Losing a Job

For anybody who has ever lost a job due to downsizing or layoffs, I understand. It sometimes feels random, sometimes feels very personal. It is sometimes announced in a group setting when whole department are about to fall victim. Other times it is a personal call into a meeting where one is usually meet by a representative from HR and a supervisor from somewhere higher than you stand on the company ladder. Sometimes there is a buzz in the air prior to the event and it is just a countdown until when it happens. Other times it is a complete shock and one that leaves those effected shaken and feeling very alone.

No matter how it happens it is rarely handle well. Some employers feel it is better that they show no human emotion from their Human Recourses personnel. That inevitably leads to the blame falling on the wrong person. HR is no doubt directly involved in the finalization of paperwork and benefit packages but they are not usually consulted for an opinion about who should go; unless their department is one that will need to lay off somebody. Sometimes it is done in a manner better described as cowardly. The CEO or other high level managers find a lower level manager do the work for them, even if the one being laid off is not a direct report to the one chosen to deliver the information.

There have been so many stories in recent times. With the economy in still in turmoil, more people have been touched by the loss of a job; either personally, a relative, a close friend or a colleague. We can only hope as the economy gets stronger the stories will become less common and effect less of those we care about or love.

The first obstacle that anybody needs to get through is condensing ones personal items and weed them out from their professional tools. Cardboard box in hand, one is given usually a very short period of time to pack that box and leave. Most times, there is some company representative watching to make sure that the only items that make it into that box are truly personnel items and not client lists, HIPPA protected patient information, company financials... It sometimes get to the point of being so petty as to being questioned about pens or a magnet or colored paperclips.

There are the cruel lay offs that happen as an ambush at the beginning of the work day. Those push the gossip button and keep an air of relief mixed with worry within the environment. There are the end of a Friday lay-offs, day before vacation and those that happen right before an important personal event. No matter when they happen, there is a sense of stillness that hits the heart. That sense of disbelief. Even if a job is not an ideal placement, it is rare for one to find being let go cause to celebrate.

There are similarities amongst stories that I have heard from friends, seen on the news, read and experienced. The cardboard box, and the security guard, HR representative or manager walking the no longer employee out of the building making sure that no longer employee does not deface the still standing building.

The Road Not Taken

If you recognized the title of this post you know that it is not an original thought. It is the name of a poem written by Robert Frost.

" Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both"

We have all been there. We have learned that there are no do-overs, no chance to go back and take the other path at the fork in the road. Perhaps I should change that we to I. An inclusive we may be presumptive.

So from personal experience I shall continue on. I have found that just when I have accepted that I cannot turn back another intersection presents itself in front of me. Perhaps it is still a matter of path a or path b. Other times it is a larger number of options which require a decision. Indecision is not the answer. I know that I cannot stand idle. I know I must choose a direction with an unknown destination and that this time hope that I get it right.

I have made many poor decisions. I have gambled on an outcome only to find myself or somebody I care for or love hurt. I have taken what has seemed to be a smooth paved path and found out that it was just the easy way out of a big problem; a band-aid on a wound that needed more attention. I have been selfish and walked the road that would satisfy my need(s) but left behind the aching needs of others.

There is no insurance policy that you can purchase to protect yourself and others from poor choices, mistakes or failure. If there were, how would one quantify what each line item would be worth? Is there a dollar value that you can place that will make an error of judgement right again?

How many times have I heard or read "If only I knew then what I know now". There are no "if only" opportunities. You cannot go back to a place you had already been with knowledge accumulated from time and distance from the event. Personally I don't want to be 17 again, or 21, or 25 or 30. I have been weak when I should have been strong. I have given in to temptation when I should have looked the other way. I have said things that would have been better left unsaid. I have taken for granted the availability of friends to weep to when things start to crumble. I have done more than enough going through those years the first time and would not want to risk making a poor decision once again. Because sometimes it is not just one wrong path you take but a series of streets and valleys, corridors and escalator rides that take you to a place where you are met with more options. I am not sure I could find myself traveling backwards anyway. Doors have closed and been locked. Destinations that once seemed important no longer hold the same importance. Past passions have had their flame extinguished.

I can only apologize to those that I have hurt. I can try my best to think about all possible consequences of a big life decision; the good and the possible bad. I can guide my children and hope they learn from my mistakes; knowing all the while that they will make mistakes of their own.

