In Other Words...

Hi Ho, High Hoe, It's Off to Work I Go...

Glory be to God in the highest, in excelius dei-oh and all other assorted falsetto rejoicings.

My work authorization permit came in this past Friday. Move over Happy, there's an 8th dwarf in town. All 5 foot 8 of me.

Now for the 64K question. What the hell to do with it?

I have been doing some serious soul searching on this work business, given that I have been a work-from-home freak for a decade and pretty much unemployed by choice this past year and half. I suspect the best way for me to return to a mid-mgt job and salary and still juggle the kids' busy after school schedule is to try to carve out a virtual office sales position, much as I what I have been accustomed to doing these past 10 or so years.

I applied for one such position with a Canadian dotcom headhunting firm but I haven't heard anything. Which might mean they think my resume sucks. To be perfectly honest, my resume is pretty decent. The only problem is, I now have a hole in it the size of two years, something I've never had to worry about before. So this concerns me. As does the fact that I now boast two decades of work experience. There was a day and age where I might have envied such career longevity - back in the days when I was trying to stretch out my knowledge and expertise - ie. I have 2 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 4 days of work experience. Whereas now I know that this does not betray my expertise so much as my long-in-the-tooth-ness. That's problemo numero uno.

Problem two is that here in Seattle, unless you have dotcom experience, a Masters or PhD, and/or are a third-generation, pedigree'd PNWester, you probably don't stand a hope in hell of getting a job interview for any corporate position remotely snazzy. So I think I'm in need of a serious Connie Corporate makeover. I left the traditional workforce when e-mail was just coming of age. And black power suits were still in. And when it was OK to have a portable hard-copy daytimer.

Now there seems to a pastel sweater-set (gag) and dress pants office dress code pervasive in industry, and I'm not quite savvy to this dress-down nuance. And forgive me, Donald Trump for I have sinned, but I have managed to survive this past decade without owning a Blackberry and horror of all horrors, I have still never sent a text message to anyone. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

So what's a dinosaur to do except to maybe don a purple suit and pander to the children instead? I know that most of the HR types I will now be pandering to will be children. And thus, they won't necessarily get that while my resume seems to have a couple of gaps, it is not for lack of skill acquisition these past years spent raising exhuberant youngsters. Said skills, I might add, are entirely transferrable to the workplace ~ they're just not easily showcased on a resume.

Event planner, mediator, facilitor, peacemaker, coach, chief, cook, bottlewasher, driver, recreation coordinator, lecturer, travel agent, and just today, graveyard cupcake maker....mothers are all these things and more. But because it isn't kosher to list the position of Mother with Both of My Children as the employer and these past 10 years and counting together with the above-noted skill set on my resume, it looks like I may have forgotten what it means to manage my time and or a project.

Big fat sigh.

I'll come up with something. When there's a will there's a way.

Eye vs. Spy

Along those lines, we had our biometrics appointment on Wednesday at the Dept. of Droneland Insecurity as part of our green card application. Not only do they ensure that legal immigrants pay dearly through the nose and up the yin yang yangtze to get said green card, but they also insist on charging each visitor to the building $5.00 for parking. Multiple that by - oh, several dozen vehicles coming in at 1/2 hour intervals and you have there a tidy sum of money to pay the oodles of DDI employees. Right? Wrong.

Upon arrival and admittance through the checkpoint Charlie security check that would put LAX to shame (Holy Daughter said, "Jeesh! This is worse than an airport!"), we were then admitted into the cattle barn to pick a number and wait our turn behind hundreds of other immigrants, aliens and the like. Which wouldn't be so bad if everyone one of the 20 or so wickets were open but alas, as it turned out, there was only one person handling the line-up. Of course. So we waited. And waited.

As luck would have it though, we got in and out and no one got hurt. And contrary to hubby's story that he told a co-worker who asked him how it went, he did not have to succumb to a rectal examination without vaseline. I honestly feel sorry for his co-workers, at times. They have to put up with his graphic tales for hours on end whereas I only have a couple of hours each evening and by then he's mellowed. But only somewhat.

