First off, thanks to all of my friends, near and far, for your words and calls of support. You’ve kept me grounded and remembering that jobs are transient things – it’s friends and relationships that are important.
We were fortunate to be joined last weekend by some dear friends from my SCA days, Jen and Tracie, and their friends Bob and Laura. They were upbeat and cheerful, and provided exactly the right amount of distraction I needed for the weekend. I was teetering on the precipice of some nasty depression, and they pulled me out right when I needed it.
Saturday night was also the bachelor party for Thomas. On Friday we’d called and said due to our suddenly tight finds we’d have to pass, but Donald called Saturday morning and informed us that we were attending, and not to worry about funds. We had a fabulous dinner at Enoteca Vin (roast duck for me, a really fabulous beef tenderloin au poivre for Takaza). After that, it was over to Havana Deluxe for fine Scotch and cigars. After a stop for dessert, we took our leave from the group and came back home to hang out with Jen and company.
Sunday was a nice morning of making French toast for our guests, then going to work on the house. The realtor came by and put the sign up in front – the house is now officially on the market. Dan and I spent a good part of Sunday, Monday, and today cleaning and de-cluttering the place. We still need to move a lot of the boxes that we stuffed into the bedroom closets to give the appearance of wide, spacious closets (which they are, actually, but when they’re filled with crap it doesn’t look that way). I had a mad scramble to put the finishing touches on the house this morning before the realtor’s weekly agency tour of new listings came through – I almost made it too. The first agents came through right as I was finishing up, so I pulled the car out of the garage and threw all the boxes that were stacked in the dining room into the garage. Everyone was happy. I got a few nice comments about the house, which made me feel better. In comics terms, I consider it to be in Very Good, but not Near Mint condition (I haven’t taken a toothbrush to the baseboards, for instance) (Yes, that’s the kind of stuff you do when you sell a house – that’s not just me being a bizarre neat freak again :-).
Somewhere in all of this I’ve applied online for a few jobs and talked to recruiters, but there’s still a whole lot left to do. I’ve got some good websites to explore and need to keep a daily watch on Monster, Hotjobs, and Flipdog. Oh, and I applied for unemployment today. Nice that you can do that online now.
So, tomorrow. My mom is coming up from South Carolina. She’ll help me put the finishing touches on the house cleaning, and she’s bringing their pressure washer – the exterior of the house really needs it! Mom will be around until Friday, and her help will be much, much appreciated. In the meantime: more calls to recruiters, more jobs to apply for. Busybusybusy…
And somewhere, in the midst of all that, I need to find the time to snuggle with Takaza. He’s so amazing – he’s been my rock through all this, keeping my mood from bottoming out, quietly doing the Stuff That Needed To Be Done, and prodding me along when I needed it. I am more lucky than I know to have him, and I love him so much.