It's All About Knowing What You Want

Back in June, when my 6 month contract with Thomson Reuters ended, I found myself facing the frightening fate that a lot of people around the country are facing right now. I found myself unemployed, and that was pretty nerve wracking. On top of that, Jason's long term subbing ended and he found himself unemployed as well. It was less terrifying for us than for a lot of other people, because we had savings to live off of and I was getting unemployment, but the word "Job" was a the top of the priority list. Jason got a temp job with Domino Farms, and that helped a little, but I knew that I really needed to get a job. And then I did. I took a job in August with a company that offered me more money than I've ever made, and suddenly money wasn't as big a worry, which felt better. And yet, it also felt like a failure. I had several interviews for teaching jobs, and nothing came from any of them. Sure, I had a job, but it wasn't doing what I really want to do.

Now, after working in my new cubicle job, doing the thing that's making me a lot more money than I've ever made, I find myself wanting nothing more than to walk into a classroom and take over teaching a bunch of kids. And, it's becoming more and more painfully obvious that the more time I spend in the cubicle, the more likely it is that I won't ever get into that classroom. It's pretty heart breaking. What's worse is that I may be forced to choose between my family and my job. I've said all along that I don't want to pack up and move somewhere out of state just so that I can have a job, I don't want to leave my family, my friends, my niece and nephew, or my life that I've built here. As hard as it is not to be doing the job I've wanted to do for years, I can't say that I lead a bad life. I lead a really beautiful life. I don't want to leave it. So now I have to decide whether I want to be happy in my job, or happy in my personal life, and I have to wonder if the two are really separate entities. Right now I know that living in Ohio for the majority of my week, sitting alone in a hotel room, living out of a suitcase, that's not the life I want. And the travel is temporary, but the feeling I have about being stuck in that cubicle every day isn't. I can't work with my drama students anymore, and I find myself talking about them constantly while at work. I find myself missing those kids almost as much as I miss my family when I'm out of town. I miss the excitement I see in them every time I'm up there, and I even miss the things they do that drive me insane.

When taking all of this into consideration, I have to say the thing I have the hardest time dealing with is hearing people who are doing what they supposedly want to do, and what they claim is their dream and their passion (and some of those people are doing exactly what I wish I could be doing every day) and complaining about it as if it's the biggest hassle, or the worst thing they're doing. I hate seeing countdowns to the weekend, or to vacations from people who claim they're doing what they love. I am definitely not doing what I love, but I don't find myself waking up on Monday and starting the countdown to Friday. Sure, everyone has a bad week every now and again, but some people do this constantly and I sometimes want to say "Then quit and do something else!" When it's people who are teaching, I want to shake them and tell them there are a lot of people out there like me who want to do what they're doing so if they're so miserable, so give it to someone who really wants it. I think that the one thing I've learned from all of my work experiences since leaving my student teaching is that I know exactly what I want and I know exactly where I want to be. I just wish I knew how to get there. But, it doesn't mean I'll stop trying.

Memories For Sale

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have an obsession with seeing the inside of other people's houses. To be honest, it was the most exciting part of house hunting for me. And this doesn't apply to the houses of people I know, just to the houses of complete strangers. There was an episode of the show "Dead Like Me" where George, the main character, talked about how she always loved Halloween because it meant seeing inside the houses of strange people and I practically jumped off the couch and shouted "THAT'S SO ME!" And, while I know it's a weird thing to enjoy, I just can't help it.

Now that our house hunt is over, I sometimes wander over to real estate websites and go through houses with photo galleries for their listings so that I can enjoy peeking inside of people's houses without feeling like a total creeper. Tonight, as I was sitting in my hotel in the middle of nowhere Ohio feeling a bit bored and lonely as the rain hammered the window of my hotel room and missing home, I decided to go clicking around to see what some other people called home. I was struck when my website search pulled up an address I recognized all too well. It was the second address I could recite from memory at three years old, the first being my own home address. My grandma's house was being sold. This isn't the first time her house has been sold, since she sold it herself years ago when she moved in with my family, but as far as I'm aware this is the first time it's been on the market since she sold it herself. Over the years, I hadn't thought too much about the place. Right after Grandma passed away I was feeling nostalgic and drove past it a few times, but the outside didn't look anything like I remembered and what I saw didn't have any of my grandma in it. The buyers had remodeled it and added on, so the outside looked completely different.

