I Need A New Spin

It’s been a long day.

I have to admit, I always imagined myself as someone who, after spending her first lifetime wiping dirty bottoms and cooking for an army, would then spend her next lifetime doing ‘bigger’ things out there in the ‘real’ world.

You know, the one where they hand you money for all that hard work and loyalty.

Most of my girlfriends turned this timeline thing around and did their careers first and are just now winding their way through the early years of marriage and/or parenting.

No one asks for your credentials to be a mom before you’re interviewed for a pregnancy position.

“Where have you been? We are ecstatic that you want to join us in career-land! All you had to do was ask! We’re not going to ask you a single qualification question, it’s so obvious that just because you want it, we should give it to you! You can start today! We see such great potential in you that we are willing to train you for the first nine months, and then sign you up for life, with a paycheck that will only get bigger, as you get better!”

Said no job application ever.

Conception is, hands down, the easiest way to start a career.

If you like being broke. And occasionally, broken.

So I was making bacon in the microwave, and maybe it was asking too much that bacon happen in a tidy way, wrapped in paper towels. Not that I’m picky. Bottom line is always: yes to bacon.

Apparently the microwave felt uncomfortable, what with all that hot greasy goodness exploding inside, so it did the only rational thing: blow up.

Technically, only the rotating glass shattered.

But if I end up with a twin suddenly growing from my ribcage, well, maybe I should have replaced the whole thing.

Who knows.

My point is, I have been dabbling in job applications lately, and no matter how I spin myself, the bottom line is always: I don’t have a college degree (in anything, they don’t care in what, only that everybody else who applied, does) or a prestigious job that they can steal me away from (twenty-plus years of housekeeping does NOT qualify as a prestigious job, obvs) and loyalty can be bought for beans.

And I feel… Useless.

Maybe a little slicey around my edges.

Now, I understand that I can lower my sights and work alongside my own high schoolers at the mall.

Can’t you just see me, folding shirts in the Abercrombie display and telling a passing tweenager to “wear something a bit more modest, for heavens sake”?

Just because I could rock the Hot Dog On A Stick uniform does not mean I want to spend hours over a deep fryer and scrub floors for minimum wage.

I can do that at home, for the same pay.

(Because hotdogs were on sale, I saved the difference. I would have to say clever moms can make at least minimum wage, don’t you think?)

So there’s a bit of identity struggle, deciding what I’m able to do, other than go in circles and make everybody’s bacon.

My resume is just a list of things I really never want to do again.

The problem is, they aren’t looking at my resume. They’re letting a computer scan a pre-made form that only lets you insert data bits in tidy little tofu squares. My resume is where all the flavor is, the excitement, the reason you must love me immediately.

Surely the sparkly lime green stationery speaks for itself.

Once I remove the spaghetti stain.

All of my kids signed letters of recommendation, although one recommended I get “way more professional”.

They say dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

So I turned my apron over and tied it around my neck.

Haters be hatin’.