Quickest Girl in the Frying Pan's Weblog

Only they spelled it “Maryann” but still.  This makes me silly happy.

“Butterfly in Reverse” ~ The Counting Crows

Maryann you’re better than the world
They took a lot of time getting it right on this girl
I said Maryann you’re better than the world
They did a lot of things right on this girl
I had a lot of girlfriends
I should have known them
Click your heels and count back from three
Do you want to go back
You should have known that
The butterfly in reverse here is me
Maryann you’re better than the world
They took a lot of time getting it right on this girl
I said Maryann you’re better than the world
They did a lot of things right on this girl
Where’d you want to go to
with nothing beside you
But webbing and curfews and rain
And everything that hurts you
Gets stuffed up inside you
Like butterflies with wings
or other perfect things
We go swimming in the sunshine
Dangling from clotheslines
Seperate and fall into me
And did you ever see me
Me absolutely
Me but all you but still me
Maryann you’re better than the world
They took a lot of time getting it right on this girl
I said Maryann you’re better than the world
They did a lot of things right on this girl did alot of things right on this [2X]
did alot of things right on this girl

My Lady and I were sitting at the kitchen table last night listening to Internet radio on Pandora.com (if you haven’t found it yet, go. It is wonderfulness).  I was having a bottle of one of my favorite beers, she was drinking her favorite brew, Mountain Dew, and we were chatting cheerfully about one thing or another when the phone rang. She checked the number and rattled it off to me, it was the number of the place I had interviewed with on Friday.  ”Answer it please.”, I said. It was the HR director, calling to offer me a job!

Rewind to Thursday. I was grumpy. Feeling depressed that I’d applied to so many different places and no one had called me back.  What does a girl have to do to get a job that is NOT in a call center in this town?! Feeling a little defeated I began looking through the customer services jobs. I knew that I am qualified and would get any job that I applied for in that field so I thought I would look through all the listings and pick out the ones that pay the highest and seem to be the least stressful.  The very first one I found STARTS paying more than I was making at my last job when I left after working there for nearly 4 years.  It was described as a “small” call center and is located just down the road from where we live.  I read the requirements for the position and somehow knew that if I applied I would get it.  I moved my cursor over the “Apply Now!” button and hesitated… “Do I really want to go back to a call center?!” I asked myself.  I reread the job description and decided to go for it, find out more detail about the position, and if it comes down to it and I don’t like the feel of it, I can always turn it down.  So I applied. Within 30 minutes I got a call.  She had to leave the office at 5 but she really wanted to get me in for an interview on Friday. There was a form I had to fill out and sign and an on-line assessment to take before they could interview me, so she emailed it to me. I finished both and sent them back promptly. She called me back to let me know I was the only one she’d ever had to make a 100% on the assessment, lol.  I got scheduled for a phone interview the next morning with the HR director. That call went very well, we walked through a mock call and she seemed impressed so she scheduled me for a face-to-face interview with the center managers that afternoon. I prepped, dressed, and put my game face on then got stuck in traffic.  I ended up being 10 minutes late for the interview.  10 minutes!  I couldn’t believe it, but hoping that I hadn’t ruined any chance I had, I gave the interview my best and then had to take 5 assessments in their office.  The first of which was a spelling test!  I laughed when she showed it to me and she looked at me questioningly.  “I’m a bit retentive when it comes to spelling.” I told her with a smile.  I didn’t mention that I will sit and play Bookworm for hours on my PC. (Yes, I’m a geek.  We’ve established this, moving on.) As I was leaving one of the ladies met me at the door to let me know that I did “very well” on the assessments and that once a decision was made they would be calling the candidates that very evening to let them know.  I left feeling pretty good about it, despite my tardiness, and thoroughly expected to get a call on my cell phone later that evening.  I even told my Lady, “I will be surprised if they don’t offer me the position.”.  But Friday evening came and went, as did Saturday, and I didn’t get a call.  I’d planned on calling first thing this morning to check on it and see if they’d made their decision.

