So I've been unemployed for 3 months now. It's been a weird time for me. I've rarely been unemployed where it's actually been a good thing. I've wanted so badly to be retired, but I know that we can't really afford me to be permanently retired. So rather than it being a relaxing 3 months of unemployment, it's been a stressful 3 months of unemployment.

Yes, I've looked for jobs.

Yes, I've applied for jobs.

Yes, I've interviewed for jobs.

No, I have not yet received an offer.

If you don't have a super great and strong self-esteem, being rejected at various stages of the job application process can be pretty soul-crushing. But then working for the wrong person, which I was at the last job, is also soul-crushing.

Either way, soul crushed.

Actual photo of my soul being crushed. Yes, my soul looks like Wile E. Coyote

It doesn't help that I've been unemployed during the cold winter months. Not enough sunshine, not enough warmth, not enough stuff to do. Okay, sure, I could be doing more to take care of the inside of my house, like cleaning, decluttering, etc.

But what fun is that? 

Pretty sure that's all kinds of not fun.

And I like being outside. Hell, I live on a lake. Who wants to be inside when they could be outside enjoying a lake? Besides my husband, that is.

Anyway, where was I? Looking for jobs, check. Soul being crushed, check. Oh yeah, and I've been experiencing lots of anxiety. I mean, I already have some anxiety and I also have arthritis and fibro and my nervous system is all whacked out already. But add some unemployment to all that and it's like my anxiety has just blown up.

Not that much of an exaggeration, my friends

What am I doing with my life? What am I going to do while I'm looking for a job? What do I do if I don't get a job?

Currently, I've been friending ducks. And watching a LOT of tv, mostly bingeing Supernatural. And I've been mostly enjoying this, although tbh (to be honest), this is not a particularly productive use of my time.

Doing this makes it kind of tough to find anything to share on my blog because I don't feel like I've got anything to talk about. Doing nothing all day is boring and no one wants to read a boring blog about nothing. That's why I have so few followers as it is.

Zing! Burned myself!

I've started studying scripting, in an effort to do something semi-productive with my time. I've also started dabbling into hydroponics, because there's so much growing things I've wanted to do but need to learn how to do things right and not waste a lot of time and energy. I've got a little Aerogarden and am currently growing some herbs that I will need to learn how to do things with, but I want to do more and my system only has 6 openings. These little guys aren't cheap.

So I'm thinking I might sent up a new system, a homemade system. And maybe I'll take you all along for the ride, as long as I'm not working, because it should be entertaining, right? To see how badly I screw things up? And hey, gives me something to write about because that's kind of what a blog is for.

So, wish me luck. Or lack of luck. Coz either way, it should give me something to write about. 

ウザインコ pic.twitter.com/WCEu45FxTv

— 🍌ひかる🍌 (@pilipilipilikka) January 19, 2018

So the past few months, I've been unemployed. It's pretty crappy because a) no money, b) job hunting, and c) it's winter. I wouldn't mind being unemployed if it were spring/summer/fall because I could be outside working in the yard instead of being inside binge-watching Supernatural.

Not that I'm dissing Supernatural at all. It's a great show for binge-watching and who doesn't love themselves a little bit of Dean Winchester? 


via GIPHY

But as far as the best season for an outdoorsy type person who doesn't do winter sports at all to be unemployed, I'm going with winter being the worst season.

Over the last few months, I've kind of fallen in love with a group of ducks on the lake behind our house. They started stalking me back in October, I think because they were looking for food and I was outside. They decided human = food.

Honestly, they weren't wrong.

I've been making some friends lately. #ducks #snowbirds #excepttheresnosnowyet

A post shared by evansdi (@evansdi36) on Nov 10, 2017 at 6:14pm PST

After the lake froze over, I discovered that they were still hanging around. The female mallard in the group has a gimpy leg and they were stuck on a part of the lake that was frozen all around them. I worried about them and starting buying duck food from the store to feed them.

Because that's super reasonable, right? 


One day, my hubby discovered that they'd moved and they were out on an unfrozen part of the lake. Since it wasn't that far from the back of my house, I started wandering out onto the ice because I was worried my gimpy girl, who I named Henrietta, was going to have trouble getting over to me for food.

The weather started getting a little warmer and the lake was slowly thawing in parts. I was taking pains to walk carefully across the ice, partly to make sure I didn't slip and fall, partly because it was hard to tell how thick the ice was.

Disclaimer:

Now normally, I'm a pretty sensible person. I have never wandered out on the ice before this winter because I have a fairly decent idea how deep the lake is and I have heard all the horror stories of people falling through ice into lakes or rivers and dying. And falling into a frozen hole and not being able to get out doesn't sound like fun, to be honest.

But love affair with ducks + boredom from being unemployed = stupid human tricks.

