Maybe it was you, maybe it was me, but it sure felt right...
***
Him: "Are you busy?"
Me: "I'm in the car with Jill, what's up?"
Him: "My wife was just admitted to the hospital for five days. She might have to have an emergency C-section."
***
Last night I dreamed that I was back at work. I came in as a shopper, for some reason I was wearing socks, but no shoes. I thought I would try to go back and find my shoes, but then the cafe manager and the grocery manager came over to me. The cafe manager handed me a partial case of very nice looking plums (in real life I have never seen this case, but it's a dream so I rolled with it). She also had some strawberries that needed to be eaten. I accepted the plums, but when I went to reach for the strawberries, they fell on the floor and became a red dripping mess when I tried to collect them (spilled fruit is a real life event in every grocery store). Last night Jill made cobbler and I'm wondering if that influenced my dream because she really did drop some strawberries on the rug I had recently purchased. I asked her to try and get the stain out, she didn't, but thankfully I was able to remove most of the red. When we went to buy groceries in real life we went to a Metro Mart that was across from where I used to work. I'm sure this was also part of what influenced my dream, but the employees were people that I had worked with previously. I walked back past rows of black and clear bulk containers. I saw the produce manager wearing a long white apron (most of ours were green, but again, it was a dream), he was stacking loaves of bread and I wondered when we had gotten bakery items in the coffee aisle.
Past him I saw my boss. I could only see her back, but I was so happy I almost started crying in my dream. I wasn't able to talk to her at that point in time. The next details are fuzzy, but I was suddenly working there again, apparently I had located my shoes and this guy I used to work with welcomed me back with a smile and a hug which I thought was nice. Then I saw my boss and she gave me the biggest hug before she told me she had to go do something. I told her I understood, I had to go outside, I was walking in an unfamiliar neighborhood when this large concrete pillar rolled off of where it had been placed. There was no way I could move it by myself, I started walking faster, I crossed over a grassy area that had a large garage space beneath it. Something fell and I increased my pace until I was almost out of breath from running. When I got back to work there was a woman I had worked with, she seemed surprised to see me. Then my boss came in and told her to do something so she left. We hugged again, I asked what I had to do, she said something, then I told her I was going to have to go upstairs and beg for my old job back. In my dream I had tried to avoid the people who had fired me, I remember being afraid of them, I tried looking for others I worked with and missed, but then I was on my way out the door again and the dream was lost.
***
A friend of mine on Twitter posted an article on highly sensitive people that gave me a lot of comfort. I don't take very good care of myself, I need better boundaries, and I would like to stop trying to analyze every flaw and weakness of mine and start honoring my better qualities. Tuesday night I went on a date that has me rethinking this desire to go out and meet more people. He was basically everything I despise and try to avoid in a partner, I could not wait to get out of there, at some point it became surreal and I gave into the bizarre situation by telling myself this would be great material to work into a book someday. He was late which isn't the end of the world, especially since he told me he missed a turn. He didn't want to order food, that was fine with me, I had told him I wouldn't be eating anyways, then he complained about the salsa and said it wasn't hot enough when it arrived. He was condescending to the bartender who had been very kind to me. He ate the entire basket of chips, drank three margaritas in two and a half hours and told me everything from the time he had a joint in his underwear on a plane that he jokingly threatened to hijack to doing mushrooms as a college student (he credits them with helping him finish his degree and suggested they might help me with my digestive issues).
He spent more than a hundred thousand dollars fighting his ex in court, I got to hear about the time he and his platonic female friend went to a nude resort in the Carribean, and how he laid in bed rather than get out and shovel like his more idustrious neighbors because hey, eventually the snow was going to melt anyways. His boss is (shockingly) annoyed with him for padding his expense account. Work has been slow so he felt like he had to bill these hours to someone even though he hadn't actually done the work he was charging to a client. He's a civil engineer who blames a lot on the market correction of 2008. My teenagers are more responsible and less ridiculous than this guy, he has no filter, no scruples, seemingly no clue about how others feel about him, and I am not in the least dumbfounded by his admission that he's been single for seven years. He told me about the benefits of taking his son's ADHD medication, he wanted to know if I was impressed with how quickly he had downed his drinks. I told him I didn't care and thought that this is dialogue I haven't had with a man since my friends and I discovered alcohol and I was going to parties as an underage guest. This guy is 47 years old and I have no idea how someone like him gets through life.
