Amy A's Open Salon Blog

The Day the Painters Came

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:05:01 -0400

Today two painters are stripping wallpaper from three rooms in our basement as part of a low budget remodel. Amazing what new carpet and a little color will do. Hermann and I bought paint at Benjamin Moore, selecting colors like Raspberry Truffle for the bathroom, and Dinner Party and Spice Gold for his office. (Benjamin Moore has really good coupons http://store.benjaminmoore.com by the way.)

Our guest room will be a utilitarian boring light blue to match the existing vertical blinds, which were custom and too expensive to replace. I suspect our guest bathroom will resemble a whorehouse/saloon of the old west with satiny red walls new red glass shades on the lighting fixture.

The cat is whining that he can’t visit his normal morning sleeping areas and I have a big assignment due for a client, but the noise from the scraping of the probably 3-decade old wallpaper is annoying.

I can’t help but remember another day of painting.

When I was 23, I moved to my first real non-college apartment. The complex was called Spring Harbor, but it was still pretty awful and I called it “Sewer Harbor.” It was close to a water treatment plant and occasionally we got a whiff.

At 23 I slept in the Altogether, generally on my stomach in my second-story apartment, especially on the weekend when I came home from a night of partying with my friends. That Saturday morning I woke up way too early, because outside the bedroom window I heard “creak, creak, creak” and it was getting louder. When you are 23 and single and go out on Friday night with your friends, you don’t want to get up at 8 a.m. on Saturday.

I failed to draw the blinds the night before when I crashed into bed. I opened one eye and saw them. Two painters in white-painter clothes were directly outside my window. The “creak, creak, creak” was the sound of the scaffolding coming up the wall.

Just as I opened my eye, the two painter’s heads popped above the bottom of the window. Let me rephrase: their very wide-eyes popped up above the bottom of the window.

What to do?

As I had just crashed on top of the bed, I took my left arm and slowly pulled the bedspread over my entire body and kept going until I rolled onto the floor. Then I quickly wrapped myself in the cover and made like the Lone Ranger out the door. And slammed it behind me.

The painters arrived so early this morning that I was still in my pajamas. Just for the record, I put on a robe.

An Old Man Visits The Wall

Mon, 28 May 2012 22:05:44 -0400

Time had caused the old man to stoop a little, but he didn’t look nearly as old as his eighty-two years. He walked with confidence even with the slightest limp..

He had been to The Wall before, but he wanted to go again on this warm spring day with his children and grandchildren. The crowd quieted as visitors walked down the hall toward the low, black stone monument.

While many of his high school friends served in the military, the old man kept the home fires burning. During World War II, he was too young to serve. And he didn’t go to Korea as he was 4F, born with a handicap that kept him from service.

Though he did not glamorize war, he held the American military in the highest esteem and raised his children to do so. As a younger man, he and his wife traveled to France to see the cemeteries of Normandy and the sands of Omaha Beach. He often quoted Churchill, “Never was so much owed to so few by so many.”

The old man was a teacher for more than 35 years. He loved his work and he loved his students. On his first visit to the Wall in 2006 with his wife and daughter, he carefully sought out the names of the three boys he taught, the three boys from his small town who never came home from Vietnam.

Today he wanted to find the name of one boy, a boy who had been a neighbor. This time was different because this time he came to The Wall without his partner of more than 56 years who had passed away earlier in the year. He wanted to find this boy because his wife, who was also a teacher, taught this boy in second grade in a tiny, rural elementary school that closed just as the wave of consolidations came to Indiana.

The page in the roster book with the boy’s name on it was missing.

The old man continued his slow walk down the hill where more than 55,000 names etched into the stone of those who served our country and never got to go on a walk with their own grandchildren on a spring day. The Wall plaza was peaceful and quiet, always free of politics and derision, a place that remembers the dead who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

One of the many veterans who volunteer at The Wall approached the man and asked him, “Are you looking for a particular name?”

The old man gave the volunteer his former student’s name. The volunteer had a mobile device,and tapped in the young man’s name.

The soldier escorted the retired teacher to the place where the young man’s name was on The Wall, surrounded by hundreds of other names of American soldiers, young, old, white, black, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, from rural America, from urban America.

Though the old man had been talkative all afternoon, telling his two young adult grandsons historical items about Roosevelt and Lincoln, and sharing their awe with the new Martin Luther King Memorial, now he was quiet.

He took his left hand and placed it on the young man’s name while the volunteer read the young man’s death date and place from his mobile phone.

He was only twenty-two years old when he died. The boy who grew up on a Whitley County farm died a man thousands of miles away in the steamy jungles of Southeast Asia.

The old man still did not say a word. His family, including his two twenty-two year old grandsons who benefit in freedom from the sacrifice of all Americans in all our wars, walked quietly behind him,

The old man wept for the lost student, and quietly walked up the hill and out into the sunshine of the National Mall.

Dreaming of the Good Job

Sat, 26 May 2012 08:05:44 -0400

Photo from AllThingsD

Early this morning, I dreamed the mother ship called me home. I woke up early with that familiar mixture of exhilaration and dread, which I always felt during my tumultuous decade in sales with a Fortune 100 company.