I walked out on the ice a few days ago to feed the ducks, knowing that the ice was thawing. I was watching where I was stepping, to try to be sure that I didn't step anywhere that the ice was too thin. 

I didn't see my ducks but I did see some geese, who were pretty shy of humans, so I started tossing food out to them. I was just thinking that I should move around to a different area, as I thought I might be walking out onto ice that was too thin.

Then I broke through the ice.

Not just a portion of me.

Not just a foot or a leg.

All of me.

I plunged down into the lake, over my head.

It's amazing the number of things that can run through a person's head in a short period of time. And not just run but move at Mach speed.

"I'm going to die."

"Is this how I'm really going to die?"

"I'm not going to be able to get out and I'm going to freeze to death and then drown."

I panicked and started scrambling to get out. As I kicked and clawed, attempting to pull myself out, the ice kept breaking around me. 

I thought of my sons, I thought of my husband, I knew I still had my phone with me but couldn't figure out how to get to it and call or text him while I was struggling to keep my head out of the water. 

I yelled for my husband, over and over, but I was a whole house away and he couldn't hear me. Then I stopped yelling for him because how could he come out and help me without breaking through the ice himself?

I kept trying to pull myself out and the ice kept breaking. I was cold, my hands were freezing, with one hand out of a mitten, as I clawed at the ice. Then suddenly, the ice stopped breaking and I stopped panicking, I stopped flailing with my feet, and I just rested my arms on the ice as I contemplated how to get out. 

I carefully dug my fingers into the ice to get a good hold to pull myself out. I slid back a bit and part of the ice crushed under me and I started to feel a bit of despair, but I held on.

Slowly, I pulled myself out. Bit by bit, pulling myself out slowly so as not to break the ice again. I got fully out and lay a moment, waiting to see what would happen. Slowly, I got up, slowly I walked across the ice to the shore. 

I attempted to walk up the slope behind my house but it was muddy and I couldn't get traction, I kept sliding down the mud of the slope. I was so ready to be done. I started shouting for my husband again. I made it up to the side of the house and just knew I couldn't walk around to enter the front door.

Thankfully, we have a sliding door in the back of the house that enters our bedroom, so I pulled that door open and shouted to my husband. He came in, saw me standing there soaking wet, ejaculated "Holy cow!", and started helping me pull off my wet clothes. He led me down the hallway to the bathroom, turned on the shower, and helped me get in. Then he made some hot chocolate for me and for most of the rest of the evening, I sat in a daze on the sofa.


I got off easily overall. I probably spent no more than 2 minutes total floundering in the frozen water before I managed to pull myself out. I massaged the ends of a couple fingers on the right hand, the hand that was un-mittened, because they were tingly and feeling like they had a multitude of paper cuts, but there was no lasting damage. The only visible proof of anything happening to me that night was a cut I sustained on the side of my hand from the ice. 

I don't feel overly traumatized by the experience, as I can look out my back door at the lake and the ducks and not feel stressed, though I do feel rather uncomfortable when I see pictures of broken ice on lakes in other parts of the country. 

From our house or from the neighbor's house, the visible hole I left in the ice doesn't look that far away and it's hard to fathom that in that short distance from the shore, I could have drowned. But walk out to the end of the cul-de-sac and look over at the hole and suddenly, the picture changes completely and it seems a million miles away.

There's no moral to this story, besides the obvious "don't walk on a frozen lake without someone keeping an eye on you!!!" It was just one thing in a series of crappy events over a course of several days. But I know that it could have been a whole lot worse, considering everything, and I'm lucky I managed to get out when others might have been less fortunate. 

Not that far and yet a million miles away

It's been forever since I've written in my blog. I started to write the other day but it's still sitting in my drafts, probably because I felt like I was talking too much and didn't know how to wrap up. 

A friend on Twitter joined a group of bloggers in writing a list of 50 happy things and I thought, "I can do that! I can write a list of good things!" In this time with all the negativity going on in the world with Trump in office and haters everywhere and with a few things going wrong in my personal life at the moment, a post about good things is... well, good. 

So, here we go, a list of 50 happy things. 

1. My husband Brad
2. My kids, daughter Moon Unit, who is happily married now, and sons Dweezil and Frank. 
3. Our pets: dogs Logan, who may be dealing with kidney failure now; Sunny, our 3-legged girl, Frisco, our little wire-haired mini doxie; and our cats Reese, a highly strung Tortie, and Poppy, a zesty little murdering ginger tabby who is the love of my life right now.

