The plot thickens

Once again, my job situation is precarious.

Those of you keeping score at home may recall that my company, which has been hemorrhaging red ink in much the same way all other companies in my industry are (when's the last time YOU sat down to savor a newspaper in print form?), had a round of layoffs a mere eight weeks ago.

Round Two (or is it Round 3? I've lost track.) is upon us, and my job category is widely suspected to be squarely in the middle of the chopping block -- just as I had finally arranged for hours that would keep me sane, give me sleep and keep at least a small paycheck coming in.

We received notice this morning that we are to meet with our executive editor at 5 p.m. Monday. Needless to say, this will make it somewhat challenging to devote our usual diligence to our jobs throughout the weekend. So I'm damn glad I'm going to the Springsteen concert Sunday night, rather than doing my usual Sunday night gig of presiding over the production of a newspaper whose staff morale is sinking fast and could hit bottom on Monday at about, oh, 5:03 p.m.

So, Bruce, I'm counting on you. Bring out all those angsty songs that you churned out with such fervor in the 1970s, before you made your first gazillion dollars, when your audience could still believe you knew what it was like to be in that darkness on the edge of town.

Why we can't live without the Internet

Because we have too much time on our hands, that's why! Ever wondered how many people in the U.S. have your same name? From now on, any time someone asks me why I changed my name when I got married, I'll direct them to this site:

HowManyOfMe.com

There is 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Just for the record, there are 7,791 people in the U.S. named Sarah Smith, and I can tell you from my early attempts at qualifying for credit cards that some of them have very, very bad credit (this was way back when bad credit actually kept you from getting more cards). Also, they apparently hang out at bars a lot and give strange men their names but not their phone numbers, leading these strange men to look through the phone book the next day and start placing pathetic calls asking "Is this the Sarah Smith I met at the club last night?" Uh, no.

And so when Jeff and I married, I went WAY outside my belief system and decided to become Sarah Nessel. And it worked! Apparently, there is only one person (yours truly!) named Sarah Nessel.

But if you're thinking of addressing any formal invitations to me (granted, this is unlikely!) please note that there is NO person named "Mrs. Jeffrey Nessel." Don't even get me started!

A fish out of water

We're back into the swing of daily life and a new school year, just after completing what may be our last "vacation" for a long time (if three days away from home in a small-town Best Western counts as a vacation). Finances and the pending loss of all paid days off have conspired to kill pretty much all non-essential travel for the next year or two. Or three. Or more.

We journeyed to the Ozarks, where I grew up, for a river-rafting trip. I'll try to post some photos in the next few days, although they may only be photos of us preparing to launch our watercraft (a big thanks to my sister and her boyfriend, who, as the only remotely outdoorsy people in either of our extended families, lent us their great raft and saved us $100!). It turns out that I, in my zest to rid our life of unnecessary clutter, threw out the disc that came with the cheap little waterproof digital camera I purchased for the trip, and the software download that was sent to us by the kindly manufacturer isn't going smoothly. But before setting out, we did get a few photos of the river and the raft, along with (of course) Elijah.

For those of you who are just dying to know how the little guy liked his afternoon on a remote river surrounded by miles of national forest with hardly a single man-made structure in sight, I'll just say that his limited repertoire of questions has grown exponentially: "Where's the hotel?" "Where's the car?" "What happened to the streets?" "Where's McDonald's?"

In short, he's his father's son.

Fair fun

I guess I'm just a country girl at heart.

OK, so I hate most country music. I'm not crazy about animals. I don't drink beer and I don't drive a pickup and I don't have tattoos and despite growing up in a small, remote Midwestern farm town, I barely know a wheatfield from a pigpen. (We lived "in town," meaning we had a paved road and neighbors on either side -- as opposed to how the phrase "in town" is used in L.A., where it apparently means on the West Side rather than in the San Fernando Valley).

But despite my lack of agricultural knowledge, I love fairs. I love the swirling lights of the carnivals and the stickiness of the cotton candy and those earthy aromas of horses and cows and corn dogs and fried food. (Official culinary motto of all American fairs: If it can be put on a stick, it can be fried.)

And so, given my heritage, of course it is incumbent on me to pass on my all-American heartland fairgoing legacy to Elijah. Because L.A.-born-and-bred Jeff, who doesn't even know the difference between a horse show and a rodeo, sure as heck isn't going to do it. (Official recreational motto of Jeff: The outdoors is evil, unless a golf course is involved.)

But while he may not be much of an outdoorsman, he's a heck of a daddy. And so at last he agreed to accompany us - camera in hand, soaked in bug spray and praying for a tornado to sweep the entire fairgrounds away before we got there.

Bottom line: The bugs stayed away, the storms stayed away and the camera clicked away. Elijah had a great time, Mommy had more or less a great time (see Ferris wheel photo), and Daddy got another Horizon-Expanding Life Experience under his belt.


This little roller coaster ride was my idea. It was while we were on it that Elijah spotted the Ferris wheel and got so excited he practically climbed out mid-ride.



Please forgive my unlady-like sitting posture. You must understand that I am terrified of heights, and my focus was on stabilizing the seat while Elijah gleefully kicked his feet and threw his arms into the air and tried to rock us.


Finally, back on terra firma, Mommy got to take a break while Elijah tried out an old favorite, the carousel.

