I'm Three Hundred and Twenty-Six Men Behind!

Yikes!!

I went to my Eharmony mailbox today - after my weeklong pity party - to discover that I am three hundred and twenty-six men behind.

Boy, do I have my work cut out for me!

And I'm most certainly not going to ignore those three hundred and twenty-six PPC's (Potential Princes Charming), because, well... because, the love of my life might be number three hundred and five.

Better get with it!

Love,

Maggie

p.s. Gentlemen who are willing to buy me lunch or dinner get extra points.

Random Thoughts on Losing My Job and Other Things

I'm still pretty raw about this.

It was a week ago today that I lost my job. Being on the other side of seven days has allowed me to gain back some of my equilibrium: I'm not crying every 30 seconds, and the big bag of chocolate on my coffee table is still over half full. I had an interview this morning, and I have another early next week.

So...it's getting better.

And in the midst of all this sturm und drang, a very bright and wonderful spot. I found an unexpected letter in my mailbox today, with a postmark that I recognized; a friend who lives far away, a friend I've never met in person. When I opened the envelope, I found a money order for an amount that will buy me a good amount of groceries and a couple of tanks of gas.

I was moved to tears when I opened that envelope; such an unexpected gift, a drink of cool, fresh water in the desert, precious friendship in a time when I've been feeling even more alone than usual.

Sometimes, those unexpected gifts of love are the things that enable a struggling individual to carry on; that give someone in despair the ability to raise their head and look again at the road in front of them... and it might, in some cases, be the one thing that tethers a suffering person to their life, the one thing that says, "I'm here for you - don't give up."

This was a small act of kindness that came to me as a light in the darkness. I wrote my friend back, and I promised her that I would never forget this and, that I would pass it on.

We never know how a small act of kindness will be received, nor can we know the full effect a small random act of kindness may have on the one who receives it. Today, I was on the receiving end of one of those small acts of kindness...and it means more to me than I can say.

So, reader, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that - I urge you to create a small act of kindness. It needn't be expensive; it can be as simple as letting someone in front of you in traffic, holding a door open for the person following you, or putting a dime in a parking meter that's about to expire. Whatever it is, please, just do it, not only because it's the human thing to do, but because it will surely come back to you on that dark day when that small act of kindness will lift you out of despair and bring a smile back to your face.

Thank you, my friend, for that gift.

Love,

Maggie

Medicating Myself with Chocolate

Welcome to my pity party.

I've spent a lot of time this weekend doing three things: crying, eating chocolate and scouring Monster.com and CareerBuilder for jobs. I even went to Craigslist (is that an act of desperation?).

Oh - I forgot: staring into space has taken up more of my time than usual.

I'm having a rough time. Of course, I'm catastrophising (is this a word??) to the Nth degree while I'm busy staring into space; I'm old, you see. I've had three jobs in the last year. I've been picturing the faces reading my resume, reading the expression on those faces, and seeing the thought bubble, "Hmmm. Great skills, but she's had three jobs in the last year; she must be a flake. Too bad." I see the mouseclicks on the delete button and myself disappearing into the ether with all the other free-floating electrons.

I've been imagining my meagre savings dribbling away, dollar by dollar by dollar as I pay my rent, my car payment, my insurance, my cell phone bill and the myriad of other bills that come every month like clockwork. I see myself being evicted from my apartment, losing my car to the repo man and desperately selling everything I own on Ebay - and ending up living in a box under the overpass of the 170 freeway at Colfax (that's one of the nicer underpasses - it's close to the park).

I wonder what one wears to elicit maximum sympathy when standing on a freeway on-ramp with a sign "Homeless - Will Work For Food." Would it help if I blacked out one (or more) of my teeth with an eyebrow pencil? Do I write the sign with a lipstick?

Of course it helps to write about it.

Crafting the words, finding the perfect adjective, going back to edit a sentence to punch it up or make it funnier - all that helps. There's something so very soothing about the click of my nails on the keys and seeing my words appearing on the screen - and knowing that you are out there to read it. It makes me feel less alone, and I've even managed a smile or two at the thought of myself standing at the on-ramp to the 101 freeway at Laurel Canyon, my cardboard sign in my trembling hands, with one of my teeth blacked out with an eyebrow pencil (I still haven't decided what to wear.).

I know I'll get through this. Between you, the flood of words, my own resilience, survival skills, intelligence and sheer pain-in-the-ass grit and toughness - and the cats (one of which is currently "helping" me type - say hello, Spikey!) who love me unconditionally, I will get through this.

