The Jobless Goddess

Shit’s starting to get real. I actually worked four full days this week. Now, naturally, this would be for two different employers, hence not reaping the benefits (no, of course I”m not jealous) my coworkers have. All I know is the older I get, the more 32 hours feels like 40. I’m all like: “Yeah, I worked full-time this week.” And my daughter Cate’s like: “Wow, really? Weren’t you off Monday? I thought you did a half-day Thursday?” Whatever. It felt full time. Couple things overheard at the library last week: Really together-looking grandma comes in with a little boy who immediately goes over to the wooden trains and starts building Penn Station. Grandma busies herself by getting to know the other children.  “Hi, what’s your name?” perfect Grandma asks a little blonde-haired girl snuggled on a bean bag reading Amelia Bedelia. “Skyler Poop,” she says. L.L. Bean Grandma looks horrified and retreats over to the graphic novel area, which we all know isn’t her cup of t...

Seriously, what is my motivation? I’m pretty sure I don’t have any. Is that really possible?  I’m trying to think about what gets me jazzed and all I can come up with is a new oversized man shirt, an eight-pack of Guinness, or a day off. Apparently I’ve turned into Homer Simpson. Unfortunately, that’s not a real stretch. I wish I could at least be Marge, her hair always looks so nice. Nope. I’m much more like Homer. Don’t even get me started on donuts. I’m lucky I’m not standing at an exit ramp with a sign that says “Will work for chocolate frosting.” Sometimes it feels like I’m working for a lot less. I used to get excited when a story I wrote was printed in the newspaper. Now all I can see is that stinking comma that’s out of place or the lede the editor rewrote because my original one sucked. Thirty years and I still miss the comma before and? Sometimes I do.  This all tells me that I’ve become a woman of a “certain age,” or as Webster says: “no longer young.” The ...

Lately I’ve noticed that I lean toward working in the children’s room at the library. I have a couple of guesses regarding this. A) No one else likes it. B) I’m so bitchy that I may be a good candidate for this special place. I side with both. Working in the children’s room allows me to make certain observations, namely that there’s a great divide between children who want to listen to their parent read a story aloud and kids who ask me for laptops.  Then there’s the breastfeeding moms who manage to text while they nurse. Talk about multitasking. I can’t help but think about the little beams of cancer-causing agents going between her cellphone, her boobs, and her baby. I told you I’m bitchy.  Then there are the harried moms who couldn’t possibly put away the 4,000 toys their kids just threw all over the cute little carpet in the room. I can’t blame them. They brought 42 toddlers with them, probably doing another 14 moms a favor, and it’s all they can do to open the do...

Well, yet another dream has come true. Not only did I fulfill my lifelong ambition of being a lunch lady, now I've landed a part-time job at a library. I waited a full two weeks before telling you in case I woke up and it was gone. And, as libraries go, this one is the Ritz. It’s got pretty much every cookbook ever written and a huge DVD and blu ray collection. It’s brand-spanking new and might as well be a community center-library-coffee shop. I’ve had an uncanny stroke of luck, I know.  As with most of my fantastic experiences, I pause to posit a few drawbacks. Like I’m pretty sure all the women I work with double as yoga instructors in what little free time they could possibly have. I also put forward that they keep the air conditioning in the library at around 87 degrees, judging by my constant sweating. Then there’s the whole question of whether or not I use the composting toilets or do I take the stairs yet another time to use the conventional staff toilet downsta...

On my search for certifiable employment, I have dabbled into “real” writing, as in some people actually complete books. I know I’m capable of writing for newspapers and magazines, but what about a short story or a book or a poem or an essay? In my search (or you might call it “stalking”) for a job or an agent or an editor, I stumbled upon a website, mswishlist.com . You would think that this would help in my search for an agent for either the book I’ve completed about living with Dan and autism, or maybe it’ll give me some inspiration for the other two fiction books I’ve started. Umm, no.  There are reputable agents who post on the website. I know this because I’ve googled just about all of them. The thing is, most of the agents who post there are younger than my most recently purchased bra.  As if this isn’t enough to make my eyes water, they use all these terms that I can’t begin to understand and they seem to know what they’re talking about. “I’m searching ...

These are some tender times my friends. If I read stuff off the internet, I should be indignant over the fact that Robin Wright had to fight for her millions of dollars of pay to equal that of her House of Cards costar Kevin Spacey. I’m not calling her out, because she’s completely right — she should make at least the same as Spacey. My problem is, as usual, here’s an example of someone being treated unfairly and the rest of the universe recognizing it. Meanwhile, there are nearly 50 million people in the U.S. living with a disability and they often get denigrated for their portion of social security benefits. Supposedly we need watchdogs to focus on how all these disabled people beat the system. It’s like when I used to get food from my local food pantry years ago. I worked two jobs, I had three kids — one with a certifiable disability — but the people at the food pantry had to be sure that I was okayed to get those cans of Spam. I regularly heard stories about millionaires who u...

