I'm Back, I'm Still Standing and I'm gainfully employed

And I gotta get a meal ticket
To survive you need a meal ticket
To stay alive you need a meal ticket
Feel no pain, no pain
No regret, no regret
When the line's been signed
You're someone else
Do yourself a favor, the meal ticket does the rest

"Meal Ticket,"  Bernie Taupin

 

     It has been a while, hasn't it?  My last entry was in March, right before I started my job search.  Because I can split my focus in only so many slices, I decided I needed to concentrate on finding a new job.  By March I was feeling much better (but you should see me now!) and started my job search in earnest.  I sent out over 25 resumes, and only got three interviews.  But one is all it takes, right?
       I almost didn't send my resume to my new employer.  It was for another tobacco company, and I wasn't sure that is what I wanted to do.  Plus, I could tell by the job description that it would be a step backwards in terms of my career (what career, I thought?)  And, the pay was a steep drop from what I was used to. But I figured, what the heck?
      I received a call from an HR manager almost immediately.   After buying a new suit, having not worn one for years, and dyeing my beloved gray hair brown again, I embarked on a series of interviews, first with the GC and the one other lawyer in the company, then with the GC of the parent company in Denmark, and then finally with the presidents of the three U.S. subsidiaries for which I would provide legal services.
       I was not sure how to take the GC when I first met him.   He was missing something. What was it?  Oh, yeah, I finally realized what he was missing-- that giant rod up his butt that the lawyers at my old job all had secured firmly up their derrieres.   Instead, he was personable and very forthcoming about everything-- the good, the bad and the ugly. This man holds nothing back.
       He was looking for someone with tobacco experience, and I fit the bill. 
       Long story short, I took the job.
       Almost immediately, the other lawyer resigned.
        Crap, what have I gotten myself into?
       The other lawyer wanted to make more money, so he left.  Too bad.  In the short time I got to know him, I liked him a lot.  But I could tell he was ready to move on the greener pastures.
        Fortunately, the departing attorney knew of a lawyer from D.C. who wanted to move back to Richmond, and who also had FDA experience, which the company needed because of the impending federal regulations.  More on that later. 
       Although I asked a lot of questions about the corporate culture, having been through the meat grinder before, I still had some trepidation about the new job.   I think that's normal.  But during the first few weeks, I had trouble adapting to the lack of stress.   I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.   
     On the Friday of my first week, I thought it had.  I received an e-mail from the GC with no subject line.  Uh, oh, I thought.  Here it comes. 
     To understand why I was concerned, you have to understand what I was used to.  At my previous job, I saw the GC maybe four times a year.  And her communication skills made a mime seem talkative.  We rarely received a communication directly from her.  Mostly they came through her management team, and it was hit or miss as to whether the message made its way down to the minion level where I toiled.  
     When we did receive an e-mail directly from her, you could almost hear the intake of breath from the other lawyers as it popped onto their screens.  News directly from her was rarely good.  Often, it involved new assignments for some of the lawyers.  She liked to re-arrange the deck chairs about once a year, just to keep everyone on their toes.  And the e-mail would be the first time anyone learned about the new assignments, including, I imagine, the lawyers who were being reassigned.  (Maybe not, but I'll never know because, as I've mentioned, communication in the law department there was tantamount to non-existent.  Corps in a morgue have better communication skills.
    So, on this Friday in May, when I saw this e-mail from the GC, my thoughts were racing around my head.  Had I screwed up already?  Had I stepped onto a landmine?  Walked into a buzz saw? Had I pissed off a VP so soon?  I hadn't even talked to one yet.  Boy, that was fast.  I held my breath as I opened the message.
     The e-mail contained only one thing-- a link to a website.  I clicked on the link.
     It took me to the Krispy Kreme website.  They were giving away free donuts on Saturday.
     I just about fell out of my chair.  The GC, the person who has the ear of the President of the Company, the guy (in this case) who deals with all of the most serious legal issues facing the company, took the time to send out a link to the Krispy Kreme website.
     I felt like I had gone from the Twilight Zone to Romper Room.  But not in a bad way, I promise you.  I don't mean to suggest that this place was like a kindergarten. Quite the opposite, in fact.  I was finally being treated like a professional again, something I had not enjoyed since my days at H&W. 
    No, what I mean is this, and this was the toughest thing for me to get used to--
    My new boss has a sense of humor. 
     

A pilot, a cemetery and a three-legged dog

I'm in Woodbridge, Virginia for a few days, visiting my niece, who is a Navy pilot.  She just moved here and knows no one. Plus, with the winter hanging on, there's not much opportunity to meet the neighbors, even though she owns two dogs.  Walking the dogs is a great way to meet new people. 

