damn the man! save my salary!
May 12, 2003, 10:04 pm
My sister Nicki, whom I live with but I see far too seldom, turned 23 today.
I tried to tell her that no one likes you when you're 23, but she failed to see the humor in it.
Just thought her birthday deserved a mention.
Also of note: I don't know which mood to adhere to based on my television viewing this evening.
I could be extremely hopeful, thanks to the presence of adorable though questionable-career-choice-maker Chris O'Donnell falling for a baby-fat cherubic Minnie Driver in "Circle of Friends" (a film, oddly enough, that is no less difficult to watch with my parents than it was in 1992) or I could be extremely depressed, owing that feeling to the presence of Jay Underwood (of "The Boy Who Could Fly" fame...hey! Whatever happened to Lucy Deakins?) in a Puppy Chow commercial.
Despite the presence of oft-mentioned hot underwear (the fruit-motif lime green ones), today was not a good day. I feel sort of put out by everything, and not in a skanky Grease way, either. I mean in a downright-I-can't-wait-until-summer-so-I-can-do-jack-shit way.
News from the Board of Ed: we're not getting a pay increase; we're getting a pay cut. All STEPS are frozen indefinitely, which means that the $4,000 jump that I was supposed to get at the beginning of August will not only NOT materialize, but my health benefits are going to cost MORE. Either I a) could get another job that will actually pay me for having my Master's degree or b) I could ostensibly make $30,000 a year for the rest of my life. No one goes into teaching for the salary, but man, this is brutal and complicated and icky and nothing can ameliorate it for right now. Same goes for the fire fighters and police officers: pay cuts all around! Step right up to the horrific bureaucracy made possible by eight years under a spend-easy Governor that stuck his pole up the clenched starfish of the budget and fucked it royally for too long after this (not to mention his secretary...oops).
When teachers, police officers, and fire fighters are getting laid off, the economy is in dire straits ("money for nothing; chicks for free").
It's hard to maintain some semblance of youthful idealism when the dominant hegemony that envelopes you is so damn cranky.
How do you people work 12 months out of the year? I mean, honestly, how do you do it? You have nothing to look forward to...but then again, I may work longer hours than you do, so I guess it's even.
Am I becoming jaded in my old age? I have been suspecting someone's kindness has an alterior motive; this is not who I should be nor what I am.
This is what I take comfort in:
1. Megan...a good friend and agent-in-the-field who had me laughing my ass off during our bleak faculty meeting today
2. pajama pants of the panda persuasion
3. alliteration for no reason
4. awesome poetry portfolios from my kids
5. tangible rewards and results in the forms of my old-lady-habit-that-everyone-makes-fun-of-me-for-participating-in-but-I-don't-care
6. Yaya does not have cancer (this list is in no particular order)
7. fat Minnie Driver can score cute Chris O'Donnell (in Hollywood)
8. Ray massaging my neck (ooh ahh)
9. sleep...sleep...sleep
10. I don't have the right to complain about any of this...