Working Hour

Thanks for all your comments. I have felt cursed all my life, at least with regard to my sexuality. There's still a little part of me that believes I'm not done with the bad news yet and that someday I will be diagnosed with cancer of either the breast, the uterus, cervix or ovaries, even though there is no history of any type of cancer in my family. That just feels like my luck.

As far as family goes, I have my mother-in-law, who is sweet and supportive, but...she is 83 years old and just doesn't understand a lot of what goes on in the world. D's brother and sister and their families are near-by, but we don't see each other often and we don't have the kind of relationships that lend themselves to intimate conversations. I have found surrogate family, if you will, in the parents of D's best friend, to the point where they refer to themselves as "Mom and Dad" in birthday and Christmas cards, and we are invited to all of their family functions, but again, we don't often have the opportunity to really talk. I do volunteer with my dog at a nursing home and have my favorite residents. Although this makes me feel as if I am doing someone some good, these relationships are not intimate either. So -- I have my close friends and all of you out there in Bloglandia.

Right now a lot of my sadness comes from losing touch with my sexuality. D and I are very loving, gentle and sweetly close, but really since we stopped ART in February, we haven't been sexual. I'm sure he's probably waiting for me to give him a signal that it's OK, and we have taken long breaks like this in the past. It just doesn't seem that important to either of us. We haven't been able to make that leap from having sex on a schedule in order to get pregnant to just making love. I'm sure it will pass -- I feel broken and damaged and that's just not conducive to feeling sexy. I'm in the process of making a CD of sexy music, maybe that will help.

I'm glad October is over, this has been a craptastic month on the job front (hence the post title, yet another old Tears for Fears song). I told you about not being able to do a lucrative speaking engagement in Boston because I was too sick, that was the first thing. I interviewed at a very high profile and famous high-tech company in Silicon Valley early in the month. They called me, and I was the first interview they did, I thought it went very well. A few weeks later I got a call from a company who wanted to hire me as a consultant through the end of the year, filling in the free days when I wasn't working for my long-term client. I pushed them off as I wanted to give first priority to the FT job opportunity. After not hearing anything for over three weeks, I sent a polite message explaining my situation and could they tell me if they had made a decision. Nothing. At the end of the week I sent another message, this time copying the manager of the group. Still nothing. FINALLY, on Friday I got a call from a smarmy HR person who told me they had hired someone who was "firing on all cylinders". WTF? So, I'm firing on one cylinder and look like a clunker that's been parked beside the shed too long? Asshole. All he had to say was they hired another candidate. OK, whatever. So I call the company back about the other consulting job and of course, they had just signed on with an agency to fill the position. Fuck.

So this weekend I've eaten at great restaurants twice, indulged in gelato and seen the new Zorro movie. It was exactly the movie I thought it was going to be, which was just fine, I didn't have to think too much.