I needed a change of venue, and so did Billy, I'm sure, so I came up on Tuesday to keep her company for a few days.  Tuesday we had yet another snow storm, but I-95 was clean and dry. 

Woodbridge is located 20 miles south of Washington D.C. and is growing.  Growing is an understatement.  Exploding is more like it.  Once I left the interstate, I saw miles and miles of houses in new and nearly-new subdivisions.  Woodbridge, located in Prince William County, is a popular bedroom community for D.C, to say the least.  

Wikipedia calls Woodbridge a "census-designated place" (CDP), which means that it's not an incorporated city or town, but has a dense population so it is "designated" solely for purposes of counting people. I had never heard of a CDP before. 

Most of the neighborhoods I passed appeared to be built on old farms.  I say this because I saw very few native trees in the subdivisions. Usually builders leave a few trees standing when they clear the land.  Here, instead of old trees, every house sported one or two saplings in the yard.

The houses looked lonely in the waning afternoon sun as I arrived.  When I rang the doorbell, it sounded like hounds had been unleashed from hell.  The sidelight windows were covered with blinds, but I could hear dogs banging against them.  I heard not one dog barking, but three.  And there was a bird screeching as well. It was a comical sound to me. 

Well, I thought, Mel doesn't have to worry about being burglarized!

Turns out Mel only has two dogs, not three.  The third dog I heard was from next door.  And only one of them was throwing itself against the front windows! 

She has two dogs, both quintessential mutts. Both are short-haired and medium sized.  The female has white fur with black spots on her legs, neck and belly, a sign that there's some Dalmatian mixed in there somewhere.  The male is mostly black.  Even though they are not related, they both have brown spots above their eyes that look like eyebrows. 

This morning I walked them around the neighborhood. There was not a soul about.  No commuter traffic, no service vehicles, nothing.  Certainly no one else out walking--it was 34 degrees with a harsh wind blowing.  Yet the dogs, even though both are short-haired, didn't seem to mind in the least.  I think it's true that mutts are hardy; these two certainly were.

We walked to the tot-lot and in the middle I saw something unusual.  A cemetery surrounded by a black metal fence.  A very old cemetery.  I could see less than a dozen headstones.  Most of them were so worn I could not make out the inscriptions.  The ones I could read dated back to the mid-1800's-- pre-Civil War.  The names were mostly the same--a family cemetery.  This confirmed my suspicion that this used to be a farm.  There was a sign outside the fence that read "Maddox Scott Cemetery." 

When I returned to the house I did some digging.  I hit paydirt almost immediately when I found a website with a list of cemeteries in Prince William County.  According to the website, there are more than 400 of them.  

The description for the Maddox Scott cemetery said it contained 33 graves, but only eight with headstones.  The dates on the headstones ranged from 1826 to 1857.  The oldest person in the cemetery was 83, which was old for that time.  The youngest was 29. 

Personally, I think its pretty cool to have a cemetery right in the subdivision.  I wonder, though, if all the residents feel the same way.  It reminded me a little of the movie Poltergeist.

And the three-legged dog?  His name is Foster.  Before Mel and her husband rescued him, he had been attacked by a gang of dogs and when he managed to escape, he was hit by a car. Yet you cannot tell he is missing a leg when you look at him from the front.  He stands with perfect balance.  He has a little hitch in his step when he walks, but when he runs, there's not difference.   

He, like his friend Shandy (the one who charged the blinds), is a sweetheart.  After we walked this morning, they both snuggled against me while I watched T.V. 

Oh, and Shandy talks.  I just heard her. 

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Being famous and gorgeous does not make a person immune to depression.  Just ask Jon Hamm or Ashley Judd.  They have both endured depression.

Mad Men star Jon Hamm guest-starred on a couple of episodes of 30 Rock.  The premise of these episodes was that good-looking people get special perks from society and can get away with more crap than the average person.   Yet in real life, being DDG (drop dead gorgeous) did not prevent Hamm from getting sick. According to Health magazine, when Hamm was 20, he experienced chronic depression after his father died.  He relied on the structured environment offered by college plus medication and therapy to pull him up out of the black hole.  Now, of course, he spends most of his time drinking bourbon for breakfast and chasing women on Mad Men.  Talk about eye candy.

Then there's Ashley Judd.  I remember her as a teenager on the show Sisters.  She played Sela Ward's daughter.  I thought she was so beautiful.  Later she played the young Vivi Abbott Walker in The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood.   Remember that awful scene when she lines up her children outside in the rain?  Chilling.

