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 |  Because I am the most interesting person I know |
| I lead the most boring life. I have challenged myself to write about my life so that it seems interesting. |
| One of my close friends is an observant Jew. I really respect her and her faith because she doesn’t try to convert me (Jews don’t proselytize) nor does she make me feel inferior. She is very open to other people’s ideas. Take God, for instance. After many long discussions, we have come to the conclusion that although we have different beliefs, we have the same God. She calls it God and I call it the Universe but we are referring to the same thing. We both believe in omens. She believes they are messages from God. I believe that they are messages from the Universe. See? Same thing. You would think by now, I would have learned to listen closely to those messages from God/Universe, but alas, I am human not divine. The Universe was sending frantic messages to me this morning but I refused to listen. I couldn’t get out of bed this morning. My body ached from a combination of sinus infection and yesterday’s workout. But I pushed myself out of bed, downed a couple of Advil and made breakfast. Even though it was late, I was determined to get to the gym. I didn’t finish my breakfast and coffee until after noon which meant that I wouldn’t be able to get in my full workout and still have time to shower and get to work. Still, I pressed on. Some workout is better than no workout. Everything was going well until I reached the gym parking lot and tried to park my car. I chose an open space between a van and a Mazda, both unoccupied. Or so I thought. As I was pulling into the space, the Mazda started to back up. I frantically leaned on the horn, but the Mazda kept coming. BANG In that split second, I finally saw the driver. He was one of those tiny Hispanic men whose head doesn’t even clear the headrest and whose shoulders were narrower than the seat. No wonder I wasn’t able to see him! I leapt out my car screaming (I tend to overreact to anything about my car). He cautiously stuck his head out and said “Sorry. I didn’t see you.” Of course he didn’t see me. I’m not even sure he could see over the steering wheel. It was downhill from there. He refused to talk to me. Instead, he stayed in the car talking on his cell phone. I didn’t know what to do, so I called my insurance company who told me to call the police. I will spare you the blow by blow and just stick to the highlights. The Mazda belongs to a relative of the driver who had let the insurance lapse. That’s who he was calling, by the way. She showed up shortly. For those readers who live in the rest of the country, NJ has the highest auto insurance rates in the country because we have the most litigious drivers in the country. It has become so expensive to insure NJ drivers that most insurance companies no longer write policies here. The few that do, price their policies accordingly, always looking for reasons to raise their already extortionate premiums. It doesn’t make any difference who caused the accident. Both drivers face excessive rate hikes. Worst case scenario is an uninsured driver. Because I was involved in an accident with an uninsured driver, I am now considered a “high risk driver”. I could lose my coverage completely and be forced into the high risk pool. I may only be able to get bare bones coverage. So I’m stuck between a rock and hard place. If I report the accident to my insurance company, they will pay for the repairs (mostly cosmetic) and then either raise my premium so high that I can’t pay it or dump me. On the other hand, the owner of the Mazda is begging me to not report the accident claiming that she will pay for the repairs to my car. Since I don’t know her, I don’t know if she will actually pay or if I will have to foot the entire bill myself. Bad things always come in threes. A filling fell out this morning before I even started eating breakfast. The car accident was #2. I’m waiting for a third calamity. |
| Furball went back to the vet today for more bloodwork. It’s been six weeks since the last test. He’s been lustily chowing down on the KD along with the rest of The Fur Patrol. I go through so much of it, that they know me now at the vet. All I have to do is stroll through the door and the techs automatically pull out a case of cans and an 8 lb bag of food. This week, I think I’ll confuse them and order some Frontline also. Yes, we are still battling fleas. It’s all Bandit’s fault. I can’t catch him often enough to consistently keep Frontline on him. My regular vet is on maternity leave. Her replacement is very young and very new. Probably a recent graduate of vet school. He gets nervous and flustered when talking to pet owners. It took two phone calls for him to explain to me that Furball’s kidney levels are better than the