We did, however, have to get our fingerprints done and pictures taken. So that's done. Now comes the FBI investigation. At which point all my Noam Chomsky reading and dissident blogging will soon be intensely scrutinized.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I wouldn't have believed in Big Brother theory stuff. But then came 9/11 and had it not been for the manner in which the feds turned insular, tribal and paranoid, which in turn sent the general public to react in kind, I don't think I would be inclined to even have given any of it a second thought. Loose Change made its rounds, and even has Final Cut due out for release on 11/11/07. And now we have the Screw Loose Change bunch who set out to debunk the conspiracy theory claims of the those who insist 9/11 was an inside job.

All I know is that all international eyes have been on the US, the world's great and soon to be late superpower, for many decades now. And as a foreigner on the fringes of the inside looking further inward, I have to admit - I kinda wish they would take their biometrics screening one step further for all us ex-pats who have a sort of double vision. They should, in fact, scan our eyeballs, if only to see the US and its relationship with the world as we, the Canadians, the Brazilians, the Peruvians and the Turkish, et al, see it.

If they scanned our eyes, they would see that this US (America) and Them (subordinate others ie. non-American) paradigm is no longer a workable one for the 21st century. Not that it ever was. The shift of late from win-lose games to lose-win economic games (have you taken a look at the US dollar in relation to every other dollar, Canada's included?), means the world is starting to believe the American bully rumours in the global playground, and new power structures are emerging.

I'm talking about the bully that always seems to have enough money for guns ($2.4 trillion but who's counting?) yet falls embarrassingly short on butter. Yes, more's the pity, the pockets never seem to be deep enough to buy all the kids lunch and an updated immunization shot every now and again. In fact the CDI chart (commitment to development index) in that last link shows the US isn't even in the top 10 of rich countries. Little wonder the kids have formed other friendships and/or taken their toys and gone home to make more ~ a full 3/4 of the world's toys more, in fact. All they need do is add a bit of lead paint for embellishment, and sell them for a huge profit to all the kids.

The tides are changing and I'm not talking global warming here. Which is why I find it disheartening to learn my husband will be sitting alone is a few short months while the rest of his officemates move up a couple of floors. That equates to the entire group in charge of this particular component of customer support except for him. This may well be great news for those who had to sit near him and endure vaseline tales and all other manner of witticisms and jokes all day, but somehow I feel there's a larger fear at work.

Here's the great irony though...well over half these customers alluded to in their division name are of the overseas variety. They hail from some 145 countries. So it will soon be Office Space: Extreme Homeland Security edition. Holy Hub will not be permitted to attend meetings on this 'upper' floor. Coupled with increased restrictions from a computer info access standpoint, he now faces enormous red tape to do his job. So in the interests of so-called security, they've made his work process much more inefficient because it now takes him way longer to do his job and in fact, there are things he is no longer able to do. For them.

So yeah, if they scanned our eyes, it would be an eye-opening experience. Perhaps it's a good thing they leave it at fingerprinting, punch their clocks and call it a day.

Long story short, I'm definitely not buttering my toast with Imperial margarine today, if you catch my slant - with profuse apologies to the powers that be and any others whom I might inadvertently have offended with my tribal diatribe.

We'll make hay while the sun shines. Another day, another .96 cents US shy of one Cdn dollar. How's that for loonie?

Having a green card will definitely make things easier from a healthcare and residency perspective - we would no longer have to leave the country within 30 days if he suddenly lost his job. But having to wear an employee badge that denotes "other," sit two floors below your team in "subordination" and have to miss out on important e-mails and meetings critical to your work - these are things that would weigh on me, too. All because we bought into the grand dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness south of the 49th parallel.

