The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Or, "Unemployment as an Exercise in Faith."

I quit my job about a month ago. (For more information on that little issue see the previous post Neglecting The Neglected of Society.) When I did it I was sure I had another job at a Nursing Home to cover me. However, my last week of work, my potential new employer called to let me know "The nurse who quit has decided to stay -- so we don't have a position open now. Sorry."

Now, as a former employer in my own right I can understand why they would want to keep an employee who's already trained and whom they know; versus a new employee they'll have to train who's an unknown quantity.

Nevertheless; what's a man without honor? What sorts of persons are we who do not keep our word?

I mean -- Damn!

Fortunately for me I had 6 days of Holiday time saved up and my former employer agreed to let me stay and additional week, so my last paycheck was more like two paychecks put together. Nevertheless, next week is "Fish-or-cut-bait" time here. I need to get employed by next Friday -- no excuses.

The first week I hit the streets like I used to work; up in the morning by 6am, shower, shave, eat breakfast -- start distributing resumes and filling out applications by 9am and home by 6pm. I did this the first four days, sprinkling a few first interviews in there as well, with more first interviews and a few second interviews for the fifth day. Thus endeth the first week.

By the start of the second week a strange feeling set in firmly that I'd started feeling some on the Tuesday of the first week. Dread. Inertia. Panic. Anxiety. Agitation, overlaid with a smothering sense of inevitability.


Depression.


It's an irrational fear, really. I know fully well that I'm doing everything possible to locate a new job. In fact, I (at this minute) have three very good offfers for employment. The first is to be the Wound Care Specialist in a Nursing Home on Day Shift, with standard benefits; the second is as a psychiatric nurse in a major Psych Hospital chain, offering Blue Cross Healthcare and willing to work with me on my schooling schedule. The third (which I did an unprecedented third interview for today, and the offer I'm still waiting to hear from) is to be a clinic manager for a local multi-clinic chain about 4 blocks from the apartment. Mondays through Fridays 8-5; great health and dental; very low employee turnover (which means nobody wants to leave this place), and very motivated, happy employees.

Yeah, I could stay there and work a long, loooonnnggggg time. If they offer more than the other two places (who are both offering the same I was making at my previous employer) I'll be really happy.

It helps to focus on the good things these potential employers are offering; otherwise I'm focussing on "why haven't they called!" or "I need to make a decision soon!" kind of panic-y stuff.

The thing that is incredibly frustrating to Ariane is that she's always accusing me of being impatient, when i feel the reverse is true. I've just put the whole thing in God's hands and pray at least once a day about it -- usually when I'm starting to feel the tendrils of depression creep in.

But I should know tomorrow for sure -- if not Friday. If not, I'm going to accept on of the other two offers and get it over with. I think I'd tend to go first with the Psychiatric Hospital, then the Nursing Home.

Maybe.

Well, we'll see.

Meanwhile, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers are running through my head.

Meanwhile, the tendrils of depression creep in. And the Dread. The Inertia. The Panic. The Anxiety. The Agitation, overlaid with a smothering sense of inevitability.

I'm praying hard. You pray hard too.

~~JD~~

I Probably Won't Be Posting Sunday

Tomorrow (Sunday, May 28th, 2006) is the Eighteenth Anniversary of my wedding with Ariane Patricia Marie Genvieve Sheik-Hossen one bright beautiful Sunny Saturday morning at 11:28am in the commune of Ixelles, in the great city of Brusselles, Belgium.

So you'll pardon me if I'm absent a day here. Instead, here's a brief restrospective of the wedding pictures I have.





Our Wedding, held in the Town Hall of Ixelles (a district of Brussells). We walked the block from Ariane's apartment to the town hall; a magnificent old stone and oak building built in 1611, as I recall.



"With this Ring, I thee wed." Actually it was a great deal more dramatic than that. When the Mayor of Ixelles started the ceremony, he said "Madames et Monseiurs, Bon Soir, Nous est rendez-vous ici pour le mariage de Jean-David Long et Ariane Sheik -Hossen . . . "and i suddenly realized something very important:

I had no idea what this guy was saying. My French was nowhere good enough to follow what he was saying, so I kept waiting for a pause -- figuring I would say Ï Do" when he paused -- no, wait, I should say "Oui!", right?

Finally, he pauses, and looks at me. I look back at him. Then I look at Ariane, who has this very strange look in her eye -- no, wait, that's tears! Do i say it now? What exactly do I say? Gripped completely and totally by panic, I froze -- only to hear my future mother-in-law's voice arcing out over the assembled crowd of guests:

"SAY IT, J.D., SAY "OUI!"

And the whole place cracked up. (We used to have a videotape of this -- it was hilarious.)