Apparently her childhood was no picnic.  While her mother and sister (Naomi and Wynona Judd) were out touring, she was mostly left alone to fend for herself.  She wrote a memoir in 2011 called All that is Bitter & Sweet in which she revealed that in 2006 she spent 42 days in a rehab center for depression.  Did you know that she recently earned a Master's Degree in Public Administration from Harvard?  Not only is she gorgeous, but she's smart too.  And she likes to hike.

When I was a kid, I thought that if I was perfect, nothing bad would happen to me.  And the converse was true also -- because I was bad, bad things happened to me. (You'll never guess who helped to fuel that perception).   Then when I was 30 and went through my first big depression,  I read The Road Less Traveled  by M. Scott Peck.  The opening lines of the book were mind-blowing to me: 

 “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

Could this really be true?  It wasn't me?  It wasn't because I was not as obedient as I should have been?
It was an epiphany.  And just as Peck predicted, once I learned that simple fact of life, my life was no longer difficult for me inside my head.  I was finally able to stop those awful tapes that ran inside my head, tapes planted by a parent who wanted to control me no matter how old or independent I got.

And this truth also meant that it didn't matter how good looking or accomplished a person was.  Life is difficult for all of us, even people as beautiful as Jon Hamm and Ashley Judd.

Until you've seen this trash can dream come true
You stand at the edge while people run you through
And I thank the Lord there's people out there like you
I thank the Lord there's people out there like you

 While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers
Turn around and say good morning to the night
For unless they see the sky
But they can't and that is why
They know not if it's dark outside or light

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, lyrics by Bernie Taupin

Why Laughter is almost as good as an Orgasm

I have to keep this blog PG rated, so I'll try to describe this as delicately as I can.  You know how an orgasm feels like a release of energy that courses through your body?   And how it releases stress?  Don't you always feel better afterwards?  I know I do.  This has been the silver lining for Billy, if you know what I mean.

The same goes for a good belly laugh.  I always feel better afterwards.  An article in today's Wall Street Journal claims that humor increases intelligence, creativity and stress tolerance.  "It's Funny How Humor Actually Works."   Ok, I'll buy that but I don't need to dissect humor like that.  I just need to laugh. 

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a smiler and I love to laugh.  I love all kinds of humor-- from sophisticated to sophomoric. I love droll British humor and slapstick.  Any movie with Steve Buscemi in a comedy role will have me hooked. The Wedding Singer?  Hysterical.  Some of my favorite comedies include Local Hero, Napolean Dynamite and Airheads.   Oh, and What's Up Doc.  It was Madeline Kahn's movie debut.  She was brilliant. 

When I'm feeling blue I don't look for raindrops or roses.  I look for a movie with lots of laughs.  No apocalyptic dramas for me.  Hunger Games?  No thanks.  I'd rather watch even a lame comedy like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, although if you watch the unrated and uncut version its much funnier.  But really, a little Russell Brand goes a long way.  

Sheldon Cooper and his merry band of nerds, on the other hand, never gets tiresome to me.  Perhaps its because I see much of myself in Amy Farrah Fowler. 

My sense of humor may not be the same as yours, but it doesn't need to be.  Whatever makes you laugh makes you laugh.  It doesn't matter.  Just find it and watch it. You'll feel better, I promise.

10 Ways to Show Love to Someone With Depression

10 Ways to Show Love to Someone With Depression 

I'm re-blogging this because it is so good.

Dancing in the End Zone

They say every dark cloud has a silver lining, and this unfortunate sabbatical has had several.  Today I want to talk about one of them-- football.  Yes, football. .

I did not grow up in a sports family, far from it.  My dad taught me how to play the piano, not how to throw a curveball.  We went to see the Symphony, not the Redskins.  I saw George C. Scott at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore, but never saw one game of the 1969 World Series, which was played a mere 20 miles away. Saturdays were spent listening to the New York Metropolitan Opera on the radio, not watching sports.  My dad's idols were Mozart, not Montana, Beethoven, not Butkis. Joe Namath was just a guy who wore pantyhose.

Naturally I did not play any sports in school, either. I was always the last one chosen for volleyball and softball teams. I was the Sheldon Cooper of Glen Burnie High School (but not nearly as smart).  My college required two semesters of a sport, so I took tennis.  I loved the game so much I took lessons all through law school and during the Missing Years.  I played a couple of times a week.  But I was never able to get the ball over the net more than three times in a row.  I'm not exaggerating. Picture Sheldon's girlfriend Amy Farrah Fowler trying to play tennis, and you've got me.  After a while, no one would play with me because I was so bad.

