Letter from the Editor

My predecessor's face smiled at me from the upper-right corner of the Letter from the Editor page. She's pretty. She's very pretty. She has a boyfriend in TV I hear.

It's hard seeing who I'm replacing. With her facsimile of her appearance, I imagine she's also brilliant, and funny, and rich- everything I'm not. I already know she has natural style. For her photo she paired a black open-collared button-down with a chunky turquoise necklace. I don't own a chunky turquoise statement piece; the closest thing I have is a mock-vintage black beaded necklace from Ann Taylor.

My issue doesn't compare to hers. As far as journalistic integrity and proper grammar, I win. I can follow the rules like anybody else. But I think my writing lacks the flair hers had. I didn't insert any personal anecdotes. I didn't have time to come up with marketing genius wording, I was juggling too many projects and the deadline kind of snuck up on us all for that. My interviews are good. My ad copy is good. It's just going to have to be good enough.

I had my photo shoot for my editor's headshot today. I couldn't get an appointment with my stylist because of the holiday season. The photographer compensated by saying my dark roots looked punk rock. Awesome. I am so not punk rock. He said I smiled easily and he liked the shirt I wore: a raspberry two-in-one where it looks like I'm wearing a white collared shirt underneath from TJMaxx. But my nipples give the thinness of my shirt away because it's cold out today.

Now the graphic designer has my photo and he's asking since my smile is so cheeky—I'm not smirking, I just have big cheeks—does he have my permission to remove some lines on my face? Hell yes, he does. But then another graphic designer gets involved and I can hear them critique my photo, and thus also my appearance.

"Here's before," he zooms in on a cheek-induced crinkle below my eye. "Here's after," the crinkle has disappeared.

"I mean, the before isn't that bad," I hear the other designer remark.

"Hey, that's my face you're talking about!" I shout from my desk.

"Don't do too many touch ups though, it should look natural," the second desginer advises.

"Shut up, Chris!" I holler again.

Before I know it, the original designer is back at my desk and inspecting my face. He points to my lower lip, "Is that a beauty mark, or a blemish?" he asks.

So he must have noticed it on my photo. "It's a mole," I respond blandly.

"I better leave it then!" and he disappears back to his desk while I feel more and more like a monster.

A few minutes later, he shows me the photoshopped version. It looks like me, but I still don't like what I see. Each of my cheeks and my chin form a noticeable triangle around my smile. Maybe that's the human form, but it looks awkward on me. They say I look friendly and helpful in my photo, but all I see is a big face of awkward- the same as that 7th grader whose face hadn't caught up to her lips yet and sported braces and had cowlicks in her hair.

"I bet you took really great school photos," the designer remarks.

I think back to my 7th-grade self, "Nope."

I wonder if my predecessor will pick up the new issue of the magazine. I wonder if she'll stare at my photo now in the upper-right corner and I wonder what she'll think about me.

Putting It All Behind Me

I know Thanksgiving is this week and I have a couple of more holidays to endure, but I cannot wait until this year is over. It's just seemed like struggle after struggle, hardship after hardship. Now that things are looking up, I just want to move forward and put it all behind me.

Scott has been doing well at his new job. When I was shopping at the store the other week, his manager even told me that it was going to work out there. He's expressed clear interest in becoming management, and they seem receptive to his ambition. Once he's management, he'll be making more than me. Which I am a-okay with, other than the fact it seems more and more apparent you don't need a college education to do well in society. The only thing college seems to ensure is Saturdays and Sundays off.

He's also been really good at paying me back his portion of the bills from when he was out of work. I incurred a bit of credit card debt during that period, which I am paying interest on, so I am applying every penny he's given me to paying that down. I've also worked up a budget. After I paid all of my bills, I cut the remainder of my money in half and sent that to the credit card company as well, and I just live off the rest. It comes out to roughly $10 a day for food, gas, and whatever else I spend money on. It's been working as far as paying the debt down—I should be back at a zero balance next month—but it gets tiresome living like a pauper by the 21st of every month. But the end result will be much worth it.

When I'm done with my debt, I'm going to begin the new year with setting up additional retirement, savings, and investing accounts. I just don't want what happened when Scott had that accident and lost his job to happen again. The next time something financially burdening happens, I am going to be ready for it. Or at least prepared.

Scott's been watching me being so tight with my budgeting that it's starting to affect him too. I couldn't be happier since I'm the saver and he's the spender. When he saw me come home from the store with Big K cola, instead of my staple Diet Coke because it didn't fit in my budget, he said it really impacted him and he's made a few changes in his spending as well. Just yesterday he dropped all his additional features on his cell phone plan, which I had been telling him he didn't need for months, and it dropped his plan from $70 to $40 a month.

