Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: zenobia_joy

I am one of those contrarian peoples (or maybe just highly self-aware) who gets up in the morning and thinks, Oh, heavens to bejeezus no, it’s St. Patrick’s Day! That green dress I was planning on wearing must not touch my body, else people think I actually coordinated my outfit to the stinkin’ day!

See, technically, even though the YUDs think we’re part Irish (there’s an O’Connor in the family, going a fair ways back), there’s also that rumor that Mr. O’Connor was impotent. So we’re not really sure, we might be full-blown I-talians on that side of the family. Or anything else for that matter. I, for one, would prefer this mystery to remain a mystery…

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photo credit: zoomar

Those of you who don’t reside in New York City don’t know the joy of watching Pat Kiernan from NY1 in the morning. See, some New Yorkers are so very busy and important that they need to have the news read to them as opposed to reading it for themselves. Time is money, after all!

Pat provides this service with a sardonic demeanor that pairs exceedingly well with the first coffee of the morning, and even though I am not one of those busy and super-duper-important business ladies, I tune in anyway. Unless I don’t get up until 10.

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photo credit: pixelcatcher

This week I feel not so much unemployed as underemployed. Yes, I’m going into an office a few days a week and doing some things that will make me some money, and it’s all very la la la/easy breezy beautiful, but it’s not a challenge so to speak. And while I, as always, have no complaints about having work, it’s a weird adjustment to go from super busy and productive to feeling kind of—well—bored.

Which is to say, skills that I believe to be fairly evident and even bursting at the human seams to be taken advantage of are falling ill from lack of use and perhaps even on the way to becoming vestigal organs that may eventually fall off completely.

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photo credit: ianus

As much as it sucks to stay home and wallow on the couch all day or force yourself to occasionally look at the computer and maybe press a few keys when you’re sick, it is way way way way worse to have to drag yourself out of bed, scan your grey visage in the mirror, groan, pour some orange juice down your throat (which cools the fiery depths temporarily), figure out what to wear that isn’t going to make your bones ache (sweats?), and struggle to midtown where your freelance ME gig awaits, and there are irritating Helvetica issues to be resolved.

Why am I sick, cruel world??? Why? (Imagine pounding fists and flailing appendages, except I’m too weak to do more than sit here and type, and maybe twitch my eye a little.)

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photo credit: Tonio Vega
Men’s underwear.

Per the Washington Post, and countless threadbare-boxer-wearing economists:

Sales of men’s underwear typically are stable because they rank as a necessity. But during times of severe financial strain, men will try to stretch the time between buying new pairs, causing underwear sales to dip.

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photo credit: Jeremy Brooks

Here’s an interesting piece, on Gawker today, about the fate of those print journalism types who haven’t been laid off. And while I don’t think it’s as dire as all that—things change, and people need (after their fair share of wallowing boozily, semi-conscious in private miseries) to hop on board and adapt or just go ahead and retire—it’s telling.

Who has it better? Maybe it’s actually us unemployeds.

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photo credit: digital_monkey

You know how yesterday I was all moans and groans about my freelance gig for the next two weeks? All, Woe to the weary freelancer! So tiring, being in an office all day long! So hard to fit in your blogging, your workouts, and your social time! How do the employed do it?

It does take some getting used to. I am working on a theory about this, but I think it’s because it’s unnatural. People were not meant to sit in tall, heavily air-conditioned buildings staring at computer screens and reading Gawker all day long, listening to loud, plummy-voiced fellows talking about how to get relationship dish from underaged, inexperienced actors at film screenings. People were meant to be active, and enjoy life, and make a difference—do something good for themselves, and each other.

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photo credit: ron.kochanowski
I have a couple things to say, so I guess I’ll say them here. Let’s call it a “Wednesday Night Roundup,” if that works for you. No? “Hump Day Mixer?” Errh. Um. “Bangers and Mash?”

Okay, nevermind. On to the bullet points:

ON MEAN THOUGHTS
• Today on the way home from oh-ye-esteemed-place-of-temporary-bizness, I saw SHE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED, aka, our Lady of the Yogurt and Backstabbery. And, get this: She was wearing an ill-fitting green dress of some jersey fabric, a material that we ladies all know to be highly unforgiving, and as such, she was showcasing her way-over-our-demographic rolls and wrinkles as if she were on the cover of, say, a weekly fashion mag. Her hair was a particularly brassy shade, like she’d lost all of her cash at the craps table in A.C. the same weekend her roots came in. And—the best part—she was pulling an errant swath of the fabric of her charming ensemble OUT OF HER BUTTCRACK. Oh, if the F train had ears, it would tell you…
• And then the poor lady turned, and I realized that she was not who I thought she was, but instead, just a woman in a What Not to Wear dress with a wedgie and a bad dye job.
• Still, the joy was mine for a moment, and it was as good as revenge.

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photo credit: lintmachine

Uh oh. Fearmongering from the working world (aka, the neverending book I am freelance copy editing, and, of course, am infinitely thankful for):

Researchers in one study found that those rated as having a dominant personality had a 47 percent higher risk of heart disease, while those with the highest scores of irritability had a 27 percent higher risk compared with their more patient, passive and unperturbed peers. Among women, the increased risk was associated with more restrained displays of anger, such as sarcasm and making faces, whereas men’s risk rose relative to more full-blown expressions of ire. Irritability was a cardiac risk factor for both sexes.

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