Today is Friday, January 23rd, and I'm already three days behind. This personal diary paralleling Barack Obama's and my own glorious new beginning of chronicling our first (hopefully less than 100 days of lay off) was to begin on Wednesday. ( Already a picture emerges of why President Obama is the one living in the White House, and I'm the one living in an RV -
procrastinators don't make it to White House.) Nevertheless, in my favor, we do already have a dog.
So at break-neck, out-of-breath speed, I'll try to catch up to the President starting even before Day One on Inauguration Day, or what I like to think of as New Year's Eve. (It's always good to have a reason to start all over again).
Tuesday, Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009
My husband and I awoke at 6:00 am, earlier than usual. I had a grand plan which included watching the Inauguration live, of course, but also had a scheme of less noble intentions that involved the LA Times and ebay.
Normally, I wouldn't have been so mercenary on such an auspicious and historic occasion, but only five days before, one of those dreaded pink-slips that have become so ubiquitous lately, came karate-chopping its way into our lives, slicing up any and all sense of security my husband and I might have had.
So at approximately 6:30 am Pacific time, while the President-Elect and Michelle Obama were calmly and with dignity kneeling in Church, my husband and I were running around like lunatics trying to grab the L.A. Times, New York Times, and any other Times we could find so that perhaps we could sell them on eBay for what I was certain would be a few hundred dollars each. Of course there were no pictures of the Inauguration on these editions because it hadn't happened yet! But in spite of my husband's doubts, I was sure that a newspaper with the exact date of the special day would be our ticket to maybe being able to go out to eat a time or two next week as opposed to facing the salmon paddies and tuna casseroles we knew were possibly imminent.
After hitting Barnes and Noble, and Borders, the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and a few newspaper boxes along our way to McDonald's for breakfast, we were able to secure our future with seven or so newspapers. We watched CNN with our fruit and yogurt parfaits and were getting emotional enough to want to share the actual Inauguration with only each other in the RV, so we took our 79 cent senior coffee and left.
It was good to be back home when President-Elect Obama took the oath to become President because tears streamed down both our faces. We are the generation who watched as President Kennedy took office and wept at his famous line inspiring us to ask what we could do for our country. It was all so familiar. We are the "Blowing in the Wind" people , the "Leaving on the Jet Plane" crowd who understood "leaving" to mean saying good-bye to your husband as he went off on the plane to Viet Nam. We are the generation who protested and were right. It felt so much the same.
But we quickly pulled ourselves together and while President Obama and Vice-President Biden and their wives walked and waved down Pennsylvania Avenue, we got back to work checking out the going price of Inauguration newspapers on eBay; working on our small on-line software business; and waiting for the phone to ring with the usual software recruiters who call when my husband posts his resume on-line. There were no calls. No worries - Wanda Sykes filled in for Charlie Sheen on Jay Leno and saved our day: "You might as well get used to it, because that's what we do now. Charlie Sheen, white guy, let you down. Black people show up to the rescue! That's what we do now, we save your white ass, Jay." And of course Craig Ferguson brought us back to the ebullient mood with which we had begun the day.
And the comics will show the way!
Day One - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 : After realizing the Inauguration newspapers people were seeking were actually those of the day AFTER Inauguration - the ones with the sweet pictures - we set out again to Barnes and Noble, Borders, newspaper boxes, and Denny's. It was only the box in front of Denny's that had some left, so we bought some, walked in and ordered one breakfast that we shared. Feeling less hopeful that our eBay sales would substitute for a our lost paycheck, we decided that at least we had enough newspapers to give to our adult children next Christmas. The evening news showed President Obama signing proclamations and declarations - all with his left hand. I was elated. My brother in handed-ness was in the White House. My "side" won this time! Time to upgrade my podcast "The Fight for Molly Dooker Day" my Civil Left-rights podcast.
Day Two - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - One or two software job calls. I spend the day working on our website, getting new ideas of people who might like our products. My husband continues searching "the boards" online. There's a job in Knoxville. "Do we really want to go there?" We've been on the road since 2004 when my husband was first laid off after 19 years with the same consulting firms. It's been 6 months here, 12 months there, a wondrous adventure until we decided we needed to be close to the kids in California and Arizona. But the worry has left for some reason. Maybe it's because I laughed at Wanda Sykes last night on Jay Leno. Maybe it's because I find it incredibly amusing to watch the White House secretaries, the administrative kind, persistently trying to get pens back from President Obama. He seems puzzled that after he signs a proclamation, they want the pen back. (I heard him comment on the first day, "They told me not to swipe the pen." And the visual image today of the White House administrative secretary crossing over from the President's right side of the President's desk, crossing her arm in front of him, to almost tear the pen out of his left hand was priceless. People who have come from humble roots like Barack and I have tend to view expensive Waterford, Cross, and Fountain Bleu pens as unnecessary and redundant in the world. I'm only guessing on Barack's mindset on pens here. But he'll soon get used to the opulence. Let's hope, however, that he can always appreciate the beauty of a really nice Flair. And let's hope that the White House staff soon realizes that they have to stand on the side they're just not used to!
All in all, the real reason I feel better today about everything might just be all about me and how I figured out how to use the "more" button on this blog! It's our own personal triumphs over the small things that give us hope we can conquer the world.
Day Three - Friday January 23, 2009
While President Obama sat at a 20 ft. table in the White house trying to sell his economic stimulus package to both Democrats and Republicans, I sat in our RV trying to sell my economic plan to my husband. Communicating with a left-brained person is never easy for me; they're all about the details and I'm all about the big picture. However, there's nothing like being close to broke that will get a big picture person down to reality, so this conversation was one of our easiest. I threw out the idea that maybe we should run up 40 miles (2 hours on the California freeways) to start rummaging through our storage locker finding anything valuable that we may still have left after his initial lay-off in 2004. We could pull out our lawn mower and a lovely oak rocker that my father refinished for me in 1978 and take some pictures for craigslist. And, of course, there are my daughter's old toys I dragged from Minnesota to South Carolina and finally to California to keep for some future grandchildren. A quick search for cabbage patch kids on ebay led me to believe that lots of laid off souls have old cabbage patch dolls to sell and we're not going to pay the rent at the RV park from that endeavor. We decided against the whole storage locker trip and my husband instead contacted old colleagues throughout the country to see how things were skaking down in their area while I kept working on our small business website.
Email replies were fast in coming to Mike. Apparently the South Carolina software consultants are becoming "just as laid off" as we in California. A friend in Denver knew of an immediate opening for Mike, if only he knew WCF which was "just released in 2008, a new protocol part of .net 3.5" - whatever that is. (I only can talk the talk.) Mike's been programming since the 1970's and knows about 12 languages, but oops, no WCF. So I went back to thinking about selling the lawnmower.
The mail came with a $25 coupon to play at the Pechenga Casino. "Should we go or not" became our next hefty decision. We decided we'd do it when we finally make the trip to the storage locker - already we're becoming so economical.
No going out to a show or eating out tonight - drats. Nevertheless, we have Craig Ferguson once again. Maybe I can find a picture of him, put it in a frame with a votive candle in front of it.
Whew! Well, now I'm all caught up to the President. So I'll just say, "Goodnight Barack, you can carry on now." "Goodnight, Michelle." "Goodnight, Sasha and Malia." "Goodnight John Boy." It's all so familiar.
