The days eke by, drifting lazily into one another. My husband sits at the computer hour after hour, looking at companies, fiddling around with his resume. I awake in the night only to see his side of the bed empty again and again. Forthright conversations take place at four a.m. Shocking declarations are made when I drag myself out of bed, when he has already been up -brooding- for four hours.

Through it all I try to hold on to optimism, pulling him up, keeping us afloat. That role does not come naturally to me.
…………………………………….
The toughest part of this uncertain state of existence is the lack of shopping. I like to consider myself a fairly frugal person, but I am too fond of not-frugal* splurges. Shopping has long been our family pastime. The fact that my not-frugal splurges are leading to an onslaught of not-frugal catalogues arriving almost daily in our mailbox seems especially painful right now.

*usually in the clearance section of certain not-frugal websites

Either from the heat or from the stress, I broke out in a rash that spread from my neck upwards to my chin and jaw and downwards to my chest. So, seeking relief in the cool, dark womb of the basement, we have now watched nearly the entire first season of the X-Files, a reasonable distraction from an unreasonable life. Tomorrow we have to get out and live this new life because I am nearly turning phosphorescent from all this time underground. For now, we have merely made it up one flight of stairs to camp out overnight in the family room.

I vacillate between calm acceptance and feeling like I’ve been sucker-punched. Really, from the moment I heard on NPR that CC’s company was cutting its salaried workforce I had a bad feeling. The entire organizational structure above him changed last year but he’s been in the same group for nine years. There used to be more people, both older and younger, in the group but coworkers were slowly moved around in the company until he remained the youngest one there. From a bureaucratic standpoint it makes sense, especially given that the people up the food chain were more interested in protecting their long-term groups rather than this step-child group that had been foisted upon them last year. However, given that CC always had great performance evaluations and had more seniority than quite a few people in the larger umbrella group, it seems a bit unjust.

Actually I am mostly okay despite the uncertainty. …Until CC starts asking me what states I would absolutely not want to move to. F* that. I don’t want to move at all. I’ve moved enough for one lifetime!

So I soothe myself with thoughts of networking. CC had people brainstorming on his behalf the morning after the damned lay-off. If something like that pans out, I can guarantee that he’ll have a bunch of ex-coworkers knocking on his door (metaphorically) in the years to come. This could turn out to be a huge “blessing” - getting out while the getting’s good, a decent severance package, etc. I told him that my plan is to feather our kids’ college funds with that money so he only has a couple of months before I expect him to work again.

The dark parts of my brain do understand that optimism isn’t necessarily warranted. But, damn it, he has people rooting for him, a solid work history, and a BS & MS from the #2 university in the world in his field. In the meantime, PonyBoy is really!really!really! excited at the prospect of Mama working as a substitute teacher again when school starts.

As the rumored Layoff Day has drawn closer I keep flashing back to the memory of when CC told me that he had changed his mind and was going to accept the job here in Michigan. We were eating lunch at Bongo Burger in downtown Berkeley. He had spent the first few months of his second year of graduate school interviewing at the requisite Silicon Valley type places, as well as this one odd choice in which he had been flown to Michigan of all places. I laughed and told him at least that was a better choice than Texas. He came back full of tales but saying he wasn’t going to take the job if it were offered. …Until that lunch when the bottom dropped out from under me. He had always wanted to work with cars. There was still almost a year before he would start.

Years later when I joined him, I hated it. Hated hated hated. My foot was half out the door for quite a long time. Just a few years ago I told someone that if he lost his job we would probably move out of the state. Now, I like where we live. I like my son’s school. Sure, I get a little wistful when I remember that another Californian who came out here couldn’t hack it, moved back, and now is the in charge of the ipod case.

Meanwhile, the ten percent salaried employee cuts at CC’s employer is not across the board. Some more, some less. CC’s division? Twenty-five percent! But even that is not across the board. The rumor mill says that eight out of eighteen salaried employees in CC’s area are going to get the ax. Some crafty engineer figured out a way to read some usually-extraneous information in the employee database, assumptions were made, rumors sprang to life, and CC received a phone call last night saying that it looks like he and his immediate coworkers might be okay.

Right now they’re about an hour into the layoff schedule. I haven’t received a phone call. But then again, CC’s cell phone belongs to the company so I wouldn’t necessarily receive a call now would I?
……
update: yes, he got his walking papers

= The time it takes to drive from Nashville to our house, with side trips for fueling and lunch. This also includes hitting Cincinnati at rush hour.

For a weekend trip it was a bit much, but it was for a family reunion so it was worthwhile. It helps that both boys are prone to falling asleep in the car. An unfortunate cheek-pinching incident precluded the use of the dvd player on the way home.

The trip also helped distract us from the looming layoffs that have thus far clouded the summer and stripped me of the will to blog.

Blue willow china reminds me of my grandparents, whose cupboards are loaded with enough ceramics in that pattern to feed a house full of guests.

I just discovered two modern recreations of that pattern: Chinese Whisper by William Warren and After Willow by Robert Dawson for Wedgewood

Sadly forty dollar dessert plates don’t go very well with my boys, but I harbor a continuing love for blue and white china and now I have a new secret desire.

In the interests of website, and perhaps sanity, maintenance I pruned, pinched, and privatized most of the blog archives recently. It was either that or dump everything.

To sum up the past five-plus years of my life: “Gosh, I’m tired. I wish the kid would sleep.” and “Gee whiz, I’m sick. The kid is sick. We’re all sick.”

As for right now - Thanks to the archive pruning, I did find out that it was exactly four years ago that PonyBoy and I both came down with the same illness that afflicts PuppyBaby right now. And, gosh, I’m so tired due to having a miserable non-sleeping kid!

I’m reading the utterly delicious The Girl With No Shadow, a sequel to Chocolat, by Joanne Harris.