Thursday at the House

Sarah, Ethan and I are hanging out in the living room after a slightly gluttonous "pizza night" extravaganza. Sarah enjoyed her dance class as usual, and I enjoyed my time with Ethan in the interim. Now I sit and scan the latest Twitter trends and news headlines, knowing pretty much what to expect.

Aside from the mass avalanche of swine flu stories, the other dog is still wagging quite visibly -- the recession, of which I'm painfully aware as my wife is out tonight with soon to be ex-colleagues who are treating her to a fond (seriously) farewell party. She has become a mere statistic, wrenched from a job that she loved, and that loved her back. Again, seriously.

We'll be good for 6-8 months, depending on what expenses may or may not arise between now and then. Only a year ago, that would seem like more than enough time to take a few vacations and then find a new job, but as it is, even though she has already been networking and baiting potential opportunities, she's nervous nothing will come through and we'll be essentially toast. Tent city, baby. Sure, it could happen. There is no guarantee that I'm staying in my job even one more day.

So, we take it day by day. We basically go through the twelve steps after losing a job (yes, it IS personal, even though it's just "business"), and are then faced with either reaping the satisfaction of burning massive bridges, or eating crow by helping our new divorcee with their transition and transfer of knowledge (and all that other garbage) in the hopes that such honorable consideration on our part might somehow pave a yellow brick road back to employment within that same company, or one of its affiliates.

We play the game like good sports :/

Please don't go thinking I'm speaking solely from the perspective of my wife because I've been down this road myself. The only two differences between her situation and mine: 1) I didn't love that job, and 2) I found a better opportunity in roughly three weeks because jobs were anything but scarce at the time.

So, here's wishing you and me and Julie, and everyone else who suffered at the mass irresponsibility of the banking and large corporate industries, the luck and fighting spirit we'll need to ride out this self-inflicted recession. In contrast to the media's current fixation, the issue I've outlined here seems much more dire and I look forward to it being moved back to the front burner.