The year hasn't been a total wash. I had a lot of personal growth throughout 2008: I switched jobs which was great career-wise and it included a 25% raise; I got my first (almost) new car and my first car loan, which is a big deal if you've ever had bad credit; I took a class online that I needed to be eligible for grad school because I'm thinking about doing it; and I got out of debt in three months. If you look at it that way, I did pretty well this year.

I just want new beginnings and a new chance to flourish. With the new year comes the new presidency. I am just so excited about our new government elects; I think America absolutely made the right decision and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Things are going to change around here.

Under Pressure

The short story of it all: I got depressed. What I was feeling was beyond a case of the blahs, I had lost the ability to process things normally. Anxiety attacks began overpowering me daily. Incorrectly billed medical statements would send me into a downward spiral of snot and tears. I just couldn't handle things anymore like a normal person--anything and everything sent me over the edge.

During my last visit with my endocrinologist, I was advised going on anti-depressants when I said my fatigue wasn't getting any better. My eyes began to tear at his suggestion. I had been this depressed before, when I first began this blog after a bad breakup in '05. I worked through it then without the aid of prescriptives. I thought I could do it again. I politely turned the doctor down.

But the difference between last time and this time were my responsibilities. As in, I didn't have any last time. I had lost my job the week before the break-up and I had nothing to do but watch reruns of ER on TNT and get better. This time I had a job, and the boyfriend, and all the responsibilities of keeping the house running.

One night I locked myself in the bathroom and lay on the shower mat and cried. At that moment, I lost the will to live. Suicide wasn't something I considered. It was more of I could lie on this mat for the rest of my life. Everything else is just too hard. Scott and I then got into a terrible fight. I still think he picked one with me just so I would show any emotion, any spark of life.

The next morning I called my doctor and asked for the prescription, and within three days I was feeling like myself again. The anti-depressants were like a breath of fresh air. Incorrect medical bills now only required a phone call instead of a cryfest. I feel human again.

I don't plan to be on them long-term, but in the meantime, they're my godsend.

Clip-Drunk Love

One nice thing about Scott is that he's fairly good about following directions. So when I looked up the qualifications for food stamps, squealed when I discovered he qualified, printed out the directions to our local DFCS, slapped him on the butt and sent him on his merry way, he was happy to oblige.

He returned home with a debit card that covers roughly 2/3rds of the monthly food budget. Taxes aren't taken out with a food stamp purchase, so he's already saving an additional 8% on the grocery bill. Sunday morning we dug through the couch cushions until I found a dollar in change, and I walked to the corner to get the paper. I spent the next hour clipping coupons.

"You can't use food stamps and coupons," Scott mocked.

"Yes, you absolutely can." I tried to explain, "Manufacturer's redeem the store for the coupon. It's the manufacturer's money, not the government's, and the store will accept anybody's money."

Not believing me, he called DFCS to double check. The lady handling his case laughed at him when he asked if he could also use coupons.

Next I opened the local grocery store ads and matched them up with the coupons.

"You can't use both a sale and a coupon!" Scott protested. "What about that whole 'cannot be combined with any other offer?'"

I rolled my eyes. "Manufacturer's pay the store to accept their coupons. The store isn't losing any money, because the manufacturer will reimburse them," I explained again. "It's the store's decision to have the sale, and they won't be out any more profits than the sale."

This time Scott called his mother, because I can't possible be right. She laughed and confirmed my strategy.

When I told him that the store will even double a 50-cent coupon, he wouldn't believe me until I showed him the store's website stating so.

He played along when we got into my car with my organized list of grocery stores and coupons to use at each store. We filled an entire grocery cart at Kroger, and when the bill came up, it was $90.

"We can't afford that," Scott nervously whispered. "This money has to last all month and this is only like 3 weeks worth of food."

"Just watch," I calmly replied. I handed over my store discount card, and then the stack of coupons. It seemed to take forever for the checkout girl to swipe each scrap of paper, but when she was done, the bill was now $44.

"You're the first person all day to get your coupons right!" she exclaimed.

Scott's eyes bugged out of his head when he saw the total. "We're getting $90 worth of food for half-price?" he asked incredulously.

I smiled. Maybe now he would believe me.

From that moment forward, Scott was a changed man. We now had more food in the house than we ever had, and moreover, it was name-brand food. No more Family Value dented cans. When he finished stuffing the cabinets, he stepped back to admire his organizational skills. Then he pulled out the remaining coupons from the trash. "Why did you throw these out? We need these!" he shouted.

"That's stuff we don't buy!" I protested.

"What? You've go to be kidding me! This is a coupon for 25 cents off of Trix yogurt. We could have Trix yogurt!" he hollered in excitement.

"We're not six! And I've never seen you eat yogurt!" I cried.

