cubicles and financial tests...

I remember, about a year ago, writing about motherhood and the fact that I'm really only good at that job. I mentioned how amazed I was by women who can pull off a career and motherhood, because I was crazy busy with the mom bit, and was fairly certain it was all I could do. Funny, how when you say things like that out loud (or in print, as the case may be), you find yourself walking into the very thing you thought you couldn't do.

Oddly enough, now I find myself in the market for a job. Dave has enrolled in school full-time (YAY!) and I have been officially looking for a job for the past two months. I've spent several hours -- many several hours -- writing resumes, cover letters, and applying online for I don't know how many positions. That's okay, it's all part of the process, right?

Part of the process for businesses apparently sometimes includes a measure of weeding out the "lesser" applicants, in the form of a test. In my case, I've been searching for a receptionist/secretarial position, and for one position, was required to take a financial test. Okay, I thought. How bad could it be? I've been running payroll and doing the taxes for the last 2 and a half years. There's probably just a few little math problems, maybe a pretend payroll sheet, and we're good.

Silly me. I arrived at the testing site (which was also my potential workplace) and entered a sea of cubicles. Cubicles. Could I work in a cubicle? The place was deadly silent: No elevator music overhead, no happy chatting around the water cooler, no water cooler, come to think of it. I was greeted with blank stares from the 4 women in their glass cubicles nearest the door. "Hello?" I ventured. Usually hello doesn't require a question mark, unless one is answering a phone, or one is met with mindless gazing from people who, you would think, should be friendly and encouraging. "I'm here to take the financial test?" A question again, met with expressionless gaping. Is there a CubicleLand language I'm unfamiliar with? Perhaps some breach of conduct I've committed? If the financial test doesn't weed me out, my lack of cubicle-etiquette certainly will.

A second later, the cubicles seemed to part like the Red Sea as a woman walked through them with a stack of tests in hand. She handed me a stapled, 5-page test, and told me to take it to room 314 when I had completed it. I pulled out my pencil and calculator (don't worry, that was allowed) and prepared to amaze the world... Or at least the person correcting my test.

"Page 1," I read. "Using the principles of Accounting, please answer the following true/false questions. 20 points."

Hello. Principles of accounting? I can tell you that cash is an asset, does that count for anything? To my horror, the entire 1st page was filled with accounting terms and odd things like, "True or False: If you make a payment on a loan account, it will be reconciled as a deposit." What? I'd just call it a payment on a loan, why do we have to give it a name? So I flubbed my way through page one, thinking, hey, it's a 50-50 chance on all of these, how bad could this turn out?

Ha. "Page Two. Using the Principles of Accounting" (those keep turning up!), "determine which category each of the following fall into: Asset, Liability, or Owner's Equity. For example: Cash on hand -- Asset" (told you). "20 Points."

Great, they used the one I knew for sure as the example. Down the page I went, assuming that anything that was a loan was a liability, and anything that was paid for was an asset. But then I came across "Office buildings." Office buildings? I don't know, do we own them? Suddenly I pictured myself sitting in one of the cubicles, looking through the glass at the back of the brown-haired woman in the next cubicle and wishing there was a dang radio in this place, when my supervisor (in my mind, a friendly, balding, somewhat harried man) rushes to my cubicle and says, "Quick! Marianne! Are our office buildings an asset or a liability??" I could see how this part of the test would be extremely relevant at work. Apparently I don't know anything about accounting.

Page 3 brought the easy math questions, at least until number 32: "Compound Interest. On December 1, so and so deposits $500 into an account that is compounded annually at 5% interest. How much will be in the account on July 1? November 31?Blah blah blah and such and such..."

Okay, let's be honest. This is how the question should have read: "Compound Interest. Do you know how to search the Internet for equations or websites that could provide you information on compound interest, and likely even allow you to punch in the appropriate numbers, whereupon you will receive the correct answers and provide them to your friendly, balding, somewhat harried supervisor?"

Alas, what should have been was not, so I did my best (which I'm certain was wrong anyway), and flipped to the last two pages. "Using the following balance worksheet, reconcile this account." Finally. Easy. But irrelevant. If this company is still reconciling their accounts by hand and hasn't joined the rest of the world in utilizing financial software, I don't want to work here. Plus they don't have a water cooler.

