Hectic Unemployment September 15 - October 4, 2003 on remodeling, prams, cribs, job search training and a face that is not mine

As you know, since the beginning of August, I "lazy around at home". Still, everything is relative. Little Hippo keeps usurping more and more of my internal life space -- at night we fight for the size of my bladder, which is a struggle I usually lose around three in the morning. Once I excavate myself from my bed and stumble toward our bathroom, our little Hippo gets all excited that finally I am up to some fun and the following hour he plays football with me. When he finally falls asleep again, I'm awaken so much that I won't fall asleep. Tiredness takes over around six a.m. -- which makes me crawl out of my bed by nine with a feeling of having had my head repeatedly smacked with something heavy. You'll certainly understand that under these circumstances, my two hour lunch-time nap becomes a matter of life and death. Yet I don't even always get to it.

When I am not sleeping, I keep on visiting doctors. I have become a local walking oddity at the clinic -- both little Hippo and I continue enjoying good health, we grow and perform actually quite by the book -- except that approximately once a week, I tend to bleed, without an obvious cause. This has made us, of course, a very closely watched object -- meaning that until birth I will now, besides regular biweekly sessions, have to endure a monitoring test every week, and an ultrasound examination each fortnight.

If I sum it up, there won't be that many test after all -- Christmas is practically upon us. Hence we begun to look around for basic essentials. The hospital won't actually release a baby until we demonstrate that we own a child seat for our car. This makes us consider a stroller (pram), and presents us with a question: should we buy these two things separately, or should we prefer a so-called "travel system". Such combo consists of three parts. First comes an actual stroller/pram. Second is a base for a car seat -- a plastic affair that gets fastened in a car. Last piece is the car seat, which clicks onto the base -- or onto the pram, including a sleeping baby (not included in the purchase). Car seats also fit onto most shopping carts and many special child chairs in restaurants. So far it seems like a good idea -- the last thing I would dare is waking up a badly spirited newborn just because we have to get through checkout and drive home. I hope that a travel system would help me smuggle little Hippo through many a lunch with Sid, a boring shopping errand, or a visit at the doctor's, without the need to frustrate our offspring by ceaseless manipulation. (We shall soon check with reality).

If something does not match your own experience, you may be right -- classic deep prams are not common in California. There is a practical reason for it -- most mothers must commute (to doctor's, shopping, child care center etc.) in their cars. Hence the most important thing about a stroller becomes its ability to fit into the car's trunk, and to be folded, loaded, unloaded and unfolded, single-handed, even by the most technically challenged woman, with a fully developed motherhood dementia syndrome, accompanied by a squealing junior in the back seat. Of course, my gaze longingly wandered towards sports versions of the prams, but my first attempt to fold and lift one particularly massive monster, made me quickly abandon such foolish desires, especially when I imagined myself rolling mud-covered wheels all over my stomach (a necessary maneuver with the model). I expect that we will eventually embrace off-road child equipment, for that would allow me outing my Big Hippo together with Little Hippo, but I shall leave things running their course. What is important now, we have selected a basic stroller with a child seat, only buying it, remains.

Our situation with child beds (cribs) turned somewhat worse. I must be an ungrateful and cheap mother, but we really did not even think of letting some wonderful supplier custom-make a whole "charming kid's room" with topically matching surfaces, from canopy over a crib, through wallpaper and draperies, all the way to upholstery on a changing table. Instead we simply looked for a bed, one which minimally promises to survive joggling with its bars, chewing on its sideboards, and all other life signs of a healthy youngster. Further, we wished it to include a "little detail" - a side that can be dropped/lowered down. I don't reckon an alternative method how to change a soiled mattress cover if the said mattress is recessed about three feet within the bed's stiff rails (does a manufacturer expect that a typical mother has her arms extended to her knees after carrying the child?!?). Not to mention that I already see myself fully bending over the rail into the bed to reach for (or deposit) a twenty or thirty pound toddler. Or should I teach my child a nightly ritual involving an aimed toss?
Then, most beds currently sold in stores resemble and actually get marketed as "sleds" - it means that their headboards are artfully curved outwards, making these horrible objects only possible to place in the middle of a (well dimensioned) room. I could not possibly want to inhibit any early rock-climbing attempts by our successor, but if one values a bed for its ability to contain the little person within, one should not relax in offering such an easy escape route that a curved headboard certainly is.

Finally, new beds are comparatively expensive, and we had spent a long time wondering which one to pick. In the end, opportunity decided it for us. An e-mail came from a friend of mine who has a friend who had so far unsuccessfully tried to sell an almost new child bed with a mattress, for about one third the price of a new one. We did not waste any time, and now our little Hippo shall have a beautiful cot; the crib is really like new and almost entirely fits our needs. And we got a free bedding on top of it.

	We begin with remodeling in the first phase, flower boxes were removed. Please notice how relatively small is the second window - to our bedroom.