first test, but still high. I am to keep him on the KD but also keep an eye on him in case he stops eating and/or starts vomiting. In that case, we will start him on medication. The vet warned me that he is starting a long, slow decline. It’s so sad because he is such a nice cat. He doesn’t deserve this. Rory is a champion at vomiting. When he eats too fast, it comes right back up. He also heaves up hairballs, leaving them in high traffic areas. I don’t understand why he isn’t bald. He sheds the equivalent of an entire cat each week in addition to hacking up daily hairballs. Perhaps he is a secret member of Hairclub for Cats. It has been bitterly cold here in NJ. In addition to the cold, I have had to brush snow off of my car twice this week. Cold weather is not a problem during the day because I keep my thermostat set on “tropical”, but while I’m at work or during the night, I lower it. My house is poorly insulated and drafty, so it gets cold in this weather despite the baseboard heat which is supposed to be the most efficient. It may not warm the house much, but The Fur Patrol makes the most of it. It’s not unusual for me to come home from work or get up in the morning and find cats plastered to the baseboards. Their favorite spot is the bathroom. It’s tiny and retains the heat well. Additionally, there is a fuzzy bath mat aka cat bed. Every morning this week, I have gotten up and found 1 or 2 cats comfortably ensconced on the fuzzy bath mat. They don’t like being chased out of the bathroom, but I don’t enjoy an audience when answering the call of nature. I remind them that they don’t like it when I watch them use their litter boxes so it shouldn’t seem strange that I don’t care for them to watch me when I use my litter box. |
| Just because I haven’t been writing here, doesn’t mean that I’m not writing. I’m reviewing recipes over on my cooking blog. I’m still working on the recipes from Thanksgiving in addition to my weekly Christmas cookie recipes. And I’m waiting for the proverbial poo to hit the fan at work. Last week, I signed the complaint against my employer. Essentially, I’m filing a lawsuit against them. The NJ Dept of Civil Rights will investigate and then a prosecutor (I kid you not!) will present the case in court. YIKES!! I’m hoping that just the threat of a lawsuit will force my employer to finally transfer me to the dayshift. I forgot to ask when the papers would be served on the company, so all I can do is keep my head down and hope for the best. And bake Christmas cookies. |
| This past weekend I hit the mall in a determined effort to do my part to stimulate the economy. In plain English, I tried to buy a new winter coat. I don’t really need a new winter coat. Mine is perfectly serviceable and a classic design. But it is 10 or 15 years old and black. I’ve pretty much given up wearing black. It emphasizes all the lines in my face. Character my ass. I’ve got wrinkles and black just emphasizes them. I had in mind something in a lighter color, camel maybe or winter white. I had a Friends & Family coupon for 25% off from Macys which was having some great sales. I was hopeful that if I got a good enough deal on a coat, that I might also buy a new parka. My parka is only five years old, but it too is black. Black used to be my signature color. I am ashamed to admit that the reason I only wore black was that a man once told me that I looked good in it. Hey, maybe I should enter this in one of those contests on WDC where you are supposed to write about something really embarrassing that you have never told anyone. Of course when asked why I always wore black, I never admitted to the real reason. I tried out a lot of snappy comebacks, finally settling on “When I get dressed in the morning, I don’t have to worry about whether or not my outfit matches. Everything is black so it always matches.” Lame, I know. But I could never quite bring myself to tell anyone that I was so desperate to attract a man, that I was willing to allow males to dictate my wardrobe. Confession time is over. Back to the main event. I hate the mall. I especially hate the mall during the holiday season. I spend more time circling the parking lot looking for an empty space than I spend actually shopping. I shop like a man. I know exactly what I want and where I want to buy it. Love, love, love anchor stores. Most times I don’t even have to venture out into the mall itself. I can just run in, grab what I want, pay for it, and run back out. I lucked into a space within ten minutes, not at all close to Macys, but beggars can’t be choosers. I would just have to brave the holiday crowds. Once inside the mall, I realized that this was the entrance near one of my favorite stores, William Sonoma. I decided to refresh myself with a leisurely tour through culinary gadget heaven. In particular, I was interested in their Christmas ornament. Every