And this is himself, the Mayor or "Maire" of Ixelles commune. When he saw he was marrying an American soldier he went home and changed into his uniform with his Resistance Medals from WWII. He took it as a singular honor to marry an American soldier -- and I was honored to be married by him.





And, of course, our first married Kiss. The start of great things to come, and it's still as thrilling and exciting as it was eighteen years ago.

We'll be at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for dinner. Gotta go get some wine.

~~JD~~

Happy Birthday,Dear Nana . . . .

Today is May 23rd, 2006. My grandmother. Isobel Florence Foster Shurr, was born 100 years ago today.

She died 5 and a half years ago, and I still feel it like it was yesterday. It's funny how some people you never think twice about, and some you miss like you'd miss your arm if it was cut off.

Or your heart, if it was cut out.

Well, that was my Nana. I wrote this for her funeral, and i think it bears repeating.


Nana

I think the thing I always forget about Nana is that she has grey eyes. Whenever I see her again I’m always startled by the color and depth and texture of her eyes. In any other medium, in any other subject the color of that grey would look odd and out-of-place. Like crushed grey velvet her eyes have a softness, ad warmth, and fluidity that makes you want to cup her face in your hands so her eyes don’t pour out of her head; she looks that fragile, and gentle. I could stare into those wonderful, warm, accepting, forgiving eyes forever.

The thing I always remember about Nana is her grace, and her strength. Widowed at a young age with three small children, she found a teaching job and put herself back through school to get her Master’s degree eventually. Where did she find the time, I wonder to myself, but the answer comes softly and quickly back; “You make the time for the important things.”

Failure was never on her list of options, but she wasn’t what you’d call “iron-willed” or “indomitable” or any of those other adjectives of strength or forcefulness. Nana has a grace to her strength that belies itself. She had to sell her family business to be able to teach because “it didn’t look right” for a teacher to run a liquor store. If that’s what she had to do to survive, that’s what she did. The iron in her deeds is always overlaid with supple, pliant willow reeds that give her a kind of sad, loving beauty. She’s not the relative I think of as harsh or strict; or the one that always gave unconditional love.

She’s so much more than the sum of her parts or actions. When I think of Grandma Florencey, I think of her old rooming house on Garfield and the borders she rented to. When I think of Grandma Albright, I think of ice cream cones and boats on the lake and fishing with hooks made of paper clips under the rental boats. When I think of Aunt Hattie, I smell mothballs and see the white tile in her bathroom and taste the windmill cookies with almonds in them that she always had. My grandma Glynn was the strict one, with the cold, hard iron in her words but the wonderful gifts she brought from Marshall Fields. Grandma & Grandpa Gertsmeier had that big old beautiful barn and the vegetable patch and the pig pen and the rows of corn that would go on forever and ever into the Iowa sky until you’d get dizzy just thinking about it.

Nana was the one who would welcome you almost any time, any day, no matter how far you’d driven or what time it was. Nana always had chores to do around that big old house of hers, and paid you too much after you’d finished. Nana wouldn’t hesitate to make you a big breakfast of fried eggs and oatmeal and toast and orange juice with the pulp still in it, even though she’d just barely eat a piece of toast herself. Nana would have Thanksgiving (and, earlier, Christmas dinner) at her house and serve up more food than anyone had a right to try eating at one sitting, then nibble at a small plate of food herself. She made the most magnificent rolls, but was lucky to get one herself

Nana? She’s . . . . I guess “respect” and “unconditional love” are just the only words that fit her even halfway, but there’s so much more to it than just that.

I have no idea what I’ll do without her, but I’m sure my life will be much more pitiful and small without her.

September 2000


Son of a gun; I was right.

~~John~~

Life Here on my Parallel Earth (a.k.a. Texas)

Science (in particular, Quantum Physics) stipulates that there are probably millions upon millions of parallel worlds separated across dimensions, and this has become a staple of science fiction. We live on this Earth; the next Earth over the primary currency is the $2 bill -- the next Earth over the South won the Civil War -- the Earth after that the Nazis won World War II -- etc., etc.

So sometime during the winter I was watching my weekly dose of STARGATE SG-1 on the Sci-Fi Channel. On one of the episodes they were discussing how some of the cultures on different plasnets were more advanced than Earth, even though they were seeded by humans from our planet thousands of years ago. One of the characters made the comment that it was because our Earth had gone through the Dark Ages from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, during which Science and Progress came to halt. A culture without a Dark Age would have continued to progress and would be far advanced of the current culture we live in today.

While I was having lunch with Ariane today it finally hit me why I like the great state of Texas so damned much.

They never had the Dark Ages.

Specifically, they never had the late 1960's here in Texas.

