April 9, 2009
Dear Followers: Son James is home from college, so I’ve had to take a break from the seriousness of the situation to have a few cool ones, sit in the hot tub and watch some college and pro hockey. Life can’t be all stress, can it? All work and no play makes Jack an unhappy boy, or something like that.
Anyway, I’ve been chipping away, trying to keep myself busy with reading (to prepare for the large volume of bookwork coming this summer), finishing a travel story from our incredible desert adventure last month and sending out some resumes for part-time instructor jobs. We’ll see what happens.
I just hope that the old bugaboo of ageism doesn’t rear its ugly head in my quest for a new career.
I don’t think it will, but someone in the house left an article from the local weekly newspaper on the table entitled, “Is 50 the new 30?” It goes on to say that many people over the age of 50 who find themselves disenfranchised come off as a bunch of lazy, whiny goons. Now where would the writer (whose picture makes her look like someone approaching the five decade range) get that idea? To her credit, she does go on to say that now is the time to “re-invent yourself.”
The writer, Joan Graci, says we over-50 job-seekers should identify our core strengths (check), get the skills you need (working on it), go back to school (check), identify employers who need your skills (schools – secondary and college) and show them what you’re made of (still to come). So, based on that article, I’m not doing too bad.
I would think that in academia, an energetic middle-age instructor would be a highly valued commodity. Not only does that person have book knowledge, but has rich and deep life experience to relate to students. We’ll see if that holds true around this time next year.
Most important for me right now is to keep in mind: One step at a time, one day at a time. If you let your mind race to the future, the whole scenario can get overwhelming. Just know that what needs to be done today is relatively simple.
Another subject I need to tackle is this: I’m tired of hearing working people say, “I’m trying to hang on for (fill in the number of years)."
That’s why I’m where I am today -- unemployed and trying to get back into the academic way of life. I decided after much soul searching earlier this year that I don’t want to just “hang on.” I want to do something that is rewarding and challenging. If it helps other people, especially younger ones, in a meaningful way, that’s a great bonus. A paycheck would help, too.
So my advice to the American worker is this: Stop hanging on, start making a difference. It’s much harder to leave that comfort zone and jettison the guaranteed paycheck, but in the long run, it will be well worth your while. America would be better off if people stopped "just hanging on."
Ciao.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
School days
April 7, 2009
Going back to school is like learning to walk or ride a bike again.
I’m going back to visit my alma mater, Bishop Timon-St. Jude, tomorrow to talk with the administration about substitute teaching. I am excited at the prospect of walking the halls again. I haven’t been back to the South Buffalo school since my 20th class reunion in 1994. We spent much of that night recalling our glory days and having a few cool ones on the rooftop retreat once occupied by the school’s many Friars.
I told Judy (blessed wife) excitedly that I get to put my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes out tonight so I can slip them on in the morning. This could be the start of something good. I’ve always felt an affinity for Timon, probably because my brother has taught there for 43 years. I believe there has been a Stanley in Timon since 1958 (more than 50 years!) when my oldest brother walked in as a freshman. My other brother followed him, and then I came along as well. In the meantime, Jim started teaching there in 1966. When he retires in a year or two, as he says he will, I might be destined to walk to the front of the class as a teacher, keeping the Stanley string alive at Timon for another 15 years. How crazy is that?
I also started browsing through practice tests for some standardized competency exams I’ll have to take in the coming year. It takes a while to get your brain back in analysis mode. Did I ever think I’d be hitting the books again? Well, yes. I’ve had that thought for years now, especially watching my wife and kids enjoying their academic pursuits – for the most part.
Studying is actually fun. It's certainly different from what I’ve been doing. I know I will enjoy walking the hallowed halls of academia again. It’ll be good to be around mostly younger people again. It should get the creative juices flowing. You betcha. You are as you think, so it won’t hurt to be around people 20 to 30 years my junior. Maybe my hair will start to grow back? Who needs Rogaine?
I’ve learned so much in the past couple of weeks, including how to take classes on the Internet, registering for classes on the Web and blogging. Now this is what life and learning is about. I have a lot to catch up on. With no offense to Geico, I feel like a cave man re-emerging into the modern world.
I’m pretty sure it was Ray Davies and the Kinks who sang: School days/are the happiest days/though they seem/so far away.
No longer, my friends, no longer.
Going back to school is like learning to walk or ride a bike again.
