Seriously, after 5 years at A CATHOLIC SCHOOL, they pull me in and hand me a pink slip (although, if u wanna talk pink slips, I got a whole drawer full of them, THOSE ARE THE REAL THINGS). So, here I am, two months later, STILL out of work, having been told on several occasions that I am "overqualified" for MOST positions. I have literally been begging, begging I tell you, for the data entry job....the one where I sit in a 3x3 foot cubicle and type all day, perhaps start eating food like, I don't know....pig rinds and chili flavored Hot Tamales. I WANT THIS JOB! I NEED THIS JOB! I WILL BECOME A CUBICLE WENCH. My skin will start looking a little pockmarked, dark circles will cover my eyes like old tires. I will forget how to put a cute, snazzy little ensemble on in the morning and run for my faded yoga pants. I will be Zombie Cubicle Bitch.....and why you ask? BECAUSE I AM OVERQUALIFIED AND DECIDED, 15 YEARS AGO, TO PURSUE A DEGREE IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES! The joke is on MOI!
BREATHE
Oh wait, I have totally forgotten how to BREATHE. Somewhere between forgetting how to get up at 5:00am, shower, and get the day going AND ironing EACH and EVERY piece of my mother's linen she left me, (as if the royal family, that cute Kate in her DVF wrap dresses, will descend upon my humble home for dinner one evening). It is in between there and here that I have forgotten how to breathe. I do a weird little grunt all day, almost a sigh...maybe a sigh with a twist. Great, now I sound like a pug in my interviews. They...."they" say that when you lose a loved one you actually SIGH all day long without being cognizant of it. So, my breath is a sigh, this is corroborated by a certain eleven year old who, alternately, loves me and thinks I am the MOST embarassing woman on the planet. "Mom, you're always sighing!" "Am I?, huh, I wasn't aware babygirl." "Mom, please, no more '"babygirl"' okay?"
Sure, yes, fine...no more "babygirl", or "doodlebug" or holding hands when we cross the street. FINE! As if hiding all this from you and pretending that we are getting by no problemo isn't enough, you want NOTHING to do with me.... while I lean towards letting the cat out of the bag and just telling you what the deal is, like WHY we aren't eating sushi out twice a week like we once were I STOP, I do my gruntish sigh and realize my shot for the good mom award gets doused in flames if I dare try to lean on this creature. So I don't. Instead I trace it all back to last year, a foolish, douche-baggish year when my mother decides to die and my family of 11 brothers and sisters decides to fall apart at the Goddamn seams, nobody talking to anyone yet finding it totally acceptable taking their grievances out one another via FACEBOOK of all things! It's like, in one fell swoop we went from being a cooler version of the Eight is Enough kids to the Hatfields & McCoys! Giddy up!
Yes, I said eleven (11) brothers and sisters. Yes, they are from the same two (2) people. And yes, our mother just passed away this year--our mother, our glue, our beloved teeny, tiny, firecracker of a mother. The same mother who had all of us kids my "C" section because she was, THAT little. She promised her uterus to the Mayo clinic and I'm pretty sure that after she took her last breath on this earth her children were NOT thinking about the damned Mayo clinic. Note: I had ONE "C" section and very nearly died (or it felt like I was dying). I am the biggest wimp compared to my mom....she stood next to by dad's undershirt and GOT PREGNANT, she was THAT fertile. And, apparently, NONE of her babies cried, or had the croup or diaper rash or needed a binkie or had an ear infection. She was, quite literally in many ways, the perfect mother if there ever was one. And now there's not!