I was one of the first ones done (probably because I aced all the accounting terms), turned my test in and thought, "Well that was interesting." A cute, blond girl turned her test in right after me, and we were asked to sit down and wait while they were corrected. I complimented the cute girl on her on her fantastic pedicure, which you could see because of her smart-yet-stylish shoes. She heaved a little sigh of relief and said, "Well that was easier than I thought." Sure, if you're an accountant. I smiled. Weakly.

After a few minutes, the woman correcting the tests called Fantastic Pedicure's name and they huddled in front of me. In order to be considered for the job, you had to get at least 75 on the test. They would be administering the test the next day as well, just in case anyone wanted to retake it. I heard the testing lady tell Fantastic Pedicure, "Okay, you got an 85, so put that on your application." She handed Pedicure her test and called my name. "So you got a 55," she began, and looked as if she were going to continue. "Okay," I said as I turned tail and tried to look dignified as I walked out. I walked down the long hallway, smiling to myself --smiling, I suppose because that was a total flop. Sure, I could take the test again, but could my dignity handle it? And if I passed it the next time, would I pass the Cubicle Etiquette Test?

I caught up to Pedicure on the way out. "Howdja do?" she asked.

"Oh, I got a 55," I said, hoping I sounded like I was talking about something clever.

"Psh," she snorted. "Sure."

Awkward.

"Uh, no, I really got a 55, they held onto my test and everything."

"Oh," she said. It's what I'd have said. I wished her luck with the job and climbed into my car, grateful to have had a glimpse of CubicleLand, at least to see that I didn't really want it. Sure, I could say I failed on purpose, but we'd all know how true that was.

PS. The formula for compound interest is M = P(1 + i) to the nth power, by the way. You know, in case you're ever stuck in a financial test in CubicleLand.

A House Called Awful End

Ok, so this is not like my usual posting, although I've been laughing to myself over 2 things I plan to blog about soon...I just have to wait til enough time has passed...

But I had to tell you: I grabbed this book at the library the other day, along with its 2 sequels. TheBoy was like, "I don't know what to read!" and I was in the 8-12ish section, and the cover looked like fun, so I was like, "Here, try this one." Well today when I was going to blow dry my hair, I wanted something to read for the 4 minutes that it takes; so since TheBoy has yet to pick it up, I grabbed it and started. It took me about as long to read the first chapter as it did to dry my hair, and I LOVE IT!! Already! It is hilarious!! It was compared to Lemony Snicket, which was fun, but different. Philip Ardagh (the brilliant writer) has yet to take himself seriously. For example: Eddie took a seat across from his aunt. "Put that back!" she said, so he did, and sat down across from her. That's not a direct quote, you get the gist. It's so fun already! I wish I had a coupla hours to just read it all, it's delightful! I'll letcha know how it ends...

More life stuff later...

the idiot in delivery room 303

No, I'm not pregnant. I have some friends who are, and that topic always makes me blush for some reason. Okay, it's not that pregnancy in and of itself makes me blush. It's the fact that I'm always reminded of the deliveries of my kids, and that makes me blush. With the exception of one -- RyBread, bless her -- I have plenty to blush about.

Never fear, I won't shock you with all the gory details. I'll just fill you in on the least embarrassing, the twins' delivery. While it's the one that makes me blush the least, it's the one that makes me laugh the most.

One terribly early morning in February, I was awakened by the alarming feeling of my water breaking...actually, I guess it would be more accurate to say that one of my waters was breaking. ...Never mind, let's move on.

Whenever I start this story with my kids, they always say, "What does that feel like?" How do you answer that? ...Uh...wet?

Anyhoo, I remember just kind of yelling, "Oh, oh, oh!"

Dave, who is never actually ready for an emergency in the middle of the night, outdid himself and jumped out of bed, yelling, "WHAT? WHAT?! What's wrong?!"

"My water just broke all over the place," I said, and he let out a burst of air and sighed, "...Finally!"

