Best of the best wishes to you in 2014.


My year ended on a high note.

Your pal Trill went out got herself a job.

A real, full-time job.

A real, full-time job in her chosen profession.

It's not a dream job, but it's a good job. And yes, at this juncture for me any job is a good job. Any job is a dream job. But this is a good job in the sense that it's a good job regardless of my unemployment status. I would have left my old job for this job.

It's not a "makes all of what I've endured the past four years worth it" kind of job, but, it's a good job.

After 1,610 days unemployed I was offered a job.

Finally, finally, an employer and everyone on the involved teams recognized and appreciated the value of my education and experience and wanted to hire me because of my credentials. This time I wasn't the runner-up, I was the first choice. And, if I do say so myself, I am the perfect person for this role. And finally an employer thought that, as well.

So 2014 is already off to a fabulous start for me, for I am no longer unemployed.

And there is much rejoicing.

My parents enjoyed movies. Classics, mostly, but they saw their share of not-go-great ones at the local theater. We lived in a really small town and if they didn't feel like driving 25 miles each way to see a better movie, whatever was playing at the local theater had to suffice. They had their favorite actors, writers and directors, and when one of their favorites had a new movie out, my parents got dressed up, went to dinner and made sure they arrived early to get tickets and good seats, even if it meant driving 25 miles each way.

Because my parents loved movies, and because we lived in a tiny town that didn't always offer the best the film industry had to offer, my parents seemed to feel duty-bound to instill us kids with an understanding of good cinema v. not-so-good cinema. They wanted us to understand there was a fantastic world of movies beyond our local theater.

I was the youngest, by a lot. My parents lost their built-in babysitters when my older siblings went to college. Undeterred, they took me with them on their movie nights. Consequently I saw a lot of movies kids my age didn't see. Unfortunately, I was not a kid during a golden age of cinema. A lot of the movies we saw were not exactly high art. But. The megaplex 25 miles away devoted one screen to classics. Disney and children's classics on weekend matinees, more grown-up classics for the evening shows. If that theater showed a film featuring one of their favorites, it was a given we were spending Saturday evening at the megaplex classic screen.

Initially, I was too young to realize other kids at school weren't seeing the same movies I was. But gradually it occurred to me I was usually the only person under the age of 40 in the theater. I soon realized it was better to keep my mouth shut at school about what movie I saw over the weekend. Yes. I was embarrassed that my parents were taking me to see what I thought were ancient movies.

But. I enjoyed most of the movies we saw, whether they were old classics, or new movies with older actors in them.

My parents would see anything with (among others) Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Alec Guinness, Cary Grant, David Niven, Jimmy Stewart, as my dad called them, the Saint Peters: Peter Sellers and Peter O'Toole.

I like those guys, too. They seemed like the men in my life. My dad, my uncles, even my grandfather and some of his brothers and cousins. Good guys, guys who could convincingly deliver an intelligent, dramatic or humorous line while imparting a little hint of their own personality in the performance. The lines rang true and resonated because the actors were skilled, and because they were old school human beings. Some of those guys were long dead by the time I saw them on the big screen at the megaplex. The 25 mile ride home was spent with my parents reminiscing about other films featuring that actor and lamenting the loss with, "Shame. The world could use a new David Niven film."

Lawrence of Arabia, was, of course, a must-see classic. We even went to dinner at a fancier restaurant before the movie. My parents were giddy with anticipation. "You're going to love this one, Trill! It's not a typical war movie. Loyalty and friendships and endurance..." my mother interjecting, "..and, oh it's just a masterpiece of a story and so beautifully filmed and the music, my goodness the score will bring you to tears." They were right. They didn't overhype it. It's a good movie. (It was also the first movie I saw with an intermission.) A year or so later we saw The Lion in Winter, and that was that...my parents were right. Great story, fantastic acting, I will never regret seeing it on big screen, even if I was the only kid at my elementary school who knew who Peter O'Toole was and had seen Lawrence of Arabia and The Lion in Winter.

My parents were upset when Peter Sellers died. No tears were shed, but, they were both quiet for a few days and would shake their heads saying, "Such a shame. Too young. Like we lost a dear friend. No more Peter Sellers movies to look forward to..."

My dad always liked Paul Newman movies, and even though she denies it, I think, like millions of other women, my mother had a little thing for him. I like his salsa and salad dressing. Paul Newman died a few months after my dad died. I was still in shockgrief over my dad, which I think (hope) explains why the news of Paul Newman's death hit me hard. I was clinging to things my dad liked - for instance, if I saw a new book by an author he liked, I read it. If a movie came out with a theme or an actor he liked, I saw it. It was an odd mix of thinking I should read the books or watch the movies for my dad, and a sort of vicarious loyalty, supporting the authors and movies my dad would have supported...I dunno, I really can't explain, it just made me feel better to keep current with the things my dad enjoyed. I even watch some PGA tournaments and football games "for" my dad. There's a lot of psychology to all this, and most of it's trite or stupid or just, well, grief does funny things to you. But there was a lot of comfort in keeping current with my dad's favorite things. As long as his favorite authors were still writing books, I still had a piece of my dad that was current. He watched the first season plus a few episodes of The Tudors, primarily because he felt if Peter O'Toole was in it, it had merit, so I watched every episode "for" my dad after he died. When Paul Newman died and the reality that there would not be any new Paul Newman movies to watch "for" my dad, it felt like losing another piece of my dad. That feeling has subsided a bit. When Ray Bradbury died I had pangs of it again, but I no longer feel compelled to watch golf or football.

And then, without warning, blam! grief reaches up and slaps you across the face. "PETER O'TOOLE DEAD" in the breaking news update. Of course his health issues are notorious. Of course he's "getting on in years." Of course it's not a "shock." But. As much as I cherish the memories of seeing Lawrence of Arabia and The Lion in Winter with my parents on the megaplex classic screen, the death of another of my dad's favorites hit me hard. No more Peter O'Toole movies or docudramas to watch "for" my dad. Another piece of my dad is dead. Finite number of grains of sand and all that. But the more I think I understand "how" I grieve, the more I realize how stupid I am. It's a process, a very, very lengthy process.

My mother happened to call shortly after I heard the news. She had not heard. She went a little quiet when I said, "Did you hear Peter O'Toole died?" Silence. And then, "No. That's too bad. Your father and I always enjoyed him. Lawrence of Arabia is such a wonderful film."

"Yeah, remember when we saw it on the big screen?"

"Oh yes! We worried that you were too young for such a long and involved movie, but you seemed to enjoy it. Such a fun evening. You thought the intermission was really something! I had all the ticket stubs in my purse, but we got separated when we went to the bathrooms. They gave him a hard time about re-entering for the second half without a ticket stub. He finally said to the usher, 'Why would anyone try to sneak into the second half of Lawrence of Arabia?' That line of reasoning convinced the kid to let him back into the theater. He sat down just in the nick of time. I felt bad for forgetting I had all the stubs in my purse. He was incredulous that the kid wouldn't let him re-enter, remember how your dad said the kid tried to shake him down for a ticket stub?! Such a funny visual. Your dad being shaken down by a high school kid usher at the movie theater!"

I forgot about all that, but when my mother talked about it the memory came flooding back to me as if it just happened a few nights ago. After that night, my mother always made a big show of presenting my father with a ticket stub after entering the theater "so you can come and go as you please without a shakedown by The Man."

I'm sad that I've lost another piece of my dad. No more new Peter O'Toole presentations to watch "for" my dad.

This is where religious people have an advantage. Thoughts of Heaven and "hey, maybe my dad is hanging out with Paul Newman and Peter Sellers and Peter O'Toole up there!" are comforting. I know because I let myself think that sometimes. If there's a Heaven, I know my dad's there, and it is nice to think about that. It's nice to think death isn't final, that souls live on and all that. It's very, very comforting. It explains thousands of years of religious believers - the afterlife is the biggest selling feature religion has going for it. Very marketable. Even the staunchest non-believer will concede that death and grief are a lot easier for those who believe in an afterlife.