He told me that I had OCD, asked if I had any vices, touched my arm and elbow repeatedly even though I kept trying to back away from him each time he did that, and went with me when I told him I needed to use the lavatory. I didn't know what to say when he told me that he was very attracted to me. He asked how sex would work with someone like me and I bit back a comment about him not having to ever worry about that particular problem. Before we met I had a hunch he wasn't going to be my type, but I told myself that I was on a dating site to meet new people, and figured it couldn't be that bad. Going on a date with him was like being cast for a super low budget film that even Rotten Tomatoes can't believe is actually a real life scenario. I wanted to stop the ride and get off, but I could hardly get a word in edgewise since he kept interrupting me. Even after he asked if it was annoying and I said that it was, he didn't stop. This guy must have through the roof anxiety in addition to his other issues. He didn't seem particularly nervous when I first met him, but as the night went on I concluded that he was either the most clueless man I have ever met as an adult, or he really was that nervous and just had no idea what to say to me since we had essentially a negative amount of things in common other than being single parents in our forties.
I learned that he had a vasectomy so I can safely sleep with him without worrying that I might get pregnant, but he also blames this for his low sex drive (like I really wanted to hear that). He wants to have it reversed so he can get his testosterone levels normalized again. While he was talking I was trying to think if there was anyone I had gone on a date with that had a lower chance of scoring with me and couldn't come up with any other names. At the end of the night he wanted to hug me and I let him which was probably a mistake. He said he wanted to keep in touch, I said that I was a good friend, he clearly has many unmet needs and on a very humanitarian level I actually feel compassion for him because this guy is something else. He's bright enough to see loopholes and how he can take advantage of others and situations, I offered to pay for my drink and was actually pleasantly surprised when he waved away my offer. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant because he wanted a margarita. It will be a very long time before I can think about the drink itself and not associate it with him and that night. We could have gone to a sports bar, when I said that I wished we would have he gave me a look and said that this was so much better. I beg to differ. I would much rather have been watching college hoops, it was interesting, but in a way I hope to never repeat again.
***
Last night I must have had something that had gluten in it. I felt awful when Jill was driving, worse when I woke up this morning, and ended up canceling my therapy appointment, and my job interview which I ended up going to anyways. They wanted me to come in tomorrow, but I'm meeting for a second interview with the window treatment company, and the distance and timing just weren't going to work with having to drop Jill off at school and then be back in time to pick her up again. I drove down there without knowing whether or not anyone was going to have time to see me, thankfully the woman was available, and we ended up having a really nice chat about regular life at the end of my interview. Her sister is trying to publish several children's books. We had some diaglogue about that when she learned that I write. We talked about how everyone has different gifts. Her sister's book features this monster that children can feed pictures or slips of paper to, the parents can empty it when their children aren't around, then they see what children may be thinking or feeling that they either can't express verbally, or don't know how to say to anyone else. I think this is a totally cool concept that has a lot of practical application as far as giving people somewhere to go with thoughts and feelings.
Somehow I feel as if I will be offered this job, but won't end up taking it, and that's making me a little sad even though I know intellectually that I may not be offered a position at all. It's a great company and I'm really glad they stumbled across me unless it was me who stumbled on their job posting. Another position that I applied for and think I may get is a cash management position at, wait for it, Miller Park. Obviously the lure here is working at a ballpark. It's a contract position, I'm not exactly sure what the job entails, the guy who called me kind of breezed through that and I didn't want to sound stupid if I wasn't catching something that should have been clear to me while he was speaking. Employees are expected to arrive at the park several hours before the game, they work with vendors who may have issues, there's some minor computer work involved, running reports, and at the end of the game all of these people come and drop off massive amounts of cash and then hurry to try and get out of there in a timely fashion. It doesn't sound like you need a great deal of intellect for this type of work, but it definitely sounds as if you have to be able to think and act very quickly and work under some pressure. My aunt thinks I would be great at it and I think I would be too. I'm not sure how much actual money I would have to handle, that's always dicey when you have food allergies, but maybe it won't be much.
