Threads for the rest of us.

So today starts the OFFICIAL Day One of UNEMPLOYMENT (wish the voice-over movie guy was still alive. Need him to say UNEMPLOYMENT for me).

Yep, you read that right. As of 8AM EST, I am officially unemployed. Laid off from my environmental consulting job. They laid off 3 folks (in an office of 26. Which is 10% of the staff. Yippee, I’m in the lucky 10%!).

Sooooo, what shall I do with all my free time? Well, I figure either the house is going to be REALLY clean and smell nice, or REALLY dirty and be covered in bon-bon boxes aka Peg Bundy style. In reality, I hope to get a bunch listed on Etsy (http://www.bitchenstitchen.etsy.com/), clean the house (really), and spend some quality time with my daughter. Not necessarily in that order.

So, speaking of quality time with my daughter, hmmm, what am I going to do? I mean, I’ve worked Monday thru Friday ever since she was 6 weeks old, and now she’s two and a half. Yeah, we’ve hung out together on weekends, but usually my husband was home too, so I could have a break if I needed one. Ya know, go to the bathroom by myself, etc. Don’t get me wrong – I would hope by two and half years, I would have figured out for the most part how to entertain and take care of a toddler. But every night before bed I have grand plans for the next day (for example, I’d say to myself, tomorrow I’m going to catalogue each vacation picture with date, time, place, persons and scan those into the computer and create folders and…oh, look, Judge Judy’s on. Hmm, I haven’t seen this episode….wait a minute, was I doing something important?). So, based on my short attention span and playing with kiddo, I doubt I’ll be able to get done what I want to get done today. Which includes going to the post office, searching online for a job, canceling EZ-Pass (that’s another entry), and going to Bed Bath and Beyond, since I have a gift card there and need a frying pan.

All I REALLY want to do today is call my former company (NOT the one that just laid me off. Because that would be just PATHETIC. Call the one I left about 4 years ago). And I’ll do that during kiddo’s nap. Try to do some sweet talking, and hope I don’t have to resort to begging and pleading. Day one of unemployment, I still have my pride. Ask me on Day 14, which is the day my incoming funds will cease (will be paid out my vacation time), and I may resort to begging and pleading.

Honestly, there’s a part of me that’s scared shitless: OMG, what if I can’t find a fucking job? How much do we have in resources? How long could we do this? and another part of me that thinks this is a vacation: oh, I can make stuff and list it on Etsy, and start writing a blog, and finally clean out kiddo’s toy bin and move all the boxes in the spare bedroom into the attic (which, BTW, we moved almost three years ago. Figure if I haven’t needed the shit in three years, moving the box out into the attic is probably alright). I guess both those reactions are normal. Right now, I still have my humor.