Tonight as I clicked on the photo gallery photos of the inside of the house, I was a little shaken. Where the outside didn't look anything like my childhood memories, aside from the large pine tree they left in the front yard, the inside is more like my memories than I ever expected. Despite the remodel, they kept a lot of the inside the same. They kept the vintage door casings, and the front door into the mud room is original to the house. The kitchen has new cabinets and countertops, but the layout is the same and I could see myself standing next to my grandma at the stove waiting to take pretzels out of the oven early in the morning when I was about 9 years old. I think they turned grandma's bedroom into the family room, and I found myself wondering if they left the wall and doorways between the kitchen and the now dining room where my cousins and siblings and I spent hours running in circles between the rooms chasing each other.

Suddenly, as I was looking at the photos, I felt like I just didn't want anyone living in that house where I had so many memories. I found myself wondering if the laundry chute was still there, and if it still went to the strange cage-like contraption in the basement. I wondered if any other children had locked a sibling in that cage and thrown things down the chute at them like we used to do to my brother. I looked at the back porch, which had been turned into a sun room and remembered how grandma used to hang wind chimes out there. I wondered if the basement was still damp and a little creepy. I wondered if they were as perplexed as everyone else was when it came to figuring out what to do with the nook in the dining room that used to hold the organ that my grandmother owned but didn't really know how to play. I wondered what they had done to the upstairs, which there were not photos of, where my mom used to sleep when she was growing up. I wondered if they kept the built in dressers that used to fascinate me when I was little. And, among all of this wondering, I found it sad that someone else would live there. Someone who was not related to me, who could not look through the pictures and share any memories with me. I never thought about this when grandma sold the place originally, because she was still around and my memories were not tied to her home. Now that she's gone, I am sad. I hope a new family is able to make their own memories there, and that they can look back at their time there and laugh like I do, or share stories with each other like my cousins and sisters and I have done over and over again. I also found myself sort of wanting to call the agent and schedule a viewing, just so I could walk through it one last time.

So with that, and my nostalgia fresh in my mind, I leave you with some photos of my grandma's house as it is now. Not as I remember it, but hopefully as someone else is remembering it, and hopefully their memories are as fond as mine.

No, I'm Not Offended By a Little Girl With a Foul Mouth

Last week Jason and I got the movie "Kick-Ass" in the mail from Netflix and watched it. I had heard a lot of people mentioning that I was going to be blown away by Hit-Girl in the movie, so I put it into the DVD player and sat on my sofa eagerly anticipating the impending carnage. I wasn't disappointed, since about ten minutes in there was a scene with poor little Mindy, who would become Hit-Girl, being shot in the chest by her dad so she could feel how a kevlar vest works. That was a bit disturbing, but also kind of funny.

As I watched the film, I did something I usually do and started looking up the trivia on IMDB to find out extra tidbits about what I'm watching. Overwhelmingly, I came across info about people throwing a fit that Hit-Girl, with her innocent girl face and cheerful smile, at a mere ten or eleven years old was spouting lines like "So you cunts want to play huh?" or "Show's over mother fuckers!" and how wholly inappropriate this was because a little girl shouldn't be saying such things. As I read this information all I could think was "Why? Why is it so wrong and inappropriate for this sweet little girl to say these things? If she were a boy, no one would be saying crap about this!" and let's face it, I'm totally right. Plus, I found myself sitting there thinking about all of the movies where girls walk around whining about losing their boyfriend, or give up their family and friends to be with some guy who might be "the one". Or the movies where girls have to be rescued by some guy because they don't have the ability to take care of themselves. Is this how girls should be in films? Why do they have to be that way? Why can't they be foul mouthed ass kickers just like their male counterparts? I love that Hit-Girl actually saved the guy's ass in this movie, multiple times. And, on top of that, I love that she did it in a skirt!

