Gotta sleep sometime....

[kyburg]

I wish I had another six hours.

Today was the day of "where the fuck did that come from?"

As in, the dads in our department were back in after being out yesterday with their kids. Because it was a school holiday. Yanno. No big deal.

And all I could think of was how I had to leave Cliff home alone with only Meals on Wheels and a phone call at 2:30 to keep him alive until I got home at seven. At least four times, when he didn't answer the phone at 2:30, I'd have called the police to go over and check on him for me - and they'd found him in a coma and transported him.

Why wasn't I home to look after him myself? I had to work - I was hourly, I was deathly afraid of losing my job and every time I mentioned him to my boss, the response was "this is not a good time for him to be sick right now." No shit. I got mine back - when I got the call telling me he'd passed at 1:30 AM, I called the bastid at 2:00 AM to tell him I wouldn't be in and why. I went in that day anyway - and the day after. I didn't miss one single day of work, even when my husband died.

But now - the dads just tell the boss they have to go home and look after the kids because school's out - and it's fine. It's a different company, a different man in charge -

I've tried to explain what happened - and their attitude is not overt, but surely I could have done something about it and was too stupid not to.. Just didn't have the Right Stuff - just a garden variety pudnocker. LOOOOSER.

I'd love to have the two perfect kids, too - ya jerk. I'd have loved to have spent the last ten years working here, too. I've been more things to more companies for more reasons that you'd ever like to think of - but because I'm not -whatever it is today- it doesn't have any value.

It would be nice if they would simply attribute some of it to just plain fortune.

I have to remember. This reaction is denial of the reality of it - it didn't happen to them because THEY were smart, THEY were cool, THEY did all the right things. Instead of because it just didn't happen to them, period. But it could - oh yes, it could. But until something like it does, it's all them. It's a common reaction, and I can understand it.

But dammit, today - I resent it to holy hell.

Shake it off, bitch. It'll make you a bitter old woman, for sure.

Comments

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

MIKE NESMITH!!!!!

*collapses from exhaustion*

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

A woman with her priorities in order! Yowser!

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

I never could decide which one of those insane boys I loved the most. It changed from day to day.

"Oh, what a kiss! I've never felt this way before!"

"You fool, it was not the kiss! It was the magic necklace!"

"Oh, what a necklace! I've never felt this way before!"

[joggingguy.livejournal.com]

Grieve a lot if you need to.

*hugs you*

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I still think you need to be my next-door neighbor....

[joggingguy.livejournal.com]

:-)

I'm sorry

[turandot.livejournal.com]

I hate to stereotype people, but some parents feel like their status as a parent gives them the right to become insensitive jerks who look down on others for things that were beyond those people's control.

I'm sorry you get to experience that insensitivity firsthand.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

It's not just the parent thing - it's just a handle. They're also ten to fifteen years younger than I am - and have no real idea of what Reagan and Bush were like when you were in the workforce.

They have no idea what downsizing was like. What watching all of the companies you knew close shop. Stores standing empty. People becoming homeless - not seeing homeless people on a daily basis. Really being worried about where your next paycheck was going to come from. No idea.

I bitch when they don't care, either.

Well

[turandot.livejournal.com]

I'm probably their age, but not having kids, I guess I'm not all set to pretend that things are perfect for the sake of protecting those around me from painful knowledge.

It helps that I was fully aware of the fact that all it takes for people to fall on hard times is one bad turn of events. I was never in a position where I could ever deny it: I didn't stop seeing homeless people on every other corner on my way to work until 2002, and that was because I a)moved and b)became jobless myself due to the move.

[lolleeroberts.livejournal.com]

This is similar to all the sweet young things who don't want to be called feminists because it's so unladylike - and don't realize that every perk they take for granted in the workplace and in life itself was wrung from society by the very feminists they scorn - and can be lost quite suddenly again. Their sense of entitlement can be a bit nauseating but I try to remember the Tolkien quote - "If simple people are protected, then simple they will be."