year, they have a handblown glass ornament with a culinary theme. They are always horribly expensive but I decided that this year I would treat myself to one. Except that they didn’t have it. Just a few cheesy ornaments made of I don’t know what. In fact, they had very little in the way of Christmas merchandise. Welcome to the Great Recession. I headed off to Macys, rode the escalator to the second floor and spent a few minutes looking for the coat department. Normally, it occupies a huge space. This year, it’s a tiny alcove with both coats and parkas of all price ranges crammed into the space where the less expensive coats normally would be. 40% to 60% off racks and racks of black coats. Almost no camel, maybe two white. The style this year seems to be very tailored, very fitted and very short. None of which is at all attractive on me. I don’t like tailored anything because I am long waisted. The so-called natural waist of most garments ends up around my rib cage. Adding insult to injury, every coat in sight had a belt, which when fastened around me, thanks to the combined effects of age and gravity, becomes what Michelle Obama’s critics refer to as a “boob belt”. Fitted also doesn’t work for me. I was brought up in a cold climate, so I dress in layers. I like to have enough room in a coat or jacket to be able to wear a bulky sweater underneath. That’s not something you can do in a tightly fitted coat. Mini skirts looked great on me when I was a teenager but I haven’t been a teenager for forty years. My preferred skirt length is below the knee. Ankle-length is also a favorite. Neither of those look attractive under a coat that ends above my knees. Especially one with a boob belt. I walked half a dozen steps to the parka racks on the other side of the alcove. Again I was confronted with what seemed like miles of black garments. There were a few light colors and a lot of purple. You couldn’t pay me to wear a purple parka. Not at my age. And not with my complexion. I’m an “autumn”. Earth tones suit me best. A nice olive green, burnt orange, light tan or off-white, none of which seem to be in style this year. Length was an issue on this side of the room also. The parkas all stopped at the waist or just below it. I prefer a parka that covers my, ahem, hips. I don’t like feeling a draft, you know, back there. I left the coat department empty handed and headed upstairs to the Christmas shop, sure that that would revive my spirits. I had a tough time finding it. The normally sprawling Christmas shop was crammed into the alcove that used to house just lights and boxed ornaments. The pitiful few racks of ornaments were all marked 50% off. I was certain I could do some major damage to my Macys charge. Except that I couldn’t find any ornaments that really excited me. And the line in front of the single cashier was long. And it was late and I was tired and I just wanted to get out of there. I hate the Great Recession. I wearily trudged through the mall and out into the parking lot where I found my car on the first try. My day had been a total waste of gas and time. I could have had a much more pleasant day if I had stayed home, baked Christmas cookies and read a good book. |
| It flurried a little on Thanksgiving. It flurried a little today. It snowed harder on my way home from work tonight, accumulating a bit. This is NJ. It's not supposed to snow until January. Gotta love that Global Warming. |
| A friend recently asked me if the holidays made my depression worse. This was my reply. Holidays suck. I have no family, so I used to spend them alone. Over the years I’ve cobbled together various solutions to prevent the dreaded sitting-home-alone-wanting-to-die syndrome. On Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, I cook with my friend and co-blogger. We come up with a theme for our meal and trial new recipes that fit the theme and then review the recipes on our cooking blog. This year’s theme for Thanksgiving was “A Healthy Thanksgiving”. We tried, with varying degrees of success, to make a traditional meal without all the fat, sugar and calories. Mother’s Day is the big plant sale at Rutgers Gardens where I volunteer. It has expanded over the years to stretch from the Thursday Evening Members Only Preview Sale through Mother’s Day on Sunday. I have been overseeing the herb sales the past two years so I take time off from work to be there to set up on Thursday afternoon and then work Thursday evening and the rest of the days of the sale. Christmas is still an issue. I may have come up with a temporary solution. One of my friends broke up with her boyfriend of fifteen years and being Jewish wants find somewhere to go out while the Christians are celebrating. Provided she doesn’t reconcile with her BF, I may not be alone on Christmas for the first time in years. I noticed that I am getting a little schizoid over Christmas. I