Csajszi
Explore Posterous
Search posterous
Search all posts and users. Type a name, type a favorite song title, whatever! See what comes up.
More posterous blogs
Here are posterous posts filed under mom...
Levi's to The Rescue
Searching for a pair of jean leggings that will not make a huge dent in your
wallet. Check out Levi's 5 pocket legging in black.
Velveteen Rabbit
Lino & Lorena with the ODC dance after the show "The velveteen Rabbit" First performance-ballet that Lino does!
ODC dance company trying to draw attention of Lino after the show and during the party milk and cookies
Untitled
Terrific! You should be very proud of yourself! I was down to 168.5 and then along came Thanksgiving....better to enjoy Daniel and not be too fanatic so...now 171..0 (mostly because of grazing at Burneals yesterday. So back to work! I will go back to 800 calories and shakes the next few days and see how I do. Ruby Valentine is coming Tuesday. I will work with her the rest of the week. I hope I can just stick to the program. The following week she will still be here until Friday. After that it will be easy and I will also join the Zumba class at the Blythe gym. Keep up the great work! Don't get too cocky and lose your momentum like I might have done. The exercising will up your metabolism...Great! xoxo m
"Nobody loves me but my Mother" (...and she ain't jivin' neither, B.B.): How my mom got her thirty-seven year old son a job
"I come home last Friday, talk to the landlady and told her I lost my job
She says don't confront me. An' so I best have my rent next Friday
An' next Friday come, I didn't have the rent an' out the door I went".
- John Lee Hooker, "House Rent Boogie"
Fortunately for me, that day never came; I never got put out on the street by my lady. Since moving to London from Sydney in September, I have been in the unemployment line. Unfortunately, it is a very popular place to be...all over the globe.
We moved to London based on a promotion my wife received from her company. This meant me having to resign from my job back in Sydney. We make moves relative to the big picture; there is no such thing as sacrifice when it comes to making sure we are in the best position to succeed and enjoy our lives together. Moving to London was a no brainer for many reasons.
This is third time I have resigned (and we have moved) based on my wife's career opportunities. My career has become this collection of experiences in a few different countries: The States, Australia and now, London.
Last week I got a job. Not just any job, but the one I wanted in a direction that I wanted to take my career.
Not bad. Three months in, and in the worst economy the UK has seen in some time, and with
a switch in industries...I found me a gig.
So why am I feeling a bit sad as I type? Because I don't get to continue to write on YUD anymore, that's why! YUD (www.yourunemployeddaughter.com) is a blog run by a friend of mine. I have written a few posts for her blog where she talks about being unemployed as a New Yorker. If you want to catch up on my previous posts for YUD, you can do so here:
- "Take this job and shove it"
- "Release the hounds: the London job hunt has begun"
- ""William Shakespeare and the New Rules for Recruiters"
If you don't want to read those and are the kind of person who just reads the ending to books, just go to the last post. Here you go:
(Have a listen to this song before reading the rest of this story. No, really...you need to listen to it)
That's right B.B.: Mothers don't jive...
...at least not when it comes to their sons. I'm no mama's boy, but I sure felt like one last week: my mommy just got me a job.
Yes, Yuddites, it is true. I had to rely on my mom (once again) to save my ass. Time and time again throughout my life my Mom (I call her "Ma") has been there to support me. There may have been times when I pressed my luck and tested her patience, but Ma always did right by me.
Living in London, I usually call home to the States every other week. You can bet the last dollar from your unemployment checks that my job search will come up in conversation. Parents never stop worrying about their kids (unless you are a cold hearted, irresponsible set of dumb-asses like Ballon Boy's two winners. Idiots). I knew only their best interests were on display, but as an unemployed person, the worst question to have to answer is: "how's the job search going?"
There is really just one way to answer to that question and you have only two options to choose from: "good" and or "bad". When you are jobless there is no inbetween. Oh, we try and make ourselves feel good about it with half-assed responses about "great interviews" and "real potential with that one", but it is all a load of shit. No job is nooo job.
The last time I spoke with my parents. My mom didn't ask me how the job search was, but she did ask me why I hadn't used one of her contacts she gave me. Ma had given me the name of a friend that is a senior VP of HR for this company. To be honest, I looked at the helping hand as my mom just trying to be nice. Shit, if the Taliban were looking to hire, she'd pass along my resume if she thought it would help.
Finally I relented and decided to get in touch with her contact.
What do you know...the Old Gal pulled through. I'm sorry I ever doubted you, mommy.
The woman I spoke with in the US passed off my resume to her counterpart here in London. After a few email/phone conversations I found myself neck deep in a series of interviews. At the end of the final interview, the person who I was speaking to asked me "how do you know [the HR contact back in the States}?" Maybe it was me, but I thought I noticed a bit of a smirk crawl across his face when he asked me that question (did he know?).
Wow. Here it was, right in front of me: a true Moment of Truth. I figured that if I was going to work with this guy, I might as well tell him how I arrived in his office. Why not, right? "The truth is easier," as my old pal Hunter S. Thompson used to say.
We talked about this before, Yuddites. In an interview, if you can't be yourself, if you can't speak your mind, if you can't give them the "true-you"...what the hell are you doing there in the first place.
So I told him, just like this: "my mommy".
I filled him in on the rest of the story about how she and my mom were friends. We both had a good laugh over it. He even called me a "momma's boy". Humility is cool.
So what is the moral to this tale about how I got my job? Never underestimate a contact or lead. At any given time, sparks can strike where you least expect them to.
Oh yeah, there is another lesson: Mother does knows best
Good luck, Yuddites!
p.s. I found it very ironic, if not scary, when I saw this recent story on the Huff Post.
Five years ago yesterday
…my mom left us to go hang out in Heaven.
John 14:2-3, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
The picture was taken when my mom first met our first daughter, Riley, a year before my mom passed away. Toward the end, Riley brought some of the last smiles to my mom’s face at the hospital when my mom watched Riley learning to walk…and ironically, my mom was also struggling to walk.
The metastatic breast cancer that my mom had been fighting had moved to her brain and was limiting her in many ways. The last couple of months we experienced ever-dimming glimpses of my mom’s personality.
I still remember the last thing my mom said to me. A little over two weeks before her passing I spent most of the day on the floor working on a puzzle in my mom’s room. She said nothing. Different people would stop by and we would have conversations. Seemingly, my mom was just an observer. She did smile once when my sister and I laughed about my college ID picture that my mom never thought was funny. I had shaved a receding hairline for it.
But, as I was saying goodbye, something burst through the haze that hung over her efforts to communicate, and she uttered, “Thank you for coming” and smiled at me. The three of us in the room at the time, while internally amazed, for my mom’s sake all acted as if it were perfectly normal that she had just spoken…as if she had been participating in the conversation all along.
Two weeks later, we spent our Thanksgiving at the hospice. That Saturday, the battle was over.
