Flying Barrel Of Monkeys

Today at work I got notice that I would be receiving a pink slip. After twenty years in existence, my whole department was defunded. It’s quite a shock to everyone there, although I wasn’t too surprised with the way the economy is going. I do admire academia though, they do their best to give their employees notice. I will still be employed through February. So I have six months of guaranteed paycheck and paid insurance to figure out what to do. I’ve been through this once before in my 10 years with the same employer, which takes away some of the unknowns for me. But it leaves open a whole lot of “what do I do now” questions.

The house has been on the market for two weeks, for a variety of reasons. We’ve only had one showing so far. They went with another house, so no offer forthcoming from that. If the house sells, that would help make some decisions about what I should do about employment. We’ve got an evil open house coming up later this month, if it doesn’t sell before then. I’m not a fan of open houses, but this one comes with a marketing twist that makes it more acceptable to me.

Two days ago, we signed up MonkeyBoy for a mother’s day out (MDO) program. After seeing him excel without hovering parents during Vacation Bible School and watching how much he enjoyed interacting with the other children he met in the cruise ship child center, I was convinced that MonkeyBoy would really thrive in and enjoy the two half-days a week program. (MonkeyMan has always thought it would be a good idea, I was on the fence.) MonkeyBoy asks daily if he can go to Bible School and cries when we head out in the evenings and run errands instead of driving towards church. I guess he thinks Bible School is an every day activity and I’m keeping him from going, instead of realizing that it was a one week a year kind of thing. One of the things friends and family say about MDO is that it gives the mommy some “me” time. But I was planning to just spend that time at the office, so I won’t have to do any work from home as I usually do. So it doesn’t really give me any “me” time, and won’t really give me any job hunting time until February. So I don’t know if it’s still worth the expense.

Another expense I’m unsure of is some concert tickets that we bought to celebrate our upcoming milestone wedding anniversary. My favorite performer will be in concert that evening, someone I haven’t seen in concert in 17 years. The tickets were embarrassingly expensive and seemed like quite the extravagance. I had actually put them on Craigslist a few days ago just because I was feeling so guilty for spending so much money on them. I got a few hits from buyers but couldn’t bring myself to follow through with selling them yet. Now that I am facing possible unemployment, I wonder if it is better to sell the tickets and recoup some money.

Sometimes being a grown-up is no fun.