chuck roast

I was sitting by the pool pretending to read a book about Jewish boys and baseball when my phone buzzed to announce a new email message had arrived. Today was the day I had decided to step away from the computer and try to enjoy retirement – er, unemployment -  because, while almost three weeks of pounding the F5  key has not brought me any nearer to a job, it has brought me much closer to a nervous breakdown. If I can’t sleep past 7AM and I can’t fall asleep before 11PM, that’s a whole lot of hours filled with refreshing monster.com and freaking out. It was time I forced myself away from it. So, poolside, a new email and I very nearly ignored it on principle until I thought, “What do you love more than email?”

Almost nothing.

So. The message was from my old co-worker/ranchin’ buddy, and the subject line, “Too long…” made my heart grow at least a half dozen sizes from the kind of love that only comes with the sure knowledge that someone misses you. Terribly. Large hearted, I clicked it open to read:

Chuck roast
Chuck roast
We want a
Blog post!

I choked on a laugh (or was it my heart shrinking back to its normal size? So hard to tell) and decided that yes, four days IS too long between blog posts when it’s not like I have a job or anything to distract me. So, here it goes.

One thing is for certain: I am not an alcoholic. I haven’t had a drink in what, months now? But last night, after updating the Unemployed Again spreadsheet with the coming week’s expenditures and watching my savings deplete further, I found myself standing in front of the open freezer, spoon plunged into a carton of vanilla ice cream, the phone smooshed uncomfortably between my ear and shoulder. I was out of control.

“I’m eating my feelings,” I told Ari, on support stand-by in New York. “I’m going through my fridge and I’m eating everything in sight.”

“Knowing you, it’s not even anything good.”

I nodded into the phone. No sugar added ice cream. Baby carrots. Low fat string cheese. It was going to take hours to eat away all of my inadequacies. Damn. Knowing I was beat, I tossed the spoon into the sink and slammed the freezer.

“Lady, I have got to go to bed before I eat myself out of house and home and the jeans that have only just started fitting again.”

We exchanged laughs and I-love-you’s and I bolted to the bathroom to brush my teeth before any of those foody feelings came back. See, if all goes well, there should be something resembling a job offer coming my way on Friday. If all goes well. Typing those words makes my stomach cramp. I am trying so hard not to want it – to need it – as badly as I do, telling myself that if it doesn’t come, well then, we will figure out what to do next. I’m not an exceptionally perky person (had I crossed the line into annoying perki-dom, Ari would have ditched me ages ago), so it’s a fine, difficult balance I’m striking between being hopeful and being realistic.

But you know, suddenly, I’m thinking much less about that crazy business than I am about how I can get my hands on some freakin’ roast, so perhaps today’s Day Away was a success after all.