The more I think about it, the more I wonder where the balance is between what makes a strong female and what makes a girl who is helpless and depends on a man to provide for her, or take care of her. I actually made a joke the other day when I was telling Jason that I want to learn to bake pies, and I want to get all Martha Stewart-y if we host Thanksgiving this year and then I said "Jesus! When did I turn into Suzie Homemaker? I feel like I should hate myself right now!" Then I started thinking about that attitude and realized that baking and enjoying having a clean house doesn't make me some weak-willed female who needs to be taken care of. It just means that's what I like. Know what else I like? Building things. Renovating houses. Using power tools. Changing the brakes on my car. Those are the things that make me the strong female who takes care of myself. So, I guess my conclusion was that you can make pie and change your brakes and that's ok. I'm sure there are guys who do it. Just like adorable little Hit-Girl can have pigtails and wear a skirt, and do an aerial cartwheel while slitting your throat. Two sides of the same coin.

So, to all of the people who are pissed that the little girl in the purple bob wig is slitting throats and calling people fuckers, I guess I have to say that I want to know where you all were when there were teenage boys doing similar things in other movies? Why do you get mad simply because the person with the foul mouth also has a vagina? I guess you probably can't be a mommy if you swear, or if you are a hard core martial artist. Maybe it just threatens someone's warped 1950's view of what a girl should be.

But, to be honest, Hit-Girl is my freaking hero.

Finding Happiness

Tonight I was working out in our front yard removing some awful limestone that was slowly choking the life out of one of our trees while Jason was mowing the lawn and at one point I looked up at the house and thought "I love it here". That's not some narcissistic pat on the back or anything, it's just that despite all of the turmoil in my life and the uncertainty of life at the moment with no job and no current prospects, I'm still managing to find peace in my life. I know it sounds stupid, because buying a house when you know you're going to have to quit your job and you don't know when you'll be getting a new one is totally insane and generally not a good idea, but buying this house was probably the best thing we ever did. There has been nothing to this point in my life that has brought me such a sense of pride and accomplishment. Sure, my college degree is right up there in rank because I worked so hard for it, but I think the house is at the top of the list. To be honest, this whole house purchase shouldn't have worked out. It was really one of those situations where the stars just aligned in the right way, since we had such a small window of opportunity before I was going to be quitting Borders and the loan wouldn't have worked out, and there were almost no houses on the market that weren't short sales with a 3 to 6 month wait for sale approval and we got rejected for this place once while it was a short sale and it just happened to re-list RIGHT before we were at the end of the timeline we had set up for calling it quits and then the appraisal came back WAY cheaper than the asking price and we got a serious deal on the place. So, as a member of the "everything happens for a reason" club, I really feel like this was supposed to happen.

I'm sure people get tired of seeing updates about our home improvement projects, but without school in my life I sort of need something to make me feel accomplished and this fills the void. Plus, I know that everything I'm doing is going to pay off in the long run. Not just in that whole "sweat equity" way, but in the pride I'm able to take in looking around and loving where I am like I did tonight. It's little things like looking around and loving a paint color, or walking out the front door and being greeted by big pink flowers where a half dead shrub once stood. I find myself smiling unexpectedly, which I never used to do. I get excited over stupid things now, like painting night stands and I get excited every time something I work on ends up being better than it was before. I am making sure to pay attention and remember these moments, because they will probably be fleeting. At some point life will sweep me away and I will have work and the drama department will devour me and at some point I'll have kids and ballet classes to drive to and sleepovers and the time I was able to spend working outside or taking on projects will be much more limited and I'm afraid I'll miss it. So, I'm trying to pay attention and enjoy what I can right now, before stress and life sweeps me away from it. Tomorrow morning I'll probably be worrying about not having a job and possibly losing this place I love so much, and I'll be focusing on other things so I just thought that I should write this down so I can remember how happy I was to be right where I was tonight. I loved just sitting on the curb, looking at the freshly mowed lawn and the flowers blooming and I was just...happy. I want more of this. I want more of the smiling and the happiness at the little stuff, and I hope I find it. It feels nice.

