I love y’all. I do. And I know that I neglect you. It kills me. And if you knew just how much I think of y’all and jot down notes and recordings and snippets and saved photos to share with you at a later date? You’d…well, you’d probably get scared that I’m really *that* obsessive. But I have yet another “kooky” idea (don’t you love that word??) that might make up for it and make it a bit better and will give you something to read on a daily basis. First a bit of chatter, then the idea. Feel free to skim n’ skip as you see fit.
<SNIPPED and moved to the bottom of the entry cause it’s whiny and boring and unrelated to the real point. Skip down and read if you need to waste 12 minutes!>
Sorry for the Poor Me moment there. I’m done now. So I’m going to move on to the REAL point of this entry. And that is to explain that until I have a job, I cannot, in good conscience, spend time writing lengthy entries, much as I’d love to. So I had an idea. (In the shower, if it matters…which it shouldn’t, but isn’t it ODD how many ideas we consider “Guhh-reat!” come to us in the shower? Yeah, note the fact that I said “WE CONSIDER” …since I know that this likely only seems brilliant to ME.)
The idea is that I would take a good chunk of the notes and post-its I’ve been hanging onto over the last year or so, those floating around the bottom of my purse, gathered in the bathroom drawer, piled up under my laptop stand, etc., and take pictures of them and post them on the site, as-is. I’m going to post one or two each day (set up on a schedule so they will self-publish each morning). In some ways it kills me, because some of these have some great stories behind them and I hate doing something unfinished and unexplained. Yet I also have a feeling that some are even better this way…without the story behind it. Regardless, it will give you an idea of me, as I am regularly, which is crazy and bizarre and sometimes funny (and usually way less poetic and deep than I want to believe myself to be). Also? You should know that as baffling and confusing as some will be to YOU? There are likely just as many (if not more) that I have ZERO memory of and will probably never be able to write about because I simply can’t remember what on EARTH I was trying to say. I also spent an inordinate amount of time last night while taking pictures of the notes asking George what the HELL we were doing or talking about when I wrote some of them. Baffled, I was. He seemed to take it in stride…like he’s used to me being inexplicable and crazy and that it’s just natural not to understand what’s going on in Gracie’s head. Hee.
Anyway, dear readers, that is the plan. I hope you get a giggle or at least enjoy the voyeuristic glimpse into my rushed “This would be funny on the site but I don’t have time to write right now, so let me jot down a quick note, no worries, I’ll TOTALLY remember what I was talking about because DUH, it’s mySELF and damn, it was WAY too funny to forget!” Uh-huh. Perhaps later, when I have a dream job with gobs of cash and little to do (bwaaahahahaha, cause THAT job exists!), I will come back and tell those stories (I still owe y’all the one about a Journey song and nearly being arrested) …at least those I recall. Feel free to let me know which of them speak to you or made ya giggle or about which you’d like to hear more. Use the Comments feature below each entry or email me and I encourage you to share your own stories and funny anecdotes in the comments area as well. Believe me, I could use the giggles right now.
So let’s begin Gracie’s Latest Harebrained Experiment! Hope you get a giggle out of my Life in Post-It Notes!
Not that it needs explanation, but just in case you’re too young to remember (and who don’t know my silly refusal to pee until I’m nearly dead because I hate interrupting my work): this was inspired by Gracie yet again being too involved with doing 19 things at once and needing to pee but putting it off until I could barely move. And, further, having the thought in my head that kids used to say when we were growing up, to wit: “Dood. I gotta pee like a RACEHORSE!” (oftentimes this was accompanied by various extensions of that statement, used to denote that the speaker not only had to pee? But rilly rilly bad. Worse, in fact, than anyone else in HISTORY had ever had to pee! These included “I hafta pee like a RUSSIAN racehorse!” and my personal favorite, “I hafta pee like a Russian Racehorse in HEAT!”) You’re welcome! 
See ya tomorrow!
~Gracie
Replaced content from “Snipped” tag above:
When I was laid off, there was a part of me that was somewhat excited for the time off because I thought “YES! At least now I’ll have time to work on the site! I can finally go through my old notes and recordings and pix and write all the entries that have suffered due to my late nights and weekends!” (which, of course we know now, were for NUTHIN’ and were apparently a complete waste of time and energy). “But whatever, I’m BACK now! My readers will LURV me for this! And dooood, maybe I will earn back some of the hundreds I lost by not being able to update so often!”