4. My brother and sisters, who I feel I've grown closer to over the last couple years, despite the fact that we are not super great at staying in touch. (Or maybe that's just me.)
5. My mother.
6. My Spathead friends, who I've known and loved on Facebook for 8+ years.
7. My Dark Cafe friends, who I've known and loved even longer. 
8. My Bloggess Tribe friends on Twitter.
9. The existence of the internet, with it's multitudes of messenger boards and social media where I can stay in touch with all my friends.
10. The fact that my husband's bankruptcy is finally paid off! Yay!
11. The home we live in, which has been a nice place to go to at the end of a long day at work.
12. Ice cream. Oh, thank god for ice cream!


13. Sunshine, even on a day as cold as they get in the middle of winter.
14. Having the weather be warm enough to go outside for walks.
15. Living on the lake and having some cute ducks coming over for food so that now they are "my squad". 
16. Not dying when I broke through the ice on the lake and plunged in over my head a couple days ago. (What my previously mentioned blog post was about and which I guess I should finish up.)
17. The Resistance, which works every day to overcome the horribleness of the Trump administration.
18. The "Fake News" outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and WaPo, who report on the Trump atrocities and keep us informed.
19. The people who have volunteered countless hours and donated millions of dollars to the rebuilding of areas hit by flooding and hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and especially Puerto Rico.
20. The ability to donate money of my own to friends who need things and to those previously mentioned hard hit areas. 
21. Netflix, which has allowed me to binge-watch tv shows while I'm home unemployed.


22. Access to relatively clean and healthy water, knowing there are places like Flint that are still dealing with bad water.
23. The #metoo movement, which has worked endlessly and tirelessly lately to call out sexual harassers and harassment, in hopes that maybe we can get this to end.
24. The end (hopefully) of the careers of men who harass and abuse women.
25. Doug Jones, a prosecutor of KKK murderers, beating Roy Moore, a known child-molester, in a ridiculously tight campaign in Alabama. 
26. Orrin Hatch's retirement
27. Not working at Fox 13 anymore.
28. My birthday cruise last year, which I still daydream about sometimes.
29. My memory foam mattress topper, which has made it easier to sleep with my achy, achy joints.
30. My weighted comforter, which has helped me sleep better at night.
31. My Ambien, which also helps me sleep at night.

32. My heating pad. I love it so!
33. Audiobooks, which allows me to enjoy literature while playing games or gardening or whatever I happen to be doing.
34. Regular books, for when I want to just sit and read.
35. My Skechers running shoes, for those days when I'm up to running.
36. Chocolate. Good, high quality chocolate! (Lindt, Ghirardelli, and Godiva.)
37. The lovely little colored daisies that have lasted on my end table for a couple weeks now.
38. Games. All kinds of games, whether board, card, mobile, or whatever.
39. My relatively new Santa Fe, which feels like it was made just for me.
40. Satire
41. Medications that help keep me functioning every day
42. A society in which my gay daughter can be married to her transgender husband. 
43. The mountains I can see every day.

44. Being able to see every day.
45. My laptop
46. My cell phone which, while maybe not being able to take the greatest pictures in the world. has survived several water incidents and is still going.
47. Laughter
48. My flower beds, which I can't wait to start working in again in a few months.
49. All the websites that make it easier for me to apply for a new job.
50. The fact that I was able to turn 50 this year.


This took me a bit longer than the 15 minutes I was supposed to use for this post and I seemed to do a combination of things that were happy with things I'm grateful for, but I guess the point is positivity, and I think I managed that. 

How to join in: write your own post and publish it. Copy the link from the post. Then click on the frog at the bottom of the post here, and follow the instructions to add your link. For extra fun, please add the hashtags #BloggersUnite and/or #50HappyThings… because, well, everyone loves a hashtag! The link-up expires January 15th at 11:59pm.

He popped down into this space for no particular reason, then turned around and just stared at me. #psychocat #gingercat #catsofinstagram

A post shared by evansdi (@evansdi36) on Jan 4, 2018 at 6:58pm PST

I suppose there's always the possibility that fashion is not meant to be understood. Perhaps fashion exists just for people to have feelings about it rather than understanding it.

Love fashion.
Hate fashion.
Be confused by fashion.

Accordion pants are super confusing

Get weirded out by some of the bizarre things that fashion designers come out with.
Get grossed out by some of the over-revealing clothing clueless people wear.
Fall in love with some of the unusual fads of the day.


I don't know. All I know is that I'm finding fashion more and more frustrating these days.

So much sheer stuff. So much clingy stuff. Wtf is "burnout" when it comes to clothing? I personally think it's a made up word to mean cheaply made clothing that only looks good on a toothpick.

I've never been a fashion victim. I've never been a clotheshorse. It's not that I have a disdain for fashion. Well, okay, I kinda do. But it's mostly due to the fact that I don't understand it. I miss your basic classic styles. I wish the classic look would come back. I guess I'm still an 80s girl at heart: give me a good old fashioned mesh polo shirt or Oxford cloth button up and I'll be as happy as a clam.