One golden week

I get a week off between jobs. A week is not that much time. Then again, it's an oasis of time. I can't wait. My dear husband will be away for the first weekend, so I and the pets will have the house to ourselves. I'd say it'll be peaceful, except there'll be the police and fire sirens, the drunk street people screaming, and, oh yes, the parrots. Also screaming. Still. If it's sunny, I plan to take a blanket and a book up to Yerba Buena and camp out for one day on the lawn. Then on another day I'll go take a long beach walk. My insides go all jittery just thinking about it. In other news: The writer of a blog I was following for two years, Carla Zilbersmith, died recently from ALS. This sounds like a real downer, and it is. However, if you care to read her blog yourself, starting from the beginning, you'll see why the final post, while sad, is also uplifting.

I eat bitter for breakfast.

I haven't posted here in a while because some coworkers used to read this site, I don't know if they still do, and I've been job hunting like a fiend and needed to keep it under deep wraps. The result of my efforts: I gave notice a week ago and on June 21 will be moving into a new office in a different department at my company. The office of a person who nabbed a job that's two levels up from the one she held before. Oh, YES I did.

Pre-Monday blues.

Today I realized there's been a distinct weekly pattern in my mood: I'm always thrilled on Friday afternoons (it doesn't hurt that now that the days are longer, Bob and I meet every Friday after work at the Embarcadero BART station and stroll along the waterfront before getting dinner somewhere). Saturdays and Sundays until around 3 or 4, I'm feeling just wonderful -- happy to be immersed in my hobbies or social undertakings, thrilled with whatever the weather may bring. Then on Sunday in the late afternoon, the blues creep in. It's now 3:05 on Sunday, and sure enough I'm getting that anxious, stressed-out, sad feeling. It's time to take charge of this. And now that I've noticed the rhythm, I can figure out a counterpoint.

The place between

I am about to stride forth into my new position -- one my clients are expressing relief and happiness I have. And at the same time, I am looking ceaselessly for employment elsewhere within the company, so I can salvage my resume at least a bit. It would be hard to credibly explain to a future employer why my resume shows a step back in my department. Nobody is going to swallow the "my position was eliminated" line, no matter the truth of it. The best route for me is to find something else as quickly as possible, so I won't have to show this position on my resume. The hitch is that I am very attached to my remaining colleague, I'm competitive about making further gains in what has been a very challenging service area (gains nobody thought anyone from my department could pull off, and which I'm starting to get credit for). And there's no guarantee any new position I land will be any less stressful than the one I already have. I wish I had a spare pile of money around so I could just equip a space and start churning out artisan chocolates and just chuck this whole corporate life. If the economy were a bit better, I'd consider it. But it's no time to be depending on a 1-person start-up to pay for itself, pay off a huge business loan, and also keep filling the savings account. I feel stuck in a place between vantage points, a valley full of brush to hack through before I can get to a hilltop, rest a moment, and see whether or not I've made good progress.

Who supervises these people?

Having not received a formal offer of employment in the mail, I finally wrote the recruiter and asked if one was forthcoming. She did not respond. I found out that a colleague had also asked, and had been told, bluntly, "No." When we asked our VP (who's interim director until she hires my department a new fearless leader) about this, she got right on the phone and instructed Recruiting to send us our offer letters. Apparently, Recruiting thought what we were going through was a transfer. No... a transfer is when an employee is moved from one existing job into another existing job. In our case, our jobs were eliminated and we went through a recruiting process and a very few of us managed to snag different (purportedly, at least) jobs. My offer came via telephone, and I had two days to accept or decline via email. Anyway, so today I got an offer letter, by email. Not as an attachment on letterhead, but as an email (and it had the wrong effective date of my new position). So I responded and asked if the email was an electronic copy of the letter being sent to my mailing address. And the recruiter responded "No, just print and sign. :)" Perhaps I'm making too fine a dice of this whole process, but I'd really like some formal, signed evidence of my offer. On company letterhead. With the correct start date, and without the emoticon. I wouldn't be such a stickler, except that HR has been making insensitive and just plain idiotic mistakes ever since this process started (they sent out job description packages that were full of errors; later they called me with an offer but couldn't name the position they were offering me), and I just want them to do something right for a damned change.

Catching up

Yikes! It's been too long since I last posted. Here's what happened: I went to the interview. The skirt fit! I rocked that interview like Mick Jagger rocks "Shattered." Got a second interview. And did not get selected for the job I had targeted. Nobody who applied for that position from my department got it (and we all got the exact same talking points about why, which would be irritating if I wasn't so tired). I did, however, get a job offer for a different consulting position in my current department, which I accepted because I am not too proud to settle. It came with a chunky raise, which does not ease the pain of losing my beloved manager, losing my cherished team, and knowing my workload will increase to the point of career damage. It nearly makes me wish I'd just taken the severance package. But, I'm in it full-tilt for now, knowing that along my path, other opportunities are bound to blossom.