I’m going back to visit my alma mater, Bishop Timon-St. Jude, tomorrow to talk with the administration about substitute teaching. I am excited at the prospect of walking the halls again. I haven’t been back to the South Buffalo school since my 20th class reunion in 1994. We spent much of that night recalling our glory days and having a few cool ones on the rooftop retreat once occupied by the school’s many Friars.
I told Judy (blessed wife) excitedly that I get to put my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes out tonight so I can slip them on in the morning. This could be the start of something good. I’ve always felt an affinity for Timon, probably because my brother has taught there for 43 years. I believe there has been a Stanley in Timon since 1958 (more than 50 years!) when my oldest brother walked in as a freshman. My other brother followed him, and then I came along as well. In the meantime, Jim started teaching there in 1966. When he retires in a year or two, as he says he will, I might be destined to walk to the front of the class as a teacher, keeping the Stanley string alive at Timon for another 15 years. How crazy is that?
I also started browsing through practice tests for some standardized competency exams I’ll have to take in the coming year. It takes a while to get your brain back in analysis mode. Did I ever think I’d be hitting the books again? Well, yes. I’ve had that thought for years now, especially watching my wife and kids enjoying their academic pursuits – for the most part.
Studying is actually fun. It's certainly different from what I’ve been doing. I know I will enjoy walking the hallowed halls of academia again. It’ll be good to be around mostly younger people again. It should get the creative juices flowing. You betcha. You are as you think, so it won’t hurt to be around people 20 to 30 years my junior. Maybe my hair will start to grow back? Who needs Rogaine?
I’ve learned so much in the past couple of weeks, including how to take classes on the Internet, registering for classes on the Web and blogging. Now this is what life and learning is about. I have a lot to catch up on. With no offense to Geico, I feel like a cave man re-emerging into the modern world.
I’m pretty sure it was Ray Davies and the Kinks who sang: School days/are the happiest days/though they seem/so far away.
No longer, my friends, no longer.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Just like Mom
April 6, 2009
It’s taking some getting used to, this working out of the home. I know I had dreamed recently of this being the perfect situation, but it is taking time to get accustomed to it. After all, I spent 31 years being like Fred Flintstone, carrying my brown bag off to work in the morning, hoisting words at the paragraph factory and then waiting for the 6 o’clock whistle to sound to return to the homestead.
Weirdly, I thought of my mother as I was making myself a cup of tea and looking out into the yard while I was taking a break from writing a travel story. Here I was all alone, except for the cat, writing, doing a little housecleaning and firing off a resume or two.
I remember my mother always being at home. We only had one car and, of course, my father took that to work. Mom didn’t know how to drive anyway. This was the 1960s. So for most of her life, Mom spent her days in near-isolation on Kelsey Drive in West Seneca. I don’t think she had many friends in the neighborhood. She liked to talk with her sisters on the telephone, but she was mostly limited to conversations with just one sister who lived in the Buffalo area. In the ‘60s, telephone calls to Olean, where her other sisters and her mother lived, required long-distance service and charges.
I never heard Mom complain about staying home. I know she walked to many places, like Gill’s delicatessen, the dentist’s office and she did some substitute teaching at St. Bonaventure Elementary School. But for the most part, she cleaned, cooked, read her books, recited the rosary and waited for Dad to come home at 4 p.m.
As I stood gazing out the kitchen window at the April drizzle which was morphing into snowflakes, I wondered if Mom was watching me, saying, “Like Mother, Like Son.”
I’m keeping myself busy writing and carrying out the flotsam of duties that have to be done before I start school next month. I find it’s important to keep the mind engaged, so as not to dwell on the task-filled future. In my daily reading of Wayne Dyer’s “Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life,” he states: “All we ever get is right now – that’s it. So we must avoid the inclination to magnify tiny events or worry about a future that may never arrive.”
Later, Dyer writes, “After all, how do you pursue a difficult course of study that will take several years to complete? By not projecting yourself into the future or using your present moments to worry.”
Whenever I have doubts about my course of action to leave the 9-to-5 world and delve into school, I think about the unanimous support I am receiving from all the members of my family and all my friends. With so many people providing me with love and energy, how can I not succeed?
It’s taking some getting used to, this working out of the home. I know I had dreamed recently of this being the perfect situation, but it is taking time to get accustomed to it. After all, I spent 31 years being like Fred Flintstone, carrying my brown bag off to work in the morning, hoisting words at the paragraph factory and then waiting for the 6 o’clock whistle to sound to return to the homestead.