I didn’t have to obviously, as she called me on Sunday night.  Turns out she had to leave work early on Friday and did not have the chance to call anyone.  I took the phone and went out to sit on the front porch to talk with her.  I accepted the position and set up an appointment for a drug screening today, thanked her and ended the call.  When I walked back into the house I shouted “I have a job!”, throwing my hands up in the air.  It was a great end to a great weekend.  Granted, it’s customer service, but it’s customer service for the government… yeah, I’m kinda sorta gonna be working for the Department of Homeland Security. Fucked up huh? I’ll be taking calls from businesses with questions about the new guidelines for the handling and disposal of chemicals. It’s verbatim scripting so it’s pretty much gonna be a no-brainer. It’s also a very small call center and the call volume is low to moderate. I anticipate being bored a lot, but with a much lower level of stress than what I was taking on before. It offers great benefits, insurance all around, and paid vacation and holidays. As far as a call-center job goes, it sounds ideal… posh even. We’ll see, of course, I haven’t started doing the work yet. But I think this is going to be exactly what I need to get me through the rest of my schooling.

Friday I took a roadtrip to my birthplace with a good friend of mine to shoot a low budget horror movie.  It was much fun. I can’t wait to see our death scenes.  I was stabbed to death.  She was strangled.  I came home tired and road weary, my clothes stiffened with dried fake blood.  It was good times.  : )

Looking for work is depressing. In case you didn’t know. I’ve sent out between 40 and 50 resumes over the last couple of weeks and haven’t gotten any calls except from temp agencies. Then after the interviews with said temp agencies. Nothing.  Ugh.

I have a handful of recurring dreams.  One of those involves touring downtown of a city that I love living near and there is always a dam with a walking bridge to it that I love visiting. I had that dream last night only the Counting Crows were in town for a show and Adam Duritz wanted to stay with locals to visit the city with and he ended up staying with us. We took him on a tour of the city, ate lunch at an awesome sushi bar and walked to the dam, then back to our house where he was admiring our book collection and telling us about a bookstore in New Orleans that he loves visiting when he is there… then the youngest darkling started crying for his breakfast and woke me up. 

I also had this severely bizarre dream where my maternal grandfather was still alive but he had cancer so they did a surgery to remove his heart and his penis.  But he was still alive.  I spent the entire dream at their house talking to my Grandmother and my Aunts trying to figure out how the hell he was still alive after they’d removed his heart.

I had my child when I was very young. She was the product of my first love, right out of high school. For most of our Life together it has been just the two of us. Even when I was married it seemed that the family was V’d with myself at the crux of it; she and I on one side and he and I on the other. Still, through the rocky relationships and the alliance she and I shared I have always wanted another child. Even when it was completely against all logic to do so. But through the years I have always said that if I were to have another child it would have to be before I turned 30. Well, my 30th birthday has come and gone and since then I have still found myself, from time to time, wanting another child. Together, the SO’s and I have three children. It seems laughable really, even with the fantastic relationship we have, three children are a handful! Our youngest is two and a half. Many of you know what it’s like having a two and a half year old child in the house and those of you who do not have undoubtedly heard the phrase “terrible two’s”.  There is a reason that phrase exists. There is a five year age difference between all three of our darklings. It’s a good span I think. I love them all as if I had given birth to all of them and couldn’t imagine my Life without them… but, I think that three is enough. In my more… unstable… moments when logic falters and I find myself longing for the experience of carrying, birthing, and raising another tiny bundle of joy I remind myself of the con’s of such a course of action.

Number one, children are expensive. It seems we can’t leave the grocery store without dropping $250. Back-to-school shopping always finds us spending around $500, and the littlest hasn’t even started school yet!  Yule shopping is unbelieveable. We typically drop at least a couple of hundred at each birthday. And I can’t even begin to calculate the incidentals in between like lunch money, field trips, school fees, allowances, shoes (omg the shoes they grow out of so quickly!), etc. etc. etc. Number two, adult time. Yeah, it’s hard to have quality adult time when you’ve got young kids. Especially three young kids. We have to plan a month in advance before taking an overnight trip. A vacation? Take in a movie?  Dinner alone?  Those things require extensive planning too.  I’m not complaining, mind you, I’m just saying. Having another baby would be like starting all over again. Diapers, late night feedings, the crying, potty-training, school, not going anywhere for the first 2 years… ugh. It’s a lot. Each individual child is a huge investment of time and energy and money.

This train of thought comes and goes for me but it’s been brought to the forefront of my attention this weekend. We are babysitting my niece and nephew, ages 7 and 4. That’s five children in the house. Five breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks to prep. Five baths/showers/hair-washings/teeth brushings to supervise. Messes to clean up, “Don’t do that!”’s to yell, and a shit ton of toys to pick up. Granted the oldest has been helpful in supervising and picking up after the younger ones (I need to drop a few bucks in her hand for that) but still, it’s overwhelming at times. So, yeah… three’s company, five is fucking insane.