I'll just gear up for TCM's Peter O'Toole-apalooza that's sure to happen in the coming weeks and cling to the memories of watching those movies with my parents.

My niece is doing well. She's working on forgiveness, but given the situation it's not happening as easily and quickly as she'd like. That's the problem with these stupid attacks - they foster confusion and animosity. But, my niece is determined not to stoop to their level and hate them in return. So forgiveness the only way forward.

Sadly, I can now attest that polar bearing, aka the Knockout Game, is real, happening more frequently than is being reported and is undeniably race related.

It pains me to admit all of those facts. I don't want any of it to be true.

But.

My niece spent the night in ER after being jumped from behind, held by her hair and strangled to the point she was struggling to breathe, thrown to the ground, kicked in the head and...not mugged. Clumps of her hair were pulled from her scalp. She was carrying a backpack with an iPad, cell phone, brand new still in packaging MAC lipsticks and eye shadows she'd just purchased for holiday gifts, $22 in cash and several high denomination gift cards she received for her birthday - paydirt for robbers, even better than credit cards - and none of it was stolen. The iPad and MAC cosmetics fell out of her backpack as she struggled while being strangled. They were left on the ground a few feet away from where my niece landed when she fell to the ground. Lest you think "guys don't care or know about the value of MAC cosmetics and wouldn't bother to steal them," here's the disturbing and puzzling part: Her attacker was a teenaged girl. Teenaged girls of all races know and covet MAC cosmetics. And iPads, for that matter. But they didn't steal anything of cash value from niece.

This attack happened at 3:00 in the afternoon in a safe and busy part of a small town bordering a college campus. Police were on foot patrol just a block away. Fortunately it was only a few seconds before two older women realized what happened to my niece and came to her aid and called 911.

My niece heard young girls giggling behind her as she walked on the sidewalk. It was around the time a local high school is dismissed for the day she didn't think anything about it. Then she heard them yell, in unison, "Polar Bear!" and seconds later her she was in a stranglehold with a girl pulling her hair and saying, "your hair ain't gonna be pretty no more." She heard the other girls giggling and cheering on her attacker in the distance. Her attacker said other things to her through laughs and taunts as she strangled my niece and pulled her hair, but my niece was more focused on fighting off the attacker than the taunts being said to her. The terms snow bunny and Barbie were used, and not in complimentary ways.

The police told her they are lots of surveillance cameras that undoubtedly captured the attack, so hopefully the girls will be recognizable and some justice can (and will) be served. The police told my niece she's the third young woman to be similarly attacked in the area in the past few weeks. The victims are not robbed. Their hair is pulled from behind, they're strangled, thrown to the ground and kicked while a group in the distance laughs and taunts.

My niece will be okay, she's bruised and has scalp wounds where her hair was pulled out in clumps, but obviously she's shaken and scared. Which is the attackers' desired result and purpose of the attacks. It is violence for the sake of violence. Putting aside the racial epithets indicating race motivation, the attackers were women. Young girls. Getting a laugh out of attacking another women. Were they really so envious of my niece's hair (which is gorgeous) that they were moved to physical violence? Can that really be happening?

Part of me wants to get to the bottom of it, understand the motivation, pinpoint the issues that led to these girls' thirst for violence and lack of regard for life. Understanding leads to resolution, right? The other part of me doesn't care about these girls, their homelife, their social, familial and cultural challenges, what video games they play, television shows and music they like. Why such a callous, unenlightened attitude? Because they chose violence as a form of entertainment. End of discussion.

Yes, I'm obviously angry. This is my always cheerful niece who is generous and kind, and, ironically, is taking classes in child development because she wants to help at risk junior high school kids. So far she's too stunned to think about that irony or reevaluate her plans. Given her compassionate and sunny nature I doubt she will let this alter her outlook or plans.

For the record, my niece is street smart and savvy. She doesn't dress flamboyantly or wear headphones or text when she's out and about. She did the things we're told to do when out in public: be alert and aware. She wasn't "asking for it."

I'm relaying all of this as a warning to anyone who thinks reports of these attacks are exaggerated, or that it won't happen to them, or in their town or to anyone they know.

The parallels between dating and job hunting are the subject of a lot of bar stool philosophy. Not so much for me, but you know, in general. People getting themselves back out there in the dating or job hunting worlds note the similarities, often with disdain and contempt. All I can offer is a sympathetic, "Yep, tell me about it" smirk.

I've had a run of interviews the past few weeks. Nine in a span of 10 days. Twice I managed dashing from one interview to the next in a back-to-back interview-apalooza. I know, I know. This should make me happy because it bodes well for the job market, the economy, life in the US and maybe, just maybe, it could lead to a last minute savior job for me.

But I dunno. I kinda doubt it.

The thing is, throughout my unemployment era (yes, it's been so long I'm now officially considering it an era) I've had interviews. The longest I've gone without an interview is seven weeks. So one naturally assumes I suck at interviewing as badly as I suck at dating. There may be some truth to that, I know I've made a few missteps in some interviews that doomed me to the "do not hire" file. There are myriad reasons why I have a steady drip of interviews but no job offers. Primary among them: I apply to every job for which I am remotely qualified. I have networked my brains out. And on the other side of the equation are: HR people and recruiters desperate to remain relevant and employed in their jobs. Their job is to find viable talent to present to hiring managers. And by talent I mean several candidates. Usually between 15 - 30 depending on the size of the company and magnitude of the position. I am really good at writing resumes and cover letters, so I frequently make the first round of phone interviews. I'm pretty good at being social and professional, which HR often like, so the preliminary phone interviews with HR usually go well. I always write thank you notes and follow up with another email or phone call. HR people often like that, too. So if I am deemed qualified for the role, I am called in for an interview.

This is where the rubber hits the road. And apparently, this is where it becomes apparent to the hiring company that I suck. That I am not worthy of a job in their company.

And for me, this is the exact sequence of events that happened when I did 50 First Dates. I wrote a thoughtful profile that was an honest representation of my personality, posted honest photos of myself, and I had a lot of responses. Phone conversations often went well, and that led to first dates...and...well...we all know that I am still so single that I gave up on men and dating and have become a spinster. So. We all know that's where things went wrong for me. Consequently, it's no surprise that the exact sequence of events happens in my job hunt.

The only problem is that I can't give up on finding a job. I'm too young to retire. And even if I could leverage my foot and ankle issues into a disability scenario, I can't live in the meager amount of Social Security I would earn. (We're talking $600/month...tell me where I can live (rent, utilities, the occasional meal) on $600/month and I will move there.) So apparently I'm not only going to be a spinster, I'm going to be a vagrant, as well.

If I could figure out what it is about my in-person presentation that makes hiring managers (and men) reject me, well, my life would be a lot easier. Sure, with men it's very clear, they told me in no uncertain terms what the problem is. Men are not attracted to me. That's the main issue and the primary reason behind my spinsterhood. I am not worthy of male attention because I am not attractive. I am ugly. That's the overwhelming reason men tell me they don't want to date me or have a long term relationship with me. I have heard so many versions of, "Your personality is great, you're exactly the type of woman I've been looking for all my life - intelligent, kind, funny, creative, genuine, on and on, but I'm not attracted to you, you know, you're not my physical cup of tea," that I could write a two volume set of how-to books for men on ways to phrase "I'm just not into you, you know, physically."

Is it really the same issue in job hunting? Of course it is. I could cite numerous studies and snarky summaries of those studies, but we've all heard about them, read them and many of us come away feeling ashamed of our species. And in my case, worried about my future. I was never a viable competitor in the dating realm. Men like attractive women. Duh. I'm not "conventionally pretty" as one of my male friends generously says about me. Ergo, men do not view me as a worthy partner. I tried fighting it, doing everything I could to find a man who could help me prove the statistics wrong, but I failed. I was even rejected by a blind man. (He preferred shorter women with smaller breasts and "different" lips.) I've dealt with my ugliness and made peace with my spinsterhood. It wasn't easy and I get really lonely, but I accept it. I have a career and loads of interests and I like to read (and I like cats, too), so I'm well-equipped for spinsterhood. I can fill time. I can manage being alone much of the time. Not by choice, not happily, but I can find ways to cope. Well. I could manage it, just about, when I had a career. A job that kept me busy 10 - 12 hours a day, 5 - 6 days a week. Being laid off at the height of the recession was a blow to me in so many ways that I still struggle to articulate how deeply it has affected me.

