My Own WPA project

I've emerged again.

Let me say, I miss you and I love you.

Kiss. Kiss.

That aside, I dropped blogging simply due to time constraints. For the last six months or so, simply breathing had to be scheduled. Every time I even slightly considered a blog post it only sounded like whining to me with the added distraction of me spending time on the computer obsessed with me - a negative - so I've avoided you guys for well over two months.

Last week I picked up a book by a Wisconsin author, Michael Perry, who writes about himself and his life in his small town up Nort', as we say.

He is self deprecating and honest, which I admire. He's a bit worduluous which has put at least my father off of his books. (I made up wordulous. It mostly means using a bigger, off-putting word where a smaller humbler word would've worked. For the record, Mr. Perry NEVER overuses adverbs, and the overuse of adverbs is a sure sign of a horrible writer.)

Perry made me think that maybe I should stop shying away from my blog and just writstraight and true about the crap that has been going down lately. I think that if I simply tell you these stories without an agenda then maybe I'll have a record of how things went down ITE (cool people shorthand for "In This Economy")

Here's the deal. Or Chapter One.

One year ago I was a stay home mom. I put my two girls in all the rec. department classes I could fit them into. In the afternoons we went to the swimming pool and I knit mittens or socks or other small things while they played.

In September the guy who was runnning my family's company called me and asked me to come help him get caught up. I was really the perfect candidate since I hired him and trained him in the first place. My good friends will recognize that I first described him as the "Republican Dude".

The day I went in to discuss starting working for him he offered me $10 an hour. I knew that he started ( and I left at) a much higher pay scale ten years ago. I said I'd work for $15.

Then I came in on my first day and fired up the computer. Exactly three seconds after looking at our books I knew we were fucked.

But really, I spent the time between September and the end of November trying to save things through straight but silly will power alone.Then one day I went to work and the Republican Dude criticized a suggestion that I had.

At that point I already knew that he had fucked our company to the point that he knew he couldn't afford me on the payroll at $15 an hour. I volunteered to be a 1099 independent and I didn't take money until they had it.

So after two months of working for nothing, he criticized me in front of the accountant. I blabbed. I told everyone who would listen that he grew our company in half.

He should have been fired on the spot.

Rather, I was told to go home for the week and cool off.

I did.

But when my brothers who own the company looked closer, they realized this guy was killing us.

He's been a friend of the family for nearly 30 years. Did I mention that?

We decided that he should work as a salesman. We'd knock his salary back but kick up a comission. If he went out I.T.E (in this economy) and brought us new business he'd get the comission.

For some reason, this made him collapse.

Rather than fight for his life, or even the life of our company, which he had an ownership of, he just gave up.

More tomorrow.