I have a new job!
By javacat | August 16, 2008
I can’t believe it has been a month already since my last blog. This time it wasn’t laziness just a whole lot of Mexicanity, meaning superstition. I have a new job! Yo! I didn’t want to jinx the whole interview process by talking about it here. I mean, I was THIS CLOSE to burning Jesus candles and saying Hail Mary’s and you all know that I’m agnostic. It was THAT intense! Three interviews , a writing assignment, a presentation….published competition and I FINALLY landed the gig. This all took place in a period of about a month, hence my absence. It took a shit load of wine to combat the nasty anxiety attacks that threaten to pound me into the ground and choke the air out of me while trying my damndest to land this job. Well, I got it. I am once again writing for a living, but this time I’m doing it at home in Ogden. Yes, yes, I work a mere 3 minutes from my own home and if that doesn’t just rock…I don’t know what does.
I loved my former job. I loved making a tangible, measurable difference in education, but the bullshit that ensued in the office became too much to bear. I helped to build that company from the ground up. I put my heart and soul into the brick, mortar and processes that made it successful. I swam to the shore like my life depended on it only to look up and find that I was still in the middle of the fucking ocean. When the owner decided to once again create a new management position and hired his friend to fill that position instead of promoting me I knew that it was time to move on. He literally sucked the joy out of my job. I have WORKED my ASS off this past year. I recruited the entire staff of a new school and half the staff of two others and I project managed the starting of the new school working 15 hours a day and I was repayed by having to train my new and completely clueless boss. When I learned where the pieces had fallen, I decided to clean up the resume and distribute.
For the first time ever I had a very candid conversation with myself about how much I thought I was worth and what would make me happy. I put the figure and the product together and decided to stand my ground no matter what offer came through. For allof my career I have always been so thankful that I didn’t end up being my mom on welfare or a druggy or a lifelong gangster that I was thankful anyone would consider me at all and always willing to settle. Not this time. This time believing in my self worth just a little bit paid off. I am now working for a company that is embarrassingly encouraging of my personal growth. Karma is good. I am one happy chica…and that is where I am today.
Topics: Daily Dose | 10 Comments »
Too young to die
By javacat | July 16, 2008
In this morning’s paper there was an obituary for a boy I had grown up with and gone through school with. It didn’t say how he died but it did cause me to surmise as a lack of description usually does. Reading his obituary and seeing his face jogged a much older memory. This boy and I had both grown up in the same rough neighborhood here in Ogden. We played in the same parks, went to the same schools and saw each other in the same neighborhood grocery store. We were the same age but never really friends. He was rather shy and quiet and he came with a story.
We often heard our mothers and the other adults in the neighborhood whisper about how his mother had killed his father and buried him in the basement….not more than a block from were our own apartment was. His father had been an abusive asshole who would beat his mother within an inch of her life on a regular basis. One day she had had enough and put an end to it.
It wasn’t a story that made us think or treat the children from that family differently, it was just another sad fact of an almost prevalently sad existence. I was friends with two other boys whose mother supplemented her welfare check by working the streets. Again, we never treated the boys differently. Their mom was just another neighbor doing what she could to survive. My mom usually just let us fend for ourselves when the food stamps were gone, or my grandfather would bring over a much needed bag of groceries.
Today I can’t help but to wonder how the boy in the obit today was affected by having grown up in such a violent household. It must have been so incredibly painful. It was only two years ago that I had read his sister’s obituary. She was only two years older than we were. We all knew that the kids had known that their dead father was in the basement and that their mother had put him there and we all agreed that he had deserved it. The courts must have agreed too because the mother never served any time.
The boy had three children of his own and a wife. The obituary said that he had loved his wife and his children very much. I don’t know what kind of demons that the shy and quiet boy I grew up with had to live with but it appears that they were much too heavy for him and his sister to carry in this life. I hope they have both found some peace.