Nesting aside, I have much more stuff to do. Sid's kind employer surprised us with a bonus, so we hastily started some long-needed remodeling of our home. Our bedroom has a relatively tiny window. Judging by how difficult it is to vent it, I would say that it is insufficient. We would also like to have a door going directly onto our back yard, mostly to provide a short route from the pool to our master bathroom (thus avoiding chlorinated water stains over many hardwood floors across the house). We selected a patio door, which dramatically increased the number of necessary modifications. Under the existing window, the original external part of our air conditioner was located (an ugly, loud when operated, metallic block the size of a family fridge) - and all its electrical and circulatory installations. We had to arrange for relocation of this monster. The beast had been (ineffectively) hiding among three large flower boxes. Nothing against flower boxes (at least moles and gophers don't eat all your seedlings), but they took all the remaining space besides our pool - one cannot lounge inside a flower box, nor can one really leave a baby roaming in it. Thus we chose to remove them and replace them with a plain stripe of lawn, which also means arranging for some irrigation (it does not rain here eight months straight of a year).

	Try to imagine a stretch of grassy lawn in place of the spread dirt here...

Works have meanwhile advanced to moving the A/C and leveling the yard. Remaining areas of our back yard and driveway are currently littered with huge piles of thrash (rotten planks from flower boxes, some dirt, gutted irrigation tubes and A/C piping, disassembled fan, broken up cooler, various bags and boxes and other "nice" things. I just hope that it all is done before little Hippo gets born. Imagining how while nursing a newborn I evacuate our bedroom for time has come to demolish the walls, I shiver.

Being unemployed, I had to fill out and send away some forms. Fortunately many such affairs can be dealt with over the networks from the comfort of one's home. Alas, once you submit a form to a bureaucrat, you shall promptly receive TWO new forms, which too are to be filled out and mailed back without delay, followed by appropriate official response according to the same logic, etc. ad nauseam.
Insurance coverage is limited to six months, then one stops being unemployed from an official point of view (aha! this way they keep low unemployment levels!) and one does not receive any more aid. I still must say that the unemployed get quite some support here. Besides the fact that you don't really need to queue in lines at some office somewhere, instead you may communicate with the administration via e-mail, or phone, and write them letters or submit electronic forms online, it has caught my fancy that the California Employment Development Department lets you use their internet, faxes, phones, copy machines and library facilities, all FOR FREE -- as long as you utilize them in your attempts to find a new job. An unemployed person is also required to attend a training, which should help him/her while seeking new position.

I have just been to the first phase of such training. It surely is an educational experience. I had expected that due to an omnipresent economic downturn I would find myself among varied cross-section of the society, yet it seems that majority of jobless recruit from ranks of middle-aged Mexicans with poor knowledge of English. The most colorful was a person I named, after her vivid poncho, an Indian grandmother. Grandma wrote her notes using a child's fluorescent pen (in a room darkened for projector presentation this caused quite some light effects), and she spontaneously and very loudly exclaimed in horror, when she learned that she was required to register over the internet, saying she knew nothing "about them damned computers". I am not quite sure how helpful these training sessions may be for this kind of jobless people. We can learn how to write a good resume, or how to cope with stress during an interview, which may take place, let us say, during a business luncheon...

In whatever free time I may have remaining, I "entertain" myself by haggling with American Express. In October, my credit card expires. The bank has promptly sent me a new one; they certainly won't waste any opportunity for me to sink into debt, right? I pulled the card out of its envelope to activate it, and I almost received a stroke. The rear side of the card doubles as my Costco pass (it's a warehouse club store we like to shop), and they require picture ID. There was a picture alright. I do not think I am being vain, but this rather well tanned gentleman, sporting a grin of a seasoned criminal, did not look like me at all.

	Beware... pregnancy can change your looks dramatically!

Armed with patience, I dialed my first number. Having endured half hour of automated forwarding and holding, a lady of AMEX on the other end told me I had to call another department. In the other department, they told me that it cannot be their fault, for Costco gives them pictures and I may thus call Costco. Costco told me that their database got probably mixed up and there is nothing they can do except that I must drive to their nearest warehouse and have my picture taken again. I went to the store, where a tiny Hispanic woman with heavily made up eyes and propped-up breast snapped at me to go away and call their headquarters. I found no other recourse than to raise my voice at her and declare that I had just wasted half of my day on line with their dispatchers, who told me to go to HER and have HER take my picture and arrange for a fix, and if she was not capable to work her job, she was to summon her supervisor at once. I eventually reached the manager, got my picture, an apology and reassurance that if I request a new card from AMEX in two or three days, everything would be all right.

A new card came during next week. The same, ugly man's picture is still there. I feel slightly like a rat in a training maze, which makes me think of hardening up a bit. Or I may unleash my secret weapon - the Hippo. His unforgiving size does not allow being taken lightly, so I hope he may cut though this credit card mess.

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.