I really liked the guy I spoke with initially. He's very no nonsense without being chilly or rude and I always admire that in others. I have a feeling he reads people well and I can almost see him picking up my resume, seeing a candidate who has worked in finance that also loves baseball and him not bothering to wait for me to reply to his email. He sees what he wants, goes after it, and I like that about him. I would totally go on a date with him if he's single. When I mentioned that I was leery about accepting a contract position for seasonal employment he mentioned the company has two other divisions, quality control, and call center work that can be done at home. Another carrot he dangled in front of me was his mention that the company is trying to get the Milwaukee Bucks to agree to the same arrangement that they have with the Brewers. One part of me is salivating at this opportunity. You never know where opportunities like this might lead, I love Miller Park. I haven't been to a Bucks game in I don't even know how long, it's the kind of job you take because you love sports and are willing to put up with a strange schedule and odd hours because every time you drive into work you get the feeling that comes from walking into a stadium and having that quasi religious experience that I associate with sports venues.
Yesterday I had a phone interview with a company that's very close to where I live. This is the guy who didn't get back to me for several days after I told him I would be available for a phone interview at his convenience. I went through the circumstances behind me leaving my last job and don't think it hurt me too much since he said he would pass my information along to the next tier of people. A friend of mine who shops where I used to work told me that she knows someone who works there and believes he may be a higher up, but he may not have anything to do with the hiring process and is probably limited by not knowing me in person, still, I'm appreciative of her efforts because any boost will help and you never know what might convince a company to choose one candidate over another. The position is fairly technical, it's a call center job where employees from corporate locations or franchises call in asking questions on products. There's a lot of problem solving, documentation, and research, in other words, a job I've had before and know that I can do well that's located close to where I'm at now that offers a lot of security and stability without the drive associated with other jobs I could get. But their process is long and slow and I'm not sure that this is a great fit for me since these larger companies tend to treat you like a number rather than a real person although I could be wrong about that.
When I asked Jill what she thought she told me to go for the cash management job. I don't know where you're going, and I don't know why. She said it was a great opportunity and I would really like working at Miller Park. Listen to your heart. She told me I could wear gloves if handling money was the deal breaker. Supposedly gluten particles aren't able to pass through skin, but I've had trouble with this in the past so even though I believe the science behind it, I also know that it could very well be a big issue for me. I would love to find a couple of people that I know and work this job with them. It sounds like the kind of thing that would be a blast with the right people, and a total drag if you get someone you don't get along with for whatever reason. I thought about asking my brother about the job and I still might since he lives close to the park, but he doesn't have the reputation for being the most reliable employee ever, and it would conflict with some of his other jobs. When I asked a friend of mine she said she didn't want to work at night. She's very detailed, the right candidate is going to have to have a certain skill set, money management requires accuracy and efficiency, you have to be quick and precise. You have to understand the systems in place and see ways to streamline and increase productivity. I'm going to keep thinking about this, there has to be someone I know who would be willing to at least consider it.
***
Today I had a very interesting conversation with my aunt. After we went through various job scenarios she asked how the girls were doing. I told her that for some reason Jill doesn't want to get her driver's license and I wasn't sure what was behind that because nothing could have stopped me from getting it after I turned 16. She thought for a moment and then wondered if Jill actually secretly likes the time she spends in the car with mom and dad. As soon as she said that I felt the truth of her statement and wonder if some of Jill's behavior issues are because she didn't get the right kind of time and attention from her parents when she was younger. She told me she wanted to get out and walk around when we were driving around, it turns out what she actually wanted was a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's. This is the kind of classic thing her dad did and I despise that kind of subterfuge because it smacks of passive aggressive manipulation. I haven't said anything to her about it yet, but I'm going to because that type of thing is not okay. We could have stopped to see her sister, but Jill wanted to get back to make her cobbler. I need to stop letting my children run my life and be okay with being in charge of how things run at my place.
***
Him: "My daughter tried to take her own life last night. If not for Divine Intervention she would not have made it. She is in a psych ward for 72 hours so she is safe. She is 23, this is her 6th attempt, the first was when she was 15. This is the closest we have come to losing her. Feeling very blessed she is alive. I am sharing this with you because you are one of my best Twitter friends. We laugh and love, sometimes we cry together. I appreciate you."
***
Would like to write more, especially after receiving that message, but I have a daughter of my own to pick up tonight.
Much love,
J
P.S. Today I am grateful for small things like the chance to drive out of my way for an interview. It's amazing how much we take for granted on a daily basis. I have never really been that active politically, but seeing these heart breaking stories about school shootings and reading about how woman are more often the victims of domestic violence than men is making me realize that we must speak for those who are unable or unwilling to come forward themselves.
P.P.S. I really need to stop crying at the library...
Xoxo,
j