I knew it would not be easy to find a new job. My colleagues and friends were laid off a year or two before me and were still job hunting. They are qualified, skilled, professional, educated and good looking. If they couldn't land new jobs I knew there was even less hope for me. But I didn't have a choice, I had to put myself out there. Unlike giving up finding a man and accepting spinsterhood, I couldn't give up finding a job and accepting, what? vagabondhood? dispossession? what is the unemployed equivalent of spinster?

By the time I was 12 I knew I wasn't attractive. My friends, boys, at school suddenly started acting weird around the more petite, blonder, blue-eyed girls who didn't wear braces and figured out how to leverage lip gloss and glitter eye shadow to their Friday night dance in the cafeteria advantage. The boys had no trouble talking and joking and working on homework with me the same way they always had, but around other girls, prettier girls, these boys were suddenly tongue-tied, sweaty, glazed-eyed, salivating weirdos. I became very aware that I did not have that affect on boys. Boys liked me, but they didn't like me like me. And that is the story of my romantic life. The intelligent boys with off-beat senses of humor and a passion for really loud rock music like me, a lot, but not in that special way. So I have/had a lot of guy friends. Always have. Still do. And they tell me all about the women they lust after, the women they want to date, the women that turn them into piles of emotional mush. These women are nothing like me personality-wise, and more to the this relevant point, nothing like me looks-wise. They are attractive women. The part of this that I will never understand is how men can maintain interest, no matter how physically attractive the woman, if she's stupid/unkind/boring/lacking a sense of humor or just generally lacking in the personality department. If these guys like me, my personality so much, why aren't they attracted to good looking women with the same personality traits as me? Some of them say it's because that woman doesn't exist. You either get a personality or beauty. One or the other. And these guys prefer beauty over personality. Why? Heh heh, "Trill, that's what I have you for, if I want good conversation or some laughs, I'll call you." Oh. Yeah. Right. Okay. Except it's not okay for a lot of women. They surely are not jealous of me, they know I'm not a threat, but nonetheless they do not want their men hanging out with another woman, no matter how ugly she is. I've lost a lot of good friends this way. It makes no sense and it sucks.

I knew there was a work-place bias toward attractive people. Copious studies prove that less-attractive people, people deemed ugly by conventional measures, have more difficultly finding jobs, and even once they're hired they are given lower salaries and fewer advancement opportunities compared to their attractive coworkers. This is true for women and men, but obviously much more of a complicated issue for women who want to forge long-term careers on a traditionally male executive path.

I knew all this. I've experienced some workplace discrimination regarding looks. A long ago letch of a boss was known for hiring attractive young women straight out of college who were in no way qualified for the job opening. He promised them career advancement if they just did one or two little things for him. Things involving working late and a willingness to perform very specific acts which at least one former President of the United States doesn't think qualifies as sex. When yet another of these young women was promoted above me, I slated him on it. This particular woman was particularly stupid and especially unqualified. Her new job title was such a ridiculous stretch that even HR took notice and exception. (HR generally turned a blind eye to my boss' exploits because the HR manager was reaping some of the benefits - when my boss was bored with a woman, he passed them off to HR, where the HR manager was very helpful in finding a new boss for a young women with her "experience" and "special skills." In vulgar but apt terms, he was getting my boss' sloppy seconds.) I had enough and confronted my boss about the latest promotion of a bimbo. His response? "Trill, face it, I'm not attracted to you. You're not the kind of woman who advances in this industry. You're reliable, you work hard, you're creative, you're great with clients. You never miss a deadline. We need you, but you are never going to advance because you're not the total package. You're not good looking enough to get anywhere in a male dominated industry." I found another job and quit a month later. I'd like to say that situation was unique, but it was not. Which is why I stayed at my last job: It was predominantly women and gay men. There was hanky panky going on, but it wasn't blatant blow jobs = promotions kind of hanky panky.

And so, here I am, ugly and in need of a job. I always hope that education and experience and a good personality will be enough to land a job, but realistically I know it takes a lot more than that. Especially now. Education and more than 3 years of experience are huge liabilities in the job market. I can't define why because it's counter-intuitive, but I have heard, time and again, that I am overqualified for jobs. I lie by omission on my resume. I misrepresent myself in that I don't list all of my education and limit my job experience to only the most recent. And. Even though I am ugly, thanks to never smoking, a lifetime use of copious amounts of SPF 45, drinking gallons of water on a weekly basis, and decent skin genes, one thing I have going for me in the looks department is a lack of wrinkles and sun damage. People, men and women, think I'm a lot younger than I am. I'm not saying I could pass for 25, and I don't get carded very often, but, people tend to think I'm younger than my birth certificate indicates. I'm working that to my advantage in my job hunt. It's a sad statement on society and life in general, but I am certain it's a huge factor in why I get called for interviews. They think I'm younger, dumber and less experienced than I really am. If you're mad at me for doing that, don't hate the player, hate the game. It's career Darwinism, I'm just trying to survive.

Right.

So.

I think I may have experienced the final straw, the experience than pushes me into accepting that I'll never work again. I had an interview waaaaaay out in the suburbs. It was in one of those generic glass '90s buildings with an interior desperately trying to pretend to be a hip downtown loft. Except it's a generic glass building built in the '90s so the attempt has the affect of white middle-class suburban kids rapping about racial oppression: Misguided, unaware and silly. What few walls there were didn't go all the way to the ceiling, and there were lots of plate glass partitions (that also didn't go all the way to the ceiling) with the company's logo and smarmy quotes etched into them. I don't know why the sort-of walls and sort-of glass partitions don't reach the ceiling because the ceiling wasn't any higher than the usual ceiling in generic '90s office buildings. I can only assume one of three things: An interior designer measured wrong and tried to pass of the shorter walls as "the latest trend"; or the interior designer knew a supplier who had wrong-sized panels to unload and the designer and supplier split the profit after passing them off as "the latest trend"; or someone mistakenly thinks this is a good idea. The result is a very echo-y office where every conversation can be heard.

I interviewed in a conference "space." Not a conference room, a conference "space." Which was basically a piece of wood suspended from the ceiling by chrome chains in one corner of the office. Completing the "hip loft" look were mismatched chairs around the suspended piece of wood. Maybe I'd be more impressed if I hadn't seen this look in every loft condo in the city in the '90s - actual lofts with actual artists and musicians living in them, carved out of actual old manufacturing plants. But to my trend-weary eyes it all just looked affected and cliché. Especially in a far suburban office. When a trend filters down to the upper middle class white kids in the suburbs, you know it's officially dead. (On that note, I have seen many suburban white kids with ear gauges stretching their lobes to improbably sizes, so, it's officially time for this trend to die.) The people involved in the interview were: The HR manager, the marketing manager and two people from the marketing team. Apart from the HR manager, none of them were over the age of 30. I'm used to this scenario. A good percentage of my interviews have been in this demographic scenario. This case, though, was painful in that the lack of experience and professionalism were staggering. There are some very savvy and professional 25 year olds. I've met them and have done consulting projects with them. So I'm not dismissive of the entire under 30 work force. But these people...well...wow. After the interview the HR person took me aside and said there was someone else who wanted to talk with me. I was led to another part of the office, a little glass chamber of sorts, where I could see most of the office except for one area that was behind one of the wall/partitions. What I couldn't see, I could hear. And what I heard was the two young people I just interviewed talking.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the future of business:
Young man: "Tall people are creepy."
Young woman, in an affected fake gravely cigarettes and fifth of Jack voice: "Omygawd, right? Totally creepy."
Young man: "Especially women. Tall women are creepy."
Young woman, in an affected fake gravely cigarettes and fifth of Jack voice: "Omygawd, right? Totally creepy. Like where does she even find clothes? Did you see her shoes? The heels weren't even high. She must be like, six feet four or something."
Young man: "Yeah. Gross."
Young woman, in an affected fake gravely cigarettes and fifth of Jack voice: "Creepy gross."

