I say “examined” because spring this year diverges from years past.

Last year, virgin green blades of grass emerged, and the branches of my Bradford pear was veiled in buds. I was unemployed.

This year, the dead leaves from last fall still remain on the ground, which is entirely bare from the beating my boys gave it from playing their favorite games—soccer and field hockey. The pear tree has lost one of its main trunks in a recent wind storm and now blocks play of any kind, which is metaphoric for the latest twist in my life.

As another spring seduces me with warmth, I am also examining my life. In May, it will change, too. I’m leaving on a jet plane to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. No, I’m not “Jihad Jane,” and I haven’t been seduced by a Saudi sheik (fingers crossed for that to be the message in my next Fortune cookie).

My wonderful employer has tapped me—after three months—to help advance the importance of early care and education in the Middle East for the next two years. A serious and important topic and one that I can perform with confidence and respect as I’m immersed in a monarchical society, where I cannot drive (I’ll have my own driver—yippee!) or socialize with men (in public—boohoo!).

This life-changing event has led me to the decision to discontinue writing Girl On the Brink. As Ann, the last thing I need is some Wahhabi Cleric after my golden locks, which I’ve cut off (desert prep), or the religious police detecting a slip in modesty when the sun shines through my abaya and shows my skin.

Work will take me to Amman in Jordan (where I can “sin” on my off hours) and other sandbox countries.

Last year at this precise time, a different breeze blew. Newly divorced, I had been scrimping by on government services and flew to Antigua for Sailing Week (see that blog), reeling from the loss of my job of 3.5 years, with my girlfriend, who’s now off to earthquake-shaken Haiti to produce a documentary.

We may be different in love and in life, but we embrace change, and that’s what brings us together. For without change, we cannot advance as a society, a nation, a world. Change brings both the good and the bad, and it seems that we cannot have one without the other.

It’s the radical extremes—this recession, in particular—that weakens the belief that we are making the world a better place to live.

As Ann Powers, I hope that I’m a small but important chink in the chain that good things can rise from the Phoenix.

On that refrain, I say good-bye but not farewell.

Always Ann (Please keep in touch ann.powers@girlonthebrink.com),

But she and I are the same size and age and have similar sensibilities.

We almost always make exactly the same mistakes, which is why we’re such good friends.

She called to ask me where the line is between exploring your options and cheating. How far out can you step before you say goodbye?

She hates her job, so she has been gritting her teeth and getting through it for well over a year. She’s undervalued and underpaid. So she’s been stealing time from her other duties and using it to look for a job while she’s at her job.

As far as I’m concerned, this is too normal to be worth talking about as a transgression. It is just too minor.

Recently, however, she’s started to get some job interviews. She comes up with an excuse and sneaks out. She told me she even leaves her interview clothes in the car so her co-workers don’t wonder why she’s all dressed up.

After the interview, she removes her lipstick and other makeup so she can blend into the blandness of her office without attracting attention.

When she dithers about cheating on her employer this way, I can tell she’s not genuinely troubled by it.

You don’t need to quit a job and be unemployed in order to find another one. Since you can get fired for even telling your boss you’re looking for another job, there is no choice. That’s just how it has to be.

Her approach to dating is very similar.

She’s always got a guy or three coming after her—one or two who think they are going out with her and at least one who she’s dumped but who hasn’t given up hope.

She doesn’t lead them on exactly, but she does manage all this male attention adroitly so she never has to be alone or pay for a meal in a nice restaurant. She tells them little lies so that Man A will continue to consider himself in the pole position (of course) despite the fact that she’s doing the same with Man B and often Man C, too.

It is always just about to collapse, on the verge of going out of control.

In the nightmare scenario, all these suitors arrive on her doorstep the same night with flowers, running into her other suitors. As I picture this, a battle ensues and the man left standing at the end gets her.

She’s not exactly cheating, I say, because she’s so adept at being vague. She lets the guys think what they want to think. She knows that clarity and transparency are not her friends, and that deception is allowed right up until the point she makes a commitment to one of the men.

She never seems to get to that point, however. If she told a guy she was also interviewing and auditioning other men he might not want to go through the evaluation, right?

I tell her you go girl, that’s just how it has to be.