The boy is drunk off coupons.

Yeah, I'm okay. I'm still here

The rumor of layoffs had been circulating for about a month. I'd get a phone call from my friend in IT and he'd whisper any new information in hushed tones. We exchanged anything we knew about secret meetings in which all the managers suspiciously had the same time blocked off their Outlook calendars. More than once, he called to tell me it was happening tomorrow, when in reality it never did.

But the last time he called, I had the feeling. This was it.

At 7 a.m. the next morning, I sat at my desk reading the morning news and any e-mail. A new e-mail from Mike popped on my screen, with a link to MSN Money. It detailed the company's third quarter outcome and announced plans to lay off 20% of the staff. I was stunned that I had to read it off the Internet before my manager said anything to us personally.

Within the hour the sheriff's department showed up. They guarded the exits and paced the hallways. The communication between Mike and me ceased. We were too busy focusing on ourselves and most likely just sitting in fear. I looked at my calendar, searching for signs that they planned to keep me. I had a training in the morning, but no meetings scheduled after that. I had no meetings scheduled for the rest of the week, nor the rest of the month. As if fate heard me sigh, at that moment I received a meeting request for that afternoon. I sighed again, this time with relief, and accepted it. Then I looked over the other members in the meeting and saw that it was my boss, my boss's boss, and my boss's boss's boss. My imagination told me it was the meeting where they would let me go. I frowned and sank in my swivel chair.

My boss came to get me for the training we had scheduled, as we walked to his car I knew I couldn't keep my anxiety in anymore. "Am I being fired?!" I blurted.

"No, you're safe," he laughed. "Unless I'm being misled, most of our department is safe. He listed off the particular people, and I noticed he didn't include everyone, but I kept that thought to myself. He started the car and pulled down the road, past IT's building.

Finally at ease and relaxed for the first time in weeks, I opened up, "Well it's pretty scary that they bring the police in to fire people."

"Yeah, they like to be official about this kind of stuff," he explained. This wasn't his first mass layoff experience at the company. "They go through the buildings and finish up by lunch. After lunch we'll have a departmental meeting where they announce who was let go and how we'll proceed."

I chewed on my lip and thought of the press release from the Internet. It said that the most of the employees being let go were people who didn't interact with the customers. I don't interact with any customers, neither does Mike in IT. Although I knew I was safe, I was still worried for him.

After the hour-long training, my boss and I exited the main building. It just happened to be raining that day, harder than it had in months. I zipped up my raincoat and pulled the hoodie strings tight. It was such a miserable day. Ahead of me, an older woman was walking through the parking lot with a single cardboard box. I didn't think anything of it until I saw the collage of her gray tabby poking out the opened top. There must have been six different pictures of her cat in various impromptu moments. I studied the woman's face: it was stone cold with red-rimmed eyes. I swatted my boss with my training materials.

"Oh, I didn't even notice," he whispered.

I buckled the seat belt in his car, and then turned around to inspect the front door. Three more people followed out, rolling their oversized briefcases behind them. "We're so far away from everyone else, I bet they're going to do our building last," I supposed.

"No," he corrected. "They're already done with our building."

I came back to my desk with the news that our small team of five was one person lighter. 20% lighter. Our department of 40 was 6 people lighter in total. I was told we were lucky to lose so few people. Entire operations shut down in other states. It was 10:30 a.m. and the local newspaper already picked up on the layoffs and covered it on their home page.

Mike sent me an e-mail titled "MY TEAM IS SAFE," but it detailed how he witnessed groups of 15 and 20 going into conference rooms and afterwards only 2-3 people would go back to their desks. I picked up the phone and called him, "How are they doing this, like American Idol? If I read your name, take a step forward. The rest of you can go."

"I don't know, but I nearly had a heart attack when one of the head boss's secretary came over with a clipboard and declared, "You're not supposed to be here anymore! Apparently we're moving cubicles, but the way she said it, I thought they lied and were letting us go."

That morning, there was a lot of walking up and down the hallway outside my cubicle. I couldn't decipher if it was people nervously pacing, people rushing to the bathroom to gossip, or people carrying their things to their cars. I was afraid to leave my desk.

We took an early and long lunch. We really didn't have a whole lot to say to each other, but we couldn't stand being in the office anymore. The environment was eerily silent as the remainders reflected on what just happened. I wish they had let us go home early after the uncomfortable afternoon meeting where they read the list of people fired. They should have let us regroup and come in fresh the next morning, but instead we sat at our desks. No one worked as personal calls were made: Yeah, I'm okay. I'm still here. I think the bosses knew we weren't working, but as long as we pretended to, it was good enough for the afternoon.