All in all, it was a great evening. It's really too bad that Jeff was behind the camera the whole time. If I had been shooting photos, I'd probably even have gotten one of him smiling.

It's official

I switch to part-time hours on Aug. 25. I'm giving up benefits. I'm giving up paid vacation. And I'm also giving up perpetual exhaustion and the sense that I'm not giving Elijah what he needs most from me at this point in his development -- a mom who is working with him and interacting with him in a meaningful way rather than trying desperately to catch up on sleep every afternoon before heading downtown for a work shift that doesn't end until at least midnight.

I'm not certain yet, but I think I'll be working my regular 4 til slightly-after-midnight shifts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, plus a shortened shift (5:30 til 9:30) on Thursdays. Yes, those are some mighty crappy hours, but it's fewer mighty crappy hours than I have been working for many years now! Once I make the shift to part-time, working these hours completely eliminates the need for us to pay for any child care for Elijah, which is good since saving money will obviously become a priority for us at this point. (Note to immediate family: Don't expect Christmas/Hanukkah gifts this year. Probably not even those calendars plastered with pictures of Elijah that you've all graciously displayed in prominent places in your kitchens, at least when we are visiting!)

Of everything I'm giving up, somehow the paid vacation is the hardest. It's not just that I will very rarely be able to take any time off at all or to travel anywhere. It's the fact that for so many years, I anticipated hitting my 10-year mark and therefore becoming eligible for the maximum number of paid vacation/sick days (it's now the same thing at most companies). The maximum number is 29, and this is the first year I've been eligible for all of them. AND NOW I'M NOT TAKING THEM! For those of you who work in more flexible industries, 29 days might not seem like much. After all, to a teacher, 29 days off is ...... July. But to a copy editor, it's nirvana, even though we still work on days most people wouldn't even consider working after age 21 or so -- Christmas, July 4, Thanksgiving, etc.

But with my new schedule, I'll have three entire days off each week, and I'll be able to get to bed by 10:30 four out of every seven nights. So until some lottery jackpot comes our way, that will have to be my own sad little version of nirvana.

Go Ask Alice.......

This past week Elijah had his first swim lessons and the best that can be said is that they were not a disaster. Although Michael Phelps will not lose any sleep before the Olympics worrying about possible competition from Elijah, Virgnie Dedieu (known as the French Solo Queen of synchronized swimming - a four time champion) should be looking over her shoulder. The reason for this is as the instructor constantly tried to get our little guy to practice his strokes in the water, he was more interested in interpretive dancing using elaborate arm gestures that would have made Twyla Tharp proud.

Which brings up an issue that Sarah and I have talked about many times knowing it will be broached by his school, medication to help him focus. I am NOT opposed to the idea for some children. I have seen it do wonders for kids of family and friends, getting them through school successfully. But focus is not Elijah's problem. If he is "writing" one of his books or recreating a strip mall using tinkertoys and paper, nothing can distract him. His teachers have said that if he is working on a project at school and it's time to move on to another area, he is adamant about completing the task at hand. As I said, focus, when it involves something he enjoys, is not an issue.

So when the subject is mentioned, both Sarah and I agree that path is better left not taken. Though our reasons may differ, we both want to see where this voyage takes us without any chemical interference. So when at swim lessons while some of children look dour as they attempt to follow the teacher and Elijah dances and sings, smiles and laughs and has the time of his life, I have to ask myself one question....When I was younger I took drugs to feel the way he does now, so why would I give him anything that would take that euphoria away? Years from now I could change my mind, but for the time being I'll take my happy anarchist.

Spam I am

There ought to be a Pulitzer category for this stuff.

If you have a good spam filter, you may not be aware of the "spam filter poetry" phenomenon, which consists of various senders of junk e-mail trying to outdo one another in the writing of nonsensical passages designed to throw off spam filters and thereby deliver their e-mails to your in-box.

I've been keeping examples of these, which often made it to my in-box at work before my company upgraded its filters. They're great fun to read and would actually be somewhat challenging to write, given that they can't include any words or phrases likely to send up a red flag, such as "opportunity," "rich," "sales," "once in a lifetime," etc. A simple line of random letters and symbols won't do, either -- after all, this is poetry! You have to get creative with word combinations that don't often occur. Like "annoying paycheck," for example. As we all learned in high school English, true poetry (well, actually, it's prose) is an art form.

So, for your reading pleasure ...... here are some of my favorite lines of "spam filter poetry":

Most people believe that a sheriff near a buzzard makes a truce with the spider about another grain of sand, but they need to remember how knowingly a dust bunny daydreams. The lover defined by another hole puncher secretly finds subtle faults with a psychotic sheriff. The familiar vacuum cleaner negotiates a prenuptial agreement with the green dust bunny. Indeed, the barely highly paid salad dressing nonchalantly borrows money from the impromptu CEO, while the industrial complex inside an eggplant trades baseball cards with a secretly annoying paycheck.

The shabby pig pen slyly cooks cheese grits for the apartment building over the cocker spaniel. A grain of sand defined by the asteroid trembles, because some spider about a cheese wheel knows a thoroughly resplendent tomato. Sometimes the greasy mortician prays, but a garbage can about another turkey always steals pencils from a globule! Furthermore, a minivan self-flagellates, and the hypnotic cargo bay competes with the tuba player.