I encourage you all the reread the Robert Frost poem for yourself. Lay it open as if it were your first reading of it. Life, mine or those of others, is not always about all the mistakes we have made. I have had my share of successes, good, strong decision making and the honor of being called mom by two incredible human beings.

Sure I wish there had been less heartache to get to here and now. Less struggle to keep a smile on my face. But I do not regret the path not taken because the outcome from having gone that way was just as unknown as the path I did travel.

Lists

To say that I like lists seems too mild. To say that I love lists would be too extreme and an inappropriate use of the word love as I believe it to be. I am a happy list maker. It is genetic. I know this because my father is a list maker.

I am old fashioned in my list making. I write my lists by hand; no technology can replicate the satisfaction of writing a list. I make only one exception to that rule; I keep a wish list on Amazon. The only items on that list are books for my Kindle. I make my purchases from that list and it is not one that is seen by others.

I have a list of my lists. That may be going overboard but it grounds me somewhat so that I don't start a list about the same topic. I am not picky about where I write my lists. I don't have a special pen designated for list writing. I use post its, the back of envelopes, pads of paper, the back of receipts, the date book I carry in my purse.

When I am reading a book, I make a list of interesting words that I find in the narrative. Some are interesting because I honestly have never heard the term before, others are interesting because of the context they are used in. I have a personal to-do list. If there is a time constraint on a certain item on that list, the date is written next to it. I have a list that I keep between my monthly doctor's appointments. On that list are questions about or observations that I have made of my health.

I have a list of people I should email and touch base with. Another of people that I should call. I even keep a list of wrongs that need to be righted.

I don't need a list to know that I wash the sheets every Sunday; routine items I can keep track of. I will admit that there are some mornings that I need to check what day it is. Not because it would be a grievous error to wash the sheets on Saturday instead of Sunday, but so that I know if it is a day that my children need to be up for school at a specific time.

One might imagine that with all these lists that I would have no room for spontaneity but that would be a wrong assumption. I have learned to be flexible because I need to be. I need to be flexible around my children's needs, the needs of our household as a whole and I need to be spontaneous around my own physical needs and limitations. Somehow, though, the sheets do get washed almost always on Sunday; more often, if necessary.

One of the most satisfying part of writing lists is taking pen in hand and crossing something off of a list. If I take a list with me to the supermarket , I cross off each item as it lands in my cart. By the time i reach the cashier, I am almost giddy if all the items have a slash through them. When I get home I can then scratch "go to the supermarket" off of my to do list. I know that it will be rewritten again at some point, but I cannot help but bask in the feeling of crossing something off of the to do list.

Now that this post is written, I can cross lists off of my list of blog post ideas. I feel the pull of the pen waiting to be put to paper and cross that line off. One more item off of my to do list for today, as well.

Defensive Shopping

Like a lot of other people, it is often after dinner, after showers or just before bedtime that my children will inform me that they need something from the store. Sometimes it is something that they need the next day for school. Other times it is shampoo, shaving cream or razors. I have tried over and over again to remind them that if they place their requests on a running list in a central location, let's say the refrigerator, they can add items to the list before it becomes an urgent situation.

I have made many runs, at all hours of the day and night, to gather what they need or what I discover that we need in the house because somebody used the last can of dog food, ate the last of the cereal or any combination of household/family needs.

Although we no longer have a 24 hour supermarket or a 24 hour Home Depot, we do have a 24 hour Walgreens Pharmacy and multiple 24 hour 7-Elevens within a 2 mile radius of our house.

One of my recent evening runs was a 9PM run to 7-Eleven. The cashier greets me with a call out "you are here early tonight". The cashier of this particular 7-Eleven has seen me at 11PM, 2AM, and 4AM on other occasions thus a 9PM visited is certainly early.

I self-consciously smile realizing that every other patron in the store has heard this. I cannot even imagine what they are thinking of me as being so familiar that the cashier would say such, or if it is just part of the background noise of cell phone conversations and music from a local radio station piped throughout speakers in the store.

I gather my own purchases; a gallon of milk, cranberry lime drink, coconut M & Ms and sugar free pudding. The necessity that brings me here at this moment is the milk. The rest are impulse items. I take my place on line for the cashier. A young man holding a 12 pack of beer looks at me and says "It's been a long day". In front of him a man holding 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream and a bag of dog food looks back at the younger man and says "My wife is pregnant".

