Currently, There are No Jobs.

That's what the Subfinder system says. It's the thing I go through to get sub jobs so I can have money to pay my student loan payment. More often than not, I hear that sentence above.

As a sub, I am required to work 5 days a month to remain active and able to sign up for jobs. My goal is to work 10 days. That's only 2.5 days a week and you would think it'd be easy to do, but no. Last month, I worked 5.5 days and that was hard to do. I had to go to a school I never go to because it's the most urban of the schools around here. They have lockdowns there regularly due to gang activity and fights. Nothing happened when I was there, but still, it was a stressful day.

Speaking of stress, I am constantly worried about making my student loan payments. I never know if there will be sub jobs from one day to the next. My student loan payments each month are figured based on a loan consolidation that I did a while back. My husband has discovered a new way to consolidate through my loan provider so I am filling out the paperwork for that if I do stay home tomorrow. It's based on income and I would basically be paying $200 a month. That equals out to about 4 days of subbing a month and much less worry.

One problem with subbing is that I already work 35-40 hours at my full-time job so, even though I know I need to work about 3 days a week, I don't want to. I just got home from work about 9 p.m. tonight and that's about average. About once a week, I work later one night. That makes me really not want to get up at 6 a.m. to go to a school.

This is also the last year that Quincy will be home during the day. Next year, he'll be at Kindergarten. *sigh* My baby! in school! every day! I have set a goal to find a job during school hours only by the time he starts next August. Considering how many times I have sent out my resume recently, I am hoping that is doable. There seem to be a lot of jobs around here, but there are also tons of applicants for every position. I try to apply for the ones that say minimal applicants.

Well, it's time to go check Subfinder again.

Biting My Nails

I am pretty much shaking with anxiety tonight. Two things are making me that way.

One--Quincy threw-up late last night, but has been fine since. It was pretty traumatic for me to get woken up out of a deep sleep by the mess I had to clean up. I'm sure it was hard on him, too. He stayed up for 2 hours, watched TV, and then went right back to sleep. Too good to be true, right? I thought so, too. Then, he played all day and was full of energy. Now, he's asleep. He fell asleep around 8:15, just like last night. I'm hoping we don't have a repeat.

Two--I am subbing tomorrow. Normally, that wouldn't make me nervous. Sometimes I am little apprehensive if it's a subject I've never subbed for before, but that's about the only time I get like that. I was a little worried about Friday when I subbed for a Driver's Ed teacher. Turned out, I had no reason to worry. It was a fun day. Tomorrow, though, I am subbing for a Boy's Wellness teacher. Now, that just means gym, but still, I have no idea what I'll be doing, but I bet I won't be showing a movie all day. I'm not even sure I'll be in a class room!

I'm going to try to relax because I have to get up really early tomorrow. I'll probably post about how the day went later this week.

Plain and Simple Neglect

The last few weeks flew by. First, there was Fall Break, when I planned on getting lots of stuff done, but did nothing. Then, there was last week, which was a repeat of Fall Break. So far, I've managed to get the grocery shopping done this week, but that's about all. In my defense, I came down with some mystery illness last Friday morning and still don't feel totally like myself.

Anyway, that's why I haven't written anything. Well, that, and I spend too much time on Facebook.

I am going through some kind of what-if phase. Like what if I'd done this instead of that when I was 25 and so on. It is pointless, because I always arrive at the conclusion that, yes, life would be different, but I wouldn't have Quincy. I might have other children, but none would be him.

Then, there's the what if something happened and it was just me and Quincy tomorrow. Would I be able to support us with my current jobs? (No. We would have to move.) Where? Who would keep him while I worked? I get all tense thinking that way. I should stop.

Maybe this is some sort of midlife crisis kind of thing or maybe it's just my own neurosis coming through. I don't know.

I do know that a topic of argument around here has been how much my husband has to work to pay bills and how much he hates that. If I made more money, I wouldn't have to listen to it every month. That's probably a huge source of these scenarios that my mind creates.

I spent far too much time daydreaming about change and far too little making any.

Tidbits

I don't have any really unified thoughts that would make a good long post so this will be a bulleted one.

• These last few weeks have been fairly uneventful as far as subbing goes. I've subbed for the same teacher several times so his kids are used to me and I know their names. Nothing really exciting there.

• Tuesday night, there was a job at the high school that is closest to my house so I signed up for it as soon as I saw it. I must not have looked too closely because I went there Wednesday morning thinking it was just a job for that day. When I got there, there was a note on the desk thanking me for subbing for the next three days! I called home and had my husband check and, yes, it was for three days. Ooops. I am still tired from that.

• Speaking of my husband, we are stuck in the discussion about whether to try for another baby. I finally decided that I'd like to, but he thinks that another baby would "ruin his life." So if I were to get pregnant, he would hate me. It's a circular fight and one that I hope we resolve soon.

• Quincy went on his first trip out of town with my husband but without me this weekend. He went to Oak Ridge, TN to visit his grandmother and great-grandparents. I think he had a good time. When he was ready to come home on Saturday afternoon, he went out and got in the car without saying bye. He must have thought that it was time to go.

• While he was in Oak Ridge, he got up very early, like 6 a.m. early. This morning, he woke up around 6:45. I am hoping this doesn't happen again tomorrow.

• I am currently obsessed with The Gourds. I have listened to their version of "Gin and Juice" at least three times today. It's a bluegrass version done with some mandolin. I love it!
  

In Memoriam

I've been reading Tennyson and various other poets thinking about the recent death of my old friend Kris Bristow and the death two years ago of Craig Duvelius. Kris died from a sudden illness and Craig from an accidental overdose. I was reading Howl earlier and was struck by the first few lines of one of my favorite poems of all time.

Excerpt from Howl by Allen Ginsberg:

For Carl Solomon

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking
for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking
in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating
across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw
Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the
scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing
obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
......
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in
the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating
all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns,
wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of 
teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and
tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan
rantings and kind king light of mind,
......
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar
to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills of Empire
State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories
and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails
and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and
nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the
pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of
ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

_______________________________________________________________________________

As you know, the poem itself is very long. Certain lines just strike me today.
Like these:

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a
vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to
Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & 
loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, &
now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each
other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul
illuminated its hair for a second,

________________________________________________________________________________
Obviously, the Denver lines are about Neal Cassady. He's one of my favorites also.