Health care reform in plain English

I regularly follow a blog written by Carla Zilber-Smith, a mother, writer and humorist who has ALS. She's a compelling writer, and has been inspiring me, making me laugh, and breaking my heart, all at the same time, for the last two years. Sometimes she allows guest bloggers. Tonight her son, Maclen, who is an American Politics and Comparative Politics student, wrote a post explaining the historic health care reform bill that passed and got President Obama's signature this week. It's the clearest, most easily understandable explainer on health care reform that I've read so far. If you're curious, here it is.

Interview Time

I applied for two of the new positions created in my department, and have a single interview for both on Monday at 3:30. I'll give a 20-minute presentation, and then they'll grill me the rest of the time. I have a wonderful skirt suit, but found when I tried it on today that the skirt had shrunk was tight because I've been undisciplined in the calorie intake department. So, no carbs from now through Monday. That ought to shave off a couple of pounds. Stop rolling your eyes. I have to be comfortable in what I'm wearing and if it's tight, that's all I'll think about. I don't have any time to shop for a different suit. So, I'll make nice with Atkins for a few days. I have an application in for a position in the Corporate Communications Department as well. HR sent me a screening questionnaire and I'll turn that in tomorrow. I scanned the job board at my present employer and find nothing else of interest there, so it's time to renew my efforts with outside groups.

Pathway defined

I have decided which of four available marketing positions I am going to apply for, and otherwise have been working my connections in other departments at my company. My resume is a couple of minor tweaks away from being finished, and my cover letter is in development. I throw my application into the ring this coming week, have a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation to develop and rehearse over the following week, and will interview shortly after that. Only hitch in the works right now is finding interview outfits. I hate shopping. I wish there were a Women's Wearhouse that I could go to. I'm envious of the suit-shopping options men have. In other news, chocolate assignment work continues. The class ends later this month, and I have two signature candies left to develop. Read about progress at cocoaluscious.blogspot.com.

My job as I know it: Gone.

My position, my fellow supervisors' positions, my managers' positions, and those of half our direct reports have been eliminated. New positions have been created. There'll be a closed application process where anyone in our department can apply for the newly opened positions. Our applications will be screened and we'll either be interviewed or given 60 days' notice. The screening process is the rub: We can apply for as many of the new positions as we are interested in. Whether we will be found suitable to interview for any of them is the question. We will receive detailed job descriptions for the new positions on Monday. I'll be looking them over with an extremely critical eye, and continuing to cast my gaze on other opportunities within my company. I'd like to stay there, if I can, either in marketing or elsewhere. Otherwise it's a modest severance package and a boot in the back. We'll see what's to come.

Tomorrow is R-Day (reorg day)

Tomorrow (Thursday) at 9 a.m. our VP will tell us just what she's been cooking up. And we'll be able to decide whether we'll need tasters to sip the broth. Stay tuned.

Targeted

The awkward thing about the upcoming restructuring at work is knowing next to nothing about what is planned for the department, yet having direct reports be laser-certain that I do. And resenting me for it. It's so strange, because of course, there's nothing I can say to convince them otherwise: they have assigned me to the "them" side of us-versus-them. That's OK; they need to be angry with someone and I'm accessible and safe to be angry with. But on the other hand, it's difficult. It makes me feel like even more of an island.

An orphan's packing list

Today I missed my mother, and that made me wonder why I don't miss my father more. While they both were alive, I was so much closer to my dad. And in the years after my dad died, my mother and I bonded so thoroughly that I was almost grateful to my dad for going. Which felt traitorous, but there you have it. When my dad died, I thought I would, too. I was in so much pain I wished I could just jump out after him. But what's strange is that my dad was always partly so sad with this life that after he left it, he seemed to be so thoroughly gone. And my mother? She seems close, even in the third year since she died. I feel her sometimes, when I'm cooking, or when I'm dithering between decision points. When I want to cry, I miss my mom. She always seemed to know when something was troubling me to that point, and one look from her would start the flood. I couldn't cry around my dad, though, because it completely unwound him. Any hint of waterworks and he'd unleash a pervasive aura of fear and impending helplessness that would dry my tears right in their ducts. But he knew how to listen, so if I could hold it together we'd discuss what was bothering me and that always helped in its own way.