To quote one of my favorite antibellum heroines, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."

Here's hoping for a better day!

Love,

Maggie

Life, Interrupted

I lost my job on Friday.

To put it baldly, I got fired. I had been there for only six months, so perhaps it doesn't hurt as badly as getting fired from a long-term job for not cutting the mustard. And yes, that's what I was told, that I wasn't "performing up to expectations."

It sucks all the way 'round. No matter how you say it. It just plain sucks.

It's another form of rejection, isn't it? And rejection is always a hard pill to swallow. It brings up all the things about ourselves that we don't like, it turns the spotlight on our flaws, it creates doubt where there was self-confidence.

It inspires one hell of a pity party.

I've already applied for a couple of dozen jobs, and I have an interview on Monday with a temp agency. I've worked temp before, and it's better than no work at all. I'll do it again if I have to; anything to keep body and soul together.

If I had a husband or a wonderful significant other, this time wouldn't be so difficult. It's rough being alone when times are hard. I've got nobody but myself to give me the requisite pep talks, nobody but myself to encourage me to get out of bed in the morning and soldier on, but frankly, myself doesn't bloody feel like being all positive and encouraging. Me and myself have been eating chocolate for two days and crying a lot.

That brings me round to my search for love on Eharmony. I have one more payment of $100 due for my Eharmony membership, at the end of March. That's the same time my health benefits run out. I find myself regretting that $300 commitment right now, and not feeling at all like wading through the mountains of men they're throwing at me. I probably wouldn't be good company now anyway.

I don't know how long I'm going to be down in the dumps, reader. It has been a very rough year, and I'm feeling rather exhausted. Misfortune and hard times have been my boon companions since I got laid off last February, and I have yet to get my life back.

Encouraging comments are most welcome.

Love,

Maggie

Are Men Cheap?

Really? Are they cheap?

Why is it that all the men on Eharmony seem to be the guys who signed up for the free weekends?

It is beginning to annoy me, because I picked Eharmony precisely for the fact that they make you do this slow dance before you get launched into the wilds of "Open Communication." I suck at "Open Communication." I'm getting better, I'll grant you, but I still want to lead up to the big event slowly and gently.

Instead I'm getting a flood of communications from these men, like a ping-pong match - and the first chance they get, they put in a message like this:

i'monlyoneharmonyforthefreeweekend.emailmeatlonelyguyatyahoo.com!

What's up with that??

The free weekend thing means that they can't even see my picture. I don't know quite how to feel about this; but I do know that I'm finding myself to be somewhat annoyed at these cheapsters - and that reminded me about my rant of yesterday about cheapass things and how long they last.

I put up my $300 bucks to find the love of my life; why aren't these men willing to do the same?

So far, the three men I'm currently corresponding with, TR, Jeff and Willie (who as it turned out, couldn't respond to me since he signed up during Eharmony's last free weekend!!) have all besieged me with a version of that same email above, i.e., they aren't paying members and could I email them my picture asap?

This is exactly what happened with Tom, remember? He was a free weekend member who couldn't see my picture - and when he did, he told me I was too fat. (Not a good memory, reader!)

I'm going to have to think about this one.

In the meantime, a bit of an update...

TR (according to him, it either stands for Theodore Roosevelt or Tryannosaurus Rex) has turned out to be a little on the strange side (and reader, I think this may be an understatement). I have swapped a couple of emails with him, and he sent me this long, overblown four page document (advertisement?) complete with 46 pictures, extolling the virtues of his condo, which he decorated and is currently selling, for which he asked me for a critique (what am I, a proofreader??).

And then...he sent me a picture of a very skinny fellow in a tiny thong? bikini? penispouch? (what the heck do you call those things, anyway?) designed to look like a tuxedo - which he labeled "formalwear" -!! He says it is a picture of him in his younger days, and it bears no resemblence whatsoever to the round-faced, bearded and gray-haired man in his close-up shots.

This is just too weird. There is no way in hell - short of torture or someone standing over me with a gun to my head - that I would send ANYONE a picture of myself in my underwear. Ever.

I did critique TR's condo advertisement. He did ask, after all! And since I love watching HGTV, I'm up on all the latest 'must haves' for homebuyers - you know, the granite, the double vanity, the stainless steel appliances and the hardwood floors - none of which this condo has (and which I mentioned). I didn't like the black curtains; I suggested a lighter bronzy shade to compliment the tan walls and a lovely slubby silk or textured linen for the fabric... and...finally, I commented that four pages of adjective-packed verbiage seemed like a bit of a hard sell, so I suggested he pare it down to one page and let the pictures do the talking.

