Adventures in Unemployment

I apologize in advance. This rant is so long, it took 2 days to write. When it is time to look back on my life - whether it is next week while I've cornered someone new and unsuspecting at a party, when I write my memoir, or when it is finally my time to pass - please know I see my firing from Independent Health as my villain origin story. Oh. Sorry. I was "laid off." Whatever helps Dr. Cropp sleep better at night. When I started at GEICO in 2017, Independent Health just so happened to be the cheaper of the 2 health insurance plans that were offered to us in the Buffalo office. Check. Done. When my husband and I got married in 2019, he came onto my plan because whatever the price difference, it was basically a wash because I had a better plan. This didn't really have anything to do with Independent Health, since that is also who my husband had, but just that GEICO had more employees than his company, so they could negotiate a better price. Each year, I would look at t...

It is 12:25pm, and my grand to-do list for the day is shot. I’m throwing myself a little pity party, which seems appropriate because I just fell down the stairs. It sounds dramatic when I say it like that. I guess what really happened is that I tried to get to the bottom faster by skipping the last step. In my defense, the last step was hidden by the blankets I had just thrown down the stairs, so I was sabotaged. Sabotaged by my own actions. This is obnoxious for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it hurts. It hurt right away, and my colorful language definitely surprised the dogs. I hobbled myself to the couch where Poppy promptly licked my face while I was trying to catch my breath and decide if I was dying. She only gave up when she heard Amazon Man. I have since stood up to go do the load of laundry I was carrying when I was viciously derailed by my blankets, and my first step was like “oh, I’m being a baby. This isn’t so bad.” By the time I got to the washer, I was holding o...

On this, the holiest day of the year for us (recovering) Catholics, a miracle did actually occur. We ate our meal on time at Grandma's house. We've had several holidays together at this point in my blog journey, so I'm sure I've talked about this, but maybe my inclination towards project management came out of having a large family. No, I'm actually sure of it. As a child, it starts simple - help make food the day before, put on the curtain dress your mom made for you, be in the car before dad pulls the car out of the driveway. It evolves as you get older. Maybe you make the food on your own or pick the recipe, or you have an option of which curtain dress to wear. You need to plan in your make-up to make it to the car on time (just kidding, I didn't have to do that, but my sister did). And you learn to tell time during this journey, and you get watches and cell phones, and you realize something. We've never eaten on time for a single holiday in your entire c...

Listen. I'm not out here trying to make my neuro-spiciness my whole personality, but I am going to ask for some leeway in talking about it while I realize that even my hair tie obsession can be traced back to something I thought I couldn't possibly have. Tonight, on our way home from dinner, I decided I wanted to write a blog post again today. I haven't been consistent in writing since the days of my job search, but I could do a second day in a row. So, what was I going to write about? Crickets. I had nothing. I felt like how I imagine one of our dogs to be - absolutely nothing between the ears. Not a single thought behind those eyes. Her three brain cells only kicking into gear to find the most blankets possible at any given time. I hadn't done anything of note at work today, and the past 24 hours hadn't been particularly exciting. Sure, a few funny texts from my sister about her day with some family, but that's not going to get me to a whole post. And that...

I’m not sure what triggered the conversations. I talked to 3 women last week who had all been diagnosed with ADHD late in life. One of them was my sister, and that’s important, because guess what ADHD has? A strong hereditary link. The other two were girlfriends - very different careers. Children at very different stages of their life. Different ages for their diagnosis. And while the wording was different, the message was the same - probably time for you to get evaluated. Actually, I think when I told my sister “I think I have ADHD,” her reply was something close to “no fucking shit.” You know, lovingly. There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where the sound of glass shattering plays whenever someone notices an annoying habit of one of the other characters. I tend to hear it in my head when I feel a lightbulb moment, and this past week has been nothing but glass shattering in my head. Why did I stay up until 1am in high school to type out my chemistry labs when no one else was do...

I prefer to write my blogs on my medium-sized screen, because as all millennials know, important things need to be done at the laptop. Big screen is the TV, for video games and watching The Great British Bake Off for the 83rd time. Medium screen is the laptop, where all the important things happen. And the small screen, the phone, is for declining calls, searching for answers to inane questions while scrolling in the same vicinity as your friends, and the evergreen doom scrolling. Buy a flight on a phone? Are you out of your mind? But you can change flights on a phone. You gotta go with the vibes. But alas, I have a dog on my lap, and she has finally stopped peeing in the house, so I will be continuing to give her the attention she requires and not standing up to find food or my laptop. (Editor’s note to add: she is calling me a liar here by standing up as soon as I finished writing that sentence.) Was there a reason I started writing today? Possibly because I didn’t want to go past t...

What am I even trying to say today? A ramble, that's what I'm trying to say. A rush of words after a very long day. Thoughts and words that are not organized at all. A 12-hour day is too long. Why was my nephew naked this morning when I got to their house? Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny make for a good playlist for me. Geeks shouldn't give presentations. My shoes were the wrong choice for today. Is Seth Meyers wearing a new shirt? But what I'm actually thinking about is how I've been taking some risks lately in trusting people. That makes it sound dramatic, but what I actually mean is that I'm trying to get to know some people around me better, and that requires being vulnerable. It meant taking a chance on texting someone who was in the most boring meeting of all time with me with some snark, and hoping I judged them correctly (I did). I reached out to a new work friend, and the work group chat, about my stress levels, and was met with empathy and assistance. I tex...