An Open Letter to Small Dog Owners

Dear Small Dog Owners,

Just because your dog is small does not mean it is not a dog. This means that certain dog courtesies should be observed. So, for example, when you let your little yappy bitch dog take a crap in my front yard without cleaning it up, it is no less annoying to me than someone allowing their large St. Bernard crap in my front yard. Additionally, when you allow your bitch dog to crap on the SIDEWALK in front of my house, I am not only annoyed that you didn't clean something off of the sidewalk, I'm also pissed off that my neighbors are going to think that it's from my dogs. This is not ok, especially since I clean up after my dogs because IT'S WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO! I can guarantee you that if I let my large dog just do his thing in your yard, you'd be pretty mad and I'm sure you'd be the first one filing a complaint with the HOA about it.

Additionally, just because your dog is small does not mean it is not noisy. Leaving your yappy little annoyance out in your yard to bark incessantly at anything that moves does not make me very happy, especially since people filed complaints about my dog barking INSIDE my house. Why no one is complaining to you about your dog standing on your patio yapping away at 11:00 at night is beyond me, but apparently you get special privilege because your dog could be drop kicked across a room, whereas my dog would need to be taken out with a lot of brute force. But, again, common courtesy still applies. When people complained about my dog barking from inside my house, I decided to make sure to close all of my windows when I leave so that the noise doesn't carry well and people are far less likely to hear him barking. That's what responsible pet owners do. Owning a tiny annoyance of a dog does not give you the right to be an irresponsible pet owner.

So, to conclude, stop being an assbag. Your tiny dog is still a dog and the rules still apply. If your mutt craps in my yard again and you don't clean it up, I'm leaving a nice pile of Sam poo on your front porch. Let's see how you like it. And, if that doesn't work, I'll just let my dog eat yours.

It's not Racial Profiling, we're just harrassing Mexicans

The news has been abuzz lately with talk of the new immigration legislation passed in Arizona. Like many civil and human rights advocates, I heard about the law and went "No, that's a joke right?" except that it wasn't a joke at all. As I listened to more and more reporting in the news about this legislation, I found myself turning to Jason and saying "So, when did this become Nazi Germany? Are we going to have to start requiring all legal immigrants to wear American Flags on all of their clothing so we can tell at a glance who is legal and who isn't?" because, let's face it, this law is very much akin to laws passed to discriminate against Jews in Germany. And, for a group of people who want to call the democrats, particularly the current president, Hitler they are again doing such a good job of mimicking his policies all on their own.

But, being the sort of person I am, I listened to both sides of the debate on this issue despite the fact that I wholehartedly disagree with the other side. I was willing to listen and see if anything made sense and made me say "Ok, I see the value in that". Unfortunately, nothing did. And then a conservative told me that the talk of the law being racist was all propaganda due to Obama not explaining the law properly, and that people can only be asked for their papers if they have already committed a crime. So, I went and looked up the exact write-up of the law. Sadly, I did not find that the racism was propaganda, because the law does not state that someone can only be asked for papers if there is a crime committed. It says that they can be asked for their papers during "any lawful contact" with authorities if there is "reasonable suspicion" that the person is an illegal immigrant. So, then you have to consider what is lawful contact, but as far as I can tell "lawful contact" is an officer simply stopping you in the street. And, if the officer has "reasonable suspicion" that someone is an illegal immigrant, that automatically makes any contact with that officer lawful. So, no crime has to be committed at all. Unless you count the crime of looking like an illegal immigrant.