stopped putting up a tree, but I still buy a few new ornaments each year. I stopped making a gingerbread house, but last year I started baking Christmas cookies. I stopped buying gifts for other people and spend that money for something expensive for myself. I hate it when someone asks me how Thanksgiving/Christmas/Valentine’s Day/Mother’s Day was. I used to smile and tell them “great!” until it dawned on me that no one realized that I was being sarcastic. Now I tell the truth: “It sucked. I spent the day alone.” The smart ones have stopped asking. Perhaps it’s because I have spent so many holidays alone that I long for a big family holiday with lots of good food, a few arguments and a few hurt feelings balanced by lots of laughter and a feeling of connection. Addendum to yesterday’s post – Further scrutiny of my port revealed that it was a pork shoulder that I made for Christmas dinner last year that was marinated in a (clean) garbage bag placed in a large salad bowl in my fridge overnight. You can read about it here: "Invalid Entry"  . For those of you who don’t want to read it, the short version is that the recipe was supposed to be Cuban and required that a boneless pork shoulder be marinated in the fridge for 24 hours and then cooked in a crockpot for 8 more hours. The marinade smelled like garbage, as did my fridge after housing the meat and marinade for 24 hours, but the resulting dish was a rousing success.Cooking new recipes rarely goes smoothly for me. In this case, I accidently bought a pork shoulder with a bone instead of the boneless pork shoulder called for in the recipe. You’ll have to follow the link and read the post to find out if the bone exploded in the crockpot or not. Things have a tendency to explode in my kitchen. Have I written yet about the exploding potatoes? I don’t think so. I’ll have to file that idea away for some time when I am searching for something to write about. |
| I’m so frustrated. Of all the thousands of words I’ve written on this site, I can’t find anything on how I made my Thanksgiving turkey last year. It was my first adventure in brining and it involved a turkey, a (clean) garbage bag and a large salad bowl. I can’t believe that I didn’t write anything about it. Come on, a turkey, a garbage bag and a salad bowl. It’s right up my alley. The possibilities, both comedic and disastrous, are endless. When I wanted to do it right this year, I thought I would revisit last year and then hit the internet for some in depth research. Especially since every recipe that I looked at called for the brine to be cooked first. I distinctly recall not cooking the brine last year. Let’s start at the beginning. Last year I used a garbage bag because I made the decision to join the 21st century and brine my turkey at the last minute. I wasn’t able to find proper turkey bags at the grocery store, so I improvised with a clean, unused garbage bag. I placed my brine and my turkey in the bag, which was in turn placed in a large salad bowl on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator. The turkey was turned periodically in the brine to ensure that all of it brined properly but I can’t for the life of me remember how long the turkey was in the refrigerator. This year, I wanted to do a proper brine. I found the bags, not where I was looking for them last year in the plastic bags aisle, but in the “seasonal aisle” where A&P had helpfully assembled everything you could possibly need to cook a Thanksgiving meal. They were probably in that aisle last year also, I just wasn’t looking there. I thought I had found a brine recipe that didn’t require cooking first because I was pressed for time. Upon rereading it Wednesday morning, I discovered that the brine was supposed to be cooked and then iced. I didn’t have time for that so, once again, I improvised. The first roadblock that I ran into was that this turkey was too large for my big salad bowl. I don’t know how that could be. It was the same size and same brand as last year. The second roadblock was the thinness of the bags. These bags were meant to cook the turkey in. I don’t know if there are special “brining” bags as opposed to “brown in” bags. And the third thing to go terribly wrong that morning (bad things always seem to come in threes) was that I didn’t have all of the (correct) ingredients for the brine. So this is what I did. I placed the turkey in the bag on the counter. I partially filled the bag with water using the sprayer. I dumped in 1 cup of sea salt instead of 1 ½ cups kosher salt, several hard shakes of ground pepper instead of 45 pepper corns, ½ bunch of fresh thyme instead of a whole bunch and 5 bay leaves that have been sitting in my cupboard for an unknown period of time. I omitted the 1 ½ cups of sugar because our theme was “A Healthy Thanksgiving” and because I couldn’t wrap my head around adding sugar to what