I'd guess these two were born a year or two after Whitney Houston's Greatest Love of All was blasting through Dodge Caravan radios. Their mothers probably bought a cassette of the album while they were pregnant because, like Whitney, they believed, earnestly, that children, their children, are our future. That future is now. Yay.

A little less Whitney and a little more Free to be You and Me would have served these kids well. Do you suppose that's the core issue with young people in the work force? They didn't have enough Free to be You and Me in their formative years? Wow. Do you think I can get a research grant to study that hypothesis?

Okay, yes, I am 5'11" and I was wearing 1" heels. So I was 6' tall. But. This is the Midwest. Women are often taller than 5'8". I realize I am taller than a lot of women, but creepy? Gross? And, more to the relevant point, I was interviewing for a job as a creative manager, not sexual partner. My education, experience and client projects are open for discussion and debate, but my height is not.

They must know that every conversation in their office can be heard by everyone else in the office. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt by presuming they didn't realize I was still there, waiting in a glass chamber adjacent to the area where they were talking. And, taking an enlightened approach, I was given the rare opportunity that many job seekers long for: To hear the conversation after the interview. I just wish it had been a conversation that was useful to me in my job hunt. Although it did give me fabulous insight into what I'd be dealing with on a daily basis in that office.

Or, maybe it was useful. Maybe the physical appearance issue isn't just about attractiveness, but about the entire physical being. Maybe I haven't been offered jobs for which I was obviously qualified because the hiring manager's husband had an affair with a woman who had green eyes, or because the HR person doesn't hire women larger than a B cup. Or because someone on the team thought I was creepy. And gross.

Do I want to work with those two shallow kids? Of course not. And I am "fortunate" to have been given the opportunity to learn just how immature and unprofessional the team is. But. As far as the job responsibilities go, I would actually like the job. The clients are great and I think I would love the actual work. But all that is irrelevant because I'm so tall that I'm "creepy" and "gross." 

So, I'm thinking maybe it's time to give up. I knew when it was time to stop dating. I didn't want to accept it and I fought it a lot longer than I should have. I dealt with a lot more rejection and frustration than I needed to because I wouldn't give up even though it was clear no one was interested in me for a long term relationship. Maybe it's the same with job hunting. I can save myself a lot of stress and worry and anxiety and frustration if I just accept that no one is going to hire me - for whatever reason.

The problem is that I don't know what happens next. When I gave up on dating, I knew what to do. I had a career and interests and, you know, an income that paid for the roof over my head. I could forge a life on my own. But without an income...well...I mean, I'm at a loss as to how to proceed.




Have you heard about the MSU study that indicates less-attractive employees are bullied at work more than their good looking coworkers?  Or that there is legislation already on the books (and more pending) about discriminating against less attractive people, and here's a proposal to cover ugliness under the Americans with Disability act.

Well well. Hell may be freezing over just in time for Halloween.

I discovered a clown that makes me laugh. It's more the concept that makes me laugh, but the visual is pretty darned funny. So funny that it is the singular clown image I have encountered that doesn't frighten me.

Behold: The Sexy Clown.

What do you think, fellas? All hot and bothered?

As scary, sick and strange as it sounds to me, I have no doubt that there are clown fetishists.  I presume this get up was designed with those guys in mind. There's a whip for every kink.

But there may be another angle to this.

Laughter is my #1 aphrodisiac. A guy who makes me laugh holds the keys to my lady kingdom. However, I have encountered very few men whose libidos have the same trigger. I assume it's because the male libido responds to visual stimuli rather than emotions. Well, here we have a way to turn men on through laughter: A very funny visual with cleavage and a short hemline.

Ladies if you want to be funny and sexy this Halloween (or any day), buy this gem here.

"Ohmygod, Have you seen gravity?!" People say this with strained urgency, with a lot of, well, gravity.

Until a few weeks ago, if someone asked that you would be in worrying furtive glance territory. Maybe you would have let something drop to the floor as an example of gravity at work. Maybe taken them by the hand to a globe and set it spinning, explaining gravitational pull and centrifugal effect. But mainly you'd think, "Okaaaaay, that's kind of an off the wall question for someone over the age of 12 to ask out of nowhere..."

The first time someone asked me that this month my mind immediately went to Schoolhouse Rock. "Down, down, down gravity..." And then to the in-class demonstration I did on Sir Isaac Newton, complete with apple, feather and extra credit written and illustrated report titled, "Gravity is a Matter of Gravity." I drew pictures of various examples of gravity in everyday life, the cover illustration showed the effects of gravity on hair wherein I drew Isaac Newton floating away from an apple tree, reaching for a floating apple, his long, wavy locks floating away from his head. (Hey, I was 8, cut me some slack. I got an A and a spot in the "Academic All Stars!" display case.) And then to physics class where the teacher painted  "F = Gm₁m₂/r²  Keeps Us Grounded!" on the wall, (I'm rather proud of myself for remembering that equation, and that I had more difficulty coding the subscript so it didn't throw off the line spacing than remembering the equation), and then to the religious kid in high school who used to hand out flyers in the science hall. He'd say things like, "We can't see gravity, but we live by its laws. So it is with God." And, "God is like gravity. You can't see Him but you know He's there because we're not spinning out of control." Speak for yourself, religious kid. Back then I mused on the double meaning of the word gravity - the scientific phenomenon v. the synonym meaning dire importance - and wondered if the religious kid meant to imply deeper significance to his gravity rants. He never seemed very bright, so my guess was that his brain was too busy being proud of figuring out a simile between gravity and God to fire any synapses over the other meaning of gravity, as in direly urgent.

I knew the recent onslaught of gravity questions pertained to the film, Gravity, italicized with a capital G. But still, until Sandra Bullock took the big screen by storm, the question, "Have you seen gravity?" was left to elementary school science lessons. And that's where my mind goes when someone inquires if I've seen gravity. Or Gravity.

What I find interesting is that people don't think about any of that when they pose the question. They don't hear the words coming out of their mouths and chuckle at the double meaning. They think Gravity (italicized, with an upper case G, Sandra Bullock) and so gravity (lower case g, Isaac Newton and/or direly urgent) never enter(s) their mind. Even though the film is about gravity and gravity. And when I point out the play on the word, that the title of the movie intentionally holds double meaning and a one word plot summery, perhaps throwing in a few interesting bits of trivia about Sir Isaac Newton, I'm the one who's given the worrying furtive glances. Like the religious kid in the science hall at school, I'm considered the weird one.

A friend treated me to a movie night, and so now I can reply, "Yes, I saw Gravity." But even when I say it I have to divert my brain away from gravity and focus on Gravity. In my mind I turn into the religious kid at school. "Gravity is everywhere. Gravity is the singularly most important aspect of life in the Universe." No one likes an imperious know-it-all, and my friends have been driving me batshit with their fingers always on the Google trigger, so I kept all this to myself. Live by example and all that. But as the frequency of the Gravity question increased, and lack of recognition of the double meaning of the question, I decided to let loose on some of the more obnoxious wannabe know-it-alls in my life. Let's suffice it to say they can dish it out but they can't take it. 

One final note on Gravity. If you have children under the age of 12, it is of the utmost gravity that you do not take them to see the movie. I don't get out much (rarely), so my movie night out was a huge stinking deal to me. Huge. The movie is exceptionally well crafted, melding visual and sound effects in a striking composition. Silence is used to great effect. Or. Well, it would have been a great effect if the children in the theater hadn't been crying/talking/playing on the stairway aisles in the theater during the entire movie. Do everyone in the theater a favor and keep your kids at home. You can show them this instead:

The recent iPhocalypse amongst my friends and family has opened the yearly holiday issues for me. My friends and family have money. They buy things. Lots of things. Lots of expensive things. They go on vacations wherein they buy exotic expensive things. Even if I had a job and money to spend on gifts, I have no clue what I could buy them that they don't already own, or, that would be a welcomed present. They have very distinct and very expensive taste.