Which brings me to the arguement that this law will not result in racial profiling. I have no idea how that can be the case, since reasonable suspicion is most likely going to be based on how someone looks. And what does an illegal immigrant look like as opposed to a legal one? There is no way to tell based on a visual assessment, which means ANYONE who looks like they might be hispanic can be stopped, which means they are racially profiling all hispanic people. And I say hispanic because that's really who they are after. My friend Jeff is an immigrant from the UK, but I somehow doubt he would be stopped on a street in Arizona and asked for his papers because he's a white guy. I don't think anyone cares about the white guys. Heck, I don't think anyone cares about anyone but the Mexicans. So, really this law is simply racism at its finest.

And, what is really eating at me about all of this is that we're not prosecuting some of the real proponents of this problem. We get angry at illegal immigrants, who are often impoverished in their own country, for coming to this country to get jobs and do better for themselves. Basically, we're angry that they're trying to get a slice of the "American Dream" that our forefathers wanted when they immigrated to this country (because you do know we're all immigrants right? Just checking) and I can't really fault them for wanting that. I can fault corporations who bus immigrants in illegally to work for below minimum wage, being paid under the table, at their farms picking our produce, or in their meat packing plants butchering our steaks that those immigrant workers will never be able to afford to put on their own tables. One of the biggest problems with illegal immigrants is that they wouldn't be coming here if no one was hiring them. But many companies are hiring them, knowing full well they are illegal, so that the corporate fat cats can make an extra buck by underpaying the workers. And it's not like no one knows about it. A lot of companies have agreements with the immigration officers that if they allow raids to be done every few months and let a few people be deported, then the officers turn a blind eye to the company practices. But who do we punish in this situation? The immigrant workers. Not the corporate fat cats who are perpetuating the problems. This makes me very angry.

And yes, I understand that if someone wants to live in this country they should do so through the proper channels, but the fact is that they are still human beings and they still have rights as humans even if they don't have them as citizens. And why can't we just create a guest worker visa like Europe has done so that immigration doesn't matter. Someone can work here and live across the border and have no negative consequences. I think that, at the root of it all, is a deeply racist and prejudiced point of view from upper class white Americans who are afraid of becoming the minority in a country where they have held the majority for so long. So, the "Dey took our jobs" group is pissing and moaning about the immigrant workers and working to get them deported for being dirty illegal aliens, but they're not pounding on the doors of the companies who took the jobs in the first place and replaced them with cheap illegal labor. That makes a ton of sense.

So yes, I hate this law. I think it's horrid, and I think that when you give everyone a "common enemy" it makes it ok for them to be persecuted and slandered and hated by the general public because you can blame them for your problems. Then nothing is your fault, it's the fault of the enemy you have created. In this case it's the Mexicans. And that makes me wonder, what's next? Internment camps? I think that this is a case of those who forget the past being doomed to repeat it.

Consumers Report

I'm not sure when it happened. I think it might have been at some point in time when I wasn't really paying attention to what was going on in the world of retail and customer service, but at some point the whole "customer service" thing went straight out the window. I've been noticing the issue kind of snowballing for the past few years. At some point, corporate greed and the desire to make a buck outweighed the necessity to keep customers happy so that they would continue shopping with the company.

I think it really started with the shift away from accepting any returns for store credit. That was a pretty nice slap in the face for consumers who, if they're anything like me, lose receipts. Where once we could go to the store we purchased product from and return product without a receipt in exchange for a store credit, we are now left with no options at all. This has become more of a problem for me with gifts than with anything else. The solution, of course, was the gift receipt. But, if the person who purchased the gift didn't have the forethought to get a gift receipt, lost the gift receipt, or attached the wrong gift receipt to the product, then what option are you left with? You have none, and you find yourself literally suck with useless product that you don't want but can't get rid of. For me, more often than not, this happens with people purchasing DVDs for me as gifts and getting duplicates. I have a whole stack of DVDs that are unopened and useless because I got them as duplicates without gift receipts. That's awesome. I'm thinking about using them as coasters. And what I hate more is that when I tried to exchange one of them at the store it was purchased from, which I knew because the "Best Buy" sticker was still on it with just the price bit scratched off, I was told that not only could I not get an exchange for another title because I had no gift receipt, it was because they couldn't be sure I hadn't stolen the DVD in the first place. Yes, they implied that I had stolen the DVD.