I stand silent as their purchases are paid for and they leave the store. I pay for my own and as I walk out to my car hear a voice in my head asking why do purchases require a defense? Either man could easily, silently make his purchases and walk away without being gawked at or labeled as anything other than another consumer. As I pull out of the parking lot, I wonder were they even talking to me or one another or were they convincing themselves that they were justified to want the beer or the ice-cream; the dog food, I am convinced was really for a dog.

Blog Name (originally posted 06/14/11)

I have had some questions about why I named my blog Purple Pumpkin. I can assure you it is not because I suddenly started a new hybrid of pumpkins that will mature in the fall as a purple tinted squash.

It is a simple explanation but one that will answer all those question marks that seem to be floating over the heads of my readers. Growing up my father had nicknames for both my sister and me. Mine was pumpkin. I have never asked why although I could make a supposition that it was because of my round baby face and those early months of life when I was a bit rolly polly.

If you know me well, if you have ever received an email from me, if you have ever seen me out and about, you will know that I always have something purple on me, or with me. The case for my Kindle is purple. My favorite gem is amethyst. In my purse there is at least one purple pen. In my wardrobe whatever is not black (a fabulous neutral) is purple. I have a fabulous collection of purple accessories, especially scarves.

Whenever I go shopping I am immediately drawn to anything purple; whether it be clothing, household accessories accessories bedding or towels. Purple fingerling potatoes? Put them in my grocery basket. As if it could not be helped, I love the scent of lavender; candles, potpourri, my neck support pillow and even my black-out sleep mask.

I apologize to those that were looking for some intriguing answer, but it is just a simple explanation to the naming of my blog.

The Waiting Room (originally posted 06/07/11)

Let me start this post by saying that the front office staff in just about every one of my physicians' offices are unusually accommodating to my crazy scheduling requests. I will only under the rarest of circumstances come upon a schedule request that they cannot meet. With my rheumatologist, I know if I am not one of his first three appointments of the day, I will spend hours in the waiting room. With my PCP I know that if I book an appointment any time between 8AM until about 9:30AM I should have a minimal time between checking in and getting called into the exam room. I am not impatient if I am kept waiting. I don't constantly check the time or question the receptionist if the doctor knows that I am there. It is just that I cannot relax in any waiting room. All I can focus on is the germs that surround me. If the seats are covered in fabric, you know that they haven't been wiped down with any disinfectant. Who sat in the chair last? Were they sneezing or coughing into their hands and then did they put their hands back on the chair?

I swear I was never this paranoid about germs and diseases. Then I started recognizing patterns. Take a child to the pediatrician for a well visit and they are sure to have a cold within days. First I banned my children from playing with any of the toys at the pediatrician's office. We brought our own from home. Then I adopted a game plan; the first appointment in the morning or the first one after lunch as the times I would take them in. It wasn't until the pattern started happening to me that I went from being very easy to book an appointment for to making special requests. I would go in for a well visit or to get my yearly flu shot, and I would subsequently have bronchitis, a stomach bug or whatever the germ of the day was. Whether proven or not, I am of the firm belief that the less time I spend in the waiting room, and in the doctor's office in general, the better off I am. Yes, I know that the handles of the carts at the grocery store are covered in germs as are door handles and the tabletop at your favorite casual eatery where they swipe a couple of crumbs off the table before you sit down.

My germaphobia would make for a strong debate but perhaps in another post. When I was being scheduled for my monthly visit with my PCP for this past April, it happened to fall during Passover week. He was not working at the beginning of the week but would be working in the afternoon of that Friday; Good Friday. The only appointment time they had available was 2:40PM. I had no other option so I agreed to be there at that time on that day. On the day of the appointment, I was feeling a bit congested so all signs seemed to point forward.

I arrived, checked in and found a seat in the crowded room. I hadn't remembered to bring my Kindle so I just sat there waiting for my name to be called. Without something to read I started people watching. I looked around at the collective audience in the waiting room. There was the son, standing at attention behind his mother’s wheelchair. She was wearing a nasal canula attached to her portable oxygen tank. Her edemenous legs pushing her pants outward and her bedroom slippers barely encasing her equally swollen feet. She kept inspecting her hands over and over looking for something barely perceptible to others but every once in a while she would find something that she would brush away. Her son, started to talk to me, a stranger, explaining that when he went through this with his father it was much worse because the doctor network he was in was so unreliable. He said that this network was much more easy to work with. We made the kind of polite small talk that strangers make while sitting hostage to an overbooked patient schedule. He was clean but dressed in worn, out of style clothes and sneakers that looked as if they no longer had a tread left.

