Checking out a tip from one of my Senior Center fares, I found the best fish & chips in Rye – Zeke’s Fish House!
Plus it was near-ish to PULP, where I was going to pick up Beatrice later for the Fall Foliage Tour.
Two Birds, one stone.
So when you have a pink slip in one hand and an eviction note in the other, what do you do? Take the bull by the horns and start working on your imminent move? (Very proactive and adult.) March to the unemployment office and submit your papers? (Still an adult response) Start day drinking while watching 1970’s era TV sitcoms looking for inspiration which will lead to your own happy ending? (no adulting to be found here, but you’ll nail procrastination and denial with one blow)
The first option made a dense grey fog descend over me, weighing my limbs down until I couldn’t move. The second option would required me hunt for paperwork and admit my jobless status – causing small boulders to roll around in my tummy Indiana Jones style. The third option sounded rather good actually. I do love The Bob Newhart Show, Bob’s Burgers and vodka…
Instead I decided to look for comfort and support, sans bottle. So I called my Aunt. I can only blame my befuddled state (the shock of my new status – not alcohol – just so we are clear) for this decision.
The conversation went something like this:
Aunt Pearl: “How are you, dear?”
Me: “Fine. Well not really, Ben has laid me off and kicked me out of the cottage! I have to be out in two weeks!”
Aunt Pearl (I can hear magazine pages flipping in the background): “I am sorry to hear that. But it’s for the best dear. What kind of future did you have there anyway? You couldn’t get a promotion or a raise. Now you can get a real job. My friend Ruth’s daughter (more page flipping) just got a job in a dental office. She’s making good money as a dental hygienist.”
Me: “Seriously? Me a hygienist?”
Aunt Pearl: “Perhaps you’re right. Still living in an apartment and getting a less morbid job will be good for you. Maybe you can meet someone, make some new friends.”
Me (Now seeing that a very large man should have popped up from the floor and sang the word “MISTAKE!” in a disgustingly hearty voice the second I started dialing this number.): “Thanks Aunt Pearl, I’ll think about it. I’ll talk to you later.”
Aunt Pearl: “You’re welcome, dear. Don’t forget your Uncle and I are leaving tomorrow and will be out of town until next Friday – visiting Susan and Dylan. We’re driving there so we can’t lend you the truck. Sorry. We’ll see you when we get back. Love you.”
Me: “Love you too. Bye.”
My Aunt possesses many fine qualities, but offering sympathy is not a prominent portion of her personality. Binge watching too many stylized TV families makes me forget my reality (no I wasn’t drinking before I called her….but when I got off the phone it was after five and so no longer counted as day drinking, I might have had a smidge). When I climbed back on the couch and mentally started sorting my living room into pitch and pack piles (more in the former than the latter) my phone warbled informing me of a new text.
So here’s the deal. Most people believe Mondays are the worst day of the week. Perhaps en masse, the grey haze of another ending weekend sucks a mathematically larger group down into the abyss – but the depths they plumb, really, are fairly shallow. A short twenty-four hours later when Tuesday arrives, most bounce back like champs or Tigger, no worse for wear.
In reality, any HR representative will back me up on this, the worst day of the week for the worker bee is Friday.
Why?
Strategically, Fridays offer better cover for the corporate overlords to lay off, down-size, make redundant, or just plain fire their minions. After most of your compatriots have already exited the building (early lunch, golf game or they’ve put their 40 in already) you are summoned to your boss’s office where he and a representative from HR wait to give you the bad news. Since aforementioned coworkers are gone, there is no one to watch you box up your pictures, souvenirs and stray books – well except Clyde, the extra diligent security guard who watches your every move – making sure you don’t have a semi-automatic in your lower left hand drawer (with which you might want to inform your boss about your feelings on his impromptu performance review) and to keep you from filching any office supplies (i.e. your favorite stapler). Once this task is accomplished, Clyde escorts you to your car (making sure you don’t detour to tell someone, anyone sayonara) where he watches you drive off – no longer his problem.
You can guess what’s coming next.
Friday, October 13 (there should be a warning label printed on calendars for this day – or perhaps a funny ferret picture printed on it? You know, start your day out with a laugh? It’s bound to go sideways after that.) finds a nervous Ben standing on my doorstep asking weird questions. Like how is the heating and plumbing? Are the gutters clogged? Does the kitchen have a dishwasher? All strange questions since he hasn’t taken any interest in the cottage since I moved in twelve years ago.
Well, they were weird right up until he handed me my paycheck and a pink slip (which he actually printed up – see above – on pink paper because he thought that was the color it was actually supposed to be). The humdinger here? Could I be out of the cottage by the 31st? It would really help him out…Awesome.
I wonder if Clyde will help me lift my bookcases.
Finder Of Lost Things 
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