First, a few notes from the 2nd LOTR series:

1. I’m nearly completely caught up with the ironing. Hurray for the extended versions of the three movies!
2. I posted this on FB, and still think it an overlooked item from movies 1 and 2: when you win a fight with a Balrog, your hair becomes perfectly straight.
3. As I watched the 2nd movie, I kept anticipatiting the scene which apparently is in the 3rd movie with the ruler of Gondor. I forgot about the irritation he caused me in the 2nd movie. Talk about one blind parent.
4. When Gandalf the White rides in with the riders of Rohan at the end of the big battle with the Uru-kai, I couldn’t help but be amazed at the apparent strength he must have with that staff. Where others need swords, he can accomplish the same with the staff. AND come through without a stain on his nice, white robe. Must come with being a wizard.

And now some other thoughts that have occured to me this week.

When I was laid off, I was hurt. Up until that point, I had been blessed with consistent employment. If there’s one thing I fear in life, it’s failure – feeling like a failure, failing at something I’m trying to do, looking like a failure… If it smells like failure to me, I really get scared. The first few weeks after being laid off, I had lots of hope from conversations with contracting companies and other companies who showed a tremendous amount of interest in my skills. I felt hopeful – hopeful that the phase of unemployment wouldn’t be long, and I’d be on to new endeavors soon.

Weeks kept passing, and nothing seemed to happen with all those hopeful interviews I’d had. Then we had ailing family and other concerns that occupied time, so I didn’t really dwell on the situation. Then came a networking meeting-turned interview that I was completely unprepared for. I walked away from the interview feeling like a complete idiot. We’d just returned from helping friends and family, and I hadn’t really done my homework to refresh my memory on what was on my resume at the very least, before walking into that discussion. I had the address wrong, parking blocks away from where the meeting was taking place, and arrived late for the meeting. My head was NOT clear – in fact, it was complete mush. I couldn’t remember names, dates, responsibilities, or, it seemed, how to speak intelligently. I walked away feeling like a failure.

I tried not to let it get to me, but it did. It got to the point that one of our toilets needed to be unplugged, and I worked and worked at it, but nothing would come of it. Rich looked at it and said to just leave it alone, it would probably take care of itself with all the plunging I’d just done. I did, and 5 minutes later, the toilet was fine.

That’s when I broke down. I couldn’t even successfully plunge a toilet.