^{Can you find my genetic code in this picture?}

Not that you asked, but I’ve been tiling again.  This time we were smart enough to hire someone to plaster and paint the kitchen but in my dopey control-y old timey schedule-y nature, I figured I'd tile and grout after the room was painted.  Please don't ask how I came up with this stroke of genius because I can’t.  I just thought it would be a better move.  So it took twice as long.  Just thought I'd mention...

Grout is a mess to work with, a harsh sandy soup that neatly buffs away lots of layers of skin without you realizing.  It drips quietly, solidifies, stains everything, rubs away new paint along with your skin, oozes where it shouldn't and dries to concrete - good when between tiles - bad when under a rug.  

The skin on my hands is like buttery suede and my fingernails and skin are deep ebony.  I would make a lovely pair of shoes.

Complaints aside, the kitchen looks fab u lous!  It has that finished look I was striving for.  But I’ve made up my mind this is the last time I will do this kind of thing because it's so very hard and harsh.  And exhausting.  

Looking for a house in CT with a whole lot of tile?  We got it!  

The reason for this sudden burst of DIY is my husband must find a new job and if this new position is far away, somewhere/anywhere (because all offers will be considered) we will sell this house.  

Except we've only been in our home for 1o years.  We've done many many upgrades and it's only natural to hope to come out of the sale with at least a minimum down payment for another.  But with housing prices sinking to inconceivable lows and our equity inching closer to the red every day, we can only try to maximize what we have with the resources we've got and hope for the best.  

The boom was lowered on my husband one morning this past spring when his entire division - one by one -  were summoned to a conference room. Some were fired on the spot, some given a month or two, some had six months, and the lucky few like my husband were asked to remain a longer period of time in order to  "sunset the product".   

All were yanked by the root of their nads from any assumptions they may have had about a place they had earned in this very ordinary corporate push and pull, workaday world.     

"Sorry folks, you will not be retiring from this company. Thanks for all your loyalty and hard work. Please have all personal belongings packed up by noon."

Here are some observations (metaphorically speaking):

^{How does the human spirit adapt to such an event?}

1. When a heart, a spirit suffers a loss of fulcrum, certain trauma occurs.  Internal balance will somersault with increasing velocity, dipping sideways, upside down, back again.  

2. As it will, the Universe of Corporate Profit will take immediate action by first seeking to assimilate.  This process determines the future of the unruly being, first by disessembling and reassembling, determining whether this entity can of use or should be discarded.*

^{*Strategim: within the process the being will be devalued in order to increase it's resale value to the greater corporate whole.}

3. As an aside: if the being possesses a healthy spirit, even in distress it will resist this chopshop, forcible attempt to ram it into some generic slot leading down a dark narrow intestinal maw of reevaluation, digestion and redetermination.   

4. This is a poignant struggle to witness, for this being under seige is unaware that it's natural anger, frustration, indignance and resistance is futile even while it struggles valiantly for it's autonomy.  

(5. Who can fight a universe?  In the end the All Powerful Corporate Universe will have it's way.)  

6. During this process the heart and soul of a living thing can be torn, broken, even while it's parts, assets and skills have been polished up, reassembled, rebirthed and greasily pressed into a greater, more cost effective slot.  The being in question may not permit itself to fit neatly into this predetermined cubbyhole.  It simply may not by exerting it's will not to fit, not to play ball.  

7. For when opening reborn eyes it may have looked up at the stars, sadly noting they are no longer in proper alignment.  Then may conclude further navigation is not possible.  Seeing itself as an outsider on an unknown path it may become heartsick.  Stuck.  

8. We have noted even as it accepts these events that have culminated in this juncture in the space time continuum, if an entity chooses to be stuck, it might be likened to a shark making a conscious decision to stop swimming.  

9.  It will die.   

10. The rule of life (aka survival of the fittest): We press out in order to live.  We will waken, brush our teeth, put on pants, place one foot in front of the other and step out into the strangeness and fight for a place in it.   Every day.  That's the rule, like it or not.

* * * 

It is particularly odd I think, that after being informed of one's unwanted unworthy, near unnecessariness,  that person is expected to smile, buck up and get back to work.  Please concentrate.  Focus. Be committed. To act the role of loyal, dedicated worker and not behave like the human being who witnessed the bloodletting of associates and friends, who faced certain death a certain morning  (all while the plush theater of the mind is replaying over and over it's variations of that imminent last scene, the Great Death Scene in one's own cinema verite' docudrama being rewritten every single day while one remains in this state of suspended unemployment.):

Nomatter the details, in all the variations it always comes to: the FINAL SCENE where the stomach drops to one's shoes and the heart pounds so hard it feels as if it's about to explode.  

The day you are told to report to an unfamiliar office and find yourself instantly alert without actually knowing what's in store. The skin suddenly hyper sensitive,  the head throbs with blood screaming with adrenaline.  The mind and body shift into psychic survival mode as it prepares to face that certain moment of termination.  

.....but wait...please... there's something wrong.  this can't be IT.