Weirdly, I thought of my mother as I was making myself a cup of tea and looking out into the yard while I was taking a break from writing a travel story. Here I was all alone, except for the cat, writing, doing a little housecleaning and firing off a resume or two.
I remember my mother always being at home. We only had one car and, of course, my father took that to work. Mom didn’t know how to drive anyway. This was the 1960s. So for most of her life, Mom spent her days in near-isolation on Kelsey Drive in West Seneca. I don’t think she had many friends in the neighborhood. She liked to talk with her sisters on the telephone, but she was mostly limited to conversations with just one sister who lived in the Buffalo area. In the ‘60s, telephone calls to Olean, where her other sisters and her mother lived, required long-distance service and charges.
I never heard Mom complain about staying home. I know she walked to many places, like Gill’s delicatessen, the dentist’s office and she did some substitute teaching at St. Bonaventure Elementary School. But for the most part, she cleaned, cooked, read her books, recited the rosary and waited for Dad to come home at 4 p.m.
As I stood gazing out the kitchen window at the April drizzle which was morphing into snowflakes, I wondered if Mom was watching me, saying, “Like Mother, Like Son.”
I’m keeping myself busy writing and carrying out the flotsam of duties that have to be done before I start school next month. I find it’s important to keep the mind engaged, so as not to dwell on the task-filled future. In my daily reading of Wayne Dyer’s “Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life,” he states: “All we ever get is right now – that’s it. So we must avoid the inclination to magnify tiny events or worry about a future that may never arrive.”
Later, Dyer writes, “After all, how do you pursue a difficult course of study that will take several years to complete? By not projecting yourself into the future or using your present moments to worry.”
Whenever I have doubts about my course of action to leave the 9-to-5 world and delve into school, I think about the unanimous support I am receiving from all the members of my family and all my friends. With so many people providing me with love and energy, how can I not succeed?
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Year of transition
April 5, 2009
We just spent a weekend at our home away from home – Chautauqua Lake. The one thing that really impressed itself on me during the visit was what a year of change this will be.
There will be three weddings this summer, including our beautiful daughter Jill and her fiancé Colin, and the two children of our good friends, the Andersons. The world seems to be spinning by at an incredible speed with change being the only constant.
Add to the weddings the fact that Jill will be graduating from grad school, James will be a senior in college, Rachel will be headed to Abu Dhabi on another excursion in her global trek and I will be attending grad school in a fresh environment. My wife Judy continues to shoulder incredible burdens at home and at work and does so willingly. On a bigger scale, the country will need to emerge from its economic funk if we are to survive as the United States of America. This calendar year must see an upturn in our economic fortunes.
It will quite the year – 2009.
I was flattered to hear from friends that I am a fabulous role model for my children and those young people I will be attending school with this year. I never think of it that way. Sometimes I think I am a complete kook, having given up a good-paying, stable job to leap into an uncertain future in a new career at age 52.
Our neighbor and confidante, Barb, says I represent what is good about the Baby Boom generation – the generation that at one time seemed to embrace the alternative, the non-material approach to life before it immersed itself in greed and thievery. I shared with her that I have stolen the phrase of author Wayne Dyer as my motto for the next 15 years: How may I serve.
If I end up teaching at a Catholic high school, that will be an honor. If I end up teaching lower socio-economic students at a community college, that will be fine. If I end up being a househusband, then I will fill that role happily.
All I know is that my soul needed a change, and in this year of change I have decided to go for it. My goal now is to keep myself involved, to write and write some more since that seems to be my calling, to keep focused on my schooling and not to be afraid to walk bravely into the unknown.
I see my 22-year-old daughter going undaunted into the unknown as she enters the last rigorous semester of her schooling, preparing to marry and possibly relocate hundreds of miles from her family. How much more change can one person take in less than a year? Now that to me is being a role model.
If I had a prayer for this coming year is would be – Lord, give me courage to stay on this path and see what good and grace I can bring into the world. Amen.
Note to readers: I woke up this morning on Vukote Road and looked at the bedside clock. Yep, it was 7:52.
We just spent a weekend at our home away from home – Chautauqua Lake. The one thing that really impressed itself on me during the visit was what a year of change this will be.
There will be three weddings this summer, including our beautiful daughter Jill and her fiancé Colin, and the two children of our good friends, the Andersons. The world seems to be spinning by at an incredible speed with change being the only constant.