He hasn't answered back.

Perhaps that will suffice to send him screaming into the sunset. If not, I'll have to gently, but firmly, let him know that he's not the one for me.

Willie seemed like a nice fellow. But there was this long period of silence, in which I waited and waited for him to respond to my communication. His silence was finally broken -- by another free weekend. I'm supposed to wait around for him until the next free weekend comes along??

Jeff, as it turns out, is another free-weekender. He and I have a lot of the same creative interests, i.e., writing, acting, theatre, etc. He sent me that patented free weekender email, so I sent him a quick email with my picture attached. He hasn't responded, so perhaps I'm too fat for him as well.

I'm getting somewhat frustrated. It has been nearly two months, and I've had one rejection due to my weight, one nebbishy date and one genuine weirdo.

Lordy. What's a girl to do??

Love,

Maggie

Happy Valentine's Day to me!

Perhaps I shouldn't post when I'm pissed off.

But I am thoroughly pissed off, and I'm going to post anyway. So there!

I was anticipating a quiet day; I'm communicating with several nice men on Eharmony, the weather is gorgeous, and I was planning a shopping trip later on, maybe, or trying a new recipe, but soaking every single one of my good towels with dirty water from my kitchen floor was most definitely NOT on the agenda.

After luxuriously reading in bed until 8:30am, I got up and made myself some coffee, and thought I'd go ahead and load the dishwasher and give the kitchen a quick once-over while the pot was brewing. So I loaded up the dishwasher, tossed in the Cascade for shinier-than-shiny dishes and started it up.

It normally makes a hissing sound when it starts up, but after a few moments, it struck me that this was not the normal hissing sound - it was louder and more ominous.

So I ventured into the kitchen to discover that the entire floor was awash in hot water - oh, friggin' CRAP! So I threw open the cabinet doors under the sink and started madly pulling out bottles and cans and sponges and rolls of paper towels and dust cloths and boxes - to discover that it looked like some idiot who obviously never graduated from any kind of school for plumbers or cracked a volume of "Plumbing for Dummies" had simply stuck a rubber hose on the nozzle for the hot water - without any kind of fastener whatsoever!!

Even I - a girly girl, with a french tip manicure on my gel nails, who has never ever done any sort of plumbing - know that when you fasten two of anything together in the plumbing world, you first seal the threads of the screw or pipe with some kind of plumber's putty, then you put the second pipe on, tighten it down, and then you support that connection with that metal band fastener thingie that you can tighten with a screwdriver or a small wrench!!! And...if you want to do a plumbing job right, especially on any kind of important and often-used fixture, you should use metal - not rubber and plastic. Even I know that.

Hell, I don't even know the correct technical term for whatever it is that is needed - but I sure as hell know that a rubber hose is not a good idea for any kind of fixture that needs to last, especially under pressure and very hot water.

So, when I see all that friggin' water, I grabbed my cell phone - and then I ran out the door and down the stairs to my landlady's apartment (with my cell phone unused in my hand and in my pajamas) and started madly ringing the doorbell. (All the while, very hot water is spraying everywhere under my sink.) After about three hysterical rounds of four or five rings, a bleary-eyed young man (her son?) opened the door. I blurted out that there was hot water spraying all over my kitchen floor and ran back up to my apartment.

I spent the next ten or so frantic minutes trying to get everything out from under the sink - after I shut off the dishwasher and determined that the water hadn't backed up in there because of something blocking the drain. When I had finally madly pulled everything out from under the sink, I discovered the hot water nozzle (or whatever it is you call that thing) was spraying hot water full-blast under the sink, because that blankety-blank-blank rubber hose had come loose.

I tried at first to force the hose back on to the nozzle, but the water was way too hot (I burned my hand, damnit!!) and the pressure was too high. Then I tried to shut the water off with the shut off valve. (Lefty loosey, righty-tighty - it works!) The valve was pretty stiff (and that water was goddamned HOT), but I finally succeeded in shutting the water off, and I burned my hand in the process.