There are so many mothers I know right now. Mothers younger than me, mothers older than me. All of them putting their babies above everything else. Except those mothers that I probably won’t write about, because we all know there are some bad ones. I digress. Mothers are complicated. They want their children to be happy and at the same time they want them to learn valuable lessons. You want to hug your kids until they’re 87 years old and at the same time you want them to ride a bike without training wheels, make friends with appropriate peers, and choose raw broccoli dipped in spinach dip over a bag of Doritos by the time they’re 5.  Sometimes I think we can’t have everything. Kids are going to make mistakes, do their own thing, not listen to you (me?) and sometimes they will not particularly care for us. Me included. That’s okay, sometimes I don’t care for me either. What I really want is for my children to care for themselves. To realize that they need to take a good loo...

I’m not sure anyone else has noticed this, but apparently what used to be 210 pounds in 2010 looks a lot like 240 pounds in 2016. I think I might be melting too. Naturally, I have many pairs of the same pants I wore comfortably at this same weight six years ago. Today, I have to lay on the bed to zip them, and then I have the inevitable waistband fold all day. And I’m thinking I should be proud of myself because I can wear the same pants.  Oh, I can, but with a couple of glitches. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll put a bobby pin in the zipper to yank it up if I have to. It’s just that I can remember them being loose at this same weight six years ago. Apparently everything has been redistributed or something, or I am truly melting. That puddle under the Wicked Witch of the West got much wider after she melted. Why I can’t look like Glinda, Good Witch of the North, is beyond me.  I spend thirty minutes on the elliptical nearly every day of the week, and if I so much as look...

I’ve had quite the week. Not much was accomplished but I had what I like to label some “experiences.” When we moved from Syracuse to Martha’s Vineyard almost four years ago, I felt like changing everything. I gave up a job that I had loved for almost 16 years; I was editor at a Catholic newspaper and nobody has that kind of job stability anymore. But hey, why not pack up and move to an island when you’re just shy of your 50th birthday? The mantra in my head kept repeating “If you don’t do this now, you’ll never leave.” So we left.  Obviously one question mark was what kind of job would I find on Martha’s Vineyard. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work at a newspaper. I’d done it for nearly half my life by that point and since I was willing to uproot our lives, I thought why not go all the way and try a completely different job.  For years I’ve thought that being a lunch lady would be an ideal job for me: I love kids, I love food, I love “mother’s hours....

This past month has been crazy. Meetings out the wazoo and then some. I’m pretty sure I went to one meeting that was about having a meeting. The only good thing about all these gatherings of people with a supposed common purpose is that sometimes you get things accomplished. Of course that takes about 347 meetings, but who’s counting? I remember early on in my work life when I thought it sounded so grown-up to go to “a meeting.” I used to wish I was asked to go to one. I’d wear something a little snazzier that day. Maybe my black shoes with the one-inch heels. Little did I know that it would become such a regular part of my life. I guess that really kicked in when I had kids. And it mostly kicked in when they were in trouble, or in Dan’s case, because of his autism.  Now that he’s almost ready to leave high school, I’m having more meetings than ever. I feel like I have to pave the way for Dan’s adult life. Sometimes that involves one of those giant steamrollers and othe...

This joblessness is something. I have whole weeks where I scour writing websites, local help wanted ads, and journalismjobs.com. I panic and eat bags of salt and vinegar popchips because I’ve convinced myself that they’re healthier than the other brands. Then I try to settle myself down and remember that I’m a freelance writer after all. Like that means I have an actual job. Lord.  Then I spend hours chastising myself because I know real freelancers who actually make a living at it. I think they must be very organized and very together, while I’m calling myself a freelancer and I wear the same pajama pants for three days in a row and get sidetracked by Googling how to make pesto without nuts.  Oh, I get assignments sometimes, and since I live on Martha’s Vineyard they range from writing about artisan pretzels to tracking the number of homeless here. It’s really not a humdrum work life really. I just don’t like the sporadic nature of it all. And how it lends itself to e...

  What a great day. I made some progress in getting Dan squared away in his impending adult life without school, and I met up with a group of women under the umbrella of what is more commonly known as “Pints and Purls.”    I may have discovered the best thing since gooey butter cake: a group of women sitting around a table at a dimly lit pub drinking cocktails and pints while they knit and crochet. This is genius.  First of all, it beats sitting on the couch by myself getting mad at CNN’s election coverage while I drink my green tea with truvia. Secondly, it meant that I met women (funny women) who might be able to teach me a thing or two about needlework. One of the women finished an infinity scarf right there at the table and wore it home. That’s progress.    Another lady was using about 18 knitting needles to make a pair of gloves that were so fine that I’m pretty sure a 17th-century princess could have worn them.    And I compl...

         Lent is my favorite liturgical season. When else do you get to have an enormous sanctioned pancake supper/chocolate pig-out followed by a fish fry? This season was made for me.          Probably the churchmen who came up with this idea were trying to think of an easy way to make me feel remorseful. Or even more remorseful.          Well, fellas, it backfired. I actually feel giddy knowing that before Lent begins I’m stuffing myself full of treats and delicacies such as fried oysters, fried haddock, fried Oreos, fried chicken fingers, fried mushrooms, fried green beans, fried ice cream, and fried green tomatoes with delicious remoulade, which by the way, contains many more ingredients than you imagine. Then throughout Lent I can think about how I’ll have all of the above again after my 40 days of mindfulness. And calm down my true Catholic friends, I know ...