I bopped around the Internet back when it was just a small neighborhood, or more accurately a boy’s dormitory.

So put an electronic toy in my hand, and I’m as swift on the uptake as my kids, and that’s saying a lot.

When I save to my cell phone a number that I expect to call again, I want to associate a picture and a ringtone with it, just for fun.

The photos are straightforward. If I meet a man online then I have a picture of him. Then again, this happens less than you might think. I don’t put his picture in my phone until after the first date, and most guys don’t get a second.

However, once we’ve met once or twice, and I go silent on him—I’m just thinking, Mmm, do I want him to take me out again or not?—his phone number and picture and ringtone get stuck in my phone.

Maybe I’ll go out with them again, maybe not. I can scroll down the pictures on my phone like an electronic menu of men and see what the choices are. I send a text message. He calls, and let the games begin.

The most fun by far is assigning ringtones. Each ringtone costs $1, so I have to at least value the man more than that.

When my kids call from home, I hear Paul Simon sing “Home! Home is where I wanna beeeeeeee!”

My ex and I still talk fairly frequently about kid business, which is the way I want to frame our ongoing relationship. We are partners in this child-raising business but not in any other sense.

I’ve assigned him Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Taking Care of Business.” This is a huge upgrade for him over the tunes that came out of my phone earlier in our divorce process, the best being Warren Zevon’s “My Shit’s Fucked Up,” which I now think of as my ex’s theme song.

Prior to that the Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy for the Devil” was the tune that introduced the harangue I was sure to get from him if I took the call.

When she called, my divorce lawyer was also announced by a Warren Zevon oldie: “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” which I now understand as a divorce song.

My ex does the same with his phone and reported to me that he’d brought a recent date to a screeching halt when I called and Joe Cocker began to sing “Unchain My Heart.”

He says the woman looked at him icily and told him that needed to be changed.

Since the season started on January 5, Jake has been sending girls home—the ones he doesn’t want to f—k or make babies with, except for Rozyln Papa—the one ABC sent home for sleeping with one of the show’s producers. She’s coming back tonight. Perhaps she’ll spread her lips and let us in on all the hooha she had while the cameras weren’t rolling.

The camera’s however, were rolling when kitty-cute Ali Fedotowsky sent herself home. She made it sound like her employer gave her an ultimatum—Jake or your marketing job. She chose work over love. Wise move.

In the Women Tell All special, all of the lovely ladies will get a chance to confront Jake about their booted bootie before they disappear into obscurity.

If only rejected job candidates had a chance to confront prospective employers. I think we need to give job seekers that opportunity so they can improve on their deficits. After all, trial and error works for employment situations as it does for rocket science (and love).

Since rejected job seekers didn’t get The Job, it’d be great to watch them say what’s on their mind as if they were aiming their discontent at someone they had hoped to develop a relationship with.

If it were me, I’d say,

“I came here for the right reasons, and there are job candidates here that did not. I know that for a fact. You didn’t even give me a chance.”

“I’m disappointed because you’re a company that I definitely could see myself joining.”

“I’m pretty competitive. I don’t like to lose. We’re all after the same job, and that’s just a cat fight waiting to happen.”

However, in the end, getting feelings off our chest will only make us feel better. They won’t change a situation that wasn’t meant to be.

But that’s okay because sometimes we need to feel better on the inside to move on on the outside.

It takes a while to be good and take off the extra pounds. But once you get on a roll, you begin to stick with the program, with an occasional fall.

When you have so little money, it’s hard to start saving. That might not make any sense or may even come off as an oxymoron, especially for someone who’s supposed to be retiring into middle age.

The start of my job last month has given me a steady income and a reason to save, and that’s a good thing. The problem: Piles of debt I’ve accumulated over the last 15 months and how to snow blow them away.

My debt is not insurmountable. My credit card debt is way less than $10,000, and I could almost pay it off. My other problem is that I need to use the money to pay taxes on the miscellaneous income I earned last year.

Although I imagine I’m a grain of sand in a desert of debtors across this land, I don’t want to invite the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to come down on me.

This is the first year in more than a decade that I’ll be doing my own taxes, as a divorced mom. So, I’ve started to explore the merits of do-it-yourself tax preparation services. From the reviews I’ve read, Turbo Tax has received the highest marks.