I already gave away my unique possessions as gifts - things over which friends and family had previously shown interest. Rare albums, a couple lithographs, jewelry, a few first edition books, my vintage Hermes scarf that a friend coveted for years...I could have sold those items but instead I gave them away as holiday and birthday gifts. So. I exhausted that holiday gift route. If you're thinking about doing this, be warned, it was met with less than enthusiastic response. The comments were typically, "Oh. I didn't know we were doing a white elephant thing this year." People expect, and want, new items as holiday and birthday gifts. Never mind that those albums, lithographs, books and that scarf were some of my most cherished possessions, things I thought I'd never part with until death, and they were given from the depth of my heart. People, my family and friends, thought that if I want to give away my stuff I should just give it to them, not as a gift, especially not as a holiday gift. Apparently the decorum on giving away one's possessions is that you give them for no specific reason other than, "here, I want you to have this." Not wrapped up as a holiday or birthday present. I lived and learned that lesson. Two people told me it was tacky. Others didn't say it out loud but their less than enthusiastic responses said it loud and clear.

And now here we are again, holiday items in stock at Costco, holiday decorations going up at Target...it's the most wonderful time of the year. The leave haven't even turned, yet, but it's time to start thinking about holiday gift giving.

I do not have money. I'm down to three apples and a half box of cereal and still nothing work-wise except a couple of inquiries about freelance projects and four, count 'em four, full-time job rejection letters yesterday. One was personal and kind of snarky. You don't want to hire me? Okay, that's your choice, but you don't have to be mean about it. This is a trend I've noticed in the past year - the rejection letters are now tinged with strong wording like, "we have removed your candidate profile as you are not a fit for our company and we will not consider you for future opportunities with us." Alrighty then.

So. I'm thinking about making good on a vow I've made every year for the past 10 years. The vow wherein I promise myself that when the holiday decorations go up in Target I will summon the courage and resolve to send an email to friends and relatives telling them that I don't want to exchange holiday gifts.

Yep, even before I was laid off I wanted to do this. But I always chicken out. Initially I thought I would say something like, "Let's focus on the children" and set an age limit for gifts, like, no one over the age of 18 gets a gift. But then I imagined the college freshman, home from a rough first semester, reveling in the joy of tearing open gifts with her younger siblings only to discover  that she missed the gift cut-off by four months. Ick. I couldn't do that.

And no matter how carefully and tactfully I composed the emails, after re-reading them, that is to say, reading through the lines like my friends and family would, they sounded contrite or spiteful or selfish. Which is what I presume people think about other people who dare to broach the topic of discontinuing holiday gift exchanges.

A lot of families (and friend groups) draw names so each person only has to buy one gift. They also often set price limits. This seems like a rational, fair solution to the holiday gift issue. My mother dared to suggest this once. It didn't go over very well. If anyone other than my mother suggested it there would have been a much more heated aftermath. But everyone loves and adores and respects my mother so her idea was met with loving, "Awwww, that's a nice idea but we enjoy the holidays so much, we enjoy buying gifts for the family." And that was that. The one person who was on my mother's side and chimed in with support was met with, "We understand if you can't afford holiday gifts, just get something for the kids." That one person was me and the message was loud and clear: You don't have a husband or children, we only have to pick up a pre-packaged gift of body wash and a candle and throw in a gift bag for you and we're done with our shopping for you, you are not a time or financial burden to the rest of us, therefore your vote doesn't count in family decisions.

Where my family is concerned, the husband and children thing is a secret issue for me. I am expected to procure gifts for my siblings, their spouses/dates, and their children. That's eight gifts I have to find, buy and wrap (and usually mail). Whereas I have not burdened my siblings with a spouse and children for whom they have to procure gifts. They give me whatever bath product gift set they find on Black Friday and give it to me "from the family," whereas I'm finding gifts for my brother, his wife, their child, my sister, her boyfriend du jour, and her three children. I tried "gifts for the whole family" a few years - one gift for my brother and his wife and child, and one gift for my sister, her husband and children - yeah...that didn't really go over very well. And honestly, it was more difficult to come up with one family gift that everyone would like than finding individual gifts. It's not really about me being petty and pouting and whining that it's not fair, which is why I never say anything about this - I don't want to seem like a pouty whiner. And I don't want to be petty. But. It's not fair. And I'm kinda sick of it. And I'm poor.

So.

I need your help. Have you ever broached the topic of ceasing a holiday gift exchange? Did you say it in person or in an email? How did you word it? What was the response? Did family fights and/or awkwardness break out as a result? Are you viewed as the family Scrooge? The family petty, selfish whiner?

"I got the golden ticket!"

A few months ago I decided to jump on the "learn something new every day" trend. If you didn't realize this is a trend you probably don't have yuppie friends who read a lot of Pualo Coehlo and don those sneakers that look like feet, stop at Whole Foods for groceries and an olive pressing lesson, take their children to "studios" where drum circles and Zither strum sessions pass for music lessons and then and then return to their gated communities with lawns so chemically treated they have to place toxic hazard signs on them.

There are websites, blogs, Wiki sites, Pinterest groups, page-a-day type calendars, copious books and even organized groups (think: the new book group) devoted to the pursuit of learning something new every day. There are myriad apps for that. I know this because I have friends in the aforementioned demographic and the learn-something-new-every-day trend is their new religion. And like born again zealots, they are enthusiastic and self-righteous in their new-found passion and feel duty bound to tell everyone about the power of their savior and how it's changed their lives.

A couple of my friends were floundering after the dissolution of their book groups. They missed their mommy nights out to drink wine and complain about their husbands discuss a book most of them didn't read. Now they have learning groups wherein they drink wine and complain about their husbands share what they learned each day of the week between meetings. This way, their skills are exponentially increased. 10 people in the group each learning one new skill a day. That's seven skills a week individually, but 70 skills a week when shared among the group. It's a pyramid scheme for learning. Yep, they've turned what's supposed to be an enjoyable self-help contemplative exercise into a more-is-better competition. Based on conversations I've heard about the groups there's a lot of pressure to learn "good" things: unique, impressive skills. My friends make fun of a couple women in their groups who show up with "silly" skills. "I can't believe she didn't know how to..." Seems like there's lot of one-upping and smarter-than-thou going on in these groups. It doesn't sound fun to me.

With or without a group, there are rules, loose rules, but rules nonetheless. Typically you're supposed to learn a skill, not a piece of trivial knowledge. You're only supposed to devote only 10 - 30 minutes to learning the skill. If learning the skill spawns deeper interest and more advanced knowledge of a skill, the follow-up doesn't count as a new skill. (Making an origami crane is a skill, but then learning how to make an entire origami zoo doesn't count as new skills.) Optimal brain function occurs when you do something that requires using your hands, so while learning how to conjugate a Swedish verb is a skill, it doesn't rank as high as learning how to fold a fitted sheet. The goal is to engage different areas of your brain than you usually use. Which is a worthy pursuit. If you're puritanical about it (and devotees are always puritanical about it) you do not merely dust off or add to an already acquired skill. (If you played clarinet in the school band, dragging out the clarinet and re-learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Start doesn't count as a new skill.)

