I'm laid off.
I was given my walking papers just over a week ago.

The job search begins.
My work has been graceful enough to allow me to stay there until March 1st. This means I get medical until March 31st. Thank you for that, NC Machinery. I'll be taking advantage -- getting massages and acupuncture every week until the 31st. I have to make a dental appointment or two as well.
Yesterday I spent the evening at work. My shift ended at 5pm, I was home at about 10pm. I stayed at work re-doing my resume and applying for one job. It was an information intake officer, or something like that. I have no idea what it was or what the job entails, but I'm mostly qualified, based on their criteria.

There was an essay portion to the application, and I had to answer each question with a narrative about why I may be capable with a customer or someshit. This, and the fact that USAjobs.gov requires you to use their version of a resume and type up all your info again, took all evening. So now that they have my information, the government is going to be receiving applications for all kinds of shit from me. That took forever to do and it isn't worth it for just one job.

We'll see what happens. I know of people taking weeks to get their unemployment benefits. I hope I can get mine.

I'm worried I won't land a job soon.

"My guilt is all I have left. If I lose it, I have stood for nothing, done nothing."

Maybe Ironweed is the darkest book I've ever read. I'm thinking that maybe it's also the reason it took me so long to read. I wound up reading a couple of graphic novels and even picking up a second book while reading it.

That doesn't mean its a bad book at all-- just that I found it difficult. I was embarrassed to find that one of the reasons I found Ironweed so hard to read was the length of the sentences. They'd go on and on, for three, four, five lines, and I, with the attention span of a beagle puppy, had a hard time following along.

I liked Ironweed. It moved me. I have every intention of reading at least one more of Kennedy's Albany Cycle books.

Ironweed revolves around Francis Phelan and his guilt. Francis is a (to use the term so often used in the book) bum who left his family about 20 years earlier when he dropped and killed his 13 day-old baby, Gerald. The book follows him and a couple of other bums on their quest to not freeze to death in the frozen post-depression Albany winter of 1938. The book also tells of his finally, after so many years, confronting his own sense of guilt for the death of his son and so many others encountered while on the bum. I don't know. Maybe frozen Albany is supposed to double for purgutory. It doesn't matter. When his dead baby's ghost, in a Six Feet Under-type speech, tells him that after he has redeemed himself he will "stop trying to die because of me," I felt it like a gut-punch.

When I hear that a book or a movie is "about redemption" I usually cringe at the sound. But I really, really liked this book. This is a book about doing really awful shit and almost destroying yourself over it.

I took one picture at last night's Juana Molina show, and this is it.

It was such a nice experience being at an uppity joint like The Triple Door and watching someone as amazingly talented as her. Julie, who I met at the show and who arrived first, saved us what I felt could have been the best seat in the house.

I was disappointed to learn that Juana Molina was touring with a band this time, for the first time. I hadn't seen her on any of her earlier tours. The band didn't really hinder her in any way, but her (for lack of a better word) jam tendencies really seemed to show themselves when she was on the stage by herself. The musicians in the band she's traveling with-- a bassist and a drummer-- were phenomenal. Brilliant. But they were her backing band, and she said from the stage that they'd only known each other for four days. So of course they weren't going to be prepared to have her go off on tangents like the one she went on when she was up there alone. The shit she did while she was by herself-- I described it to Beth as being a "vocal kaleidoscope." I still haven't found a better way to describe what I heard her do.

I don't mean to complain, though. I couldn't have been happier with the evening. Five or six of us, mostly meeting for the first time (via Yelp), sat down to dinner and a phenomenal show. Everyone was perfectly friendly and just the right amount of chatty. I had a lot of fun. What a great night.

Edited to add: I can't believe I haven't yet mentioned Laura Gibson. It was such a pleasure to watch her, up there, by herself. She played her guitar and stomped her foot and sang her haunting and lovely songs. She was funny and loveable and just... perfect. I wound up buying her stuff.