In my dream, I received a call from the Senior Vice President. He said the company made a mistake and was rehiring my original training team from 2000. Apparently the company made a mistake about him, because after he was involved with cutting the four thousand his number was up.

In the dream I flew to a resort in rural South Carolina, a place we never went in the decade I worked for the company. At the airport my luggage was stolen. The company provided me with a rental car to visit the local FBI which had an office in a desolate rural wooded area. I spoke with the agent through a small glass window with an opening. The placement of the window forced me to lean over in a very uncomfortable stance. The FBI agent was blasé and said “Not much can be done. This happens all the time. I suggest you call your credit card companies.”

Back to the resort I went in my rental car (which was a red convertible, very different from the utilitarian Ford and Chevy sedans the company provided.) I found myself in a high school gym, recognizing people from my original days with the company in the crowd. Soon I began to see other people I knew, two sisters from high school I haven't seen since.

What were Gloria and Yolanda doing there? They told me they, too, had been cut by the company three years ago and received a welcome callback.

We were showered with gifts, Columbia-brand jackets, computer bags for our new laptops, a laser printer, polo shirts with elaborate logo stitching, even tennis shoes in our correct size (one manager bought us running shoes one time.)

The Senior Vice President talked about all the benefits, the low-cost Cadillac health insurance plan for our families, the meetings at luxury resorts with a Five Star restaurant meal every night, the theme parties – casino night, Southfork Night, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Texas Rangers, a Broadway show – top shelf events all paid for in glorious cash by the company.

But as he talked the dread surfaced. Sales jobs like there are always desirable because of the high salary and perks. Frankly the demands and pressure on me were no more than when I worked in the non-profit sector.

But.

In the audience, I worried about not having any provisions for the conference. Somehow I end up in a room with three close friends (from home) and they took me to a mall where bought me clothes, a new suitcase and a purse.

I woke up and ate breakfast and then went to my computer to record this madness, to mull over this message from my unconscious and see what it means.

During that decade, my family had no financial worries. Because of the nature of the work, I knew when I took the job that I was on a train whose tracks eventually ended. I determined to ride the train right off the rails. I won trips and many awards and prizes.

Life is different now. We rob Peter to pay Paul, and we are still better off from most people in this country. I never favored fancy purses or shoes, and we saved our money or put it toward our son’s education. I am aware that I just slid from the upper middle class to the middle class, and many people have slid right into poverty.

When the industry cut back dramatically to deal with the economic slide, they weren’t relinquishing profits, only people. As far as that industry goes, I was washed up. I knew I was too old, too gray and too fat for another job in that industry.

I think the dream is a result of a phone call I received from a recruiter out of the blue two weeks ago. The recruiter wanted me to travel to New Jersey in two days to interview with a similar large company. After all this time, my old resume is still floating around out there. And frankly, I had a good ride with the company and did very well.

The job was full-time and the base was $200 over half what I made when I left the other company. Of course, that's the modus operandi for most companies now, less salary, fewer or no benefits.

I didn’t go for it, and here’s why.

The real downside of the job was that every minute of every day for ten years I worried about my future with the company. Nine months after I got the job, the company merged with another company. I was “last in” and informed I was “first to go.” But my partner wanted to move to Florida and asked to be transferred which left his slot open, and they put me in it. Two years later the mega-global company ate up the two smaller companies and all employees were required to interview for a position. There were fewer positions available. As the newbie, I beat out a long-term veteran which caused terrible hard feelings among my team. Took a while for everyone to recover from that and become friends again in this small town.

After that, we had yearly layoffs. I survived six of them and they were almost always in December. I remember one year not buying Christmas presents until December 18 because that was the day the company announced a layoff of several thousand people. I’m not sure I have my numbers correctly, but I think the force decreased from 11,000 to 4,000 people during my tenure. That Christmas two of my closest work friends “got it.” Not a happy holiday under their tree.

Always waiting. Never knowing. The criteria constantly changed as our numbers got smaller. Then it was my turn. I was given a generous severance package and the wonderful insurance at employee prices for a year. 2009 is now ancient history, and the company doesn’t do that anymore.

So why didn’t I go for the job?

I’ve started my own business, and yes we do struggle sometimes when things get crazy. Owning an old house something expensive is always going wrong. Yesterday the chain broke on our garage door. We’re also getting a new heat pump in June out of real necessity. We’ve been limping along, having the service provider add Freon to a leaky system. It’s time, even though it will be thousands of dollars that will come from our decreasing, much smaller emergency fund. Ninety-seven is the predicted temperature for Sunday, so I’m hoping it will last another few weeks.

My business may never provide the benefits and salary the sales job did. Clients come and go, often for reasons that have nothing to do with me. Last week I lost my second largest client for a reason that had nothing to do with the quality of my work. The project ended, and the company was happy but moving on with something. They will probably use my editorial services again, but not this month.

In the corporate job, there was always the fear of losing that income. That fear lived in me every day and last night it gripped me in my dreams.

As a freelancer, I troll for new clients and that takes much time, that’s part of what freelancers do. But when I’m writing for clients or for my newspaper and magazine columns, there’s no dread. There’s nothing but joy and that’s worth a lot.

