I AM A ROBOT....

Lately I feel like a robot.  Honestly, I find myself speaking all mono-syllabic and moving hurky-jerky style.  I feel as if I lost the up in my giddy-up and I am locked in the ho-hum hum-drum of unemployment.  This totally sucks!  Five months and counting.  I have created a routine and I am rather sure I have mentioned my routine in earlier posts but I am too lazy to re-read it looking for it to link to it.  Robots don't do things like that.  They only do what is in their routines and what they are programmed to do.  I am programmed to get up, read the paper, look for jobs, apply for jobs, clean the house, do laundry, go to work with my husband, make pizzas, deliver the pizzas, come home, look at Facebook, fold the laundry I put in the dryer before the leaving the house, empty the dishwasher, watch a rerun of  "Cold Case" and fall asleep.  Then repeat.  


I wish someone would push reboot or reprogram me to do something different.  Last week I did do other things but even those other things were work like mowing the lawn, weeding the flower bed, raking, waxing the floor and unpacking those boxes of weird shit I can't figure out where it goes but I know I have to keep it.  Aaargh.  I want to enjoy summer but summer enjoyment apparently equals money which one earns by working outside the home which is what I don't do and in my job with my husband--it is unpaid so the business doesn't have to pay someone else, so what fun is that?  


I think I may have a nervous breakdown and start beeping like Silas does when he is nervous.  For example:  First day of school,  "Hi.  I am your new teacher.  What is your name?"  "Beep." *Me* "His name is Silas."  "Oh, welcome Silas.  Let us find your desk.  You are sitting next to Libby.  Do you know Libby?"  *Him* "Beep."  "Well, you must be a little nervous.  That is ok.  Second grade is going to be fun.  What is your favorite sport?"  *Him* "Beep."  I finally left him at his desk even though he didn't stop beeping.  He always stops eventually.


Robots get stuck in routines because that is what they are made to do.  Not me.  If I am stuck in a routine I want compensated for it.  Here are somethings I would like to be paid for:  working and working.  I am good at working.  Mother f***er.  Beep.  Does not compute.  Does not compute.  Beep. Beep. Beep.

Striking Gold

Wowsers.  I struck it rich on Craigslist today.  After a very long dry spell of any amusing job postings, I found two this morning-- ripe and ready for the picking.  La-di-da!

First up is a continuation of our old friend, Edwina, and her property preservation request.  I have no doubt that this has been posted by the same bottom feeders willing to pay a whopping $7.50 for a site visit!  (Gas is $2.89 a gallon right now, barely covers gas.  Idiots.....)  Funniest part is how they ended their posting:  "If you are insured, and honest, we should talk," as opposed to "If you don't have your own worker's comp policy and are a liar..."  Der....  That "we should talk" part should be a red flag that this is not the most genuine posting.  Maybe they should have ended it with "Lets do lunch, dahhhhling," in order to have a higher response rate since only a newb job hunter would respond to this one and, hey, free lunch!

Second idiot posting of the day comes to us from Sarah and Kent who feel that they have discovered the key to success and happiness and therefore must advertise it on Craigslist instead of late night infomercials.  They begin their post with an extremely annoying headline:  "Do you desire a change?"  Answer:  "No, I just look for jobs because I enjoy it."  "No, I just peruse job postings as a way of making myself feel better since I already have a job and want to laugh at the lack of good jobs available."  Why would they include that rhetorical question as their lead-in!?!?!?!  Of course I want change!!!!! Why would I be reading wanted ads online if I wanted to stay all caught up in the usual rigmarole of being unemployed.   For gods sakes alive!  This just really annoyed me but not as much as when I visited the website.  The website was so bad and I became so frustrated by the ambiguous phrases hinting towards financial freedom that I couldn't even post a screen shot here.  It made me so disgusted that I vurped.  I then took some Tums and only posted a screen shot of the ad.  Aaargh!!!!!!!!!

I am not sure if it is the weather, the moon cycle, my female cycle or the fact that I am entering into my 5th (yep, that is right) 5th f'in month of unemployment that is making me sound more like Maxine in those grouchy cartoons than sounding like myself (see dumb cartoon below).  I am also getting so distraught with my lack of leads that becoming an alcoholic or collecting disability pay for doing nothing is becoming more appealing by the minute.  If you are an alcoholic there are recovery services available for you and they will help you find a job if you go into "recovery."  If you are disabled, you can either get free schooling to be retrained or just collect money each month from your mailbox job.  You don't really have to be disabled in the usual manner of loosing body parts either.  You can just have a mental illness.  Mine is unemployment.  It is driving me crazy.  Grrrrr again.

Gottcha Where I Wantcha....