Sadly, it’s been over a month and that’s still not to be, because …Gracie still no have no yob. I can’t bring myself to spend my days doing what I love, because it’s not right. Not until I know I have a job and will soon be back on track. I need to spend all day every day scouring the job boards and hitting up any and all staffing agencies and recruiters and networking contacts and doing phone interviews (that of course waste everyone’s time because they always wait till 40 minutes into it to say “Now the hard part…we only have a budget of ___.” and they say it KNOWING that it’s not enough…some of them even say “I know it’s obscene, but our budgetary committee is stupid and they don’t understand how important documentation is and how much it’s worth.” And the others talk about the economy and the price of gas and how people just aren’t spending money these days, which means they’re all losing money, too, and can’t afford to pay people what they’re worth. And they always rave about my skills and experience, which helps, but…they just can’t pay. It’s always a budget of “__Just-out-of-College kids could probably afford this…if they lived in their mom’s basement for a coupla years___” and it kills me, because I know I’m very good at what I do and that they would be lucky to have me, especially with my combined skill set, which isn’t typical in my field, but is useful as hell in my area (or so you’d think…) but because I don’t have that damned college degree? Most companies won’t even talk to me. It doesn’t matter that I’ve learned more than most who DO have the degree (don’t send me hate mail…I said “MOST”) and that I’m a workaholic who would gladly give them 110% all the time. They simply don’t believe that someone can have a grasp on the language and write well if you haven’t spent four years sucking on a beer bong. That if you didn’t pay 50k a year to read William Strunk or any version of the Chicago Manual of Style, you can’t POSSIBLY have gleaned their meaning, let alone apply their lessons in the real world.
Dammuht.
And it’s sad, because if they did? They’d realize that I’m even better than I look on paper, in spite of that “other” lack of paper. And it’s not professional to explain that I would have LOVED to have gone to college, but I couldn’t. Things happen. I’m not going to blather on about how I spent my twenties raising my kid and barely making ends meet, because a jackass husband decided (AFTER we were married and AFTER I got pregnant) that “…yanno what? iiii changed my mind.” And because I refused to get an abortion, well, he was outta the picture and I was on my own. That meant no college for Gracie. (Side note: I did actually try to get in several times, but because I was still of a certain age, I was considered a dependant of my parents and they insisted that my parents earned too much money for me to qualify for assistance…yet my parents had their own bills and issues and other kids and couldn’t afford to send me, so…such is life) and I moved on. I spent years as a secretary, building up my skills and studying in my off-time, reading dictionaries (yes, reading them from cover to cover), and working my way up. And I thought that mattered. I thought the experience and intelligence and personality and work ethic would speak for itself and that silly piece of paper would mean NUTHIN’. However, because so many layoffs have occurred lately? Well, many people are vying for a finite number of jobs and there are people who HAVE that piece of paper (many of whom don’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your,” as I’ve seen repeatedly) and are willing to work for less (likely because they KNOW they don’t know even the basics and couldn’t speak for more than 30 seconds on the difference between active voice and passive voice).
Sigh. Yes, I admit it. I’m a wee bit bitter right now. I don’t want to be. I try not to be. And I refuse to whine to my friends about how scared and sad I am right now. I try not to dwell on how it seems unfair to have this happen, not just to me, but to EVERY MEMBER of my household. That’s right. All three of us were laid off within a month of each other. Ugh. And I push away the fleeting thoughts of “Dammit to hell! This isn’t FAIR!” but sometimes ya just can’t help it. We were finally nearing the end of the suckitude that was George’s almost year-long health scare and I thought we were finally going to have some breathing room and downtime and getting back to the beauty of Normal again, but sadly it seemed that that sooo wasn’t in the cards and as mad and utterly hurt and devastated (and rejected) as I feel right now? I have no right to complain. Because as bad as this is? It could be so SO much worse and at least I have my George and we are in it together. But the bitter feelings are still there, much as I try to squash them. And it’s annoying because as insecure as I am in …well, pretty much EVERY other area of my life? I am beyond confident in my abilities in my career. And I can’t get a chance to prove that to potential employers (well, I can, but the people who WILL give me that chance? Will only do so if I agree to take a THIRTY-THOUSAND DOLLAR pay cut per year and I just can’t do that…unless I don’t MIND being homeless and not paying my bills and having a totally wrecked credit rating that took a decade to perfect). Sadly, I might have even been able to work with those crummy salaries if both the other tenants in my home weren’t ALSO unemployed at the same time. No way around it, it sucks. But I promise to make such bitch-fests few and far between. I needed to vent and I thank you for “being here” for that.