NO! the brain screams.   Please!  the day..... too beautiful.....too perfect......... (much like 

today/this day sun shining through the windows brilliant white, luminous, dazzling light reflections bouncing from the floor, shafts, oddly placed bubbles of radiance and and

the air, like cool water on the fire of one's face so fresh and clean on the cheek

and you, protagonist remember walking just that morning to "your" office and recall feeling so calm, almost good, so hopeful......that perhaps

(we saw earlier in our film a facial expression indicating pleasant thoughts  and were privy to a quiet ongoing prayer, an internal dialogue of hope:

"is it better?........maybe it...... maybe I..........." ) 

BUT as in any good drama, when one least expects it, the ax will fall and the hero falls to his death...ahhhhhhhh.  

This is how it must end in the vastly entertaining, fabulously profitable, merciless shithole corporatist movie of life.    

(Sound of ax being lowered and hitting target.)  

oooooh...the audience screams!

FINI!

_{We can title it:}  

"And That's.  

How.  

It.  

Goes.  

(For. You.)

(Schmuck.)" 

As one might expect the pressures of the unspoken but often considered, gradually trickle down

to the people living in it, (who are) us, our life and me <-- not the best at quiet stoicsm.  Slowly but surely life slips from good to not so good to sometimes brutal as Team Us become increasingly surly and contentious and so like my hands now: on the verge of cracking.

There’s very little to be done in a situation like this other than to keep shaking it off, keep keeping it positive, pedal to the metal and all that, hoping the uncertainty ends before the marriage does.  

(This might be the time to take notes.... except there's no one with any time to spare because we're all on this side, the wrong side of the rope.  the rest are peddling madly, hoping they're moving too fast to be noticed, too fast to be stopped, too fast to look at someone else's roadside breakdown.  

Move along quickly now! No slowing down, no rubbernecking!  Whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK BACK! )

Thus we stand together at the brink of the precipice, all alone, yet side by side -  us.  and the 99ers, the Beleaguered Middle Class, hoping and/0r praying from one day to the next.

(Take a number, there may still be some seats in the back of the room.) 

There are no feelgood getaway weekends, no second homes to fall back on, no equity or big savings or trust funds or wealthy distant relatives with apartments over their garage.  There is only us and the dogs and our beloved cluttered life and while it might be more than most, we are like everyone - far less than secure - and we know it.  

So behind closed doors there is little quarter to be given when there's none to be had and after a while, what we feel is who we are.  

We are this marriage, this joining of human beings of the warty variety.  

Eventually the tensions, the unspoken is spoken, then yelled, then hurled across the room by catapault: the why can't, why didn't, become who the hell ARE you?  why am I here?  

All of it wearing the us out of us, wearing down our ability to feel the other. 

I marvel at how impossible it can become to feel our us, how deftly I can seat myself on my stool in my corner of the ring, the place where shallow dents are rifts are chasms grown into great craggy pits in mountains of mean assumption and resentments that hover over us like greased boulders waiting.  And the bell rings...

That’s the tragedy I think, that at this time when we need each other and the love and support and comfort, we are so perfectly adept at disengaging.  So efficiently.  So thoroughly.  It is too brutal.  

We are of course, not alone.  Like everywhere else, economics is adversely affecting our entire family, all once upwardly mobile typical American middle class, we dig in and prepare for the worst.  It's a family joke we may end up where we started - living under one roof.  

Secretly we wonder whose roof it'll be.  

And then there's the scary possibility that with a stroke of fantastically rotten luck we could end up under no roof at all;  that simultaneously everyone has That Bad Day, Week, Month and piece by piece everyone loses everything.  

Now that would be a timely 60 Minutes segment, to have a family with every branch living in various cars in one parking lot, don’t you think?  Our American Family Caravan, where at that point the best to be hoped for might be our own reality show.

* * *  

For now, putting aside projections and imaginings, we're holding.   Tony and I are still joined at the ample hips, torn and a little tattered yes, but still here.  Together.  Today.  Thank you my darling.  We are as brave as we can be. 

And there's our brilliantly white, brand new artificial Christmas tree that's the most razzle dazzle holiday vision for miles.  We haven't taken it down and  may not for a while.  Very few of our neighbors bothered with Christmas excess this year.  So the effervescent irridescent illumination in our bay window is quite the little spectacle and I'll tell you, it's good for the soul to see it.  

And... guess what?  beneath it there are gifts waiting to be opened.  No kidding! 

I suppose somewhere in all this is a parable of sorts, that beneath it all -  something waits.   Let's hope it's something good.  

 ^{my man and the happy little tree} 

POST SCRIPT:  The grandchildren are fabulously fantastic, just gorgeous and I look at them and it's as if they're little rubber people popped out of the mold, wiggling and bouncing, oblivious to all even while they're unconsciously realigning.  So they get on and out the door, off to school, off to life. 

We are aware, they are aware of the economy that everyone is entirely too aware of.  Although they’re ridiculously young, they're also relentlessly smart and too savvy and they speak of these troubles with too much first hand knowledge about the who's and the what's of what can be lost. 

Even with the blues (or a chip on one's shoulder) with that crew of knuckleheads one can’t help but smile. They’re loud and spritely, their imposing auras filling every corner of every room the color of unstoppable promise. 

And this includes our Cameron, who is blossoming.  He’s been told to go the gym and work out so he's faithfully at it and filling out (but still a beanpole).   His color is normal, pink even and there is much in the wind for him.  

For what more could I ask, except a little more of everything?