Unemployment Retraining....

There are more whack birds in my yard than I've ever seen. Things I can't identify. I need a guide... there is this gorgeous little thing with a burgundy underbelly and black back, and he is gleamy and shiny and so sweet. He looks sleek and fast... and his mate is just like him, only instead of dark burgundy she's a pale yellow... not as shiny, but she's lovely too. The orioles were in the tree at 9 singing, and bluejays were all over the place. And we've a herd (yeah, a herd... I did that on purpose to paint a picture of cow like masses of birds hopping along) of chickadees pecking the grass. Eat all the fucking grubs you want boys and girls! They're killin' my yard.

That's why I think the yard is so full of birds, we're a feeding station. Bugs o plenty.

My unemployment saga that I mentioned Wednesday is ready to be told. Here is the short version of why bureaucracy sucks.

I get this letter in the mail informing me that I am required to go to this employment retraining seminar. I've been randomly selected to be a participant. So I'm like a piece of paper out of a hat... randomly chosen. The kicker is that I am required to attend this thing, or lose my unemployment benefits outright.

How fair is that? You randomly pick me and then penalize me for not going by taking away my benefits. What kind of shit is that? It makes NO sense. I should randomly decide if I want to randomly participate. Jeesh.

Anyway, I call them up, make an appointment to go to the seminar. I arrange for Jen to watch Geoff. I go to the office in Haverhill, not too big a drive but the closest one to my house. I get there, and they have me fill out this ridiculous "Application" to become a "Member" of the Retraining Office.

???

Application for something that you people DEMAND I attend, and then calling me a "Member" as if I've willingly joined and want to participate? What is wrong with this picture? It would have been like the Concentration Camp director handing out applications to be members of the work camps. Whatever.

I filled out my "Application" and thank you for extending an invitation to me to get joined up y'all, and on the application it says "What services did you hope to get out of the Center?"

I didn't hope to get out of the center. I didn't WANT TO COME TO THE CENTER so asking me what I want out of it is the biggest bullshit question in the history of humankind.

I want my unemployment benefits to continue.

That's what I put. Only nicer. "Seeing as I was required to come here, I don't have any preconceived expectations from the center. The only thing I'd like is a resume critique."

I really wanted to put: "I want to continue to stay home, not shower until 10am, eat ring dings and play with my son. I want money to do nothing for the first time in my life and if "joining" and "becoming a member" of the center is the only way I can get that then baby, that's what I want out of the center."

Asking me what I want out of the center. HA! I started laughing.

I finished filling the application out, hurrah! I'm a member now! And the girl leading the seminar says "Is anyone here working part time at all?"

I raise my hand and say that I'm designing some websites and working for catering man...

"Well, you don't have to be here," she says, looking at me like I am some sort of dingus for showing up.

"What do you mean by 'you don't have to be here?' " I ask, stunned, and looking at her with the equal dingus accusation gaze.

"How many hours a week are you working?" she asks.

"Maybe five to ten. Not sure. But each week that's about what I'm doing."

"And you are being paid?"

"Yes."

"And you fill out your time card each week saying that you are being paid."

"Yes."

Well she explains that the state of Mass says that working 2 hours a week is part time employment. 2 hours a week? Perhaps she means 2 hours a day. But anyway, she tells me I'm off the hook. I can leave.

Another guy across the table says to me, "uh, I'm working too! About 10 hours a week."

Bullshit. You are concocting a ruse. The lady let him go too. The thing that chaffs my britches is she didn't even ask the name and phone of the company/ies he/I were working for. How can they verify this?

Losers. Incompetent losers.

So I got home as Jen and Geoffrey were leaving to go run errands that Jen needed to do. He insisted on going with her... she accepted without grudge, and they went off into the morning.

I was at the unemployment office for 20 minutes. It was unreal.

Well, I got the woman's email so I could get that resume critique. I need to email it to her and see what she says.

Aaron and Michelle are here for the food drive help. I'm psyched. They got here at about 9 last night. We all were pretty pooped. Tonight I'm going to the college to work with the professor I used to work with designing an online course. She started putting it together in 1999, with me, and the college kept denying her request to teach it. This fall, they gave her the go ahead, so she's pressed for time. She has 3 months to polish what we did. And I'm disenchanted with what we did. I think it sucks. I want to redo the whole damn thing... I've learned so much more about layout and design, and don't think that it's a good course to teach online anyway. I'm reticent to go down to the college... Doug is going to flip when I remind him. I am unsure how late A&M are staying... so he's going to give me shit about abandoning my friends. Like he can't be the person in charge or something.

So it should be a very long and very tiring day. I'll let you know, obviously. I feel good about doing the food drive thing, but wish I had someone to hand Geoff off to so I could be at full involvement. I'm not sure how crowded/insane it will be there today, so one of us will probably stay somewhere with Geoff at all times. When we get the stuff back to the church, it will be okay for him to run around and play and whatnot, but while we are at the distribution center, it will be best if he's tethered to a human.

Alright. It's 8:45am. I wrote most of this yesterday, but this is my entry for the day. More later, and very happy mother's day to all the moms out there who have come across this journal and read it. We're "good eggs," to steal from P.G. Wodehouse.

...the space between

The company I work for has a luxury box at Foxboro Stadium. They raffled off tickets to people in the corporate officewho would want to go to certain shows this year, and I won tickets to see Dave Matthews Band. I love older Dave Matthews stuff, not fond of the new album... but hey. Luxury box. Free beer. Comfortable and safe surroundings for my daughter to go see her first concert, and a band she actually likes. I figured this would be an ass kicking 9th birthday present for my best girl... so I decided to take her instead of my husband (who, by the way, dislikes DMB greatly...).