My thoughts exactly. People like to say a rather absurd thing to a woman carrying twins: "Wow, twins! Two for the price of one!" No. It is not two for the price of one, it is every bit, two for the price of two; and while every pregnancy is difficult in its own right, take each typical difficulty and multiply it by two. In many cases, you could add on doctor-prescribed bed-rest for who knows how long, non-stress tests, twice a week, for at least the last 8 weeks, a constant feeling that your body is being slowly ripped in two, and in my case, extreme itching of the palms of the hands and bottoms of the feet (go figure. But have you ever tried to satisfy an itch on the palm of your hand? It's physically impossible. I seriously thought I might go completely crazy some nights). Now you're getting the gist of carrying twins. So the idea that we were finally actually going through with this whole thing was, indeed, quite a relief.

We called my friend, who came to babysit (or really, just sleep out the rest of the night on my couch, as the bed was no longer an inviting idea to anyone), called my mom to let her get all excited about the next few hours, and headed off to the hospital.

Truthfully, I don't remember most of the details once we got to the hospital. It seemed like checking in took about 72 years, but that can't possibly be right, since their birthday has been recorded on the hospital and state records as the same date my water broke... I do remember how freezing cold I was as they prepped me for a C-section and gave me an IV. Not until I was shivering uncontrollably did someone get me one of those delicious blankets from the warming bins, and stuck a new, warm IV in. I also remember being a little nervous about the spinal anesthesia -- my first 3 kids were delivered without any meds, so that needle going into my back, while I was supposed to be calm and exhaling, was a bit unnerving. I know, Chicken.

I remember that as I was being wheeled into the delivery room, my little silly surgery hat fell down over my eyes. I laid there on the bed helplessly, since, of course, I couldn't move, and said, "Could someone fix my hat?" One of the nurses glanced down at me, and just kept on pushing my little bed. "Ok," I thought. "It's probably not important that I can see right now anyway." A few seconds later, someone pulled my hat back up to my forehead.

Of the actual C-Section, I remember 3 things: Dave almost got kicked out for crossing over the doctor's imaginary (but apparently very real to her) "do not cross" line -- he needed a better view. That was bad, but when he watched them stretch my skin apart with the those metal claws of pain and told me I was going to hurt in the morning, that really ticked them off. Please. if I didn't know I was going to hurt in morning, something was seriously wrong with me.

I remember when they brought Morgs around to show her to me (oh sure, they can cross the little line), I just couldn't believe how skinny she was. SO skinny. "Here's your baby girl!" they said. "Man, she's skinny," I thought. Tender, wasn't I?

Then two minutes later, they pulled out The Boy, and brought him around for me to see. He was obviously shorter than Morgs and was screaming the most pathetic little wide-mouthed sound I'd ever heard. More sentimentality from my groggy brain: "I had a frog," I thought.

And that was it. The next several hours were a blur of half-awake, groggy sleep; the kind where you don't really feel like you're sleeping, and when you are sleeping, you keep dreaming that you can't stay awake. I remember being so tired, but feeling a terrible need to stay awake because...what was it? I'm sure someone brought some sort of food or something in and left it by my bed...at least it seems like that could have happened. A very helpful nurse came in to check on me every so often, and finally told me I needed to remember to breathe. Really? Don't most people just do that automatically? I remember Dave coming in and telling me that The Boy had been having a hard time breathing. Huh. Me, too, apparently.

The days passed; the twins cried; we slipped into a weird new reality of life with five children, ages 5 and under; the twins still cried, I got used to missing twice as much sleep (two for the price of one -- Please!); and did I mention the twins cried? But it was good. We were a big little family, and happy in our sleepy, cry-ey new life.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. That's no big deal, what's there to blush about in that story? It is this: One day, several weeks after I had brought them home, I sat remembering the morning of their birth. I remembered Dave, and The Frog, and the Skinny Thing, and that stupid hat that someone had to push back up for me because my arms were... my arms... they...

There was nothing wrong with my stupid arms! They weren't numb, I could still move them around, even with the IV, they weren't pinned down to the bed or anything! I totally could have pushed up my stupid little hat! No wonder the nurse just kind of blew me off. She was probably thinking, "Push up your own hat, I'm pushing a bed here!"

There. That's my little blusher moment with the Twins. It's really nothing, I know, but I have a strong suspicion that the nurses were calling me "the idiot in room 3" for duration of my stay.