Add to the weddings the fact that Jill will be graduating from grad school, James will be a senior in college, Rachel will be headed to Abu Dhabi on another excursion in her global trek and I will be attending grad school in a fresh environment. My wife Judy continues to shoulder incredible burdens at home and at work and does so willingly. On a bigger scale, the country will need to emerge from its economic funk if we are to survive as the United States of America. This calendar year must see an upturn in our economic fortunes.
It will quite the year – 2009.
I was flattered to hear from friends that I am a fabulous role model for my children and those young people I will be attending school with this year. I never think of it that way. Sometimes I think I am a complete kook, having given up a good-paying, stable job to leap into an uncertain future in a new career at age 52.
Our neighbor and confidante, Barb, says I represent what is good about the Baby Boom generation – the generation that at one time seemed to embrace the alternative, the non-material approach to life before it immersed itself in greed and thievery. I shared with her that I have stolen the phrase of author Wayne Dyer as my motto for the next 15 years: How may I serve.
If I end up teaching at a Catholic high school, that will be an honor. If I end up teaching lower socio-economic students at a community college, that will be fine. If I end up being a househusband, then I will fill that role happily.
All I know is that my soul needed a change, and in this year of change I have decided to go for it. My goal now is to keep myself involved, to write and write some more since that seems to be my calling, to keep focused on my schooling and not to be afraid to walk bravely into the unknown.
I see my 22-year-old daughter going undaunted into the unknown as she enters the last rigorous semester of her schooling, preparing to marry and possibly relocate hundreds of miles from her family. How much more change can one person take in less than a year? Now that to me is being a role model.
If I had a prayer for this coming year is would be – Lord, give me courage to stay on this path and see what good and grace I can bring into the world. Amen.
Note to readers: I woke up this morning on Vukote Road and looked at the bedside clock. Yep, it was 7:52.
Friday, April 3, 2009
New guy on campus
April 3, 2009
It felt pretty good this morning, parking the car on Columbus Avenue and strolling through the rain onto the campus of D’Youville College, knowing that I was to become part of it. I looked down Niagara Street into downtown Buffalo and the business district and thought I won’t miss being part of that scene for the next year or so.
I had to go into the undergraduate dormitory to get to the Health Office for a meningitis waiver and passed bleary-eyed students heading out to their 9 a.m. classes. I made my way to advisement where I got me list of courses to begin my master’s degree. I felt definite exhilaration working with the advisor to get my class schedule set up and devised an ambitious plan to complete my degree in one calendar year.
I’m ready to rock ‘n’ roll - whatever it takes, I will do.
My initial feeling is that this is going to be a lot of hard work, an intense year, but a lot of fun. I can feel the synapses in my brain firing again after years of boredom and inactivity. It’s pretty amazing how we get into ruts and never know it.
Cleaning out some files at the end of the day, I had to laugh because I’d been looking for another job for years. There were resumes, cover letters and “notes to self” spanning 15 years. I knew I wasn’t especially thrilled with my employment at the newspaper, but I never knew it went back so far in my career there. Brain. Dead.
So it was with enthusiasm that I mixed with the young students, watching as they studied, delivered papers under professors’ doors and sat in groups chatting. This is my new world – the world of academia. It seemed oddly calm and civilized. Nobody has had big sniff of the almighty dollar yet, so they’re not half-crazed. Hopefully, they will be able to keep their heads in the right place, unlike the Boomer generation, of which I am a part, which has really turned out to be largely – in the words of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson – a generation of swine.
I definitely sensed a spirit of renewal as I marched around the small, urban campus where, coincidentally my wife and mentor also works. Tee-hee! Who knows, maybe I’ll end up with a job at D’Youville also.
It felt pretty good this morning, parking the car on Columbus Avenue and strolling through the rain onto the campus of D’Youville College, knowing that I was to become part of it. I looked down Niagara Street into downtown Buffalo and the business district and thought I won’t miss being part of that scene for the next year or so.
I had to go into the undergraduate dormitory to get to the Health Office for a meningitis waiver and passed bleary-eyed students heading out to their 9 a.m. classes. I made my way to advisement where I got me list of courses to begin my master’s degree. I felt definite exhilaration working with the advisor to get my class schedule set up and devised an ambitious plan to complete my degree in one calendar year.
I’m ready to rock ‘n’ roll - whatever it takes, I will do.
My initial feeling is that this is going to be a lot of hard work, an intense year, but a lot of fun. I can feel the synapses in my brain firing again after years of boredom and inactivity. It’s pretty amazing how we get into ruts and never know it.
