{"id":1489,"date":"2013-06-20T10:50:43","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T16:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2013-06-20T10:50:43","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T16:50:43","slug":"whats-acceptable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/?p=1489","title":{"rendered":"What’s acceptable?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

My daughter has told me that whenever she\u00a0hears the word ‘acceptable’ she thinks of broccoli and cauliflower.<\/p>\n

I know, right?\u00a0 Totally wacky and I’m not even sure how those wires\u00a0coulda gotten\u00a0crossed.\u00a0 I can understand how,\u00a0when she hears the name Keith, she thinks of Heath Bars.\u00a0 But the acceptable\/cauliflower combo??\u00a0\u00a0Not so much.<\/p>\n

You know what I think of when I see the woman on the bike wearing a full-on sunhat UNDER her bike helmet and a surgical mask covering everything on her face but her eyes?\u00a0 I think she’s got\u00a0bubonic plague.<\/p>\n

This woman rides through our neighborhood every morning in her\u00a0get-up.\u00a0 At some point I would think she would\u00a0A) either get over her bubonic plague or B) finally succumb to it, in which case\u00a0bike riding is no longer an option.<\/p>\n

Granted, there could be a very reasonable explanation for the surgical mask (pollen time, pollen time, poll-poll-pollen time.\u00a0 Pollen tiiiiIIIIMME! – sung to the tune of summertime, summertime, sum, sum, summertime.\u00a0 SummertiiiiIIIIME!)<\/p>\n

But where’s the fun in having a reasonable explanation?\u00a0\u00a0It’s more fun to develop an off-the-wall theory and treat it as fact.\u00a0 So either this woman is afraid of GETTING bubonic plague on her morning bike ride…or she already HAS bubonic plague.<\/p>\n

Which is\u00a0actually NOT\u00a0as off-the-wall as you might think because bubonic plague is alive-and-well here in Colorado.\u00a0 The prairie dogs carry it.\u00a0 And there are a LOT of prairie dogs.\u00a0 In fact, my neighbor spotted one running through our back yard recently.\u00a0 A\u00a0“scout” of some sort for the prairie dog colony that lives down the street?\u00a0 Who knows.\u00a0 But the neighbor reported whacking it a few times on the noggin’.\u00a0 Is this\u00a0the prairie dog equivalent of\u00a0breaking someone’s knee caps as a way to send a message to the mob boss??\u00a0\u00a0Yo!\u00a0 You’s – this is OUR territory, capiche?!\u00a0\u00a0The prairie dogs have not been spotted in the ‘hood since the “whacking” incident.\u00a0\u00a0But that’s assuming the scout made it back to base with the “message.”\u00a0 For all I know he could\u00a0now be\u00a0lying comatose in our yard and at some point our dog will find the plague-y thing,\u00a0playfully toss it\u00a0into the air, jauntily catch it\u00a0in\u00a0his mouth, then proceed to drag it up and down the front stairs thereby spreading\u00a0death and destruction to all\u00a0household members.\u00a0 If – going forward – you begin to see us riding our bikes with masks on…Beware!\u00a0 BEWARE!!!<\/p>\n

But I digress.\u00a0 Where I was REALLY going with all of this is how this reminds me of the way people treat me (not all people, but a surprising number of them) when they find out I don’t have a job.\u00a0 They treat me like I have the plague.<\/p>\n

I can practically\u00a0HEAR them whispering behind their hands to each other, “But what’s WRONG with her?\u00a0 Why can’t she get a job??”\u00a0 As if I have a hunchback that I disguise very well under my interview blazer (“She gave me water!”\u00a0 What??\u00a0 Too esoteric of a literary reference for you people without\u00a0Degrees in French??\u00a0 I was quoting Victor Hugo’s\u00a0Hunchback of Notre Dame\u00a0after Esmerelda gave\u00a0him some water.\u00a0 Hunchback.\u00a0 Get it now?!?\u00a0 And you wonder why I can’t get a job!)<\/p>\n

And if it’s not some physical deformity,\u00a0could it be some\u00a0inherent character flaw that prevents me from being\u00a0employable??\u00a0 (whisper, whisper, whisper<\/em>)<\/p>\n

All this whispering is making me think there IS something wrong.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe I should just start wearing a surgical mask\u00a0to interviews as a very visible sign of whatever ails me?\u00a0 Beware!\u00a0 BEWARE!!!<\/p>\n

Well – there actually ISN’T anything wrong with me, all joking aside.\u00a0\u00a0I am eminently employable.\u00a0 It’s just really hard to find a job doing what I was doing.\u00a0 There are a total of\u00a05 companies in the world where that job\u00a0exists.\u00a0 And none of those companies\u00a0are located HERE, where I live.\u00a0\u00a0And until I can repurpose my skills, there’s a slight (ongoing) hitch in my job giddyup!<\/p>\n

But\u00a0really, don’t worry about me (she says as she holds her finger up to her mouth\u00a0trying to keep the emotion in check and give herself a moment to regain her composure).\u00a0 Nope!\u00a0 Don’t worry about me!\u00a0 And don’t worry about me wearing masks to interviews.\u00a0 While it\u00a0certainly would make me MEMORABLE to prospective employers, I understand it wouldn’t be……acceptable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My daughter has told me that whenever she\u00a0hears the word ‘acceptable’ she thinks of broccoli and cauliflower. I know, right?\u00a0 Totally wacky and I’m not even sure how those wires\u00a0coulda gotten\u00a0crossed.\u00a0 I can understand how,\u00a0when she hears the name Keith, she thinks of Heath Bars.\u00a0 But the acceptable\/cauliflower combo??\u00a0\u00a0Not so much. You know what I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}