Little wonder he faces north and bows to the totem poles in Stanley Park in his quietest moments, whilst rueing the day I ever covertly applied for a job in Seattle in his name, and with his resume attached.

Greener Pastures

Whoa Nelly.

Tardy Tart
Three weeks since my last post. There should be some kind of Hail Mary for negligent and reticent bloggers. Forgive me Blogspot, for I have sinned. It has been twenty days since my last blog. That's fine, my child. Say ten Hail Blogspot, full of Spaces and all will be well.


Summer is half over. And we have nothing to show for it save for a couple bright spots and two fun events. The bright spots are/were Holy Sun attending morning summer school this past month. It's being taught by an inspiring and amazingly fun Teacher Man dude. Case in point, said son actually looks forward to going each day. The other bright spot is our gorgeous new canopy bed suite. Photo, stage south. I'm a liking it. Alot. Bye bye 80s white melamine furniture. Hello new millennium.


The other pic is our rear window view. What you can't see through the forest of trees is that, to the right, there is a neighbor whose family room faces our bedroom. We don't yet have bedroom drapes or blinds. You should see the stealth, tactical moves I perform to get in and out of bed each morning and night, particularly upon remembering I ain't in the old gray house anymore.

Hair of the Dog
These same neighbors (immigrants as only transplants from California can be in these parts) have two beautiful yet annoyingly barky beagles. Their dogs are cute as can be, but trust me - multiple the whiny woo woo wooof woooof woof of a beagle ~ a sound that really can't be adequately replicated on a blog ~ times two, times 90 second durations at odd and inconvenient moments most days of the week, and trust me ~ you too would know with a certainly born of acute irritation that these dogs are getting really old really fast.

But not as old as the chihuahua two doors down. If those neighbors, a really nice couple actually, hadn't dropped by with a particularly lovely bottle of cabernet sauvignon as a proto-apologetic for quasi-ownership (they're rarely home) of a certain proto-canine, then I dunno. I really don't. I hate to think what might have happened to their tiny, pathetic excuse for a mutt. Let's just say it wouldn't be doing Taco Bell commercials anytime soon. It wouldn't be quiero'ing much except life perhaps. I may be speaking prematurely at any rate. I've been looking up cruel and unusual recipes on the Weber website, which can't be good.

I'm thinking I need to meet and befriend all these dogs, as we have Sarah, the 16 year old je ne ce quoi breed of doggie next door. We already love her. She takes up squatting rights in our front yard. We've already negotiated walking rights. Part-time walking of the neighbor's dog beats the high hell out of owning our own and it's way cheaper than FlexPetz. Thank God for the white living room carpet (ahemmmm.....what the heck were we thinkin'?!) - it will buy us a lot of time - hopefully two entire childhoods.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation
But I digress, which is blogspeak for I'm back blogging.

Anyhoo, our first of two fun outings was the auspicious occasion of the mid-July, Tragically Hip outdoor concert nearby, on what proved to be the hottest summer day thus far. It was a smoking 100 degrees (smoking by Seattle 2007 dismal summer weather standards) and we, along with 1,996 other ex-pat Canadians living in the area showed up with our blankets, picnic items and pent-up Hip lusts and fixations.

I can't believe in all my live long years, I had never been to a Hip concert. It was sad if bittersweet to be catching them on American soil. Bittersweet because it felt like we had teleported to Canada for a night, and sad because only a couple of thousand people showed up. One of....no make that Canada's the, all-time top bands and only a couple K riff raffers show up. Clearly a best-kept Canadian secret and little-known export. Although to be fair, I did hear Blow at High Dough piped in while grocery shopping at Slaveway last week. Case in point though, the very next night, the Hip were heading north to Vancouver of BC fame, to play to an audience of some 25,000 fans.

