Denial (De Nile?) is a River in Egypt

Is it wrong to debate using my $600 economic stimulus check from the US government for boots? Answers on a postcard. I'll be at http://www.raejones.co.uk/collection.html?img=gallery/img_19.jpg

Is it wrong to debate using my $600 economic stimulus check from the US government for boots when I won’t have a job in a few weeks? (Is your answer still the same?)

I keep waiting for it to hit me, this jobless thing, but it hasn’t. All that has changed in my life so far is that I do less work – a lot less work – and I occasionally freak out about not having any money. And then I do lunatic things like decide to walk from Islington to Each Finchley – five miles – to avoid the £3 tube fare (and to burn off some Thanksgiving dinner), and then spend 300 euros on a 19th century rose gold-and-pearl bracelet I found at a Paris market (but I only went to Paris because I had a free Eurostar ticket. See? It all works out!)

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Before the choice to keep my job was taken from me, I’d see the Evening Standard headlines about 2 million jobless and wonder if I was crazy to think about leaving my nice, safe employment. Now I constantly have two images in my head: one is where I’m being shoved off something (a cliff?) and I land, D-Day-invasion-style – on my stomach, crawling. In the second image, I’m trying to get off an overcrowded subway train, but the platform also is overcrowded, so I’m stuck. Paging Dr. Freud.

I guess I am stuck, in a way, no thanks to the British redundancy process, which drags on. I still don’t have a final leave date and I’ve only just gotten an answer on when my notice period starts (but not, of course, whether I’ll have to work in the office during it.) The British redundancy process is a lot like life in England itself – on the surface it’s lovely and polite and no one wants to be the one to tell you things you don’t want to hear. Oh, and there’s lots of alcohol. But because of that it’s also inefficient, frustrating, and bureaucratic. And in our office – because they are replacing all of us with one home-based correspondent (a job I think I’d need a lobotomy to consider applying for) – it has turned into Lord of the Flies. Every man for himself. You know the world has gone a bit topsy-turvy when you walk into your boss’s office and he quickly flicks up a computer game screen to hide the fact that he is doing actual work because he doesn’t want you to know he is desperate for said job.

Ahem.

I just want someone to give me a leaving date already. Would that be so much to ask?

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This week I went to see my binge eating counselor and he told me I looked like I was still losing weight.
I’m not. I was at 150 for about 3 seconds, and now seem to be hanging out around 153-154, although that was before I went and consumed mince pies, brandy butter and brandy cream last night. And it’s only Dec. 10. Be afraid, be very afraid. I am.