Day 190 — Little Red Wagonhood
Mon, Oct 12, 2009
ANN’S NOTE: Listen to Girl On the Brink on NPR’s Tell Me More.
One of the many things about being unemployed is that I need to negotiate new reasoning for accomplishing my daily and weekly chores.
Usually, not having a car is no big deal except when you add in the mitigating factors of children and grocery shopping.
I am not—I repeat—not the kind of mom who debates whether I should buy a minivan or an SUV. I internalize whether I should empty my son’s backpack and ride my bike, or walk and pull the little red wagon, to the grocery store.
In thinking this through, I said to my ex and now roommate, “What do you do with it [the wagon] when you get there?”
“Just park it,” he said. “No one’s going to steal it.”
Well, okay. Out the door I go; little red wagon in tow.
Still, the thought sticks in my mind as I made a path through my shady Northwest neighborhood to the Safeway. What if I came out of the store, and it’s gone? I’d feel bummed, and then I’d need to call a cab.
That happened to my ex, but he wasn’t pulling the red wagon. He got a flat tire in a borrowed car a few blocks away from the house but far enough to mandate a cab. He cabbed the groceries home, to which the cabbie charged me $24 (figured $2 a bag). I reached for the Kleenex on that one.
On my merry way, turning left on 42nd Street Northwest, my thoughts skipped ahead. How much I should buy? Too much and I’m stuck with overflow. I called on my spatial-awareness skills, but my brain’s hippocampus shot back the thought that I should have paid more attention to puzzles in kindergarten.
When I arrived at the Safeway, I pulled the wagon near a soda vending machine, parked it and wheeled a grocery cart inside.
After I checked out, I held a short breath as I rounded the corner of the vending machine. The red wagon. Just where I left it. Ahhhh.
The wagon, however, doesn’t fulfill all of my transportation needs.
Getting my 10-year-old son home from soccer practice is tricky.
Every Monday, I cross my fingers and hope that one of the moms can drop him off at the corner of East-West Highway and Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda. That’s near the Metro and where I’m temping. From there, it’s just two Metro stops and a 1/2 mile walk home.
The red line has become my main line. In fact, I’ve adjusted my online dating profile to say, “Red Line Guys Preferred.”
As Ann would say, “Love doesn’t transfer” on the Blue, Orange, Green or Yellow lines.
Now, step back. Doors closing.
Tags: relationships, survival
There oughta be a way to do a mod to the little red wagon to tow it with the bike. Then you gotta worry about whether you can lock the bike to something while you’re in the store.
First blog I’ve ever gone to and read. Very slick graphics and presentation. With the huge publicity you must certainly have gotten from the WP magazine article, you should be able to turn it into a business of some kind. You might want to consider your ex husband as a partner since his background as a political consultant should be useful and complementary. The world is full of people who make good business partners yet have prickly personal relationships. They key seems to be recognizing where the divide is and having mutual respect for each partner’s relevant talents. You could become the public outreach and communications vehicle for a political organization built around the unhappiness many of us feel with the current economic and job situation.
Do you make a regular appearance at the Topaz Hotel comedy night? Have never been, but would go to catch your act.
I belong to the growing population of people who are retired and have a pension but still want and need to work. Am a former US Foreign Service Officer (Department of State) whose career primarily involved reporting on international oil (Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria), economic development (El Salvador, India and Kenya) and environment (the UN Environment Program and negotiation of the climate change and biodiversity conservation conventions). Sounds fascinating, and it was, but it’s a career that simply has none of the metrics and keywords a corporate recruiter looks for (unless you reach the exalted level of Ambassador or Assistant Secretary and have some value as window dressing on the company letterhead). You’re a generalist whose strengths are writing well, negotiating, speaking foreign languages, making contacts easily, and understanding other cultures. But those aren’t useful keywords on RetirementJobs.com. You never ran a business, and can’t say you increased the State Department’s market share of anything, managed a large budget (all centralized), or cut government operating costs so as to increase shareholder value. Everyone nods and says wow, you’ve had a fascinating career and have seen many countries, but that doesn’t translate into grasping how you can help them today. As so many others have done, I went into real estate five years ago, when it was booming, but that’s an overcrowded and depressed field these days. I thank the lord evey day for the pension we have, since without it I’d probably be one of those guys with a shopping cart sleeping down on the steam grates at 19th and E.
Still, as you said in the WP mag article, we keep our heads up and eyes open, hoping to attract positive vibrations and recognize opportunity when it comes. Keep on, and best of luck to you.
Ann: They’re talking about you at a crazy bulletin board called Camp Idiot!!!! They love your pics. Check it out!!!
http://www.campidiot.com/ci/viewtopic.php?id=272976
Thanks! Pretty funny. For as much as the piece included, there’s even more of a backstory that was left out. For “potboiler” reasons of course. Touché!
what about beta males? you know, the kinds that no women like? got any opinions.
Here is a BBS of beta males http://www.loserkibbutz.com
From west of the Beltway (our beloved local Interstate parking lot), I’m thoroughly enjoying reading your blog. I’d hire you if I had a job!
All men are great!
Enjoyed hearing you on NPR. And I LOVE the 1940’s graphics – like those magnets and note papers at Catch Can in Chevy Chase that make jokes about men and menopause.
I too, lost my job – in 1999, and temped until 2007. Nobody told me that to debit and credit and get benefits you had to be a size 8, at the most. I could write a litany about all the places I temped and all the wacky, tacky and sometimes human and inhuman) ways I was treated. As a matter of fact, NPR was one of my temp assignments.
I’m constantly amazed as to how anyone can feel free to blog their souls while the rest of us classily suffers the fate handed to us and plug along. Did you ask your husband, oops, ex-husband (sorry, I get confused since you live together and he sounded like he still wants you or at least have s__ with you)
This blog does not reveal you as a great person, which you could possibly be. In the book, “From Good to Great”, great companies hire people based on their skills (rule: first who, then what) and that you have lots of, but my parents, especially my dad, could possibly land you a great gig but can’t now ‘coz you’ve revealed that you’re too shallow. You just about wiped out any serious journalistic job by revealing who you really are (or maybe not who you really are, who knows). Try Hollywood. Most jobs outside entertainment cannot have this kind of publicity.