Fellow patients, and their family members, mostly kept to themselves. There was a young woman there with her parents. Her mother dressed in well tailored jeans, heels with their trademark red soles and a handbag that cost as much as a car payment, if not a mortgage payment. Her husband speaking loudly on his cell phone despite sign after sign asking people to not use their cell phones in the waiting room. I have been guilty of using my cell phone in that same waiting room, usually just to check in with the boys or to assure them that I will be home soon. When the daughter was called in to be seen by the doctor, the nurse tells the mother that she was welcome to come with them. The young woman was not even consulted and she certainly looked to be over 18 to me, perhaps even as old as her young to mid 20s. I felt the girl’s conflict as she followed the nurse but kept a wary eye on the mother that was following behind.

There is a WIC office right off of the waiting room. A mother leaves that office with an abundance of powdered formula. As she is strapping her very little bundle of a baby into the carriage she looks directly at a woman who had been staring at her and felt the need to apologize for the formula. The cries and noises from the baby indicated to me that this was a newborn. There is a very distinct difference in the sound of a newborn to older infants. The mother looks directly at the woman and said “I tried to nurse, but it didn’t work”. I felt sorry that she felt obligated to need to explain such a personal decision with a stranger.

The loud speaking dad takes a new call. His end of the conversation gave the waiting room more details about his family. “Yes, we are at the doctor’s now”. “No, she is not going back. We are going to buy her a house near us”. His wife returns to the waiting room and says to him “Shhhh, she doesn’t know that yet. Who are you telling?” He says some name with his hand over the microphone. His wife tells him to stop the conversation because their daughter will be coming out soon.

There was the filthy man sitting in a corner, speaking to himself while rocking back and forth. His words either did not make sense or were not clear enough to hear. There was the man in work out clothes and very clean, white sneakers tapping his foot and checking his watch with impatience. There was a woman there with a huge handbag from which I witness the appearance of a water bottle, a notebook and a bag of chips.

The receptionists talk of their weekend plans and then start to speak of televisions programs they had seen the previous week and those they were looking forward to seeing in the week to come.

Eventually my own name is called and I go through the basics of the pre-physician appearance. My vital signs are recorded in my on-line record. My time with my physician is short. He confirms a sinus infections, prints out prescriptions for that and others for my regular medications. My visit took a few minutes, at most. What should have been just that - a short visit - had taken three hours on this Friday afternoon.

Welcome (originally published 6/6/11)

I guess I should start this, my first blog post, explaining what brought me here. I have many friends that have blogs. I find them fascinating and I have learned things from their blogs that I did not know about them previously. It made me think that if I am learning more about my friends and family through their blog posts the reverse may be true. It is not a need to posts secrets but to put together all the pieces of who I am for those that may be interested.

Speaking of friends, that is what I wanted to write about this morning. I was looking through my friends list on Facebook and it occurred to me that it has not been since high school that I have been part of a group. Don't get me wrong. I have friends that I have meet in my adult life. Some I have met through other friends. But I don't have that group dynamic that I had in high school. I don't have a group of friends that I get together with on a regular basis. I see my friends individually or in rare cases there may be a trio of us having lunch.

In high school there was a group of us that did things together. We had common interests. Most of those that I spent the greatest amount of time with were affiliated with the music department. We worked together to make sure that our performances showed our very best. Whether it was for a concert, dreaded marching band, or a music competition we were there to support one another. When we were old enough to have jobs after school we would meet up afterwards and share those individual experiences. I was a Domino Pizza employee, others worked at Chi-Chis or the local movie theater.

I can still remember the bedrooms of my female friends where we would sit for hours talking and listening to music. There were sleepovers whether at my house or one of theirs. I remember attending B'Nai Mitzvahs and Sweet 16 parties. My memory of those days is so clear. I have found that many of the memories that I have stored away are not as easily conjured up in the memory of those that were there. But I know that they are true memories; some people do remember them and there are boxes and boxes of photographs that have moved with me over the years that affirm that truth as well.

I want to thank my high school friends for having been there during those awkward teenage years. Without having had that kind of group dynamic since, I treasure it.

To all my friends I appreciate your place in my current life. Whether we keep in touch through Facebook posts, phone calls or sharing a meal, I am so pleased that you are in my life.