I formed strong opinions about the learn-something-new-every-day trend while listening to my friends self-righteously extol their new knowledge virtuosity and degrade others who have somehow managed to go through life without learning how to semaphore their name or blanch a tomato. My opinions were unfavorable. Google has turned my friends into boring, nitpicking, pedantic assholes masquerading as elite intelligentsia. Google hasn't made them smarter, it's made them know-it-all assholier. Take away their Google access and they're the same mediocre IQed people they always were. It was bad enough when they were racing to be the first who knows every bit of trivia about everything, pretending they knew it without the aid of Google, but now they're also racing to be the first to know how to tie a four-in-hand knot or open a beer bottle with a cigarette lighter. (the latter cracked me up because the person who learned that skill doesn't drink beer or smoke. Kudos for stepping way outside yourself, but it kind of smacks of desperation for trying to come up with a new skill to learn.) I notice a lot of the skills center on food preparation and crafts. Nothing wrong with that, either, except it's turning my friends into 10 Minute Martha Stewarts. Survival skills are also big. I've learned more about making igloos and escaping crocodiles and bears than a city dweller will ever need to know thanks to my friends' devotion to acquiring new skills.

What gets old for me is the "sharing" aspect of this. Having a laugh over learning some obtuse skill is one thing, one funny thing, but boasting about one's accomplishments, no matter how trivial, is another thing entirely. I'm developing a deeper understanding of why pride is a deadly sin. Even God and Jesus realized how tiring and annoying bragging about one's daily accomplishments is. Yes. This whole thing is turning me Biblical. That's how bad it is.

My friends think their new skills make them more interesting people. They think they are scintillating conversationalists and more fun at parties because of their new skills. And yes, sure, having a couple go-to topics handy at parties is always a good thing. I don't deny that. My parents taught me that when I was a shy kid forced to attend birthday parties. Having a couple topics of conversation at the ready does really help ease the fear of social situations. But. Regaling some poor soul you just met at your cousin's barbecue with details of your newly acquired ability to clean silver with milk and vinegar does not make you the life of the party. Nor does sharing your Skill-A-Day app with them. The only new friends you'll make are people who share your mission of acquiring as many new skills as possible.

Ahhhh. Yes. That's it. I just had an epiphany, or, well, an epiphanette. Acquiring. My friends who are into the new-skill-a-day trend are also big on acquiring things. Houses, clothes, cars, olive oil...the measure their success by what they acquire. Achievement = things. And yes, some of those things are esoteric and worthy: Spouses, children, world travels. But. They're more consumed with acquiring amassing stamps on their passports than actually going places to meet new people and learn about different places. Sure, I love to travel, I'm intrepid and curious and always up for a trip just about anywhere. If one steps outside one's usual realm, travel can broaden the mind. However, you can relax and gain a lot of insight by spending a week in a small town in Minnesota or Kansas or Virgina or wherever you find a place with friendly locals. But if you're American you don't get a stamp on your passport for that. PBS doesn't air travel programs about that. Condé Nast doesn't publish stunning pictorials of that. There are no 5-star, 5-diamond resorts with infinity pools. There aren't TED talks about it. Sometimes there's not even a fast enough wifi connection to upload photos to Instagram. You don't acquire travel cred or an instant endorphin rush digitally bragging about it. It's not about the knowledge or skills they're acquiring, or the pursuit of exercising their brains...it's about acquiring and bragging.

These are people who used to have keen senses of humor and were actually fun at parties because they were interested in other people and had a firm grasp on reality about themselves. I presume this is the beginning of midlife crises, my friends are feeling desperate to remain relevant. I presume they think they are engaging in life, and sure, they are, but the quest aspect of their pursuit takes the fun out of it. They are tactical and always planning for their next skill lesson. They buy stuff (more acquiring) to inspire, log, track their progress and show off their skills. They buy stuff (more acquiring) to practice their skills.

My outlook is more organic than strategic. Which is the definition of the difference between me and my friends in pretty much every aspect. It's not that I'm some hippie free spirit - hippie free-spirits probably find me uptight. But compared to my tactical, competitive, acquisition frenzied, pompous, "I know everything and I am always right" friends I am one macremé hanging planter away from changing my name to Harmony and living in a commune where my job is tending pottery kiln's coal fire.

Deep down I knew engaging different areas of your brain is a good thing. I am a Girl Scout, and a Girl Scout is nothing if not prepared, and preparation requires skills acquisition. I didn't earn a sash full of merit badges through complacency. (Nerdiness fueled that fire.) And I suspect apart from the acquiring aspect, that's the real undercurrent of my friends' race to amass skills: It's not a lust for knowledge or journey of enlightenment that's driving them to learn new skills, it's a need for merit badges. The need for proof of achievement.

That's all really sad.

Which is too bad because fundamentally, learning is a great thing. The core principle of pushing yourself to learn new things is solid and not in dispute.

Because I read a lot and have lived alone for most of my adult life and have relied on myself for fixing and dealing with every aspect of life, I thought I was engaging in quite a bit of thinking outside my own thoughts and acquiring new skills just by, you know, living. Plus, I'm curious by nature, and poor, so the combination yields a lot of pushing up of my sleeves and figuring out stuff out of necessity. Life is a learning process for me. I don't find that boast or praise worthy.

When I was a kid, the Girl Scout merit badges were an incidental result of my interest in performing the tasks required to earn them. I was given a handbook filled with fun ideas about how to learn stuff. My parents, troop leader and camp counselors checked off tasks as I accomplished them, and eventually merit badges were given to me. Other girls were mission-bent on acquiring badges for the sake of the badges, strategically going through each step of each badge like a recipe. I took a more haphazard approach, meandering around tasks from badge to badge. My first year of Girl Scouts I only acquired three badges. My sash looked lame compared to some of the more competitive girls. However, my handbook told a much different story than my badge sash. Almost every merit badge check list in my Girl Scout Handbook had at least two tasks completed and signed off by an adult. Many of the badges were close to completion, even the obscure and weird ones. I was hopscotching around the badges as my life, whims and interests took me, not as a strategic, task-by-task, badge-by-badge assault on the Girl Scout Handbook. By the end of my second year of Girl Scouts my badge sash far outnumbered the other girls' sashes. That really pissed off some of my troopmates. I suppose I was a dark horse in their race to acquire the most merit badges.

A couple of the badges were such a part of my life and interests that I earned twice or three times the required credentials. That's one of the points of merit badges. They're supposed to inspire girls to try new things and in the pursuit they discover talents and interests. Girls become more well-rounded and civic-minded human beings as a result of accomplishing tasks set forth in the badge guidelines. I struggled to even accomplish a few tasks on some of the badges in the book. There is a noticeable absence of cooking-related badges on my art and writing heavy badge sash. But, I did attempt some of the tasks on every badge. I tried. I made efforts. But not enough to earn a badge. I sometimes wished there were more badges for topics that interested me, more in-depth badges to build upon the ones I already earned. That's the way the Girl Scout cookie crumbles. A few other girls had the same issue: One girl took ballet and dance lessons and she rocked through the dance merit badge in a matter of weeks. She thought it was not fair that she didn't get additional dance merit badges every time she worked her way through the requirement list. She would have ended up with several of the same dance badge, and she thought she should get several of them. Apparently she envisioned a sash full of the same dance merit badge. There are valuable life lessons in that: Push your boundaries. Try new things. Don't be a one trick pony. The pursuit or journey is its own reward. Joy and knowledge are their own rewards. You don't get extra credit for doing the things you've already mastered, or that you're supposed to do. And. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

I finally decided that maybe there's something to the skill-a-day trend, maybe the tired cliché isn't tired. The theory behind the trend is solid, it's just the overzealous practitioners who are giving it a bad rap. This occurred to me when I Googled, "How does one effectively deal with a pedantic, pompous, self-righteous know-it-all?" and the results numbered in the hundreds of thousands, many of which were skill-a-day type instruction sites.

A friend, insisting the skill-a-day pursuit is the answer to all my problems, gave me a special skill-a-day journal for my birthday. It has an app that goes with it. Of course it does. It sat under my desk, collecting dust in the gift bag it came in, for several months. I decided to make note of the things I learned on a daily basis, things I learned as life presented them to me, not because I was on a mission to learn something new solely to learn something new.

I'm more liberal with the rules.