Topics: Daily Dose | 8 Comments »
Abusive Boyfriends
By javacat | July 11, 2008
My kids asked again about how I met their Dad and the crazy boyfriend that led to that fateful meeting. It all started with the Cure, a great band but a band that reminds me just the same of the a relationship that almost ended my life. It’s a strange story but a true story…..and I can’t figure out what the hell ever landed me in such a perplexing relationship but here goes… I had seen this look on his face before. The same lovely green eyes that had often looked upon me with tenderness would cloud over becoming deep wells of darkness that imparted an impression of being soulless. I had left him for the last time. I knew that if I did not that it would eventually come to this. He would try to take my life. I had meticulously planned my return for my things; the antique hope chest, my clothes, pictures and things. I had watched the apartment from a careful distance to gauge his comings and goings so that I could avoid this final confrontation. When I heard the resistant squeak of the flimsy screen door, my stomach lurched and my heart dropped into my toes. The beast stood before with a look of fury and madness that contorted his features into a mask of horror. “Why are you doing this to me? You said you loved me?” His words were tenderness wrapped in razor blades. I knew where this was going I had heard it all before. “Please just let me get my things” I begged. As he made his way towards me I backed into the closet holding my hands in front of me. He had never hit me. His abuse was always more subtle than a fist to the face. He preferred detaining me by bending my arms and wrists, pinning me up against walls, kicking my car and breaking off mirrors to make a point. One time he pushed me out of my own car leaving me crying and scared in an empty park to walk back home. He knew how to control me. He had successfully alienated me from friends and family through his own insatiable neediness and well, I felt sorry for him. He would often use the dark secrets I had entrusted him with to berate me into a spineless lump of submissive human waste that lacked the emotional toughness required to end it all. I knew that this time I would not escape with a simple bruise to the wrist or forearms. The beast grabbed me by my arms and threw me down to the ground. I screamed at the top of my lungs hoping that someone would hear me and come to help. The familiar insults and slurs that poured from his mouth became muted as it dawned on me that I would be fighting for my life. I half comically thought of cavemen as he dragged me out of the closet and into the kitchen by my hair. He secured me to the floor by a foot to the chest as he grabbed a kitchen knife out of the drawer. The beast straddled me and told me in between sobs that he was going to kill himself if I left him. I felt a calm wash over me as decisions began to solidify in my head. He pressed the knife onto his wrist in a show of resolve. “Good riddance mother f*cker. Do it”, I said. His rage resurged and the knife went from his wrist to my neck. “Go ahead” I said again. I’m done with you whether you kill me or not.” I heard the knife clatter to the floor and the pressure from its blade was replaced by his big calloused hands. I felt them tighten as I gasped for air. I stopped gasping and closed my eyes. I pretended that it was over. “Catina? Catina? he asked with a new fear in his voice that I had never heard. I continued my possum pose. I felt him gently shake my limp body trying to elicit a response. Finally after what felt like ten lifetimes, he stood up and ran. I waited another ten minutes on that ugly linoleum tile…praying that he would not return to finish the job. Finally I got up and walked to a neighbor’s house to use the phone. I called a family member who picked me up and took me straight to the police station to file a report. No arrest was ever made. I was just another dumb teenager who had chosen to be in a rotten relationship. Not even the death threat phone calls were serious enough to compel the police to search harder for the beast. It soon became clear that he would never leave me alone and that I had to leave. I called up the father I had never known and asked if I could come stay with him for awhile. He welcomed me with open arms as I made my may way across four states to save my own life. I stayed there for a year, until the ache of my family back home became too much and I returned. The beast was here waiting for me just as sure as the sun rises. I was somehow able to convince him that he should join the military to make something of his life. I even went with him for his interview with the naval recruiter. Once the beast was safely away at boot camp, the recruiter called me back to inquire if I had found employment yet. I told him I had not. After unsuccessfully trying to enlist me into the Navy as well he offered to get me an interview at a trophy shop where his son worked. The son and I became best friends, lovers and then spouses. He was and is the polar opposite of the beast; gentle, kind and devoid of violent tendencies. It has been fifteen years and it is still perplexing to me that I stayed in a violent relationship for two unreclaimable years of my young life. I was seconds away from never experiencing a loving marriage and three amazing children. Women beware of the man who would cut you off from the world in order to possess you completely….to the point that he would even end your life in the event that you choose to walk away from his.
Topics: Daily Dose | 9 Comments »
Morons, Old People and Dead Kittens
By javacat | July 7, 2008
Sometimes a bad day at work can just bleed off the page like a watercolor, mucking up the area outside of the lines. That is exactly what happened last week when I almost accosted an old lady in a Blimpie’s sandwich shop.
It was late when I returned home from work that afternoon and Miss Rex, the bearded dragon needed crickets and the family needed sustenance as well. So we went to the local Petco to get Miss Rex her dinner and then next door to Blimpie’s to buy sandwiches for the fam for dinner. There was an elderly couple in front of us and we waited patiently as they placed their order. The young boy who was putting together their sandwiches was gingerly dropping olives onto the lunchmeat when I distinctly heard the old lady say “Are you counting those? You moron!”
