So how is the job search going?

It has been 12 weeks and I have submitted 42 job applications and had zero interviews.

I am never going to find a job.

I am never going to find a job and we will lose our house.

I am never going to find a job and we will lose our house and end up living in our car.

I am never going to find a job and we will lose our house and end up living in a cardboard box because we had to sell the car.

I am never going to find a job and we will lose our house and end up living in a cardboard box and I will never see my grandson again because my daughter is already pissed because they were renting our house while I was working out of state and when my contract ended suddenly because the new CEO cancelled the project we had to unexpectedly move back into the house with my daughter and her husband and my new grandson and try to cope with two households’ worth of furniture and boxes and stuff and the garage is full and the basement is overflowing and my husband is sleeping in a little room off the basement and I am sleeping in the ½ floor bedroom in the attic with my cat who can’t understand why she can’t leave the attic because she is a cat and can’t concede the fact that my daughter’s two dogs would eat her.

And my daughter doesn’t think they should have to pay any rent at all now because after all they have lost their privacy and she can’t see the decorations on her dining room hutch because our baker’s rack is sitting in front of it holding the (very) few kitchen items that we have unpacked even though the amount of rent they are paying is only half the amount of the mortgage plus utilities and we were covering the other half and still are covering it with the pittance that is unemployment. Which means that most other expenses like groceries and prescriptions have to be paid with a credit card. But two of her Millennial friends have told her that she shouldn’t be paying rent now so she knows she is not crazy for thinking that she shouldn’t have to pay any more rent so by making her continue to pay rent we are forcing her to ‘keep us in the manner to which we have become accustomed”. So my husband reduced their rent by twenty percent and she said, “Big whoop.” She says we should be using our savings so they don’t have to pay rent.

Savings? What savings? Oh, you mean the savings that have disappeared while waiting four years for my husband’s Social Security Disability hearing? Four years that he hasn’t been able to work since his surgeon pronounced him “no longer able to perform meaningful labor”? Four years waiting because our Social Security system is so messed up that the court cases are backlogged four years or more?

Savings that were finished off when I first moved out of state to take the contract I got after I was laid off of the job I had for twenty-eight years? Savings that were already gone when, four months into a six month contract, I was told that they liked me so much they weren’t going to wait for the six months to end, they already knew they wanted me through 2009 and I could look for permanent housing and move my husband up there with me? But that was okay because working the rest of the year would pay off the credit card and put a nice little nest egg back into the savings? Which didn’t happen because my “all the way through 2009” contract was cancelled at the end of February so the move back home had to also be put on a credit card? Along with just about every else now?

When everything else went sideways, I always had my job. When my twenty-four year marriage spent the last twelve of those years dying a slow and painful death, I had my job. When my daughter blamed me for the divorce, I had my job. While I was ‘finding myself’ after the divorce, I always knew ‘who’ I was at my job. When my next husband had to quit his job due to a medical disability, that was unexpected, but I still had my job. When I was laid off the first time with a thirty day notice, from the job I had been in for twenty-eight years, in two weeks I had another job waiting for me – my last day at the old job was on a Friday and my first day at my new job was the next Monday.

This time it was unexpected – that Friday morning I had a job, that Friday afternoon they told me the project was cancelled and they had no other work for me. I moved home the next week and immediately developed bronchitis that lasted three weeks. The depression has lasted longer. Even though my husband is trying to run interference, my daughter still insists on taking her pissy mood out on me by crying and yelling at me and then not talking to me. We don’t unpack anything because, after all, tomorrow I may get another job in another state and we will move again and leave the house to her, and leave behind my new grandson, and I don’t want to move to another state. I want to stay home. And have a job. And see my grandson. Four people are depending on me to do that. Because my husband can’t work. And my recently graduated son-in-law also got laid off a few months ago which is a mixed blessing because he has been able to stay home and take care of my grandson but now his unemployment has expired and anyway any entry level job he could find in his field would only pay enough to pay for child care so what’s the use? So he stays home with the baby. And doesn’t speak to me either.

So out of four adults currently living in this house, only one of them is working. Work they get paid for, that is. And only one of them is talking to me. When we manage to get together, that is. And in the mean time I polish my resume and submit it and wait for the phone call that will never come. And try to remember what day of the week it is. Because something seems broken. And I don't know how to fix it.