Andrea's Adventures in Binkyland

Job Loss

This has been a very messed up week.

Last week, I dealt with some very difficult issues around leaving Sasha for around four days, and trying to decide if the emotional damage this would do her is worth the paycheck I bring home a couple of times a month. I swear that this is not me being an overprotective, clingy mother. She is a very attached baby, and flips out if I come home late for dinner. Leaving her overnight would be one thing, but FOUR nights?

So I came down on the side of NO, and my wonderful and supportive husband was wonderful and supportive of me. Thankfully, he found a way to make it a family trip before it could come to that. This is a much better solution for everybody. But the topics of job loss and economic hardship are fresh on my mind.

So there is a certain cosmic irony when we learn that one of my co-workers was let go of today. It was due to a certain conflict of interest, and it's not my place to gossip and go into specifics. I'll just say that he's a good guy, and it's too bad that everything turned out this way, but it doesn't inherently reflect the financial state of my employer.

I am not responsible for this. I am nothing more than a witness to the Greek tragedy that has transpired, and not a close-up witness, either. But I feel... guilt.

We're living in a sucky economy, no question. Many good friends of mine have gone through lengthy periods of un- and under-employment. Unemployment rates are raising, median incomes are dropping, and a conservative winter is a-blowing through the nation and telling me it's not turning around tomorrow, and no, not the next day, either.

But here sits my happy family. We drive two new cars. We live in a decently large house, to which we make frequent improvements. We eat out more than in. In short, we live the good life. Why us? Why have we been spared the razor's edge, when so many good and deserving people are slogging through hardship after hardship?

Not because I work hard, that's for sure. Not because of our great spiritual faith, or even good management. We're just very lucky. It could be that our number is up right around the corner, and my salad days of spending $12 a pop on upscale haircare products will be gone forever.

But that's how life is, and that's how it's always been. You never know what to expect. You just have to scope out your fire exits and then hope you never, ever have to use them.

My kitchen is: clean but anty. Blasted ants. I'm about to get chemical on their collective butts.

Sleep Deprivation

There are times when Life in Binkyland is like some sort of cruel top-secret military experiment. My ongoing lack of sleep is a testament to this. I've always needed a large amount of sleep. I have not been getting it, to the tune of two hours short a night for who-knows-how-long.

This sleep derivation manifests itself in a variety of ways. I begin to lose lower brain function and forget to do things like rinse out my hair in the shower, or check that the back door is locked before I leave the house. (Higher brain function is fine, though -- go figure.) I become a little too overemotional. I lose the ability to make decisions, especially insignificant ones, such as what to make for dinner, or whether I want a straw in my beverage. I lose my sense of proportion, so not being able to find the book I was reading becomes a great internal melodrama.

Wednesday night, though, I finally struck back. I went to bed before 8pm. My sleep was interrupted only twice, at 8:30pm and at 5am, when I had to return Sasha to her crib (Matt brought her to me both times, so minimal interruption there). I got up at around 8am, and felt tired, but comparitively great.

This is a new and novel approach to catching up on sleep for me. I've always known that to catch up on sleep, one could, in theory, sleep in late. This is only a theory for me, now. Every now and again, Matt will try to take Sasha downstairs to let me sleep in. This turns into Matt plucking Sasha off the stairway every twenty seconds, against her verbose and loud objections, because she wants to go check out what's up with mommy and why she's not come downstairs yet. We adults both give up fairly quickly. Ah, but going to bed early? It sounds so Rockwellian, so farm-country quaint, so positively pre-electricity.

Still, it seems like the only solution I have available. I'm going to try it a little more often. Maybe, by the time Sasha is in high school, I'll have finally caught up. And maybe I'll be able to make a snap judgement on what to make by dinner, too.

My kitchen is: Weirdly cluttered. I'm not sure what all that stuff is, much less why it is hanging around on my kitchen counters. But I have the nasty suspicion I'm the only one who will ever put it anyplace else, so I suppose I should just suck it up and hop to it.

Hair Heaven

When your hair looks really good, there's a certain spring in your step. You feel a kind of zing, an amazing confidence. People let you ahead of them in line at Starbucks. When you smile at strangers on the street, they don't just smile back; they're still smiling when you glance back a minute later. Maybe it's all energy and attitude; who knows. But today, I had one of those days.

The reason? I got my fancy-schmancy haircut at Devachan today. It was like coming home. I've never before left a salon without thinking, at best, "Wow, this might look pretty great after I go home and wash all the crap out of it." I've also never left a salon so completely confident that I could make my hair look exactly the same the next day.

There's also the lovely tingle of vindication. I have the professional stamp of certification that my hair is, in fact, curly (not wavy). Lovely Carlos even offered to write me a note to that effect.

Here are the before shots. Bear in mind, this was pretty late at night, I was tired, and I'd been pulling the front of my hair back behind my ears (and hence pulling the curl right out) all day:

And here's the after:

Isn't it terrific? I'm just thrilled to pieces. And Carlos tells me my hair will just get better and curlier and bouncier and shinier as time goes on, the longer I keep off the 'poo.

My kitchen is: Pretty and shiny! You can almost see my new stainless fridge in the After shots! And the rest of the appliances are coming on Monday. Hurrah!