I was dumbfounded. Here was this poor kid trying to earn some extra change to buy some new songs for Guitar Hero or maybe some new wheels for his skateboard and the old lady had the nerve…..no wait…the freaking audacity to call the poor kid a moron!
I could feel the blood in my veins start to boil (again) as I sympathized with the kid as a fellow downtrodden worker….working for the man….and the disenfranchised elderly, when all of a sudden a verbal confrontation starts forming in my head:
*Being old does not give you the right to treat others poorly*
and
*You mean old bitty, calling that poor kid a moron, who do you think you are?*
And so forth…..
Then I say to Buddha, “Did you hear that lady? She just called that poor kid a moron! Who the hell does she think she is?”
To which Buddha responds, “What she said was, “Are you counting those things? Put some more on!”.
“Ohhhh,” I responded.
I watched as the old lady’s husband counted out a pocket full of change to pay for their dinner and I’m all of a sudden reminded of my grandparents whose nights eating out consisted of a trip to the Arctic Circle hamburger joint in our old neighborhood. The guilt got heavier and heavier with each clink of a coin that hit the counter.
I listened as a new confrontation on my own sensibilities began to form itself in my head. “Oh well” I said to myself, “he could have easily moonlighted as a kitten killer in his youth. Who could possibly feel badly for someone who doesn’t love kittens? Not me.”
Topics: Daily Dose | 3 Comments »
Choker
By javacat | July 5, 2008
The girl is now 13 and more often than not we are bumping heads. It’s a scary age and it’s not because she isn’t a good kid (she is), it’s because I wasn’t a good kid. Weekends spent at my mothers meant that I got to do what I wanted, where I wanted and my friends and I did not exactly seek to fill our free time with wholesome summer activities. Thankfully for the girl, she is much more shy than I was at that age and probably more intimidated at the prospect of kissing boys or even talking to them for that matter. I can live with that. I’m half tempted to tell her the story of my first kiss, but I don’t want to encourage her! The story goes a little like this.
It was the summer of my 13th year and my cousin Tanya who was also my age had already landed her first real kiss. My mission that summer was to land my own first kiss and boy did I ever succeed. Tanya and I had hung out with a group of boys in the neighborhood all summer and one of those boys, Paul, was friends with a boy that I had had a crush on at school. All the girls had a crush on him, but I was somewhat invisible in the 7th grade. I had not yet gotten rid of the coke bottle glasses and spent most of my time hiding behind books. By the end of my 7th grade year I had talked the grandparents into letting me get contacts and I saw doors open that I hadn’t known existed. Not because I was cooler or better looking but because the contacts helped me to be a little more confident.
Paul’s friend B was at his house almost every day that summer. As Tanya was setting the stage more kisses with more boys I was busy renovating my façade. I wore black eyeliner that summer and hideous white eye shadow. This was pre-braces so I still rocked the fangs, but that was hardly noticeable because my bangs were reaching epic heights and stole the show.
On one of those days of hanging out with the boys my mom just so happened to be somewhere else so we invited the boys into her apartment. Tanya had already partitioned herself off into another room with maybe Paul or one of his friends and I was left all alone with B. B sat next to me and made small talk. The next thing that I knew his face was moving into mine and I panicked. I grabbed that poor boy by the shoulders and stuck (more like shoved) my tongue into his mouth. I must have bruised his tonsils and nearly severed his trachea because he pulled out of that kiss faster than you could say “frenchy”.
He didn’t try to kiss me again and for the rest of the summer I was heartbroken and couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t been hypnotized by my mad kissing skills…..until the first day of school. B had obviously told all of his friends about my enthusiastic kissing because every time they would see me in the hall at school they would put their hands around their necks and pretend to gag and then yell “CHOKER!”. I spent my entire 8th grade year being known as “choker”. I wished back then I could hang B with the proverbial noose that my grandmother always talked about me hanging myself with if she gave me too much rope.
I hope my daughter understands that this is the reason that you shouldn’t kiss boys at 13….you haven’t yet had the opportunity to grow into your tongue!