The kids and I spent the afternoon at a pond, and I got a killer sunburn. I always remember to put sunscreen on them and not on myself. It was monkey hot that day, and I really wanted for us to get out and have fun swimming and sunning. My daughter and I left for Foxboro at 4:30. When I was much younger, the need to get there before noon to tailgate, eat, drink and puke in the parking lot was a lot stronger.... I felt that if we got there before the opening artist, Macy Gray, was finished, and before DMB started playing, that'd be good timing.

We got to the Foxboro area at about 6pm. Parked in a motel parking lot for $20 and walked the mile to the stadium. Again, it was super monkey hot, there were tons of drunk college students... and my 9 year old daughter right there among them. She seemed completely oblivious to their behavior, which made me feel good. She had the binoculars in hand, and was enjoying listening to the songs that the tailgaters were blasting from their cars. The parking lot area brought back a lot of memories for me, being a drunk stupid college student once upon a time... I honestly don't remember ever being THAT drunk and stupid though.

She asked for a slushie (turned her mouth horrid blue) and we got to the stadium, the luxury box, the beer, the pizza and the whole 9 yards before Macy sang her "signature song" which I can't stand. We had binoculars, a view of all God's creation, and it was refreshingly cool up in the box with the window wide open, and the cold beer and good friends from my office to hang out with.

Dave and the boys took the stage at about 8:20, earlier than I expected. With luxury box tickets you also get tickets in the stands, our tickets were right on the 50 yard line (had it been a football game) in the very low section of the first tier above the floor. After DMB took the stage, they were about 3 songs into their performance, I suggested we go down to our seats to see what the view was like there.

We fought the crowd, made it to our seats. Someone was in them, of course, so I made no big deal of it and we just stood beside the drunk college students who were in our seats. The row of drunk college students in front of us had a guy in the midst of them who looked like he was going to hurl. He'd stand up straight, sing along, wave his arms, yell "Wooooooo hooooo!" and then he'd bend over at the waist, fix his hands upon his knees and breathe heavily for a little while, hunched over forward in vomit-position. I kept a good eye on him... I didn't want him to do a lightning fast 180 degree turn and slather my daughter with spew.

Jessica noticed the pot smell, and I asked her if she was bothered by it. She said the smoke itself, not the smell was bothering her. I asked her if she wanted to go back yet, and she said she wanted to stay there a little while longer. I got the impression that she was kind of nervous, but it was exciting and weird at the same time. The band went into "Sattelite" and had a woman singing in some one of the many African languages (Dave's big into his Africa roots), and it was very pretty. Jessica was fascinated by the stage backdrops, they looked like tree trunks, made of taut canvas, painted in a way that made them also look sort of like snake skin. She eventually started applauding and "Wooo hoooo"-ing along with the crowd, and was getting into it.

Aside from the fabulous music, the crowd watching was the best part. I watched this tall, black security dude behind our row of seats keep a tube-topped, drunken blonde-floozy from scamming her drunken ass down into our section. He was a riot, not putting up with her drunk ass shit as she drunkenly begged him to let her go "back to her seat" and she didn't have her ticket because she "dropped it" somewhere when she went to the ladies room... and dropped it because there are tiny tiny pockets on her little tiny white shorts and no pockets on her tube-topped entombed boobies. Something happened behind her, and he turned his attention to the frackas, and she tried her drunken damndest to squeeze past him with all the determination and strength youth could muster. He thwarted her attempts with a "What DO you think you're doing?" Then she started cursing at him, yelling at him... "That kinda talk isn't helping your cause, young lady," was his retort. She slammed her foot down and screamed through her teeth, like a 7 year old.

It struck me right there and then that she was more childish than my own 9 year old.

I laughed.

My daughter eventually wanted to head back up to the booth. Even at 5' 1" she felt too short to see anything well. So after another two songs we pressed our way back to the luxury box entrance, and went back upstairs.

The stadium broadcasted the show on the jumbo-trons (four of them) and closed circuit tv in the boxes. We were the only people up in the booth for a while, then other people started filtering back in. One of my friends from another department sat with my daughter and shared binoculars. He asked her how old she was, she answered; he smiled and said "do you know how lucky you are?" She replied, "I have an idea."

We left before the encores, which bummed me out but we needed to get out of the Foxboro area before the crowds tried pouring out. The drunk and ridiculous crowds. Plus, Jessie was showing her tired side, and would have minded a long trek back to the car. We got a ride from one of my co-workers, who dropped us off right by our car, and we were home in an hour.

Boyd... kicked ass.

Dave and the boys played a lot of stuff off the new album, and I wasn't overtly impressed with the playlist. They did play an unbelievable rendition of "Bartender," which I've only ever heard played acoustic by Mr. Matthews himself (an mp3 of Austin City Limits lives in my "soundtrack of my life" mp3 folder), and a rousing rendition of "Lie in our Graves" where Boyd Tinsley performed a 15 minute "fiddle" solo that had the crowd writhing with joy... I never would have imagined that a "fiddle" solo would get 60,000 people that frenzied up. It was so amazing.

I think if Mr. McCune, my elementary school music teacher, had told me there was something more to violin playing than classical music I might have stayed with it. I mean, if I knew you could bend notes, play frenetically, rip the bow across the strings like Boyd does, man... I think I would have enjoyed myself more at it.

I really wanted my daughter to see a live concert. And this was a great one to go see. (I just wish they'd done "#41/Say Goodbye", "Two Step" and "Rhyme & Reason" that night, and there was just too much stuff from the new CD, which I am not particularly fond of). It was a great show. And I am glad my daughter's first big rock concert was mostly spent in the luxury box, with a bird's eye view of all that's wrong, funny, crazy and good about college/high school kids. I think she got a musical and social education. It'll be one she will rightly remember.