Dusting off old skills counts, as does building on a newly acquired skill. I was visiting my mother and dug out my old clarinet. Occasionally (once every 3 - 5 years) I pull out my oboe to see if I can still squeak out a few notes, but my clarinet has been sitting dormant in the back of my girlhood closet since college. It took several attempts, but eventually I squeaked out a tune. I found the score for Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams and I am not so proud to admit that four weeks later I can almost play it on my old clarinet. It's Green Day like you never imagined. I find it hilarious.

It doesn't have to be a motor skill. I'm learning a Norwegian word a day. I do this sometimes anyway, every now and then I think something like, "Hmmmmm, sock. I wonder how you say sock in Norwegian." And I look it up. (Sokk) Now I'm just making a more concerted effort to do it every day. Ditto ASL. In Girl Scouts we learned the alphabet and several words in sign language. We did a joint project with a troop from the school for the deaf. I felt really sorry for those girls who couldn't hear music. I still do. That experience has stuck with me throughout my life. But I learned that many of the signs for words are really creative and there's a joy of expression in signing. For instance, to sign seahorse you can sign sea (hands waving up and down pantomiming a choppy sea) and horse (hand up to the side of your head two forefingers moving up and down), or, spell it out.

My budget is tight, really tight, and I can't afford much in the way of food. But it's farmers' market season and if you show up near closing time you can haggle your way into low cost produce, especially the weird stuff no one else bought. Consequently I learn to cook with foods outside my usual realm. I recently learned how to select a healthy jicama, for instance.

See what I mean? Boring. Boring. Boring. Crashing bore. It's interesting to me because I'm a curious dork, but I would never expect anyone else to care about my funny clarinet sonatas or foray into inexpensive root vegetables. Sure, learning is good. Curiosity is good. There's expansive virtue in trying new things. But it's a personal pursuit, not something should (or want to) share with anyone else. I don't need (or want) a sash full of merit badges to prove my worthiness.

I dunno. Maybe I have it all wrong, maybe talking about achievements (if you can call them that) garners something more from the pursuit, takes it to another level. Maybe sharing my knowledge leads to deeper fulfillment. I kinda doubt it. I don't feel more fulfilled knowing that other people now know that I am teaching myself how to play Boulevard of Broken Dreams on my school band clarinet. I don't feel embarrassed that other people know this about me (I suspect I should), but I don't feel more fulfilled. And acquiring the knowledge doesn't make me feel better about myself, either. Let's be realistic. Learning stupid stuff isn't going to boost my confidence. So what if I can squeak out a few notes on a clarinet? Unless I visit Norway and need to communicate about socks, who cares if I know a few words in Norwegian? Or that I can sign a few words in ASL? Or that I can select a healthy jicama? These are whims, diversions, itches I scratched, things I learned about life on earth at best, stupid human tricks at worst, and they're not the sort of thing that boosts confidence or morale.

That's what I've learned thus far, anyway. Maybe once I have a few more months of noting what I learned each day under my belt I'll feel differently. So far, it's just status quo for me.

Well, that's it. Summer 2013 will henceforth be The Summer of Death for me. It started Memorial Day weekend when a friend/former coworker died in a freak accident. Since then I've either received a "hey, did you hear ______ died" email/call, or a family member calling with bad news about another family member every 10 days.

Yep. Today I realized that I'm on a 10-day death cycle. I calculate Summer as 98 days this year (Memorial Day - Labor Day) so that's 9.8 deaths. So far the .8 is rounding down to 9 and I want to keep it that way.

Last month a very close older relative died. I've been in a grieving funk since her death. She was elderly and she lived a great, long life and it was "time." But. I'm sad she's gone and I miss her.  I was asked to speak at her memorial. Public speaking + grief = very difficult for me. Trying to encapsulate someone's life into a 5 - 10 minute speech is not easy, especially when it's someone you've known your entire life. Especially when it's someone with whom you've shared a lot of landmark experiences. Especially when it's someone who's a kindred spirit. Very often, at least in my case, we don't relate to relatives. She was one of only a couple relatives to whom I related. Unlike the nonsensical dissimilarity between most of my relatives and myself, it made sense that we were related. We're cut of the same jib. When I was a kid, she didn't treat me like a kid. She either didn't know or didn't care that I was just a kid. She always talked to me as if I had a functioning brain with the capacity to reason, learn and form my own opinions...and she wanted me, expected me, to express them. She was interesting and inspiring. And I miss her.

That was the most difficult death for me this summer. The others were sad, a some were surprising, and a few brought back old friends and long forgotten memories. I got The News, got in touch with old friends/coworkers, reminisced about the deceased, shared a few memories or stories, sent the sympathy cards or pitched in for flowers when appropriate, and grieved the way you do in these situations. In a few cases I keep forgetting the person died. I think of them in the present tense and have to remind myself they are now very much past tense.

I received a LinkedIn reminder for one of them...eeep, that was maddening and kinda creepy..."Endorse Jane Smith as marketing manager!" Uhhhh, okay, well, you know, I suppose it's possible Jane Smith has a new job in an afterlife of some ilk, but I am not qualified to endorse her abilities for that job. That made me think: I really should a) figure out a program/app that tracks obituaries and notifies social networks of deaths of members so that sort of thing doesn't happen and b) you know how they say it's "good" to write your own obituary? I need to write my post mortem social network profiles, something like: "Tricia McMillian has been promoted to creative services manager at Devil's Advocate, located in the 4th Circle of Hell."

A couple weeks ago I was visiting my mother in my tiny hometown. While there my mother received news that an elderly friend died. My parents were good friends with this older couple, my dad golfed with the (deceased) husband. They were always one of those "kindly older couples" in the community. The woman was going to be 100 next month and everyone was bummed out for her that she didn't hit the milestone. My mother wanted to go to the funeral. I was in town. My mother's widowed. Everyone hates going to funerals, and everyone really hates going to funerals alone. My parents' friends who also knew the deceased woman were out of town when she died. The obvious and polite thing was for me to accompany my mother to the funeral. After all, I've known this woman most of my life. So, what's the big deal? Take my mother to the funeral and pay my respects. Wellllllll, there's a bit more to it than that.

Unfortunately, the deceased woman is the grandmother to Beth and Renée. Yes, that Beth and Renée. The girls who tormented me relentlessly in school. They're cousins who made it their mission to ridicule, tease, start rumors about and occasionally spit on me. They stole schoolwork, toys, mittens (a big deal in Michigan winters) and gym shoes from me when we were young, they started a rumor that I was so ugly my parents took me away to Europe for 18 months to have head to toe plastic surgery. (In actuality my father was working overseas at the time.) As ridiculous as it sounds, there were kids who wondered if it was true and asked me about nose jobs, lip jobs, boob jobs etc. Even at the end of high school the rumor was still circulating, albeit diluted to whispers and pointing, "She had plastic surgery that didn't work..." Also in high school when rumors about girls being pregnant started circulating, Beth and Renée got a lot of laughs from our classmates by making jokes about me. "We know who's not pregnant, no one will ever have sex with Trillian, she's so ugly she's going to die a virgin." So I then became the Ugly Virgin. Every so often a prayer card of the Virgin Mary with ugly features drawn on her in ball point pen appeared on or in my locker or in my book bag or passed around the lunch room for everyone to see, eventually landing at my spot at the loser table. That's when I started working in the library during lunch hour. Instead of eating I got a study pass and hid in the earth science section reading whatever book looked interesting. By senior year I was an expert in geology and well on my way to anorexia. The bastardized Virgin Mary prayer cards still appeared, but at least the other dorks at the loser lunch table weren't subjected to the ridicule aimed at me. Beth and Renée started the uglied up Virgin Mary prayer card fad, other kids joined in the fun, but Beth and Renée were always the kingpins. At first I threw the cards away, but then I started keeping them. I'm not sure why. By graduation I had a large collection of them, about 100 or so. I had a ceremonial burning the day after graduation. Labeling Beth and Renée as bullies doesn't do justice to the pain they caused me for most of my youth. Their personalities were so different from their kind, compassionate grandparents' personalities that it seemed impossible they were descended from them. My parents knew Beth and Renée bullied me and it put them in a difficult position. They weren't particularly friendly with Beth and Renée's parents, but they were friendly with their grandparents. No grandparent wants to know their grandchildren are Satan's Henchmen.

