a hankering for Pizza, so we decided to follow the signs for Pizza Hut, which was three miles from the exit ramp. Then when we got there, we saw that there was all these little tykes and their parents running around having an end-of-season party for their soccer team. We were both hungry enough to settle in anyway, but it was a while till the pie was put on our table.

All told, it took about 6.5 hours what usually takes five. It wasn’t the first time for the weekend that we were on the road longer than we thought we would be.