Oh well. I was ticked that they wanted to kick Dave out. They were ticked that they had to push my hat up. We'll call it even and move on.

internet snobbery and other such nonsense...

I have a confession. I do not play nice on the Internet. Well okay, not to be misunderstood, I always give positive feedback on eBay (well at least I did the two times I used it); I almost never type in all-caps in my emails, lest someone mistake happy yelling with angry-e-yelling; I never make people feel dumb when they pass along a billionth-forwarded email with a "Snopes Verified! story about someone's pet giraffe that ate an entire house, and here's the pictures to prove it," and it turns out to be completely bogus on snopes. I never do any of that stuff.

For the record, I rarely leave comments on people's blogs, or play "tag" games of any form online, and certainly never bother with the applications on facebook. Internet snobbery? Probably. But really, I certainly don't expect everyone who reads this flapdoodle to comment on it. Who's really got time to comment on every blog they read?

Where was I?

Oh. The Internet. You should know then, that, at least according to the emails I've received, I don't really love my country, I really don't care about protecting my children, I've cursed myself with tons of bad omens, I have no heart, I've lost my one chance with my big crush, I've offended slews of veterans because I didn't boycott Target, I'm a lame friend, I'm likely responsible for most of the bad things that have happened to my friends, and I've broken at least 27 chain-emails that some kid was supposedly doing for his 4th grade science project.

And all because I don't forward emails. Oh sure, I used to, way back when the Internet was new and it was the first time I'd received some touching story about a lost child and (sniff) knew that I had to forward this one, because what if I was his mother?!!

But then time happened. And I kept getting the same emails about someone trying to outlaw God in schools or some tragic story about someone who desperately needed a miracle and sending this email on would somehow provide that, or someone else who, while putting on lipstick and facing east while standing on one foot, was attacked by a crazed lunatic, just two feet away from her vehicle.

Have I turned into a cynic? I can't say, but who wouldn't become at least a little cynical when their inbox is being flooded with countless messages about how the world is coming to an end because the guy they didn't like was voted in as President; or how a bazillion germs are on my toothbrush because I don't keep it 100 feet away from the nearest toilet; or how lemons in my ice water are covered in e-coli and I should never order "with lemon" again. Come on, life is too short to be pestered with this kind of stuff. Sheesh, we've made it this long, haven't we? Even with the lemons in our ice water or toothbrushes in the cabinet right next to the toilet, and heaven forbid, a Democrat in office.

I got a good one yesterday. It had a link to some guy on YouTube, but the details on that don't really matter. The introduction before the link told the thirsty email masses that the very President of the United States had viewed this video, and had been so disturbed that he called the guy and asked him to a secret meeting at the White House to discuss it. The President "told the White House staff to handle the press and not to talk about the video or the visit."

"That's interesting," the email said.

You're telling me. Anyone else wondering who told about the "secret meeting?"

Help me.

Okay, so I'm a cynic. At least email-ly speaking.

But I've got one word for you: Delete.

It's a beautiful thing.

Pass it on.

a few words on my long absence...

Okay, so was it wrong to miss an entire month and a half without some sort of mention of what in the world was going on at my house?

Here it is, in a couple of deliciously long, run-on sentences.

Long about the beginning of May, my husband's masonry work finally dried up, causing a few dark weeks, made darker by hopeless thoughts, of blah and oh dear and what in the world are we going to do; by June we began survival mode, in the form of selling anything that could be liquidated, buying new, used-paid-for vehicles, and trying to come up with a general plan of what in the world are we going to do next; in the midst of all that, I was called as the Young Women President in our ward (do you ever wonder if the Heavens snicker a bit behind discrete hands?).

Let me be honest. I couldn't even think as far as next Tuesday to get my perspective straight. I had to just wait until next Tuesday came, and come it did, long about mid-June. The darkness left, even though no great, substantial things happened to push it out. It was just hope. Delicious, lovely, hopeful, Hope. We are certainly not out of the woods yet, but we are definitely not alone in the woods, and because of that, life keeps going, and we keep living it. Not just surviving, but living.

Thank goodness for Next Tuesday.