Cleaning out some files at the end of the day, I had to laugh because I’d been looking for another job for years. There were resumes, cover letters and “notes to self” spanning 15 years. I knew I wasn’t especially thrilled with my employment at the newspaper, but I never knew it went back so far in my career there. Brain. Dead.
So it was with enthusiasm that I mixed with the young students, watching as they studied, delivered papers under professors’ doors and sat in groups chatting. This is my new world – the world of academia. It seemed oddly calm and civilized. Nobody has had big sniff of the almighty dollar yet, so they’re not half-crazed. Hopefully, they will be able to keep their heads in the right place, unlike the Boomer generation, of which I am a part, which has really turned out to be largely – in the words of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson – a generation of swine.
I definitely sensed a spirit of renewal as I marched around the small, urban campus where, coincidentally my wife and mentor also works. Tee-hee! Who knows, maybe I’ll end up with a job at D’Youville also.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A matter of faith
I’m getting ready to head for my advisement meeting tomorrow at D’Youville College for the master’s in education program. This marks my formal re-entrance into academia. I have a course catalog, notes written to myself to ask the proper questions and my trusty notebook at hand. Soon they will be stuffed in the green backpack for the trip in the morning. I have some butterflies in my stomach. It’s been 31 years since I snagged my diploma at Syracuse University.
Earlier today I went to the Newspaper Guild office in the historic Larkin Building to attend a seminar on navigating the unemployment insurance process. It sounds like a relatively easy procedure, but it’ll be a weekly event to register and report any income. Big Brother likes to keep tabs on you when he’s doling out your tax money.
It made for a day that was anxious at times as I start down this road. There are so many uncertainties, but that’s what makes journeys interesting. I keep thinking of the advice I received from our neighbor in Chautauqua who advised me on “taking this leap of faith.”
“There’s something great out there waiting for you. You just can’t see it right now,” she told me several weeks before I took the buyout from my employer in order to pursue my education and devote the rest of my life to teaching – and learning.
It really is a matter of faith. I believe I will be successful at this, regardless of how daunting a task it seems as I write this on a mild April evening in Buffalo. Keep the faith. Remain positive. Take one day at a time. That really is the key: to refrain from looking ahead too far. Just handle the task at hand.
Self-help author Wayne Dyer would probably tell me to believe in abundance, and that the universe will provide what I need when it is needed.
So be it.
Earlier today I went to the Newspaper Guild office in the historic Larkin Building to attend a seminar on navigating the unemployment insurance process. It sounds like a relatively easy procedure, but it’ll be a weekly event to register and report any income. Big Brother likes to keep tabs on you when he’s doling out your tax money.
It made for a day that was anxious at times as I start down this road. There are so many uncertainties, but that’s what makes journeys interesting. I keep thinking of the advice I received from our neighbor in Chautauqua who advised me on “taking this leap of faith.”
“There’s something great out there waiting for you. You just can’t see it right now,” she told me several weeks before I took the buyout from my employer in order to pursue my education and devote the rest of my life to teaching – and learning.
It really is a matter of faith. I believe I will be successful at this, regardless of how daunting a task it seems as I write this on a mild April evening in Buffalo. Keep the faith. Remain positive. Take one day at a time. That really is the key: to refrain from looking ahead too far. Just handle the task at hand.
Self-help author Wayne Dyer would probably tell me to believe in abundance, and that the universe will provide what I need when it is needed.
So be it.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
752
April 1, 2009
For the past decade or so, a puzzling phenomenon has been happening to me.
The number 752 keeps cropping up. Most mornings and evenings when I look at the clock, it says 7:52. When I’m on the treadmill or cross-trainer, I’ll look down and see on the timer – 7:52. At a hockey game, I'll look at the game clock and see 7:52. I’ve played the Pick Three Lotto with lucky 752 several times, but without success.
I’ve heard other people talk about seeing the same number all the time – 911 is a popular one, and in fact I do see that sequence quite often and it’s not in news accounts of the most famous terrorist event in history. They say 911 means to live for the moment. So what does 752 mean?
Especially in the last few years, I’ve been wondering about the significance of 752 in my life. I came to the conclusion that it had something to do with the seventh month of my 52nd year, like something momentous might happen to me. Since I was born in October of 1956, this month that we just entered – April of 2009 – happens to be the seventh month of my 52nd year. Sure enough, something major has occurred in my life. I’ve left a job that I worked at for more than two decades and have taken a new path in life.