I've been gone for a couple of days, in the Central Valley for work. Now when I travel, I pack more carefully than I did when I was younger and could just fling outfits into a bag without having to worry about medicines, contact solutions and permanently missing parents. For this trip, I packed light: one change of clothing, plus the necessary toiletries, meds and potions. I took my father with me in the form of a letter I wrote him many years ago. And to keep my mother near, I packed her favorite ring - the one with the filigree setting and the dark purple stone worn smooth between its facets.

Chaos and opportunity

I'm no stranger to job hunting. But in the past, job hunting seemed kind of like dating. I was dating jobs until I found the right one. Now job hunting seems like looking for a lawyer when you know your spouse is going to file for divorce. I thought I'd found the right position, in the perfect department, and I nested into the roses and prepared to spend the rest of my career in marketing in this organization that I love. Now I'm in danger of being pitched out of my nest, and I'm working to keep my equilibrium in the midst of chaos, doing my best to be the consummate supervisor and professional so I can support my team and represent myself well in whatever networking and interviewing I manage to line up. I don't sleep well, but I clean up well, and I plan my strategies and lead my meetings and chalk up my gains, all the while knowing that in a few short weeks my work life will look very different. I look forward to a day when life is calm again. But, lesson learned: Network, network. Always network; and no matter how much you love your job, always be at least a little bit on the market.

Blogging my chocolate work

I started another blog - Cocoaluscious - where I can prattle on about my chocolate work. Working in chocolate is something I've loved since 1981, when I began working at The Chocolate Gallery in Santa Barbara. There I learned the craft of working with semisweet, milk, and white chocolates, and the science of cocoa butter and temperature and agitation. I worked there for more than four years and then left to get a college degree in journalism, which I parlayed into university communications, and after a few short hops the marketing communications job I've had for the last five years and which is about to disappear as I've known it. I've loved my job, and now I need to consider my options: Accept what I'm offered, if I'm offered anything; look for something else; or go out on my own again, but this time as a chocolatier (everybody and their cousin's monkey is freelancing in editorial these days, so I won't go back to that). It's likely I won't be able to do that last thing, the chocolate thing, though it's the thing I want to do the most. For one, it would cut my family income by a bit more than a third. For two, it'd destroy my ability to save for retirement (I've been working hard to catch up, as the last economic downturn coupled with my now-late dog's cancer treatment, drained all my savings). For three, I'm extremely debt-averse. Still, I can't stay away from chocolate work. So, I'll keep learning and maybe I'll keep dreaming, and for sure I'll keep writing about it.

New Year. New Me. Yeah.

Well it looks like the job I've known and loved is going straight into the loo. A big reorg will be happening up next month, and who knows what the corporate origamists will come up with. Today was a day when I couldn't handle the uncertainty, and I wasn't up for dealing with more meetings, more politics, and more petty weirdness, so I stayed home. Don't get me wrong: I still love the people I work with, and the people who report to me especially. That's precisely why I was feeling so awful: I have no idea whether after next month I'll be working with them anymore, and it's just wrenching. Today I came up against the wall of it, and I couldn't think of anybody at work without crying, so home I stayed. I trolled the job boards for a while and sniffled and felt sorry for myself. I did some chocolate work and felt a little better, but the minute I stopped I started feeling sorry for myself again, so I went out for a little walk, then came back determined to hit the gym. But then my lovely husband came home to pet my head and he enabled my wallowing by putting on "The Plan," which was good, and opening a bottle of cava, which was better. Then we watched "Julie and Julia." Now the achiness is settling back in around my heart, but at least I don't feel like bursting into tears.

I'm back. Sorry for running off like that.

A lot has happened since I scurried off and abandoned this journal: work went completely into chaos, for one. We lost two beloved pets, and acquired another. I went through bouts of writing interspersed with no time at all to write, because of the awful overload of work. Yes, I do realize I'm lucky to have work, however odious it might be, so don't wag your finger at me. I put this URL on lockdown back in the spring because I was interviewing job applicants for an open position on my team and realized they were all reading my blog. It was unsettling to have people I didn't know and who were trying to impress me ask me about family members and health issues as if they were my long-lost cousins. Bleah. Anyway I don't know what I was expecting, since I'd made this an extremely findable blog. That's changed now. I cut off the padlock, but have locked down the searchability factor and altered my profile. Now people can read if they choose to do so, but the posts won't be traceable directly back to me. So, it's Sunday after Christmas. We washed up back home last night and are putting things back to right. I'll get back into the posting habit, if there's anyone left to read what I write. And if there is not, I'll post anyway. This blog was always more therapy for me than reading material for anyone else. Happy almost new year.

Call me a crone and I'll bust you one.

