I thought this day would never come. I feared I would be unemployed for all enternity. I believed I was destined to become a Dr. Phil fan no matter how hard I fought it. But alas, the drought is over. I am employed. I have officially joined The Soft Society (for a definition, see www.schmusic.com/flash.html).
It seems someone has finally recognized that my skills extend beyond walking and talking. You may remember that I recently attended a job fair where I charmed the pants off (not literally) a male interviewer. Well, it worked. As of June 19th, I will be a customer service professional at a call centre . I have accepted the challenge to sit, pick up a phone, and talk--simultaneously. Watch out world! And while it means I will miss my 4 o'clock ritual (me, mum, and Oprah), it also means that I will be getting a paltry but much-needed paycheque every 2 weeks. And getting a lot more use out of the VCR timer.
This employment has come just in the nick of time. My dad is in between jobs for a few weeks, which means I will be at home with BOTH of my parents. Between my dad monitoring when I wake up in the morning, and my mom with her "psychic" abilities (she predicted the phone would ring about 5 minutes ago), not to mention their near-constant bickering, there is little peace to be found at home. They just pick-pick-pick at each other, it's only a matter of time before all that negative attention would turn to me. I'm getting out, and I'm taking what little self-esteem I have left with me.
But there may be a down side to my sudden surge of hire-ability. I recently completed the in-class portion of my driver's education, and have started the in-car lessons with my male instructor. But today, totally uncharacteristic of my usual encounters with the opposite sex, he forgot about me! I sat on my front porch waiting for him to come and he never showed up. I thought about it for a long time, and decided there's only one explanation for this drastic turn of events: Getting a job has killed my mojo. Sigh. My future is looking sadly devoid of free drinks.
To end on a brighter note, I met an extremely nice and generous man from a local publication who gave me some great advice on freelancing in London. It is so nice to live in a city where someone will actually meet with you to give you guidance, despite having looked at your blog with your scary Chicken Little hair. Or maybe I have a little charm left in me yet.
-sbg
Just call me Chicken Little
This one is for my faithful readers out there who are jonesing for more posts from the superblackgirl. The subtitle to this one is: My trip to the hairdresser.
I've had the same stylist in Toronto for the last 5 years. We have an understanding. She knows that I tend to play it safe on the hair tip, "just wash and blow dry", is what I usually say. Every now and then I get bored, or she gets bored, and we'll do a little cut, a little colour, a little sumthin' sumthin' to keep it interesting. Well, the stylist I went to in London added a little too much of sumthin'--that would be grease. As my sister and I would say, my hair was "Grease Mania". She purposely did not face me towards the mirror, so I had no idea what she was doing back there while I watched the Young and the Restless. At some point, I felt like my head was getting a little heavy, but I dismissed it. I mean, she's a professional, right? Just because we're in her apartment and she washed my hair over her kitchen sink, doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's doing, right? Wrong. Oh, I/it was so wrong.
When she finished, she said, "Shake your hair out a little". I tried, but unfortunately my hair was so grease-laden it would barely move. Remember that scene in Flowers in the Attic when the evil grandmother pours tar in Carrie's hair when she's sleeping, and when she wakes up she can barely move her head? Yeah, I'm Carrie.
So I paid her (yes, I paid her. I'm a punk, I know) and left, got in the car with my mother, and proceeded to have a total freak-out. I couldn't even touch my head I was so grossed out. The only good thing was that my mother's hands and arms were really ashy, so I told her to rub them in my hair to oil them up. It worked, but she could barely grip the steering wheel after that.
So we're driving home with the windows down, and we pull into the Tim Horton's drive-through to get coffee. My mother looks at me and says, "I wish I had a camera". It seems the wind had blown my hair-don't around a bit, and it was frozen in it's wind-blown position due to all the grease. As it turned out, I had my camera phone. So that's me up there, and that's the story. Hope you enjoyed it.
sbgreezy