But it was still great if not the bestest, because we got to see Gord Downie in all his antic-filled glory cavorting across the stage and captivating all of us with his showmanship. I hoisted Holy Daughter up in the air and she waved her little Canada bear in the mosh pit - bless her heart for her tenacity because let me tell you, it was stink-y toil, grooving with the beer and sweat-marinated freaks. But Gord looked her way, smiled and waved and redemption was immediate for our concert pilgrimage.

So that was our one wee night-off from our July moving madness.

Beastly Blather
On a much sad note, I ended up having to cancel out of the SSBM first annual blogger getaway, held in Cannon Beach this year. I was looking forward to it more than any of the others ~ ie. Jeri, Tanya, Becca, Grace (of secret blog fame? - do tell, Grace!), and Christina, but alas, it was scheduled smack dab in the middle of our big move weekend wherein we had friends in from Vancouver to help load and haul. Moving places should go to the very top of the qualifier list for true friendship. I can't think of too many friends willing to help pack, move, schlep.

Anyways, I missed the getaway due to moving madness. Said madness has pretty much extended from early-July straight through to this past weekend, when we held our Schmidt Galore garage sale. Hardly anyone turned out, comparatively speaking to past garage sales we've had. But the kids had heaps of fun playing store. They fought over who was Manager, who was Stock Clerk, who got to sweep floors and the creme de la creme, who got to wear the money apron. We or should I say my son - who has clearly inherited the family sales gene - managed to peddle most of the big stuff and what little of value is left (a desk and a kid's toy bins rack) will get listed on Craigslist.

Cube Dudes & Boxes
Which leads me to the second fun event - the obligatory company picnic yesterday. It was held at a local farm that caters to large corporate events. Microsoft Saturday, Boeing Sunday. It was good in that I got to meet some of hubby's co-workers - not the ultra weird ones though. After two years of hearing stories - stories that make you go ewwwwwhhh!, suffice to say, my curiosity was on sabbatical at a cat killing farm. I was really hoping to meet this one, really eccentric...OK, eccentric doesn't cut it - psycho killer is a more apt description....dude of two cubicles-down the row fame. He makes the weirdos and wackos in Office Space look normal. And that's as diplomatic as I can word it.

But he was a no-show.

Other than that, our entire life this past month has been devoted to all things moving. No, we aren't even close to being settled, but thanks for asking. Our garage is packed with boxes, none of which are labelled and most of which are filled with 100% genuine and pure, authentic, unabashed crap. Hence the reason that they are out of sight and not wrecking my little feng shui fantasy of sparse furnishing and zero clutter. Things will come together once we get our proverbial shelving and storage schmidt together in various rooms throughout the house. Or feel audacious enough to ditch one box per week on garbage pick-up day over the course of the next year while our spouse isn't looking. Whichever comes first.

The good news through all this, however, is that we received word that our green card application is, once again, a go. Un.freaking.believable. Apparently the July application freeze by the feds turned into a fiasco (quelle supreeze), with untold numbers of pending lawsuits and the like. Again, duhhhh. So they decided to honour (honour as in honour among thieves) these pending July applications for a new August deadline. Hello light at the end of the tunnel.

So yet another $1,500 poorer and pages of documents lighter, we are now in the pending pile. Amongst other piles, I'm sure. There were fees for everything. Fees to grant us out-of-country travel permission, fees for me to get a work authorization this coming fall (happy happy joy joy), fees for fingerprinting, fees for seven million passport photos (by compare, methinks deranged astronaut chick looked far more civil and attractive in her police photo than the image I presented for posterity in my frightening passport photo posing. If we aren't granted green card status, it will all be on account of my picture, no doubt about it).

But Inshallah, or even if God doesn't will it, please someone else, do so!, it will all soon be done and Amens and Hallelujahs and God Bless Americas can finally be sung on this front. I'm already planning my Americanadian PermaRes Bash in anticipation of getting green cards in hand next year. You're all invited. Fingers crossed that it will be next year and not the year after or the one after that.

So that's my story, morning glory, and by golly, I'm stickin' to it. Like Venus to a flytrap. Or something like that.