At home, Scott jumped up and down when he heard I made it through unscathed. Because we're one income family, we couldn't have made it if I had gotten laid off. But I couldn't share his jubilance. Inwardly I was relieved, but I couldn't be happy. It was such a miserable, long, oppressive day that I just wanted it to be over. "I'll be happy tomorrow," I told him, "But for now, I'm going to bed."

Bad, Good, Ugly

"We found a few benign cells," the doctor tells me over the phone, but before I can breathe a sigh of relief, he quickly finishes, "but not enough to rule it as benign."

"So it's inconclusive again?" I ask, thinking about the inconclusive statistic which means imminent surgery.

"No, not inconclusive, just... not benign."

So, not cancer, but not benign.

In my flow chart of hypothesized outcomes, this wasn't one of them. He then looked over my blood work to see if I was eligible for medication to shrink the tumors. "No," he tsked. "Your levels are high, so any medication would not only be useless to you, but it would also throw your body into hyperthyroidism."

"Hyper? As in rapid weight loss?" I asked.

"Yes, as in eyes bugging out of your head," he corrected.

"Oh."

He gently encouraged me to have the surgery to remove my thyroid and "put this behind [me] and move on with [my] life." When I told him I was not ready to have surgery yet, he then gave me the option of waiting another six months and having a third biopsy to see if there are any changes. I greedily accepted and promised him that if I felt any pain in my neck, or noticed it larger in size, I would have it out immediately.

In other news, I had to have a different biopsy on a very scary part of my body, but that came back all clear with nothing wrong. The relief of a benign biopsy made me giddy.

In other other news, they are laying off 20% of my company tomorrow. The shit keeps a commin'.

Post-Op Notes

Scott continues to heal. His hand looks a whole lot less gross with skin covering it, even if it is from his thigh. Yesterday he noticed one of his leg hairs growing out the side of his hand and he was thoroughly disgusted. I broke out into a fit of giggles on the couch while he ran around the apartment screaming, "this is sooooooo gross!" He then grabbed the tweezers and plucked his hand.

He has some body issues right now. His left leg, where they took the "sizable chunk" of skin, has about an 8-inch incision running up the inside of his thigh. Whoever closed him up post-surgery did not do a very good job with the stitches and the doctor warned him the scar is going to be pretty bad. Also because of the surgery, one of his legs is shaved and the other one isn't. I was surprised when I saw how high they shaved. I think it's funny that they only manscaped the one side. The skin graft to the elbow didn't take very well, most of the new skin just fell off, leaving him with a lot of scar tissue. But, really, it's just an elbow. Not the most beautiful of body parts. The graft to his hairy hand took really nicely, but the doctor said because he burned off so much skin there, he'll never have the amount of padding he has on his right hand. His left hand will always be thinner. So he feels a bit like Frankenstein's monster right now, all put together with scrap parts.

The pin that was surgically placed alongside the bone in his pinky finger got caught on the sheets one night and ripped out. I'm worried that the surgery was for nothing without the pin, and the outer fingers will heal curled to his palm. I keep reminding him to keep his fingers straight, but I don't think it's doing any good. He has yet another doctor's appointment today, so we'll find out if he needs to do anything to protect his hand.

Scott also had his court hearing regarding the accident. He went hoping the lady wouldn't show up. If that happened, then the officer said his ticket would be dismissed and he would no longer be held responsible for the accident. Scott had called her a few days after the accident and told her he wasn't required to carry insurance on his bike because the engine size is 49cc. He offered to just split the costs: he'll pay for his damages and she'll pay for hers. He even offered to split the uninsured motorist deductible on her policy. She said that sounded fair and she would run it by her husband and insurance company. The insurance company balked and said he was required to carry insurance no matter what (even the officer who faulted Scott for the accident confirmed about the insurance regulations). Contact between them halted and as luck goes, she showed.

Scott asked for a continuance, saying he needs a lawyer if she plans to fight the accident, which, frankly, I don't blame her for doing. The judge granted him one and now the court date won't be for another month and a half. I don't know what's going on with that, or even if he will hire a lawyer. I certainly don't have the money to pay for one.

In the meantime, he's applying for part-time work. He's shy to work in the kitchens because he's afraid of damaging the new skin on his hand by burning it on the oven or cutting it with the fancy chef knives I got him for Christmas last year. I don't blame him for feeling that way. His arms already look like they've been put through a blender with all the kitchen wounds he's incurred over the last 15 years. He has a third interview scheduled for Friday at a gourmet organic market as a consumer consultant: someone who provides the customer with recipes and cooking tips and the like. Apparently it comes with benefits such as your standard 401(k) and—I'm ecstatic—medical insurance! So pray, meditate, throw a coin, pass the salt, or whatever you do that he gets this job. He needs this. I need this.