So I have spent the last two weeks applying for one journalism job (in broadcast!) and two secretarial — excuse me, administrative assistant — positions; sleeping until late morning, sometimes afternoon; filing for unemployment; chatting with Bill on AIM and storming facebook walls; doing half-assed workouts at the YMCA; accepting dates from a guy who wants a relationship with me even though I have no interest; not conserving money like I should be; substituting a job I truly loved for booze and boys; and going to the local coffee shop to read the newspaper I used to write for — while secretly being jealous of my friends' bylines.
But all that self-indulgent pity aside, I actually did something tonight for the first time in weeks. A close friend called as she was driving back to Junction City, and asked if I would help her move her and her husband's bed to their basement. He couldn't help because he recently submitted to his first round of chemotherapy for terminal colon and lymph node cancer. Both of them are 28 years old and found out about the cancer on her birthday. Since then they've spent a considerable amount of time in the hospital, and she's had to spent way too much time dealing with insensitive co-workers — but that's not the point. People will always suck. But not her. She has done anything and everything for him, one of the most unselfishly devoted people I've ever known.
So back to tonight. We successfully moved the mattress to the cool basement in front of the big screen TV. We were not so lucky with the damn box spring. No matter what, that thing would not budge past the seventh stair. We removed a shelf and took off a door. Nothing. She tugged until it was tightly, tightly wedged between drywall and the stairs.
"Oh ... come ... on! Life can't be this hard!" she said.
We never got it down the stairs. Even after her husband, who successfully got a behemoth pool table to the basement one drunken night, stood at the top of the stairs clutching his chemotherapy fanny pack and offered hints. In the end it was decided that they would search for two small box springs and make do with just the mattress
for the night. So she and I put sheets on the mattress and adjusted the big screen so they could watch it from thier bed.
I wish I knew more people like my two friends because then I wouldn't sit around bitching and moaning so much because unemployment sucks. Posing as someone else and posting to blogs sucks. Your friends questioning whether it's really you sucks. Hardened nuked pizza crust sucks. Love, or lack of it, sucks. Being overworked sucks. BUT, life is hard and at least you don't have to move a queen-size box spring to
your basement. And if you do, I'm around.
You can be mad at me for devaluing your hardship ... NOW!
AKS