I moribundly had been thinking for a while that maybe 752 signaled my demise, as in the appointed time for the grim reaper to come calling for me. There’s still 29 days to go for that, but I don’t think that’s what the number gods had in mind. I think it pointed to this as the time for a major life change.
As for today, it was calm and without much of the mental and emotional turmoil of the past couple of months. I busied myself tying up some loose ends, making some telephone calls to a couple of old friends, doing some housework and mostly trying to get my plans together for the coming 12 months.
I had to laugh when Judy called from D’Youville College, where she is a nursing professor, about 4:30 in the afternoon to say she’d be late for dinner. Here, I’d been slaving over a hot stove for an hour, fashioning some turkey balls out of egg, bread crumbs, milk and, of course, turkey meat to flavor the jarred pasta sauce and spaghetti. Mr. Domestic!
I told her, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll keep the dinner warm." I actually enjoyed whipping up the evening grub. I think my calling may be as a househusband. A man slave.
Judy loved the dinner, by the way.
Tomorrow I’m headed to a seminar about filing for unemployment. That, in itself, is a new experience for me. (Do one new thing every day!) Today I tried filing for benefits but the state’s Department of Labor computer stated that the two days I’d worked this week made me ineligible. Try again Monday, the computer told me.
As a longtime breadwinner, I still had some minor anxiety about not shuffling off to work (what a bunch of robots we are!) at the appointed hour, and then I started thinking about paying bills a year from now. Ugh. I hope that ugly beast stops rearing its head.
Anyway, I’ve got to teach myself to enjoy these five weeks before school begins – to make it entertaining yet productive. Why not just relax? That’s difficult for a man who has been a worker bee for 31 years, gathering honey for the queen bee’s hive.
For the past decade or so, a puzzling phenomenon has been happening to me.
The number 752 keeps cropping up. Most mornings and evenings when I look at the clock, it says 7:52. When I’m on the treadmill or cross-trainer, I’ll look down and see on the timer – 7:52. At a hockey game, I'll look at the game clock and see 7:52. I’ve played the Pick Three Lotto with lucky 752 several times, but without success.
I’ve heard other people talk about seeing the same number all the time – 911 is a popular one, and in fact I do see that sequence quite often and it’s not in news accounts of the most famous terrorist event in history. They say 911 means to live for the moment. So what does 752 mean?
Especially in the last few years, I’ve been wondering about the significance of 752 in my life. I came to the conclusion that it had something to do with the seventh month of my 52nd year, like something momentous might happen to me. Since I was born in October of 1956, this month that we just entered – April of 2009 – happens to be the seventh month of my 52nd year. Sure enough, something major has occurred in my life. I’ve left a job that I worked at for more than two decades and have taken a new path in life.
I moribundly had been thinking for a while that maybe 752 signaled my demise, as in the appointed time for the grim reaper to come calling for me. There’s still 29 days to go for that, but I don’t think that’s what the number gods had in mind. I think it pointed to this as the time for a major life change.
As for today, it was calm and without much of the mental and emotional turmoil of the past couple of months. I busied myself tying up some loose ends, making some telephone calls to a couple of old friends, doing some housework and mostly trying to get my plans together for the coming 12 months.
I had to laugh when Judy called from D’Youville College, where she is a nursing professor, about 4:30 in the afternoon to say she’d be late for dinner. Here, I’d been slaving over a hot stove for an hour, fashioning some turkey balls out of egg, bread crumbs, milk and, of course, turkey meat to flavor the jarred pasta sauce and spaghetti. Mr. Domestic!
I told her, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll keep the dinner warm." I actually enjoyed whipping up the evening grub. I think my calling may be as a househusband. A man slave.
Judy loved the dinner, by the way.
Tomorrow I’m headed to a seminar about filing for unemployment. That, in itself, is a new experience for me. (Do one new thing every day!) Today I tried filing for benefits but the state’s Department of Labor computer stated that the two days I’d worked this week made me ineligible. Try again Monday, the computer told me.
As a longtime breadwinner, I still had some minor anxiety about not shuffling off to work (what a bunch of robots we are!) at the appointed hour, and then I started thinking about paying bills a year from now. Ugh. I hope that ugly beast stops rearing its head.
Anyway, I’ve got to teach myself to enjoy these five weeks before school begins – to make it entertaining yet productive. Why not just relax? That’s difficult for a man who has been a worker bee for 31 years, gathering honey for the queen bee’s hive.
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