I moved away to college, lived my life and try to never think about Beth and Renée. I put them firmly in my past the day I burned those prayer cards.

And then...their grandmother died and my mother wanted to attend her funeral. I knew Beth and Renée would be there. And yes, of course, the funeral is about their grandmother and no place for petty childhood issues. But the thought of attending the visitation or funeral knowing darned well they'd be there is not something I want to deal with right now. Or ever, really. Call me immature. Call me silly. Call me petty. Call me a coward. I'm guilty of all that and a lot more.

But let's keep it real. If my parents didn't know their grandparents I would not be paying condolences to their grandmother.

Let's keep it even more real: if I had my life together I would love to go and flaunt myself at Beth and Renée, be living proof that living well = revenge.

But.

I'm unemployed, unmarried, childless, losing my home and limping on a foot and ankle that are in desperate need of repair. I have hair that is way too long and shaggy because I go as long as possible between haircuts because I can't afford them. I have old clothes because I can't afford new ones. I look tired and weary because I don't sleep because of the anxiety and stress of my life situation. I look like crap. I feel like crap. My life is crap. I am exactly what Beth and Renée predicted I would be: An ugly failure in every aspect of life.

I didn't have to say anything about any of this to my mother. She told me she didn't want me to have to deal with Beth and Renée and that I didn't have to go with her to the funeral, she'd go on her own. And of course hearing someone else say that made me feel even more immature and silly and petty. And hearing my mother acknowledge the Beth and Renée thing was so awful that all these years later she didn't want me to have to be in the same room with them was surprisingly difficult. My mother was in the, "turn the other cheek" and "don't stoop to their level" and "just ignore them" schools of dealing with bullies. I always thought she didn't fully grasp how horrible those girls were to me and how the teasing and tormenting I dealt with because of them was brutal. I don't blame my parents - by the time we were in junior high school I stopped telling my parents about the teasing I got at school. I was embarrassed about it and didn't want my parents to know their daughter was such a loser she was being teased. I also thought I had to learn how to handle it on my own - I didn't expect, or want, my parents to come to my rescue. I knew that would only make the teasing worse, every kid knows that parents intervening in this sort of thing is just an open invitation for more teasing.

But apparently my mother knew it was more than typical schoolyard teasing because all these years later she didn't want me to have to deal with them.

In the end I went. My mother and I slipped in to the funeral at the last minute and sat in the back row. My mother said a few words to Beth's mother and we left. I don't know if Beth and Renée saw me or not, and I don't care. I was there on my mother's behalf and to pay respects to my parents' friend. That her grandchildren teased me mercilessly throughout my childhood and high school years was not a factor. I don't think I rose above anything. I didn't confront Beth or Renée, I didn't speak to them. I didn't even really get a good look at them. And I suspect they didn't see me, either. They may not ever even know I was there. So I was really just as cowardly as if I hadn't attended. In the words of my teenage self, "Whatever."

I was dealing with all the deaths and trying to squelch the drudged up memories of Beth and Renée and get myself out of the grieving funk, reminding myself to live. "You're still alive! Live!" When blam! the call you don't expect to get arrives.

I have cousins. But because my parents are the youngest children in their families, and I'm the youngest (by a lot of years) in my family, my cousins are all much older than I am, the lone exception being a cousin two years older than I am. Consequently I'm not very close to most of them. Far flung logistics play a huge role in our lack of closeness, as well. Some of us turn up at weddings and funerals. Some of us keep in touch with others of us and eventually news and life updates filter through the family's communication network. I suspect we're like other families in this regard. I'm not saying it's good, or even healthy, but it's how it is with a lot of families. When I hear about someone who is close to a cousin I look upon the relationship with curiosity. I'm not entirely sure what that relationship is like. Beth and Renée were cousins and they did everything together. They appeared to be best friends. Evil incarnate best friends. Consequently, for me, there's an air of something sinister about cousins who are close. (Thank you, Beth and Renée, for badly skewing my perspective on familial relationships.) So deep down I've always been kind of glad my cousins are older and far flung. No one forces relationships and no one pretends we're anything other than what we are: A bunch of people whose parents happened to be siblings.

But that's not to say we don't care. We do care. My oldest cousin had a long and difficult war with several types of cancer. At different junctures all of us cousins helped her in the ways we could. Visits, phone calls, cards, help with treatment care...from the oldest to the youngest, we were there for her. We do care, we do support each other. We're just...far flung, literally and figuratively.

Another older cousin, though, is a family legend. He's the kind of guy with just enough redeeming qualities to render his assholiness moot. He's so much older than I am that he's always been almost a mythical creature to me. If you read his bio you'd think it was made up. He was at Altamont and is captured in one of the famous (and infamous) photos of the concert-gone-wrong. He dodged the draft by living in Mexico working as an English speaking guide in the Yucatan. (His father, my father and my other uncles, who all did time in the military, all agreed that he was not armed services material and he wouldn't last a week in boot camp let alone in Vietnam...it was agreed that the US did not need someone like my cousin in its military ranks. It was also agreed that the US did not need to be in Vietnam, period, and therefore drafting the dodge was the only real choice and forgivable in their eyes.) He returned to (eventually) get a degree in architecture and worked his way through college as the lighting guy for bands in the '70s. He made a lot of friends in bands and amassed an impressive collection of guitars and clothes castoff from impressive music names. Speaking of names, he dated a Hearst. Yes, of those Hearsts. He went to Europe thanks to an offer from a friend in a band and lived there for a few years touring with different bands as the lighting guy, and, oh yeah, working on restoration and conservation projects at Versailles and the Louvre. When I was little he visited us for a few days. It pains me to admit this, but I had a castoff Beatles toy guitar one of my other cousins had long outgrown. I discovered the broken pieces in the bottom of my cousins' abandoned toy box and my aunt told me I could have it. My dad repaired the broken fret with glue and tape and replaced the strings with different weights of fish line so I could strum different chords. It also pains me to admit how long I played with that stupid thing. Anyway, en route to some adventure, my cousin visited us for a few days. He had a real guitar with him. In my childhood naïveté  thought he'd be impressed that I had a guitar, too, and he suggested that we jam together. I showed him my jumping off the hearth airborne windmill technique, and he taught me a few chords.

I know, you're thinking, "Holy crap! Trillian's cousin is either full of shit or the most interesting man in the world!" There's photographic evidence of all of this that lends credence to his tales. Every now and then he sent my parents a postcard or a few photos with a funny letter detailing his latest exploits. My dad used to read the letters aloud. They often contained a guitar pick for me, usually allegedly from someone famous. I was always fascinated by my cousin. The fact that we were related to him blew my mind. That we shared a gene pool was cool to me. I felt like I had a sliver of street cred thanks to him.

Eventually he settled down and got a steady job. And then there were some bad years, personal problems, marital problems...but he rebounded and was his old adventurous self. His holiday cards were hand drawn and hysterical. He chose a couple noteworthy weird news events from the previous year and mocked them, incorporating different family members in the drawing. He often sent me a guitar pick from some concert he attended during the previous year. Last year he sent me a pick from Wayne Coyne with a photo of him talking to Wayne Coyne. When I opened the card and saw the photo, I thought, "Huh?" but then all I could think was, "Of course he hung out with Wayne Coyne. Why wouldn't he?"

And then his sister called and told me he died.

After all his exploits and adventures, all his lapses in judgement and feats of daring, he just went to sleep and didn't wake up. Which is, of course, what we hope for everyone - a peaceful death. But not yet. He's older, but not old enough to say, "he lived a long life."

I know we're supposed to learn life lessons from death and blah blah blah. Two people, two family members I really liked, are gone. Of course I miss them, but the world is going to miss them, too.  They were the kind of people you want to meet in life - interesting and interested - and it makes me sad and mad that from here on out no one will get to meet them.