when life gives you lemons…..

…you’ve got a lot of lemons that you could make lemonade with and sell in a healthy free-market economy to make a living.  But alas,  there is no economy to buy our lemonade.  We just have a bunch of worthless fruit that will be a rotting stinky pile in a few weeks.  Why can’t life just give me something I can actually use?

Boooooo

Enough metaphors and rhetorical questions; I was laid off this morning.   I’m pretty disappointed because I actually liked this job and it’s been very hard for me to find a company that I liked.  I liked all the people I worked with and the work I was doing.  They were also very accommodating during my cancer, which is rare and very very appreciated.  Mine was the third round of layoffs in a couple months.  The engineering staff went from seventeen when I started to seven as of today. Ultimately I fear the company will be doomed as the sole proprietor sold to an investment firm just before all the layoffs started happening.  It’s looking more and more like they’re just trying to break it apart and sell it off.  Money talks, the customers don’t have any money and we’re all out of talk with which to silence the investors.  Every week that sales don’t meet the goals more people get laid off.  This practice seems very counter-productive and I can only imagine what the rest of my ex-co-workers will have to face in the coming weeks and months.  I expect it will be more of the same, and they were already understaffed after the first two rounds of layoffs.  Without the necessary personnel the company will cease to exist.  I wasn’t a ‘necessary’ employee for the company to operate, but if there are no engineers, the shop won’t have anything to build and there will be nothing to sell even if someone were buying.  The downward spiral has begun to suck it in like a black hole.   Once you realize you’ve reached the event horizon, it’s too late to turn around. I worked there for 13 months which seems to be the longest I can keep a job without something bad happening.  I’m tired of looking for jobs.  I hate it so much.

I’ve tried very hard to stay upbeat and positive but I want to take a moment to revel in self-pity as I review the last year and a half.  I have:

Left a terrible job for a better job and more pay ++

Got married++++

Got two dogs++

Lost one dog to cancer –

I got cancer –

Got a puppy ++

My parents split up–

Got laid off–

As you can see, it’s bad, but not all bad.  In fact, I’m glad I just did that.  It makes things a little less terrible.  The negatives were some pretty big ones, granted, but getting married was also monumental.  I’m sure Elaine didn’t expect our first year to be this hard.  I sure didn’t.  I guess I’ll keep chugging along, taking the bad and the good and hoping not to be overrun by the bad.

On the cancer front my nuclear sunburn is healing and has almost completely peeled.  It was very strange, exactly like getting a sunburn VERY slowly over the course of weeks.  It took a week or more to become visible.  It continued reddening over two weeks and then it started to tan, just like a sunburn.  The ‘burn’ felt exactly like a sunburn too.  It was itchy at first, like you’ve just come out of the sun and know you’ve gotten burned even though you can’t see it.  Then the sunburn gets red, itches, and hurts when you stretch the skin.  After the redness peaks the skin begins to tan.  For me the resulting tan was dark brown, thick, and rough to the touch.  Now it’s started to peel off and show new pink skin underneath it.  My (little) facial hair has still not tried to grow back in the irradiated area.  It doesn’t hurt anymore and I can turn my head normally without looking like my head is fixed in place atop my neck.  The mouth sores are almost completely healed.  I still can’t use the right side of my mouth to eat though, and my teeth are VERY sensitive.  I’m going to need to go to the dentist soon.

*big sigh*

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