My life is calm. Yesterday I walked the Mud Creek Trail instead of going to the gym. #2 son tried to turn in his summer assignment but no one was in the office to accept it, so I have to drive him back out there today. It’s been busy at work. I tied the new skein of Luna in and disliked how the knot looked, and so I frogged a few rows to redo it.
Yawn.
#2 daughter’s life, on the other hand, is all go. You may recall that she finished school on Friday, and had a good job, an apartment (after some drama there), a car on its way to her, and was generally moving fairly smoothly into adult life.
So on Tuesday morning, having been off work for a week for finals, she returned to her job and was let go.
No notice. It seems to me, frankly, that the boss probably did not wake up on Tuesday morning and think, suddenly, that he wanted to fire her. I think that he intended to let her go last week, but allowed her — an hourly employee — to be without any source of income for a week while he gathered up his courage or whatever it was he was doing.
So there she was, having been unknowingly unemployed for a week, and now entirely unemployed.
She spent a couple of hours moving quickly through disbelief, anger, fear, and misery, and then perked up and began applying for jobs.
I, thinking of the lease she had signed and the car contract she had signed and her student loans and all that, had quite a sinking feeling myself.
But last night, shortly after I got the update on her first day of job-hunting, she got a call.
“I know you have a job,” the caller said, “but would you consider…”
She has a few weeks of work at the same hourly wage she had at her briefly-held manager’s job, organizing a music library.
This gives her some time to job-hunt without worrying about eviction or foreclosure or starvation or any of those things.
Her grandmother is thinking that she really should come back home and live here while working on her performance career. I think there is little work for opera singers in our neck of the woods. I think that people who hear #2 daughter will gladly hire her, but that folks with positions like that to offer don’t mostly come to church with us.
My mother, however, believes with Thomas Friedman that the earth is flat. She is, after all, a successful writer and speaker living in the middle of nowhere.
It’s a moot point, since there is that lease.
If you have a prayer list, please add #2 daughter to it.
While my mother and I were talking about whether foreclosure and eviction might be positive experiences, we considered the possibility that everything happens for a reason.
I don’t fully believe that, but I find it an appealing philosophy.
At the very least, I think that when bad things happen, one should look for the lesson in them, and the positive side to them.
So, even though I can imagine that this summer will be enshrined in #2 daughter’s memory as The Horrible Summer, I can also imagine that there have been benefits to all the complications she has faced, and lessons to be learned from them.
first, I do believe that for every door that closes there is a door that opens, and this is an opportunity for your daughter that is cloaked in a scary package. It sounds like she is up to the challenge. And I’ll add her to the list of those I’m praying for.
Two, I’m floored! are you reading a book a day? Looks like it.
Three, I love your SWAP and the planning that is going into it, and the willingness you have to jump in with both feet. I’d like to offer my help, such as help can be given on the internet, with your sewing projects when you get into a situation where you need it. I’m a sewing teacher and over the years have gotten paid to sew for others. I wrote the tutorial for altering a pattern for a larger bust that I posted to Sew Retro not too long ago. I’m in the process of writing and illustrating several other tutorials that I’m putting into my flickr pages. Let me know what you’re running up against and although it’s not as good as being there to teach, I can help some.
Marji
http://fiberartsafloat.blogspot.com
I will pray for her.
It’s a bad situation, but, as has been said, could be an opportunity in disguise. When I was a little younger than her, I got laid off from a job due to lack of work. It was my first job, and I was devastated. But due to what I had learned at that job, I soon had another job at twice the pay.
Fortunately, I was living at home.
I suspect that she may not have been there long enough, but is she (or will she) be elegible for unemployment compensation? This is worth checking because she may be elegible for help finding a hob even is she can’t get unemployment.
In Virginia, there are lists of jobs available, plus, essentially, an office with copiers, fax machines, computers, printers, etc, all available to job hunters free. I know she has a computer, but she may have use of other help. Oh, and they have classes on how to write a resume, how to change career direction, and info on job fairs, etc.
Some of this may help, so it’s worth checking out.
I like the colors of yarn you chose to go with the fabric. You were indeed lucky to get such good matches.
Was the problem that caused frogging due to the yarn? The yarn seems nice in the photos, but you have to touch it to know.
It should be noted, in an irked and pissed off kind of way, that the general consensus on the firing (or break-up as it seemed at the time – does seem now) is that my former employer was feeling “pressured by the women” to remove me from their sight.
That is to say, he was not entirely convinced that I needed to be fired.
What is the point of owning your own business because you’re sick of taking crap orders, when you then take crap orders from the old bitties at work?
If your daughter had quit her job without giving notice, her employer would probably have acted indignant and put upon. I hope she’ll remember this experience when she has a chance to join a union and protect her rights.
It sounds like a job in a music library would be more to her tastes. I hope it pays as well.
Why were old bitties pressuring the boss to fire her? She can’t help it if she is beautiful and fabulous.
Will keep her in my thoughts, and wish for good things.