seemed like a perfectly respectable brine/marinade. I added more water and then I tried to close the bag. This is where I began to run into serious trouble. No matter how tightly I twisted the twisty tie, the water kept going sideways instead of up and covering the turkey. Plus, that bag seemed awfully thin. Was it strong enough to hold a 12 pound turkey and several gallons of water? I didn’t have a container large enough to put it in. I began to have visions of putting the bag in my fridge before work then returning home to find that it had burst while I was out, leaking all over my refrigerator and kitchen floor. What to do, what to do. I know! Garbage bags are really strong. How about I put the turkey bag inside a garbage bag? That way, if the turkey bag breaks, the garbage bag will hold all the water instead of spilling it. I should become a spokesperson for Glad Trash Bags. No brining bag? No problem! Glad Trash Bags to the rescue! Afraid that flimsy turkey bag can’t take the pressure while you’re brining? Use a Glad Trash Bag! It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without Glad Trash Bags! Another Thanksgiving and another turkey in a garbage bag in my fridge. I’m happy to report that the thin turkey bag didn’t burst and the turkey turned out moist and delicious. Next year, I’m going to take a vacation day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That will give me time to prepare my brine properly before placing it in a … you guessed it … Glad Trash Bag. |
| This is not really a Furball update. It’s more of an interim report. A couple of people have asked me how he is doing. We are halfway through a six week trial of a special diet for cats with kidney disease. It’s supposed to be easier on the kidneys than regular food, but I’m not clear on how. Not surprisingly, it’s called KD (kidney disease). At the end of the six weeks, there will be blood tests again and, depending on the results of the blood tests, a CT scan. By the way, “Special Diet” translates to “very expensive food available only by prescription from the vet”. I could also take my prescription to PetSmart and buy the food there, but I have no idea if the price differential is worth the extra distance. The vet’s office is closer. The vet warned me that Furball might not like the taste of the new food and refuse to eat it. That was the case initially. I started with wet food, feeding him in a separate room but he wouldn’t touch it. When Rory and Bandit had eaten their fill of their wet food, I would let Furball out. He would race to the food bowls to see if there was anything left over. After a couple of days of racing and refusal, I gave up and started adding KD to the regular wet food. No one seemed to have a problem with that, so when the last of the cans of regular wet food were gone, I started feeding everyone straight KD. I then mixed the dry KD with the regular dry until it too was gone and am now feeding dry and wet “very expensive food available only by prescription from the vet” to all three cats. My pet food bills have increased astronomically. I am not surprised that Furball is willing to eat the new food as long as everyone else is eating it. He is not a fussy eater. I am very surprised, however, that Rory is willing to eat KD. He is my fussy eater. He won’t eat anything fishy, normally a favorite among cats, nor will he eat any texture except “classic pate”. I should probably read the KD label. I’m guessing that it has no fish in it. It is also in the “classic pate” form. Hence the reason(s) that Rory is willing to eat it. Bandit doesn’t care what I feed him as long as I am not in the room when he is eating. Furball’s illness has put a crimp in my book plans. I’ve been hoping that my depression would lift just enough so that I could write again. The first draft is finished except for the chapter on cat shows and cat breeders. That requires some research, including trips to cat shows and interviews with breeders, neither of which is possible as long as I am so depressed that I can barely get out of bed in the morning. I hate books about animals that end with the animal dying. I know that animals die, but I hate investing a lot time getting to know and love an animal and then spend an entire chapter, crying hysterically because the animal in question died tragically/painfully/heroically/unexpectedly. My book is about all of the cats I’ve owned or been owned by, but it’s really about Furball. He is a big, goofy, lovable lunk. The thought of losing him tears me apart. I’m not sure I could even write about it. It’s been almost a decade and I still cried buckets while writing about Sneakers’ death. I would hate for readers of my book, however few, to make it through Sneakers’ death in the beginning of the book only to get hit again at the end with Furball’s death. That’s too much death. I had wanted to end the book with