So I never watched sports and I can't play sports.  As a result, I have no interest in sports, either playing or watching.  That's why I like to hike. At least I can put one foot in front of the other, although I do fall down a lot.

I had never seen a football game until I started dating Billy.  His family would spend Sunday afternoons watching the Redskins and picking crabs.  Since I didn't watch the game, I was able to pick a lot more crabs than anyone else.  Early in my marriage, my mother in law told me if I loved my husband, I would learn to love football.  Well, it took me 32 years to do that.


Last fall, Guido was one of the captains of his football team.  They had a great team and an excellent chance of winning the state championship. I promised both Billy and Guido that I would attend as many games as I could. I knew that the boys checked the stands at every game to find their parents.  I had to be there.

The games were played at 4 p.m. on Fridays, which you would think would be a good time to get away from work. But I spent much of Guido's first game behind the bleachers, on the phone for work.  This was just a few weeks before my breakdown and I know it helped to precipitate it.

When I sat down on the bleachers, I made the mistake of checking my e-mail.  I had a message from a VP, who needed me to do some legal research ASAP for a very URGENT MATTER!!.  This was at 4:15.  I called outside counsel, who was an expert on the topic.  I can't say what the question was, but the answer was a resounding NO.  There was a teeny tiny loophole, but counsel said it was a long shot and would require a written opinion from the agency, which would take months. The VP needed the answer by Monday.

When I told the VP the answer was no, he told me to keep looking anyway and see if the loophole would apply.  I spent most the game and half of Saturday hopping down this rabbit hole.  It turns out that the question had been asked many, many times before and the answer had always been NO.  And the VP knew this.

While I was dealing with this pointless fire drill, I missed the first touchdown of the season, which was scored by-- yup, my son. I was livid. If the legal issue had been legitimate, I wouldn't have minded missing my son's first game as captain.  But it was not.  The purpose had been to help another VP avoid being embarrassed. I knew then that I could not go on like this, no matter how much they paid me.

Two weeks later I broke down.  As a result, I got to watch every one of my son's games, both at home and away.   During the first month or so, however,  it was all I could do to get to the games.  In addition to depression, I had agoraphobia.  I did not want to leave the house.

But now I'm glad I did.  I finally began to understand and appreciate the game.  Football has a reputation for its toughness, but I realized that good players have to be smart too. It's still hard to follow, but I'm getting better at it.  It helped when I sat next to someone other than Billy who understood the game and didn't mind explaining things to me. 

Guido's team had a 10-2 record.  They beat their biggest hometown rival to make it to the state championship.  Even though they lost the state championship game, they had an amazing season.  You can see Guido's highlight tape on YouTube.  Guido's highlight tape.

Go Cougars!

Hi. I'm Art Buchwald and I just died.

I used to love to read Art Buchwald when I was a kid.  He was a political humorist for the Washington Post.  He was like Will Rogers before him and Dave Barry afterwards.  His column was funny and fun to read.  He won two Pulitzer Prizes for Outstanding Commentary.  He also wrote an astounding number of books--44 according to Wikipedia.

He was also famous for being in hospice care for over a year!  Hospice care is supposed to be end of life care; typically people last a few days or weeks.  But Buchwald went in and out of hospice for over a year.   Every time he went into hospice he would get better.  Talk about having the last laugh.

What makes this all the more amazing is the Buchwald suffered from depression.  You would think that someone with depression would want to die. But this was not the case with Buchwald.

He wrote about it in an article in 1999.  Celebrity Meltdowns   As usual, he wrote about it with humor:  "One of my major fears during my depression [in 1963]  was that I would lose my sense of humor and wind up in advertising."  (This was before Mad Men, obviously, because advertising looked like a lot of fun in the 1960's as long as you were a white male.)

Buchwald's message was this:  "You do get over depression.  More important, you are a better person for having had one . . . You become more sensitive and kind.  In my case it was so."

The article goes on to discuss other famous people who suffered from depression, including Sigmund Freud, Marilyn Monroe, Ted Turner, Greg Louganis, Alanis Morissette, and Abraham Lincoln. 

Wow-- such brilliant (in most cases) company.  These people were (and are) creative and successful.  However, the article also claims that "history shows that brilliance often goes hand in hand with mental illness."  Lucky me.  I guess I can't have one without the other.

Ok, I'll take brilliance and creativity with a side of Welbutrin, please.  I can live with this.  And I mean just that-- I can live with this.

Thank you everyone for all the positive comments on this blog and on my FB page. They help me more than you know.