So now, companies that once offered customers the ability to do an even exchange, or an exchange for greater value are allowing nothing at all. They claim it's because they were losing too much money, but I am not sure how since research showed that people who received store credits typically spent 10% over the amount of the credit when they redeemed it. I know I always did.

But it hasn't really stopped there. More and more, the customer is always wrong. This is seen in the attitudes of store employees, who want nothing to do with helping anyone unless it's absolutely necessary, and it's seen in the store policies that are now being imposed on consumers. I actually have a list of stores I don't go to because of their poor customer service and poor company policies. And, some of them have actually listened to their customers and changed the way they do business. Others have not. This past weekend, Jason and I went to Lowes to buy some paint for our upstairs bedroom. We found a color we liked, took it to the counter and said we wanted it mixed in a No VOC paint that they carry in the store. We were promptly told that they could not mix that color in anything but their store brand paint, because they had a contract with that company and could get in trouble for mixing it in another paint brand. So I said "But there are no similar colors in other brands of paint, and if you're not going to offer a no VOC option in your brand then you shouldn't limit people to getting colors mixed only in that brand". The employee looked at me like I was the world's biggest nuisance and acted like I was an idiot for wanting the other paint brand and not understanding that their contract was important. He then told me that they would lose revenue if he mixed my color in another brand of paint. I said "Well, I was going to make $100 worth of purchases today and you've just made my decision to leave the store, so you are losing revenue either way". Plus, I know that they color match anything you bring in, and you can walk into the store with a purchased paint chip deck from any paint manufacturing company and get the color mixed in any paint brand you want, so why the sudden problem with giving the customer what they want?

I think the problem is that no one cares about helping the customer or making them happy. No one says "Sure, I can take care of that for you" because store employees are simply there to stock shelves and ring up purchases, not to actually provide any real "customer service" to anyone. There is distain from most of the people I ask for help in stores. A simple question like "Do you carry cake flour?" in a grocery store where I can't find the cake flour is met with a huge sigh from the employee and a tone of incredulity that I would even consider bothering them. And I know it's not entirely the employee's fault, because sometimes the corporate structure puts too much focus on tasks and not enough on helping people, but is it such a crime to help someone when they need it? It could be said that I don't understand, I'm not doing that job, but the fact is that I have done that job. I worked retail for over 5 years, both as a sales associate and as a manager, so I know that it's possible to be nice to someone when helping them find something. I know it's possible to work a job that pays you crap (because my retail jobs certainly did that) and still be cheerful. Yes, there are people who are over the top ridiculous in their expectations, but they are not the majority.

And when it comes to things like "This is our policy" then maybe someone at the store level needs to say "This policy is unfair to the customers". I did. I still do. As a customer, when a policy in a store changes to be more hostile to the average consumer, I e-mail their corporate office and tell them what I think. More people should. And, if you don't like the policy, try not to shop there. If they're not getting your money, they're going to have to start listening.

Maybe I'm just thinking about a time when my patronage is respected instead of seen as a given, and instead of trying to keep me around using rewards programs or coupon cards, the store actually tried to keep me coming back by offering the service that many of them once did. Maybe if I could find an employee to help me in less than 10 minutes of searching, I'd remember and keep coming back. Treating me like a human being does so much more than mailing me a coupon every week. And having employees who actually know something about the store they work in and the product they sell helps too. If I go into Toys R Us and ask for a good educational toy for a 2 year old, I don't want to be taken to the games section and left standing there to fend for myself. I want someone to say "Here's what I would recommend" and actually show me some of the product. I can't remember the last time I was out shopping and had that experience. Maybe it's a thing of the past.