Topics: Daily Dose | 8 Comments »
Half Empty
By javacat | May 29, 2008
One of the first fights that I ever had with Buddha in our early marriage was about the toilet paper roll. After living with the man for awhile I noticed that he would never replace an empty roll on the spool. He would simply grab a new roll and leave the empty roll there. For some reason I found this so psychologically disturbing that I literally wanted to boil those empty cardboard rolls, season them with cyanide and force feed them to him in gruel. First, I tried the passive aggressive approach with him. I stacked all of the empty rolls next to the bathroom sink until they were literally seven deep and he STILL didn’t throw them away. He just left them there! Maybe he thought of them as a modern art project, I don’t know. I remember throwing those empty rolls at him and just being so hot and enraged that I singed the hair off of his left brow. He might have improved for a few weeks, maybe even months after that argument, but eventually he just regressed into grabbing a new roll before the old roll was “all the way” empty. I have since learned to only freak out about the big things and not to stress so much about “almost empty” toilet paper rolls…and then I returned from Spain after a week.
It appears that my family spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom while I was gone and do you know how I know? There were FIVE “almost empty” rolls of toilet paper sitting around the bathroom. The kids have inherited their father’s aversion to replacing the damned toilet paper roll on the spool. I don’t get it…I really don’t get it.
Topics: Familia Blogado, Daily Dose | 8 Comments »
My Boy Genius
By javacat | May 28, 2008
My little trouble maker almost made it through the entire year without getting into too much trouble. Almost. I got a call from his teacher yesterday and the boy genius had written “I’m a butthead” above a girl’s photo in what he thought was her yearbook. Turns out it was his teacher’s yearbook. Thank God! I would have felt TERRIBLE if that little girl had gone home with “I’m a butthead” written across her forehead as her 4th grade memento.
I feel like we do a good job educating the urchins on damage resulting from bullying, name calling…you know all the good stuff. The girls get it but the boy not so much. He’s lucky that I leave my postits at work or I might have made him worn “Butthead” across his own forehead for the next three weeks. Maybe acts of kindness instead? Oye….is it bad to wonder if he spelled “butthead” right?
Topics: Daily Dose | 3 Comments »
Still alive
By javacat | May 27, 2008
New school staffed at about 50% and the others at 100%. I kick ass, really. Did I mention I may not be doing this next year? I mean really, what will I do with all of the left over anxiety? Maybe I could plant it and grow my own crack. I won’t miss any of it, except the Spain part. I’m no HR gal, this is all just a fluke…a bad bad fluke.
Topics: Daily Dose | 4 Comments »
Madrid 2008
By javacat | April 20, 2008
Interviewing on steroids 2008 was a success. I hired quite a few teachers and interviewed at least 60. This year was a lot less distressing than the last. I have more confidence in my discerning abilities and could pretty much make a decision after five minutes with a candidate. I hired a math teacher who looked like Willem DaFoe who is startling in appearance but funny. I interviewed a fat French teacher with purple hair who wore a plaid skirt and sat with her chubby legs spread apart like a baseball player in a dugout. I interviewed PE teachers who looked like they belonged on the cover of GQ and others with such a soothing cadence to their voices that I would literally beg my partner to go to the hotel bar to get me an espresso to keep from falling asleep.
The hours were long and tedious and didn’t leave much time for tourism…meaning that I had to become nocturnal, prowling the city until one am in the morning looking for good tapas and vino tinto. I am going to miss the hamon Serrano and the croquets topped with anchovies and octopus. I could eat off of a Spanish menu for the rest of my life and never miss food in America. I’ve got wanderlust again and I wouldn’t think twice about selling our home for a three year stint in Spain. I’ve taken to trying to convince Buddha that a house is just a thing and that I would prefer experiences, but alas I’m married to a man who loves his place.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures this time, because I was out mostly at night and it rained most nights. I did get pictures of our dinner at Casa Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world. We dined on their world renowned suckling pig and the biggest and most delicious artichokes you have ever seen. We downed several bottles of wine and made our way back to the hotel just before the metro ended service for the night. Among my other touristy ventures was a visit to the Thiessen Museum, El Prado for a Goya exhibit and Retiro Park. I’m happy to be home but also missing Spain at the same time. Here are a few pictures:
Me and my posse outside of Casa Botin
Inside Casa Botin
The pig de resistance
Oh yes, those are teeth
That would be pig snout in my mouth….yum
The Ham Museum…oh yes, ham off the hoof, the only way to eat ham in Spain.
Topics: Daily Dose | 3 Comments »
High Waisted Slacks
By javacat | April 11, 2008
I’m digging the cute new high waisted slacks at Express. I want some even, but I just know that when I try them on they will come up to my bra line and double as the second line of defense against gravity. It’s really all I have to work with at 5 feet tall. I honestly can’t decide between high fashion or the grandpa with big boobs look.
Topics: Daily Dose | 3 Comments »