Friday, November 25, 2011

Life in November 2011

It's Fall in Philadelphia. Anthony and I got married in October and are living with a roommate in an apartment in Chestnut Hill. We have a big tree in the front yard that just dropped a thousand red leaves onto the yard.

Anthony is working for an electrical contractor. For the last few months they've been short on employees and heavy on work, so he works six or seven days a week. It's so strange to me that in the middle of this recession, they can't seem to find any new hires. I guess of all the thousands of unemployed out there, not many of them went to trade school.

They probably all went to College! Like they were supposed to! Only to be unemployed, underemployed or underpaid! Like me!

I'm still working at the "temporary" case management position I started almost a year ago. I actually got promoted to Senior Case Manager a few months ago after my boss was laid off.

When I took the job, I was thinking it would be a nice part-time pay check while I tried to start my own freelance business. Once I gave up on freelancing, I thought it would be "a nice part-time pay check" until I found a full-time job doing something more interesting and/or advanced. A few hundred resumes later, I find myself having worked only part-time for a whole year with no new prospects in sight.

This means I have 4 days off a week and Anthony has 1 or no days off a week, so I've become a master at entertaining myself.

We have a pet turtle named "B" that we rescued from an after school program, where she was regularly shaken, unfed and generally abused. After bringing her home, we found out that turtles don't really have a life span. As long as they aren't eaten or mistreated - they'll just keep on living. So suddenly instead of a pet, we have a new family member. Also, if she dies - It's definitely our fault.

Anthony has 3 friends and one cousin nearby that he grew up with. When he has a free weekend, we hang out with them. They are all true Philadelphians: sailor-mouthed and rough around the edges, but good people.

Philadelphians can be a little shocking at first. They're opinionated, outspoken, brash, impulsive. I blame this on their heritage. The settlers of Philadelphia were some of the first Americans. The constitution was signed in this city. I think of that generation of Americans as a slightly more eloquent version of modern day Philadelphians.

So that's our life now, an update that I hope will generally describe what I've been up to in three months of lapsed blogging. Living this life... oh! and getting married. Which was lovely!

The New Year is coming up... I hope in 2012 to be more ambitious, have more adventures and see my family more. And hopefully keep a record of it all here.

1 comment:

Moma said...

So glad you are back! I've missed your writings... Mom