On Friday, while working at my condo-stripping job I was reminded of a series of horribly stupid, long-winded jokes that we used to tell as children.  Maybe you remember them.  The jokes all center around people staying in a hotel and checking out early based on scary voices they hear chanting mantras such as "Gottcha Where I Wantcha, Now I'm Gonna Eatcha," or "When the log rolls over we will die, we will die."  Usually a brave person tracks down the source which ends up to be an old women in a closet holding a bloody booger on her finger or a bunch of talking flies sitting on a turd that was left in the toilet.  Not the best jokes but they were funny to a 7 year old.  The funniest part is why my temporary job on Fridays cleaning hotel rooms would remind me of fodder that is embedded in my mind from almost 30 years ago.  Any guesses as to why??  Honestly, the truth would make you barf.....No pictures associated with this post.  I am still too busy trying not to vomit little bits in my mouth in order to draw what I have witnessed.


Note to Self:  While staying at hotels or resort, be sure to bring ample kleenex and not to use the bed sheets as tissue paper especially while suffering from bloody sinus pressure.  *Barf*  Don't get me started on the toilets again....  

Yellow River.....

There are certain jobs that I just won't do regardless if turning them down would disqualify me from collecting unemployment each week.  Those jobs as we have come to know most likely involve animals, poop and blood.  I suppose I had left out urine.  Here is an announcement from good ol' Careerbuilder about a job in my area--even though it was categorized as not a good match they sent it to me anyway.  I have posted it below as proof. I am not a doctor.  I will never be a doctor.  I have not ever been a doctor nor a urologist.  I don't work with the yellow kind of pee-pee and I don't work with men's pee-pees or women's hootchies.   This job is definitely not for me although it would be a good match for any urologists you may know looking for work especially if they are trained in the computer program listed.  

BTW--I used to have a job that worked with urine.  Not a fun thing to do.  I worked in a probation office and one of those "other duties as assigned" included watching females urinate in cups and verifying that they had not tampered with the urine about to be sampled.  Two people were required to do this for safety and liability--as you might suppose, it would be rather easy for a person to say someone acted inappropriately while watching them pee.  Strength in numbers.  In addition to watching a person pee or watching the person watch the person pee (I preferred to watch the watcher), I was lucky enough to be the one who packaged the urine samples and sent them off via Fed-ex.  This duty as assigned involved wrapping the pee in ultra-absorbent barriers so as not to leak about the box should the lid come dislodged.  The worst part was that while I waited for the Fed-Ex carrier to arrive, the pee samples sat on my desk.  Yep.  Right next to my coffee.  Good times.  I will divulge that the whole reason I went back to university was because of this job.  I wanted a job where I NEVER had to deal with pee again.  Now I just deal with the crap that comes along with unemployment.  Aargh!

Musing Over Unemployment

1. Things that eat at you: The next time I hear the words "over qualified" I am going to throw up on the person who is rejecting me as a future employee. At least they will have a real reason not to hire me AND and I will feel better (ever since I lost my job my tummy has hurt).

2. I am annoying like that kid that sat behind you in 7th grade math and made fart sounds and smelled like B.O.: When I actually go through the process of applying for job then obviously I am interested. Right? -- Nope. Apparently people assume that I just spend an hour or two re-tailoring my resume and filling out generic employment applications for shits and giggles. Hmmmm. Why yes! Now that you mention it, I do indeed enjoy this process. Ultimately my end goal IS to accept a job and then abruptly quit just to cause my employer the hassle of repeating the search process. I enjoy causing misery. WTF?!?! My goal is to obtain and sustain gainful employment. Like previously hinted at: I am not enamored with the job search process.


3. Watch your Ps and Qs: Most recently I have remembered that interviewing is not an activity I would chose to partake in more often than the bare minimum required. Yes, it is possible interview more often than just for employment. Those who choose to be involved in the citizen form of government must be interviewed by commissioners and councilmen prior to be appointed. Others are interviewed for research purposes or disseminating information to the general masses. Even those famous people that irk me so much I get an eye twitch when I see or think of them interview as often as possible to stay in the limelight (tilla tequilla *twitch*).

4. Does this simulation have a reset button? I would like to start this level over: I would much rather have an interview that is a simulation. Not just a typing test either. Maybe we could pretend that I already work there and I can make the coffee. We could talk about dinner last night and how I reprimanded with the children this morning about leaving the milk on the counter, again. Or, how last night my husband and I watched a tantalizing episode of 'Cold Case' that we had not been fortunate enough to have seen before. I can ask how their night was. "Did your mashed potatoes turn out too lumpy again or did you finally use the beaters instead?" "Oh, by the way, how was your pedicure? What color did you choose? Oh yes, yes, the french pedicure is classy."

After the chit-chat I can then proofread their latest report, correct the grammar and set the margins correctly. "Did you realize that your font changes for some reason in this section? You will want to fix that so it doesn't look like you are a noob user of Word." Finally, I can compile your notes into a delightfully modern PowerPoint presentation for your evening meeting and then I will smile while you practice your presentation and pretend that I didn't just rewrite it for you.

5. See you later Alligator. Not if I see you first. That should be enough to tell if I will fit in or not. How often will we be sitting here like this anyway? If it is much more than this initial interview then I definitely do not want this job. Thanks, I will just keep looking.