the smack factor

Man.  Man man man.  I could get all wah wah wah depressed about 2007, but in reflection dressed in a positive little monkey suit, I gotta say, it may have been the most eventful year of my entire life.  Let’s make a cute little bulleted list of the year, shall we?  I’d like to start with December, because that’s when the beginning of the end (as far as I’m concerned, asscheeks)

• December: My fabulous work team and I, after much micromanagement and absolutely arbitrary editing, re-editing, and manipulation delivered our program annual report.  It was awesome, besides a lot of the writing, which got edited down and up into completely unintelligible, often rambling, and vomitacious managerial speak.  Okk, sorry, phew, it was good.  It was well received – people were really impressed.  I worked my ass off on it, and got no support, no compliments, nothing positive at all in terms of reinforcement from my “boss”.  Everyone else?  Totally positive.  Regardless, this was about the time I started getting an inkling that this was not going to work out.  I was beginning to see that my manager had multiple personalities brought on by the fact that she was born as a cold blob of cat worms.
• January:  It was probably around this time that I was planning my retreat.  I was looking forward to turning 30, which in my mind was perfection.  And I wanted my year of perfection to begin with new job prospects.  Due to the fact that my manager was/is constantly involved in a personality conflict with her self, I couldn’t decide if it was good where I was or not.  challenging work, great team, exposure to super nerds.. so much was good.  Then she started emailing me monster.com postings.   For outside the company.  Yeah.
• February: I turned 30.  I think with the onset of my perfection came… my downfall.  It all started when my beautiful badass Betsey Johnson bag containing my cellphone, wallet, two cameras (including Factor’s work camera), and my, well, existence was stolen from the sunburnt cow on the LES.  They were assbags, don’t go there.  My friend had her bag stolen as well, which contained her plane tickets to california – she was leaving the next day.  i had moved to the West Village, so that was a good thing (I think that was in November…), where I pretty much cried, felt like crap, mooned over my bag.  Ug.
• March: Someone close to me informs me I’m going to be part of a resource action in my group.  the exact words were “if you haven’t started looking, in a couple of months it’s not going to be your choice.”  This didn’t scare me.   I thought it was a great piece of news.  I knew if i kept working my ass off and stuck it out, I would get a severance package, time off this summer, and the great opportunity to pursue what i really really wanted to do.  Whatever that is.  In the back of my mind I knew I had major weddings looming, too.
• April:  What could really throw a wrench into things now? What could possibly add to the stress?   Oh, I don’t know – maybe my West village roomie telling me they’re jacking the rent up.  Typical, yes, but here I was, living in a tiny apartment with two other girls.  One who I loved, one who I nicknamed “shitshadows”.  My room was smaller than a fetal pig’s nipple and yet, here i was – about to pay almost 1200 for this tiny tiny space.  The rub, my friends, was that there was no way I could afford to find a new roommate AND, I didn’t want to.  Live with ANOTHER stranger?  Hell no.  The obvious solution?  Ask Factor the scariest question on earth.  While I chewed on that, I got the official word that I would be canned from the big blue hole.  If you’re familiar with nyc renting, you have to have a job to rent.  OK, let me rephrase that, if you’re having two people on a lease, you have to make like 4 times the rent a week or some exaggerated crap like that.  It would have to be the two of us because neither of us made that much alone.  however, come a month, I wouldn’t be making anything.  Thus, i had to get some balls and ask factor… and the unfortunately put the heavy hooha on him because of my stupid situation.
  Oh yeah, wedding #1 in Maryland
• May: Factor crapped his pants.
• May continued:After much pants crapping, the move was a reality.  Now we were buried in craigslist and brokers, which coincidentally feels like drowning in a septic tank.  Tastes that way too.  I think I woke up every morning with that taste in my mouth.  I think it’s called fear.  We find a place.  But we can’t move in until June 10.  OK, great.  Factor tells Danny, who has decided to move to Brooklyn, and then I tell my roommate.  Which means I have to move into the tiny mouse turd coffin that was Factor’s old place on E65th street.  It was only supposed to be for a month.  We plan to go to my sister’s high school graduation in Ohio, come back, and then move the next day.  Really, we did.  Then she was going to come down and visit for a week, staying at our new, large, accommodating east village happy home.   Until the douchebags we rent from told us that we couldn’t get in until July 1.  they tell us this a week before June 10.  no wait, maybe 10 days or something.  It was close.   Are you stressed out reading this?  I’m stressed out writing it.  I move to E65th.  Realize this is the second time in 6 months that i’ve moved.  2 moves in 6 months.  we go to Ohio.  We come back.  I live out of boxes.  but i get to leave my shit everywhere, which is great.  And Gail was my neighbor!
• [insert job separation and all the emotions that go with that, like filing for unemployment, being initially really excited about summer and weddings, and all that jazz... oh and a patent that paid out and bought a new camera!]
• June: My sister comes to visit in the mouse turd coffin.  Fun, but probably not as I had imagined.  In fact, it wasn’t.  I didn’t want her to see my non real life in citysuburbia, I wanted her to experience our east village place.  i was in a funk the whole time, but hiding it.  She leaves and then we get the word that we can’t move until July 15.  Which means we have to pay rent in two places.  Luckily because Factor is a people person, he worked out some sort of deal where it wasn’t as painful.
• July move in.  Live here for a week. Immediately go to Carolina Beach for a week
• August/September: come back from the beach, have two weeks here, and go to Mississippi for a wedding.  Come back from that wedding (which garnered new friends and at least for me, a closer relationship with the bride and groom. Iuka rocks!) and it’s onto bachelor parties for factor, job huntingish for me, and eventually bachelorette party for me to attend too!
• Now, in between here, I’m fixing my resume up to where I’m happy with it.  And also eventually happy enough not to ask anyone to look at it anymore because frankly, people get really bloody bossy about that stuff and I was over it.
• October: No weekend at home.  at all.  It went like this: Connecticut, then Drew Maria wedding (yay!), then she-factor’s engagement party, and then off to:
• November 4th weekend: pressure’s on, wedding in Puerto Rico

Now… somewhere in October things got fishy with cash and jobs.  And you can check yourself when the interviewing began.

Obviously, I got a little stressed just writing all of this.  And I really don’t feel like going into detail where I am emotionally and mentally right now, but suffice it to say I want nothing more than the holidays to be over.   I know that I have life and love, but right now, considering the state of my job and unstable future I don’t have this grand desire to smile and celebrate.

Considering that 2007 was supposed to be my year… it was.  It was my year.  My year for listening and experiencing, for opening my mind to paths I hadn’t really considered for myself before.   I’d probably be tied up somewhere in a rubber room with all kinds of tubes hanging off of me if it weren’t for my beautiful friends.  So unique and special in their own ways, but the thread that connects them all is their big fat hearts full of love.  Same with my family.   The love is unquestionably there and mostly unconditional.

I’m looking forward to a quiet 2008.  Two fun weddings and then naps only.