January 27th

IT'S POSSIBLE THAT EVERYTHING WON'T BE OKAY

I've been doing all I can to keep a positive attitude. I keep telling myself that this will work out, that things will be okay. I won't end up homeless or hungry. I keep saying it. I try to believe it. But when I read in the news that the extension of unemployment benefits was left out of the plans for stimulating the economy I finally broke down and cried.

Do the powers that be really think that people like me would rather sit on our asses and get a fraction of our former pay? Do they believe that we've committed some horrid crime for which we should be punished? Most of the unemployed mortgage workers had nothing to do with the questionable loans. We were the worker bees, just doing our jobs and trusting that the industry we had given decades of service to wouldn't abandon us.

Maybe they think I should swallow my pride and take a job that pays less than I'm used to earning. For one thing, a full time minimum wage job wouldn't even cover my mortgage payment, much less food, utilities, and transportation costs to get to work. And, I HAVE applied for less lucrative jobs. I haven't had a single response to any of the resumes I've sent out. I even tried putting something in my cover letter to address the employers' possible concerns about hiring a laid off mortgage worker. Still nothing. Nada. Zip. The buzz out there is that resumes from mortgage people are going straight into the trash, not even getting looked at. But, heaven forbid that the gummit should extend unemployment until we have some reasonable chance to find jobs.

This is rather amusing though. I sent emails to all of the presidential contenders, my representatives and the leaders of both houses of Congress asking them to support extending unemployment. Of course I haven't received responses from most of them. Except for this little gem that I received today:

Dear Marilyn,
Thank you for your interest in employment with Romney for President, Inc. Please submit your resume for consideration for full-time positions via our website at http://jobs.mittromney.com/. Thank you for your support!
Sincerely,
Team Mitt

This proves one thing. Nobody reads letters written to public officials. They must have an automatic system that picks out keywords and sends the "appropriate" response. In this case the response had nothing to do with my message.

And then today FlufferNutter chewed up the power cord to my expensive cordless phone with the extra handsets, (for some reason the only phone jack in this house is in the computer room and I can't hear the phone ring in the kitchen) which I really can't afford to replace. I cried again.

SO, LET'S AT LEAST LAUGH AT MORONS FOR A FEW MINUTES

Heard on Good Morning America: “A common bound...” Is that when a whole bunch of people leap forward at the same time?

From an obituary: (He) was a native of San Diego for 48 years. The other years he was born somewhere else?

From the homepage of an email list: ** This group does NOT!!! except Mass Spam Forwarded Email post from people who mass post about animals all over the US which they personally have no first hand knowledge about. If you do so you will be removed from the group.Thank you **

And finally, there was a solicitation going around for submissions of stories and photographs for an upcoming book about dogs. I checked out submission requirements about photographs and saw this:
"JPEG, 300 dpi (hi-res) image, sized to 5.5 inches in width. Color or black and white. Verticle orientation is preferred, but horizontals will be reviewed." I'll check back with you after you hire a proofreader, ok?