Like the annoying pimple and the extra roll around your waistline, I am back……..
It has been a LONG time since I wrote the blog – most of you know that I went through a very sad year of losing my mum in 2014, and the joy of the written word simply left me for a while. Many of you have lost your mums as well, you’ve all been there and got the tee-shirt, so I’m not going to dwell upon that topic – it sucks, it hurts, life will never be the same, enough said.
Now to current topics…… After 34 years of toiling in the Oil and Gas Industry, for the first time in my career, I have been laid off….
Please don’t feel sorry for me! I consider myself to be very fortunate because:
1. I absolutely, irrefutably, hated and loathed where I worked
2. Now I do not face the struggle each morning picking which outfit to wear, from the three that still fit me
3. I can be the honest,bitchy, sarcastic woman I truly am, instead of the fake co-worker I have been for almost three years
4. I can pursue the dreams and ambitions I have have had for thirty years…….
Ah, the life of an unemployed woman…..I really like it…I mean love it…..it is such a joy not having to put up with some pompous over-paid fifteen year-old individual with perfect teeth, bossing me around. Of course I should clarify that no one was actually ever silly enough to try and boss me around, but it still rankled, knowing that they were ‘allowed’ to if they wanted. It’s a liberating feeling waking up and not having to step outside except to get the paper…..fortunately the spousal unit is still employed so we can afford to get said paper…
It has been an entire month since I became Judy homemaker, and I am more tired than I was when I was employed. That husband of mine, the wicked Gumpster, has seized this opportunity to make me his personal administrative assistant, in addition to ongoing roles as his mother, sister, best friend, wife, nurse, cook, massage therapist, financial advisor, nutritionist, mother to his children, personal reminder for anything he needs to remember, errand runner, laundress, and sex goddess. Wow, wish I was a man.
But, all is not lost, he is really surprisingly happy to have me at home, and has not given me a guilt trip about the income I am not bringing in – ok, perhaps he has thought about it, but my threats of “I’ll take 50 percent of everything you bastard” must be hitting the target. Oh the power of being post menopausal and angry!
I hope you all had a good weekend – I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day – I took it as a personal insult that only women with boyfriends and husbands were acknowledged as queens of the heart. Of course, I am married now, and even though the Gumpster is no Cary Grant, he is still flesh and blood, with half a brain, a wallet and the means of driving to a store. I (of course) had it covered, even with my ever-shrinking bank account I bought him some weights he wanted, a tv series he wanted, and with a shudder, two tickets to see ANOTHER Marvel movie (groan)…..yet all the while he kept muttering “I feel really bad about what I got you babe…” and that should have been my clue.
I had been noble, giving him the “Oh, you don’t have to get me anything” routine…but he should have known I was lying right? I mean, after 24 years of singleness and nada in the lovey dovey present department, of COURSE I want a damn present…..silly me, after almost seven years I am still not smart enough to realize that the Gumpmeister isn’t clever enough to decipher my code…he does, in fact, take me literally.
After our Valentine’s breakfast (which was the same as any other day), I presented Gump with his gifts, and he was very happy, but also had a pained expression on his face that had nothing to do with breakfast hitting his stomach. Still muttering, he disappeared and returned with a bag he thrust towards me. The bag, was a used sacking bag from the Basmati rice we buy at Sam’s, and that, along with the “it is a useful gift” comment, should have been enough to warn me I was not going to sob with delight, rain him with thankful kisses, or swear undying love to him at the sight of this gift.
Gingerly I opened the bag, and pulled out my gift…..it was hard and in a plastic moulded casing…….I turned it over…..it was a Carbon Monoxide Detector for the house. I am going to pause here, so that you can enjoy the moment just as I did……
Later, AFTER I had explained to Gump that sometimes no gift is better than the wrong gift, that household items are exactly that, and not gifts from the heart, we left the house to go to Sam’s. I was still speaking to him, but mostly things that weren’t nice to say. As we walked along the aisles I stopped at the jewelry counter and talked to Liz, the lady that works there. I’ll have to tell you about Liz next time, she’s a story in herself. Liz told me that her Valentine’s Day was always a dud as she didn’t like her husband anymore, but he had poured her a cup of coffee that morning. …ouch! I left the counter and caught up with Gump, who had run into a friend of ours, big Mike. Big Mike could be an advertisement for all the things that you don’t want people to associate with Oklahoma. I said hello, and then saw his wife was also with him, a lady I had met many years ago. I would not have recognized her in a line-up. She was old, grey, over-weight, far different from the woman I met twenty-five years ago. I was still deep in thought about that, when I realised she was looking at me exactly the same way……
We had a few minutes of small talk, and I commented on it being V-Day. I told her we were buying charcoal as Gump was going to cook me a steak that night. She smiled and then she and Big Mike explained that they had gone out the night before for their Valentine’s dinner.
“Yup” she said, “we had us some calf-fries and they was delicious!” I smiled politely, and the visions of genitalia that swept through my mind were many and horribly realistic. We said our goodbyes and headed home, both chuckling about testicles and trying to figure out who had the bright idea to fry ’em..
I studied Gump on the drive back. His sticky-up hair, his damned grey tshirt, his goofiness …..I thought about the rib-eye steak in the fridge….I thought about how he told me that I needed to stay home for a while and write my novel and not worry about working, that he would take care of me, and suddenly, my carbon-monoxide detector was the best gift in the world……