Boogie nights and layoff days

This has been a week. Started and ended on a positive note but, oh, that middle ground. Every time I see that ad on TV "help, I've fallen and I can't get up" it occurs to me that I live alone in a fairly isolated area, seldom see or talk to other people -- most days the only people I talk to outside of work are the kids at the Subway where I buy my lunch sandwich -- and could easily not be missed by anyone for weeks if something happened. Now, one day this week I ran into one delay after another on the way to work which made me half an hour late. Mind you, in almost five years there, I have never missed a day, nor have I been late more than once or twice and that only by a minute or two. With all that in mind, that delay day as I was finally pulling into the parking lot my phone rang. It was the supervisor asking if I was all right. It turned out he and another fellow I work with had wondered why I was late, and discussed the fact I am never late and actually started to worry a bit. I found it reassuring that people notice things like that and were concerned enough to call.

Well, that was the good part of work. On the day after the Haiti disaster occurred, the company announced a new round of layoffs, the third in little more than a year. This time the cuts went deep. I watched a woman leave who has worked there for 32 years and there were rumors of others with that sort of longevity getting cut as well. This is a recurring action in the newspaper business and particularly at McClatchy which made some financial mistakes that are now haunting the company. I survived this cut and the others, mostly I think because I took the offer a couple of years ago to work on the Web site rather than the paper, although I still edit several stories a night for the paper in addition to my internet duties. But it has reached the point where I think we all begin to feel guilt as we watch colleagues leave the office while we sit quietly in our seats glad it didn't happen to us, but feeling so much for the departed and not really knowing what to say. There were tears this time and I have never seen that happen in previous layoffs. This one hit me harder than the others, I guess because now I don't see the possibility for improvement. I have a feeling we are now clinging to a sinking ship and it is only a matter of time before it turns bow up and slips below the surface.

So, ups and downs and overs and outs. Today my son turned 20. He is no longer the kid or the teenager who lights my life so much. Now he is officially in his 20s and a man I love. And though I have known it for a while, today my daughter announced her engagement publicly. Maybe these are signs I need to grow up, too. But I really don't want to. I am glad to see them progress and I cheer for them but still out there is drugs, sex, and rock and roll, boogie till you puke, and ohhhhh baby. I am not trying to deny age. I am quite comfortable with my age, I am just not ready to act it. So, today, I am playing with a new machine. It converts audio tapes to MP3 and I have 30 years of music with the attached memories to keep me going for a long time. And, it helps for a while to sublimate what is happening to my colleagues at work. Plus it is a party day for my son and the announcement of a party for my daughter and her fiance, so let's get down and boogie.