And yes, I know how you feel. I studied for nursing finals in my husband's hospital room at midnight after spending 8 hours at work and five hours at clinical. And when I was laid off two weeks before graduation with two months severance pay I kept being told how lucky I was. Excuse me? I worked, went to school and cared for a sick husband for 3 years. I lived in a 90 year old rent house with holes in the roof that cats could crawl in and out of. I slept with a bucket on the bed to catch the drips. Um, tell me again how lucky I am? (I also got the lucky crap when I found a decent job as a nurse when other former employees were trying to get jobs at Radio Shack at $8/hr. We all knew layoffs were coming. I went back to school. They sat around and bitched. Yeah. Luck.)

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I've never considered myself a feminist largely because being a feminist exclusively doesn't address 50% of the population. I've sworn up and down that for every stupid thing men have done to women, there are two stupid things we ALL do to men.

I've told sweet young things to go home and take care of their children if they didn't like working that much - they didn't appreciate it at all. And in today's world, how could you afford to live in a house and drive a SUV?

Congratulations on reinventing yourself - we ought to form a club. We Saw It Coming - and did something about it.

Luck often masquerades as very hard work. Good thing we know how to work hard, neh?

Ever feel funny doing well with what you prepared yourself to do, now that it's paying dividends? I do - but I think it's just leftovers from how angry I was when I just didn't have anything to provide a decent life when Cliff was still alive. I'm still angry about that. All the resources came to me after he died - when he couldn't use them and I didn't need them. *grump*

[lolleeroberts.livejournal.com]

I think we use different definitions of feminist - I tend to use it to mean wanting true equal rights for women, not an excuse to male-bash or a demand for preferential treatment. It may simply be that I'm in Texas, or that one of my former bosses once said women were good for two things and you didn't cook or f*ck at the office.

As for luck disguised as hard work - oh heck yeah. My mom could join that club too. She went back to work and started her own company so when my dad left her she had a source of income. Gee, wasn't she lucky she went back to school in her forties and started not one but two small companies that took 60+ hours a week to run?

I don't really feel guilty because I'm still not making that much money. What's nice (and I don't feel at all guilty about it, thank you very much!) is that nursing is one of those fields that if you've got a master's degree you can find a job if you can stay upright. I may get old and too decrepit to work in a hospital or as a practitioner, but I can sit in front of a class and lecture.

[neintales.livejournal.com]

I've always had issues with people being quick to judge someone as having 'not tried hard enough' when they've really had no first-hand experience with the kinds of shoes the one they're scorning wore.

The only people who don't think asking bosses for help of some sort can be scary as hell, or that a job isn't something to cling to worriedly are people who haven't faced that kind of desperation- (and currently, up here, are people who don't read any newspaper articles about layoffs).

From one person trying to not be a bitter old woman about some occassional resentments of her own...

*HUGS*

Heee... we're too young to be bitter old women yet, but when you hit your 80's or 90's if you like, I'll make sure there's a rocking chair on my front porch for you to glare at kids from!

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Hee. I get the slingshot and rock salt to pelt the little twerps as they go by.

[neintales.livejournal.com]

And there'll be a cat for each of our laps!

I'll learn to knit, so I can shake the needle at them threateningly when I tell them all about how things were in MY day. Woohoo! It'll be a blast!

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

Wonder if the dads get as much flack and stereotyping for taking a day off to be with the kids as the moms do?

Wonder if the dads took off because the moms had to work, or face the music at work if they didn't?

I would resent it to hell, right along with you. I have. I've been told, point-blank, that parents got the first choice of vacations and time off.

Not here. I'm finally in a place where that doesn't happen.

I'd love to have the two perfect kids, too...

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Our company is the one with flexiblity - the wives work jobs that don't allow them what we do. It's happened to me too - I end up with most of the runaround tasks because Jim just can't do them. I have a desk I sit at and a phone. I can also take hour lunches and run errands. He can't.

I don't envy them what they have - I resent the attitude that I'm somehow deficient because while I want what they have, I haven't gotten it yet.

*grins* Gosh, I'll bet you are just have a wonderful time with your new job. I would be!