the story of the foster cat that terrorized The Fur Patrol. He has a wonderful home now. His new family sends photos of him. I wanted to end my book with The Fur Patrol and me gathered around the computer looking at the photos and thinking, "You would never know by looking at them that in that quiet, contented housecat beats the heart of a terrorist." I could always insert a note after the last chapter about Furball. But I hate those endings also. Mirabel Osler’s book, A Gentle Plea for Chaos, was totally ruined for me [WARNING! SPOILER ALERT] when I got all the way to the end only to find out that her husband died right after she finished the book. All the time I was reading it, I was imagining them enjoying the wonderful garden they had built and all of the trees that they had planted. Then, WHAM! The man who had planted groves of trees will never see them mature. That’s not the kind of ending I want for my book. I am rescinding the dietary restrictions today. Furball loves turkey. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! |
| I started my holiday baking early this year because … does anyone really need a reason to start their holiday baking early? Maybe it’s because of all the pre-Thanksgiving Black Friday sales that it feels like the Christmas season is upon us. Christmas cookie baking was not a tradition in my family. See "Fire in the hole!!" to get an idea of what was considered “cooking” in my mother’s kitchen. I hear a lot about baking Christmas cookies. How does one go about it? Do you make a different recipe every day? Every week? What happens to all of those cookies? I’m totally clueless. Last year, I decided to start my own tradition of trying out a different Christmas cookie recipe every week and blogging the result, good or bad, on my cooking blog, The Wooden Spoon .I am unfamiliar with a lot of the traditional recipes. I have to rely on BHG.com and Martha Stewart to tell me which are considered Christmas cookies and which are just ordinary cookies. Then there are all the variations of the same recipes. How am I supposed to know which recipes are “authentic”? Which recipes work? All I can do is pick one and hope for the best. Last year, I made gingerbread men, peppermint bark, spritz, Bacardi rum balls, and pfeffernussen. I saw a recipe for something called “snickerdoodles” on the Martha Stewart site last year, but ran out of time before I could try it out. So I bookmarked it for this year. I just liked the name. I was kind of at loose ends this weekend, craving something sweet but feeling too lazy to bake anything complicated. Cookies came to mind, then Christmas cookies and Snickerdoodles popped up. It seemed like an easy and fun recipe to try. I can’t tell you if they came out right or not. I’ve never tasted a Snickerdoodle before. I can say that I don’t care much for the taste of the cream of tartar and the amount of cinnamon needed to counteract that taste is too much. I felt like I had overdosed on cinnamon after eating only one cookie. Next weekend, it’s gingerbread men again but a different recipe. Why my obsession with gingerbread men? I volunteer at Rutgers Gardens and they have a holiday event called “Hollyday” in honor of their collection of hollies. At all of their events there is always a children’s activity. For this one, it’s decorating gingerbread men. Last year was the first year for this event so when they sent an email asking people to volunteer to bake one or two dozen gingerbread men, I signed up. And inadvertently started my new tradition of baking Christmas cookies. I ignored the recipe they sent out because it was illegible. Someone had scanned a handwritten recipe. Between the bad scanner and the worse handwriting, I couldn’t read a thing. So I decided to use the recipe on the Grandma’s Molasses bottle. It didn’t come out well, so this year I am using the recipe from my trusty Betty Crocker Cookbook. It’s cheating, in a way, because I have baked it before. Many years ago. When I was still under the delusion that I could have a normal life and normal holidays with my now ex-husband and our evil offspring. NONONO!! Don’t think about the past. Don’t think about how miserable your life was. Think about how you are going to fit roasted potatoes and a turkey in the oven at the same time on Thursday. Think about baking gingerbread men on Friday. Think about the new newsletter you are creating for the volunteers at Rutgers Gardens. Whew!! That was a close one. It’s taken me days to climb out of the suicidal depression caused by two weeks of nightshift. I don’t want to go back there. I want to concentrate on the few good things in my life. |