I've been dealing with the hormonal mutiny every woman has to face at some point in her 40s. Trouble is, I wasn't ready. Is any woman ready? Anyway, it started with the previously mentioned never-ending visit from Aunt Flo. Apparently this was caused because I didn't ovulate last month. Hello, perimenopause. Boy, is it not nice to meet you. Anyway, apparently when you don't ovulate your hormones just go into complete confusion and they go running around your endocrine system with their little heads on fire and their little hands waving in panic. So, I couldn't stop bleeding, and to boot I was fighting an extremely low iron level (still am). As fast as I was shoveling iron in, I was losing it. So, I went to see my doc. She prescribed progesterone and lots of it. My panic-ridden hormones said "we SPIT on progesterone!" and they kept up the chaos and I kept bleeding. 30 days went by. Finally, my doc got out the big guns and put me on birth control pills. (The fact that I'm back on birth control 2 pregnancy-free years after going off it, is fodder for a whole different post.) I'm not just on birth control: I'm on 3 pills per day for the next three days, and then 2 pills per day for the following 3 days, and then down to the normal 1 per day probably until I'm 52. It's just depressing. But on a high note: this ought to halt the hormonal chaos and I can stop single-handedly supporting the feminine-products industry. Which will give me time to start contemplating the idea of menopause. Goddamn I'm not ready for that.

The saddest picture in my world

Before I was born my parents bought a chair to rock me in. It was a typical rocker for its time, with a turned spindles to support the back, and curved arm rests. It was painted black with antique gold trim and flourishes of apples and pears and flowers. Over the years, the paint was rubbed off the hand rests and the rockers had to be replaced, but my parents kept that chair. It was for me to rock my own children in one day. It turns out the never-ending visit of Aunt Flo is the result of one of my ovaries miss-firing. This is a relief, considering there could have been more sinister causes, like benign or malignant tumors. In the process of arriving at her diagnosis, my OBGYN performed an ultrasound. There on the screen was a dark gray image of my perfectly healthy, empty uterus. I'd never had an OBGYN ultrasound before. I'd always expected that when I did have one, it would be so I could observe the beating of a small heart inside me, and that I would get a series of little photos that would reveal the curve of a head, the little Hang Ten image of two tiny feet. The first picture in my baby's album. At the end of today's appointment, after my doctor explained her recommendations for treatment, she printed out a strip of images, zipped them briskly from the machine and waived them briefly in front of me. "For your chart," she explained, and left me to wad up the blue paper sheet I'd been covered with, get back into my black and lavender work clothes, and resume my hectic day. I was grateful for my health, but there wasn't time to think beyond that. Now, it's a half hour into tomorrow and I can't sleep. A month ago, when my younger sister mentioned the need to clean out the garage of my parents' house so tenants could park there, I asked her not to sell the rocking chair. "Please take it home," I said. "And rock your children in it."

Iron will

When I and my siblings were growing up, our mom was fixated for a while on our getting enough iron. Calcium was not a problem: She had milk for that. Fluoride was provided in our tap water. We ate oranges with gusto, so Vitamin C was not on her worry list. But iron? There was something to fret about. The last thing she needed was five little wan, anemic kids. My mom was canny. She knew that policing a multivitamin into her kids every day was not going to work. No, the iron problem would have to be solved by means of a carefully managed diet. She started sneaking spinach into soups and salads. She tucked an individual-serving-size box of raisins into every brown bag lunch we toted to school. She tried getting us to drink milk that had molasses stirred in (we hated it and flatly refused). She made liver and onions at least every other week. I can't think of a meal that is more designed to repel children than liver and onions. But my dad loved it. And on liver-and-onion night, as on every other night, it was either eat what was served or go hungry. We had wolverine appetites so going hungry was not an option. We'd drown the liver in ketchup and choke the mess down. All my mother's toiling on the iron front came to mind the other day when one of my lab results came back with a low ferritin level, again. Abysmally low. Hemoglobin is down, too, though not as alarmingly. I've been chasing after the ferritin for a while now, trying to coax it back within normal range. But It's remained at 9 instead of the minimum 22, and I imagine it thumbing its nose at me from the depths. Add to this injury the insult of either wacky hormones or a side-effect of the low iron (or both): never-ending visit from Auntie Flo. Now I have the attention of two doctors, both of whom want to run more tests to be sure nothing sinister is going on. Overnight I've turned from someone my insurance company makes money on to the dreaded "high utilizer." So, I'm scheduling appointments and going back to a carefully managed, iron-rich diet. I drink nettle tea, eat my spinach, take iron tablets, munch on raisins. I'm even considering cooking up some liver. Pass the ketchup.