[The IRS will do your taxes for free if you make less than $49,000, but you need to visit your local IRS office to get the help. Find out more.]

You get to try Turbo Tax out—for free—meaning that the software program will prepare your taxes for you online, and if you want to file the results you need to cough up the cost of the program. I’m exploring the home business version because it’s meant for people who’ve piddled at different jobs throughout the year and/or collected unemployment.

So far, it’s been pretty easy to use. The best thing is that you can start, stop and save what you’ve done if you need to gather more information. I’m at the point of calculating all of my business expenses from the past year.

While Ann is much better at spending money than saving, her timely tax tip for this year is to label 10 standard white envelopes with the month and year. During a given month, put all all of your receipts that you’d like to take deductions against in the proper envelope. That way it’s not so overwhelming when you have to sort them at the end of the year.

I don’t know if mine will add up to anything worthwhile, but it’s worth a shot to find out. Just like it’s worth a shot to start saving.

I got off last week, government services, that is.

I had been a recipient of unemployment, food stamps and Medicaid (remember, Medicare is for old people).

When I got off the unemployment roll, the change in my income disqualified me for government assistance. Sure, I probably could have kept it going. I think the it’s not hard to game the system if you feel it’s necessary.

But I felt that having a full-time job with health and other benefits marked the first of many positive steps toward recovery.

Reporting my new-found job to the authorities seemed like the right thing to do. With food stamps, I just let my re-certification application lapse, which automatically terminated my benefits but not the amount remaining on my card, which I did use up.

For unemployment, I simply got a notice from the D.C. government saying that my unemployment benefits were canceled. The notice arrived before I got my full-time job. I didn’t bother questioning the government’s logic.

But I do question the logic of Medicaid. My new employer pays for my medical benefits—100 percent, even for a higher-end PPO (preferred provider option).

When I called the company that provides me Medicaid coverage, I said I wanted to report a change in income and that I didn’t need its insurance anymore. A company representative told me she couldn’t take the information over the phone because I was in the process of being sent my re-certification application. She said I had to do it in person.

To me, that’s a bad flaw in the system, like I’m going to use four to five hours of vacation time to trek to a bad part of town to let the authorities know I have a job. No way.

The company will eventually figure it out once I don’t appear for my re-certification appointment.

I just don’t get it.

I also get to ponder the dos and don’ts of such things as potty behavior, especially when I’m at a restaurant or nail salon. Like so many things, it comes down to common sense with what to throw or not throw in the pot.

Common sense, unfortunately, is not an innate trait in humans like it is in animals of the four-legged variety.

Usually, the “please don’t throw feminine products” in the toilet suffices and is the standard don’t do that for female occupants. While I’m sure a woman wouldn’t throw a cardboard tampon ejector in her own toilet, I’m not sure what possess one to think it’s okay to throw one in the toilet of a dining establishment.

The Filene’s store in downtown D.C. has come up with a litany of other no-nos. The sign on the stall door lists five bullet points—paper towels, multiple seat covers, excessive toilet paper and foreign objects (like would that be a condom?), and the standard feminine products one.

My favorite, however, is the sign at the place that does my nails. It says, “Please don’t stand on the toilet seat.”

I’m not sure what would possess anyone to stand on a toilet seat unless you wanted to see what the person on the other side of the stall wall was doing, not that it would be a big surprise unless it was former Idaho Senator Larry Craig having another bathroom stall incident.

While I’ll never solve the bigger problems of the world, I can ponder the little things and speak out with authority and conviction. I think we should all do that as we find ourselves under another blanket of snow this morning.

It’s the one thing we can still control after other things in life have robbed us of our homes, jobs and relationships.

On a normal weekend, I usually get about 8.

Before the big snowstorm hit Friday evening, I got to go home early from work. I enjoyed sipping a glass of wine and watching all the fluffy frosty flakes fall from the sky.

The next morning, I felt like Alice in Winterland—Jack Frost nipping at my toes and a whole lot more. I wanted to make snow angels.

Then, I looked outside. Horrors to find so much snow covering the walkway, sidewalk and my ex husband’s new used car. I shoveled for a good long while before I realized I needed a different strategy. Then, two strong men trudged by.