Supportive Friends on Weight Loss

Wed, 23 May 2012 14:05:54 -0400

On the flip side of fifty, I'm experiencing a literal downward slope of what was formerly perky and positively uplifting.

I’ve battled weight since my twenties. Drinking beer with my pals at the Chug-O-Mug on Tuesdays (and Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays) in college was the origin of the Michelin rubber around my middle.

My friend Droopy has also battled this and is currently winning. She’s lost about forty pounds and is a superb example for any woman. She is also very supportive of my struggles against weight. She also makes me laugh and helps me not take myself too seriously.

When I complained yesterday about my shifting sands, she sent me this e-mail.

**I may be getting thinner, ever so slowly, but I am also getting older. So here's the stupid annoying problem—gravity has moved faster than weight loss.

My boobs are now my waist. I have a rain gutter where my stomach has shifted down; the tops of my hips are now saddlebags on the tops of my thighs. And all my pants seem to bag there and I'm back to looking like I am wearing jodhpurs. Tally Ho! Droopy **

Never being the “Cover Girl” type, I am fascinated by women, my close and not-so-close friends as they also do battle with gravity.

Perhaps I’m dreadfully insecure, but I need the interaction and positive support of friends. And I try to give it in return.

Droopy has been in my corner all of my life and particularly in this battle with weight.

Not so much some other friends.

Yesterday I had shared pictures from a recent family event with a friend who said, “Too bad you can’t see the weight loss in your face.”

Yeah, that’s a keeper.

I like that as well as the old “For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much.”

Another comment came from two other friends who are also struggling with this postmenopausal dance with fat cells.

"It is much easier for you to lose weight because you've never dieted before."

Here's what I heard, "You are so fat that this is just a picnic for you and you are losing weight with no effort whatsoever while I struggle day after day."

Come again?

I heard this from two people who have been dieting for as long as I’ve known them.

Damn! What a strategy. Perhaps you, too, would like the secret of my success and my plan.

Here's what you do:

Get about 75 pounds overweight by whatever means you can. Perhaps have a kid or two and say, "I'll lose the baby weight later." Or maybe just stay sedentary. Eat a lot of sugar. Oh, let a high heel slip out from under you at an O'Charley's lobby so your tubby self falls on your left knee which will become terribly arthritis.

Then WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA’AM.

Eat less than you did before and you will magically lose weight. (I know, I know, thank you very much. Happy to help.)

Thank God for Droopy. She’s got my back (as large and defined as it is.)

Proms of the Seventies

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:05:10 -0400

My social network page and my Real Life Grapevine are full of news of Proms. The girls’ dresses are stunning, and I suspect the price supports the shimmer, glimmer and glamour of these special once-in-a-lifetime evenings.

In our semi-suburban community prom night is just as it was for the last century, filled with anticipation and unrequited and fulfilled lust. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck; I remember, holding close to "Colour My World" and the AOR version of "Stairway to Heaven." Can't dance to that no way no shape no how.

My potential Night of Passion was a night of riding around in a ’73 Malibu with five other people and ending the evening at IHOP at six a.m. for pancakes.

That’s the old news and probably won’t change ever.

What has changed are the accoutrements.

And now for the requisite “contrarian” “In my day….”

IN MY DAY, my Prom dress was handmade and the material was polyester and probably cost about eight dollars. The style of the day was an empire waist with two tie-backs that were looped to make a bow in the back. I swear on all that is holy that my dress matched the draperies of the eighth floor ballroom at the Downtown Holiday Inn.

My date gave me a wrist corsage which was lovely but weighed about ten pounds, multiple yellow roses and babies breath.

My date wore the style of the day, a light blue tuxedo with a white ruffled shirt. The shirt was outlined in the same shade of blue, yes, turquoise blue. He had the pseudo-Donny Osmond haircut and shiny rented shoes that came with his $60 tux. My hair was cut in something chic from "Seventeen" called the "shag" haircut. Looked like ~~hell~~ something out of a popular magazine.

Horror of horrors, he was a Boy from Another School. In the dark ages, attending your senior prom with a Boy from Another School was just a little lower on the pathetic list to going with your brother or a group of girls.

I met The Boy from Another School the previous summer on a 4-H trip. The day after I asked him to the Prom, a boy from my class asked me. I was very happy to have the date I did; I had gone to another dance with the boy from my school the year before. He was an hour late and didn't say one word to me during the entire evening.

TODAY things are so different. Many young people think the Prom is a ~~drag~~ (oops, use of lame seventies word) sucks big time and don’t go. Many have parents who think it is ~~the bomb~~ the thing to do, and spend thousands of dollars on limo, flowers, parties, designer clothes.

The year I had a senior in high school, two different sets of parents rented party buses for a formal dance and provided ~~alcohol on the bus~~ shots of tequila and all the top drawer booze the kids wanted. The vehicles were Greyhound-size with a driver and bar.

What's the point? I don't know. I had a good time at my Senior Prom and I'm glad I went. I cannot under any circumstances imagine paying for certain items that some parents do today. The best thing my parents did for me for my Prom (as they were teachers) was not to chaperone.