Now for the first time in three years I am an unemployed woman. It makes me wish I'd at least done my duty as a departing employee and taken at least a box of pens or a print cartridge or, hell something other than back issues of struggling Canadian magazines. Not that I don't consider that a booty of sorts.

There are between six and eight job opps on the horizon. And on Tuesday an interview for the job I just left. This makes no fucking sense to me.

Bearing in mind that the internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens, I'm going to stop feeling guilty that my posts are becoming less and less interesting. So help me god, as soon as I post a photo of my cat doing something cute or inform all/both of my Stumblers what I had for breakfast, I'm shutting this place down.

Sorry Stumblers, I'm losing you. Blame it on the generally overdone characteristics of a girl.

This time, being alone will take longer to adjust to.

Officially Now The Worst Weekend Ever:

Saturday night, in a fit of absolute fucking genius, I got up from the sandbox in the little parkette where I was sitting with Tinsley and forgot my bag. Normally, hell, it's just possessions and who the fuck cares, but this bag contained everything a person needs to be useful in a city and essentially the keys to my Ego. Talk to Freud about how to replace that.

Lost items include:

-cell phone
-driver's license
-health card
-bank card
-metropass
-birth control pills
-Y membership
-keys
-$20 in cash
-agenda with the phone numbers and addresses of everyone I know
-notebook with all the stupid quotes and things I heard since April
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates (half done)
-3 resumes and 3 cover letters (for jobs I didn't get)
-a hand-drawn map of Vancouver
-the purse itself, a cottage-y looking straw-type 6-pack carrier

I've never felt so stupid and useless in my life. Nor have I ever felt like such a twat for being so chained to things.

Couple days ago I was talking to a fella at work about Bad Days and how I decide whether it's been a good day or a bad day. Generally I weigh it out at the end of the day, or better yet the next day. This way I don't shoot it out with no chance of return, if you catch my meaning. This other guy's method--choosing bad/good by the week, not the day--was just as effective but not my style. I'd rather think of a day as an isolated unit that can be discarded; not so with a whole week.

See The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon for a nice, arbitrary method of choosing a bad or good day. In the morning the narrator counts cars out his window. Four yellow cars in a row means bad day (or was it brown? Damn this short term memory). Three red cars in a row means Super Good Day. This method pleases me but is unfit for my purposes.

Well Stumblers, I hate to admit it, but it's been not just Bad Day but Bad Week too. During the trademark-busiest-work-week at the job I don't-really-but-kind-of-have I have learned that my brother may or may not be coming back from Israel (both options bad). Goldschläger has gone out of his way to tell me how many women he's been sleeping with and why they're oh-so-great. Job prospects looking worse by the day. Very rainy out.

Not to mention it's only Wednesday.

Wish me luck, Stumblers. I'm going to need it.

Thus ends my firt-ever week of a full-time day job that is not bakery-related. I wouldn't say I've got angels on my shoulders yet but I definitely don't feel so alone in the world. There are good people behind me.* What's still making no bloody sense to me is that my interview for the job I'm currently doing is two weeks away. Bloody beaureaucracy. I just want a little cash and a place to get out of the rain.

Election time is looming. I've made my choice as a responsible voter.** Harper's minion's abortion comments did not go ignored. There has been an uproar that he wants mandatory third-party counseling for a woman seeking abortion, thereby legislating her own personal pro- and anti-choice debate right between her legs. It's reassuring to hear so many people say this Conservative fella is nuts, but I've heard very little from people who agree with him. And there's probably a lot of them. As if she doesn't have enough on her mind already.

Many things plus the new novel are what takes up my time. The retelling of the Thames Daughters in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. It's like a big pot of water slowly simmering, this one. I cannot write it quickly. I wish I could write at work but I think that's against the rules. Waving with four fingers. Just like that.

Earlier this year it occurred to me that the only good thing to come out of the Industrial Revolution was the Lunchtime Quickie. I'm not going to write any essay on that; I'm just telling you.

Notes:
*good people behind me: in and out of this crazy office. Have I gushed lately about how much I like my coworkers and my mom?

**a responsible voter: I've been voting since I was 12. My dad's official policy is and always has been that all politicians are idiots, so he has given up his vote to me for every election for as long as I can remember. My first official federal vote, when I was 18, was a big deal for me and I'd gone to the little booth thinking, "NDP NDP NDP NDP." How was I to know that there was such a thing as the Marijuana Party? Or those other cool parties that are so right-on that their leadership would create a country too perfect to invent.

Yesterday I told someone that I use mayonnaise on my hair. She seemed pretty convinced when I told her that it was the eggs aka protein that made it strong and the oil that made it shine. This exchange occured with malicious intent on my part.

Any discussion about hair care products or makeup is a bloody waste of time and brain power, the latter of which I have little.

Go jobs!

Just today I thought that if I had ample warning where my next post would be, and if I didn't really have to spend any time being unemployed, I'd temp for the rest of my life. It's not so bad, really. Except when you find that your classmates are working the entry-level versions of their dream jobs.

My mantra starting in the winter of 2002 was "it could always be worse."

And it could. At least I'm not this guy.