what have you done now in 2015

Last week, I sent a thank-you email to the engineering firm that had interviewed me right before Christmas. I promptly received a miserably apologetic email from the HR rep who had phone interviewed me and loved me–I had come in second by a hair.

Motherfuck, it’s my dating life all over again.

On Tuesday, I received an email that confirmed: my contract with the financial assets firm would terminate on Friday.

Commence the panic. Commence the nervous, crying prayer sessions. Commence catching a radio blurb about ”Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”

On late Tuesday afternoon, I received an email from a different recruiter, saying that she had an opening at a place. I consented to the forwarding of my resume. We chatted on the phone after work, and got that sent off. She said that they wanted to interview Friday or early the next week, which worked just fine for me.

They asked to interview me Thursday, and on Friday, I woke up to a phone call. They wanted to hire me. I spent too many hours Friday afternoon on my ostensible lunch break doing paperwork and it’s still kind of a frenzy to get my drug screening completed, because they want me to start Monday.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect. Both Aaron and I were tired and (situationally) depressed, trying not to think of how we would pay the rent next. People we knew told us how brave we were, which is a really nice way of saying you are in such deep shit.

Voila. Has job. Just freaking like that.

When I did the paperwork, the manager who arranged the whole thing couldn’t believe how lucky I was, that I had three contracts all one after the other, with only about 3-4 weeks off the whole time. It never happens like that, she said. Hopefully this is the last one and we can get you into something permanent.

I wanted to say it does when Jesus wants it to, but I just nodded and smiled instead.

It’s a 5-month temp contract followed by permanence if all goes well. The benefits are swanky (investment advisers? fitness advisers? nurse practitioners?) and the company values fitness, so there are showers in the bathrooms and trails nearby for lunchtime gym and trail running. The hours are 7:30-5:30 Monday through Thursday and 7:30-11:30 (half day!) on Friday. Aaron will be home to take Sheppy out so he doesn’t have to hold it for almost 12 hours. It’s the same office managing for engineers, and one of my interview questions was, I shit you not, “how do you feel about the Oxford comma?”

“I love the Oxford comma!” I said. “I have very strong feelings for the Oxford comma.”

I’d like to think that the Oxford comma got me my job.

I had a pretty solid send-off at MTAG. I hung around for 30 minutes, killing rush hour, talking to the lovely call center ladies, the head of which had a hand in hiring me and wants me back later this month and has promised to talk to my managers. She told us about the time her car broke down in Atlanta’s rush hour and her Good Samaritan actually just wanted to take her to his basement and make her an alcoholic beverage, because “that’s where the only phone is” despite the ringing phone in the kitchen. “He was gonna put my head in a sammich bag! He was gonna take my virtue!”

*

Today, Saturday, was a barrel of monkeys. I rushed out to get my drug screening done, but 45 minutes after checking in, I was exploding and late for my next appointment, and they finally came up and apologized because the program to record and stamp the sample wasn’t working. DID IT TAKE YOU 45 MINUTES OF REFRESHING TO REALIZE IT WASN’T WORKING?! I peed (not in a cup, for no credit) and ran out, where I was 15 minutes late for my volunteer orientation at the Charleston Animal Society.

You know, where they made this: 2015 calendar of hot firefighters holding cute animals.

I needed something to do besides work and sit at home, but I can’t afford my usual Top 3 hobbies (dance, soccer, music). Puppies it is. And I’d really like to up my dog training skillz and get licensed one day, so here we are! They’re positive reinforcement and no-kill and have their shit together. I’m in. (No-kill aside from critically ill or wounded; merciful euthanasia is still a thing.) So next week-ish I shall sit a one-on-one interview where they can put me in roles and start training for things that fit me best. They have a ton of big bulldog mixes and LET ME AT THEM AAHHHH.

Right after orientation was my fitting at David’s Bridal. Aimee went with me to help me in and out/keep me company/get her own bridesmaid dress. My dress took a full two freaking hours and despite the talk of finding a nice lady at church to do it, I’m paying my awesome seamstress $259 because she worked some MAGIC with that thing, bent over backwards for me to keep the cost down as low as possible, and whispered ways of altering the dress that wouldn’t cost me anything. She saved me $160 alone just by confirming that day-of, someone could stitch my corset to the bodice to keep the satin (both are satin) from slipping and moving around. The bodice technically fits, but the satin-on-satin is slippery. So rather than take even more out of a complicated bodice with 5 layers, she suggested a shortcut. That sort of thing. It’s a lot of satin and chiffon, a lot of layers, a long train, a lot of odd and asymmetric angles, a lot of STUFF. After seeing how the dress would need to be hemmed and pinned, I don’t have a lot of faith that “a nice lady from church” (about whom I know nothing–she might be qualified, she might not) could have done it reliably and quickly.

I’ve had alterations done by “family friends” before, for a bridesmaid dress. I walked down the cobblestone aisle in a dress two inches too long. Mmm… nope.

While I was doing all that, Aaron and his buddy Chris completed the move. Chris’s bed went to Aaron’s old room, Aaron’s bed came to my–our!–room, and my bed went to his sister Kara, who had been sleeping in a double with her toddler. We have it all set up, the desks moved around, and while it’s better, both animals are a little out of sorts from the chaos and the clutter. They’re having to re-establish rights of way and who has dibs on which corner. At some point soon, my little table and four chairs is going to Chris and Kara is giving me an actual desk (!!!) that she has lying around. Family and friends are the best. The second best is coming home to all the hard work already done, and two leftover tacos after missing lunch. I had to help assemble our bed, but not finagle anything up and down flights of stairs. Win.

And I now have a roommate. Forever. Forever.

Stay tuned for the next month of how we try to get out of a debt hole after not being able to pay bills for a full billing cycle!

Last updated January 10, 2015