I did my damsel in distress thing. Try it girls, it really works! I got my walks cleared in no time.

I realized I needed to take out the trash and clean the kitty litter since I have a no-pets-go-outside policy in cold weather. Not enough men see my best lingerie, so I took out the trash to give the boys a show. But they were a no show. Must have been the weather, I guess.

I went back inside to do some housework, because work outside the office doesn’t stop. I feather dusted the fireplace mantel and set out some cooking in anticipation of a St. Nick reprise. But he was a no show, too.

So, I waited to see if some beeswax I had ordered to make a specialty cosmetic would arrive. This is what I wore when I saw that hunky FedEx guy brave the storm to knock on my door. I don’t know why they call that guy Abominable; he was the best snowman I ever had.

I can’t wait for the next big snowstorm to hit.

Now, tell me, how did you spend your weekend in the snow?

That’s because snow presents serious questions.

The bigger the snowstorm, the more serious the questions.

There are job-related questions: Will my office close? Will I get to leave early? Should I work like crazy and get as much work done as possible, or should I take it home?

I see parallels between that last question and my dating life. Should I go out tonight and get as much sex in as possible, or should I cancel and wait for another opportunity?

I can’t take sex home because I’m trapped in my house with my ex husband (recession victims who can’t afford separate digs). The only sex I can take home is me, and I think I can do better than that, though I am a lot of fun!

So, what to do?

I feel good about boiling my life down to simple pleasures because it really does come down to work and sex. Yes, I know we need to eat, and there’s plenty of time for that, too.

We wouldn’t have TV reality shows such as The Biggest Loser if people could keep their hands out of their mouth. We also wouldn’t need Planned Parenthood if people practiced abstinence (god forbid). And we wouldn’t need jobs if we lived like aborigines or were Paris Hilton.

But life is only simple in our minds.

In reality, life is complex and complicated. Why am I still living with my ex husband? Why are my tween boys challenging authority and playing video games for hours on end? Why don’t I go home to see my aging parents? Why can’t I save enough money to move? Why are fires romantic (They seem a lot of work to me.)? Why do I have a lipstick fetish?

As the snow falls, Ann will think big as she reaches for her Bluetooth vibrator and a hot buttered rum as her mind drifts from reality to what really matters—the simple pleasures in life. Won’t you join her?

For Ann, one job is never enough. Yes, Ann is looking for extra work.

While she’s thrilled to be taken off the unemployment roll, she’s got one little problem. Ann is making $20,000 less than in her last full-time job. That’s a significant drop in wages, given that her cost of living keeps rising.

How to plug the income drain guides Ann to explore quick employment opportunities. You might say she’s in an “I-don’t-know-if-I’ll-go-through-with-it phase,” but she’s applied for [fill in the blank].

Let Ann fill in a couple of them for you because she’s actually applied for them through her favorite what-the-hell-I-can-do-this-job site—craigslist. Craigslist has all kinds of goodies under the events and gig links. On a fluke, Ann applied to become a nightclub dance partner for single guys in need of eye candy. The only problem is that Ann can’t dance but maybe that’s not that important.

As with women, looks are deceiving. The website, DanceDate USA, looks good, but Ann can’t believe this site isn’t a front for hooking up hookers with men willing to pay for the privilege. You do get paid to go out, but that’s the real killer—only $20 to $25 an hour.

That’s not enough for Ann. She’s supposed to show up at the trendy Current Sushi nightclub in D.C. on February 5th for an in-person interview. Not doing it.

The other gig seems much more promising, but she imagines stiffer competition. Ann has applied to become one of the Racing Presidents for the Washington Nationals baseball team. If she gets tapped for an audition, she won’t be running in heels. That headgear is anywhere from 45 lbs. to 60 lbs.

The Presidents’ Race features four former U.S. Presidents, namely those found on Mount Rushmore: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. At every home game, they run against each other during the fourth inning.

Ann is vying for Teddy, the underdog. He’s never won a race.

She doesn’t think it pays anything, but think of the publicity. You become a local D.C. celebrity. Appearances at the White House, annual Easter Egg Roll, 4th of July fireworks.

Now that’s a home run she doesn’t have to take her pants off for.