Think about it for a minute with me. Drift back in time with me if you will. It's that dark, desperate period of the late 1960's. Psychedelic music, drugs, free love, and the all-consuming power of Rock-And-Roll. Authority is Questioned, the Social order is disturbed. Hair is grown long in defiance of parents and authority. Teen-agers and college students are tuning out, turning on, and dropping out. In 1968 in Paris, student protests tear the city apart and unleash weeks of violent protests, leading President DeGaulle to expel NATO for both their own safety as well as to placate demonstrators. In Chicago later that summer, riots convulse the city of Chicago and Mayor Daley issues a "shoot to kill" order to the Chicago Police. In 1969 in upstate NY, thousands of teenagers, college students, and Hippie counterculture members descend on a small farm for a week-long literal orgy of free love and indiscriminate drug use. In 1970 Ohio the National Guard is called out to Kent State University to quell student protests, leaving 4 dead.

Mass social upheaval, leaving societal scars lasting decades. Indeed, the after-effects of these events and these times are deeply ingrained into the societal fabric of today.

Except here. Except on my Earth. A little planet called . . . . Texas.

It's like it didn't even happen here. The prevailing hairstyle here is still short hair, and the shorter the better. The occaisional long-hair is seen, but usually braided in a pony-tail a la Willie Nelson.

Women are still "Ma'am", and men are still "sir." Drug use is neither tolerated not condoned; mostly just ignored like bad manners and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law when it's blatant and obvious. Free Love has pretty much been stopped in it's tracks by the advent of AIDS.

It just doesn't happen like that here. For crying out loud, I was eating lunch with my wife in a Cafeteria when I made this connection today. (Cafeterias pretty much went out of style everywhere else about 40 yerars ago -- yet Luby's Cafeterias are thriving in Texas (and in states near the Texas border.)

And the flag still proudly waves. We respect our president, whether we agree with him or not. God Bless America.

Really, it's such a better way to live. I don't know why the rest of the country doesn't try it. The 1960's are over -- get over it. Demonstrating against the war -- ANY War -- is NOT right or honorable; it hurts the kids in the military. Your "right" to Free Speech ends when your whiny, self-indulgent babble enters my ears.

And drugs kill people. It's not a "victimless crime." There are no Victimless Crimes.

~~JD~~

The Latest Photos From South Texas

The local weather in Spring in South Texas can be . . . . "highly variable." This day (May 2nd) it hailed like HELL all over San Antonio, and gully-washed the whole metro area. This picture, by the way, was taken outside Ariane's clinic, just so you know.


Julian at Japanese Gardens in San Antonio. He's trying to look "spiritual," but it mostly just looks like a weasel is burrowing up his pants.


Julian ande his best buddy Jaime from school. More a brother-and-sister thing; these two are a riot when they're together.


Candid shot of Ariane at a Quincanera party with a beer in her; hence the loopy smile.


Julian with his violin at the final (Thank God!) band concert of the year. The girl on the right is Jeanette, his Stand-Partner. Julian is completely unaware that Jeanette is gorgeous; which is probably good.


Julian's Award for "Outstanding Orchestra Member -- Junior Varisty" at the Band Banquet two weeks ago. I asked him why he got the award, he said "Just dumb stuff. I never missed a practice, or a concert; I was First Chair all year . . . y'know, dumb stuff like that."


Julian as he stands up to receive his award -- completely stunned. I love this kid.

~~John~~

New Features to the 'Blog

There's two new features to the 'blog that I'm kind of tickled with. The first is directly underneath the Counter and shows a map of the world. About once a day this little map will update with red dots indicating the locations where people are looking at my 'blog from. It also tracks the ISPs where people are coming from, so if there's any attacks on the 'blog, we'll be able to track them. (Unlikely, but a necessary precaution anymore.)

Meanwhile, I'm just interested in where people are looking at my 'blog from.

Also, there's another map from FRAPPR directly above the counter that has the title of my 'blog ("Apocryphal Evidence") on top of the map. By clicking on this title you can see who else is online and viewing the 'blog (optional registration only) and even chat online with those folks. So if your my relatives in Indiana or Illinois and want to set up a chat with my other relatives in Iowa or France, be my guest.

Or you can even chat with me, should the muse move you.

This FRAPPR map also allows you to zoom into anywhere on the globe and get satellite photos of anywhere. Just zoom in with the (+) or (-) and move the picture with the arrows, all of which are at the top left of the maps. It's a lot of fun. I can even see my car in the parking lot of our apartment complex.

Enjoy. Anyone wants to chat, e-mail me at jd_long@hotmail.com.

~~John~~

I'm Here, just Underground . .

With the end of the semester last week, I'm staying our of Ariane's way by tweaking the website a bit. You may see some small refinements and adjustments ongoing -- in most cases, I'm adding more links to other marvy websites for your entertainment perusal.

And another good newsy post when I get a chance this week -- I promise.

~~JD~~