The landlady called on the phone and I told her what was going on. She told me to put all my towels in the water to soak it up. I was horrified. I don't even have that many towels in the first place, and soaking up dirty water off my kitchen floor was not what I wanted to do with them. But I did it anyway. I pulled every towel I own out of my linen closet and laid them in the water. They are now completely sodden, and piled in the sink. Great. Fifty pounds of wet towels in the sink, which I am going to have to pay $2.25 per load (in quarters, mind you!) to wash and dry.

My landlady finally showed up to see what was going on. She told me that the apartment of the poor guy who lives downstairs is completely flooded; his carpeting is soaked. Poor guy. He's not home much; I think he stays with his girlfriend - he's going to be in for an even nastier surprise than I got. Poor guy.

I told my landlady that the water had gotten underneath the dishwasher and the refrigerator, so I asked that she have someone come to clean up the mess, because I cannot move the dishwasher, and I sure as hell am not going to move my gigantic fridge by myself.

She agreed, thank goodness, so my next task was to move everything off the top of the fridge...which is also artfully (and very inconveniently) covered with really cool tacky magnets from around the world.

The plumber came, thank goodness! (Julio, you are my Valentine!) He had the problem fixed within ten minutes, and then he showed me the rubber fixture he took out from under the sink.

As I suspected, it was a cheapass rubber hose that had originally come with a cap attached to thread onto the nozzle. So, it actually did have a fastener at one time, apparently, that cheapass plastic cap on the end of the length of rubber hose that screwed onto the nozzle, and it was expected to somehow hold up under the pressure and heat of the constant use of hot water under the kitchen sink. According to Julio, my plumbing Valentine, to save a couple of bucks, whoever did the plumbing in this apartment used that rubber fixture (as opposed to a metal hose and fixture) because it was cheap.

But, as it happens with all cheapass things, they wear out quickly, and so, predictably, this morning, that little cheapass rubber hose, from just a little too much pressure and a little too much very hot water, gave up the ghost and broke off (also predictably) just beneath the threaded cap, thus kicking off a flood of epic proportions.

In order to save a few bucks, the owner of the building approved the use of a cheapass rubber hose when the proper metal fixture and flexible hose would have only cost a few bucks more. Let's be generous and say it cost $10 more than the cheapass rubber hose, shall we?

So, what has Mr. Building Owner gotten for his ten buck savings?

An emergency visit from a plumber on a Sunday morning.

And an emergency visit from professional carpet cleaners to not only clean up my apartment (soaking up the water from the carpet at the kitchen door, which is wet), but to do a big clean-up job on the poor guy's apartment downstairs - which is pretty badly flooded. Also, the carpeting in the stairwell and hallway is wet as well - I took down two bags of water-soaked debris and noticed the squishy sound my feet made on the stairs as I wended my way down the four flights leading to the garage.

All for a grand savings of ten whole dollars. Hurrah!

Reader, this is the very meaning of the cliche "penny wise, but pound foolish" brought to unpleasant life.

The carpet cleaner came. He checked behind the fridge and fortunately found no visible water. He also removed the front panel of my dishwasher and didn't find any water under there either. So he's going to clean and dry the six or so square feet of carpeting near my kitchen door...and then go downstairs to do damage control on the apartment beneath mine.

As an aside and a corollary to this story, I have lived in several apartments here in Los Angeles over the last twenty-five years, and since my first apartment, which was on the ground floor, was burglarized twice (I was home both times), I swore never again to live on the first floor. The Rhino People (you get the idea, right?) who lived in the apartment upstairs -- also were a very large (seriously large!) factor in my decision never to live on the first floor again, but that's a story for another blog.

My subsequent apartments (all four of them) have been on the top floor of the building I lived in - mostly as a kind of safety precaution, because I like having my windows open, and only the most determined burglar is going to climb the wall like a spider to get in the windows.

As it turns out, this top-floor policy has saved me even more misery, because I'm not the one with the BIG flood. That poor guy downstairs....

Sign me "Pissed off in Los Angeles,"

Maggie

A Question from a Reader

Hillary wants to know what happened to Jeff and Alex.

Well, Hillary, actually, so do I.

You see, I'm kind of in limbo with Jeff and Alex.

Neither of them has responded to my last communication, and the way Eharmony is set up, you just can't nag them.

I did send the one "nudge" Eharmony allows me - about two weeks ago, but neither of them has acted on it.

I only have two choices at this point: 1) continue wait for their responses or 2) close the matches. I suspect their lack of response indicates a lack of interest - that's the obvious reason, isn't it?

Thanks for the reminder, Hillary. I'll let you know what I decide to do about Jeff and Alex.

Love,

Maggie