| I drove to Newark today (NJ residents insert groan here) and filed a complaint against my employer with the Department of Civil Rights. I’m not normally a crusader (except on WDC: "Invalid Item" ) but it has become a matter of life or death. Sue or die. I’ve stopped hiding the fact that I suffer from clinical depression. Mainly because I can’t hide it any more. My life has ground to a complete halt. On bad days, death seems the only way out. Lately, the bad days outnumber the good. A major factor contributing to my depression are my work hours, second shift 4 pm to midnight and covering for the nightshift when they are ill or need time off. Working those hours cuts me off from most human contact. The only relief is weekends, when my schedule finally syncs with the rest of the world and I can get out and be with people. I lose my precious weekends when I cover for the nightshift who work weekends as part of their regular schedule. As if crazy work hours weren’t bad enough, each shift I cover consists of only one person. Ask any mental health professional what happens when you force a severely depressed person to spend entire nights alone in an empty office building. It’s a recipe for disaster. I talked to my boss more than two years ago about this and asked if he could move me to dayshift. He said he would think about it. And proceeded to have a nightmare two years. His son was killed in a car accident and then the company moved and he had to move an entire network without interruption from the old site to the new one. Well, we are all moved in now but I am still working nights and my depression has gotten exponentially worse. Thank goodness I have a good therapist. She nagged me for a year about requesting an accommodation under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) because clinical depression is considered a disability and a change in work schedule is considered a “reasonable accommodation.” Quite frankly, I didn’t believe her. I hate being nagged, so I set out to prove her wrong. I began my research on the internet and then expanded it to telephone interviews with government agencies (EEOC for the ADA and NJ Dept of Civil Rights for the NJLAD, more liberal than the ADA) culminating in an appointment with an attorney who specializes in civil rights law. I hate to admit it, but my therapist was right. Everyone made it sound so easy. Just submit a written request to my employer with a doctor’s note and they would have to move me to dayshift. That is the theory. In real life, nothing is ever easy. I submitted my request in September. I’m still working nights. I have been offered either changing my work hours to 12:30 PM to 9 PM (the head of HR obviously has difficulty with the concept of dayshift) or switching places with a woman in our Virginia Beach office who wants to transfer to NJ. Yes, you heard that right. My boss thinks it’s a good idea to move to another state so that I can work dayshift. They refuse to switch me with another dayshift employee and the CEO refuses to lift the hiring freeze so that they can hire someone to replace me. In my last conversation with my boss on this subject, he kept mentioning that he would hate to see me go. So now their strategy appears to be to wait me out in hopes that I will get fed up and quit. I worked nightshift last week and ended up a blubbering, suicidal mess. I have to work two more nights this week. I barely made it through last week. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to make it through two more nights. There’s good chance that I won’t. My therapist is frantic, terrified that she is going to lose me. My boss is avoiding me because he knows how nightshift affects me. So in a last ditch effort to save my own life, I drove to Newark this morning and filed the paperwork to start legal action against my employer. I don’t really want to go to court. My hope is that just the threat of legal action will be enough to spur them into moving me to dayshift. If not, then I look forward to standing in the courtroom and telling the judge: They pay me less than the men, most of whom I outrank. As the sole woman in the department, it is my job to keep the staplers and tape dispensers filled and to return the empty inter-office envelopes to the mailroom. Despite the fact that I outrank the men who consider it beneath their dignity to perform these tasks. They won’t switch me with the man on the dayshift because he doesn’t want to work nights but they had no problem a few years ago forcing me to switch to this shift against my will. They don’t want to move the dayshift guy to nights because he helps care for his brain injured girlfriend whose welfare is considered more important than mine, a suicidal employee. They had no problem changing the shift of a man who was so incompetent that he was eventually fired. They plan on stripping me of my title, nightshift supervisor, and management responsibilities if I move to days despite the fact that the previous nightshift supervisor, a man, worked days. No, no discrimination there. |
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