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the boy in the cooky jar
March 12, 2008
I�m starting to wonder what�s going on.
I should have been riding the rapids on the Red River sometime around leap day, but I�m still sitting here high and dry 12 days later. Since I am certain it isn�t pregnancy, maybe it�s peri-menopause? I�ve had cycle shifts in the past, but only by a week or less. This is a bit less than two. And a bit disconcerting.
Of course, if you look up possible non-pregnant causes for this, the number one hit is �stress�. Same as the constipation, the insomnia, the excess stomach acid, and�as of the last 24 hours--the huge eruption of eczema on my arm. Stress, stress, stress. And stress.
It�s pretty obvious that I can�t tolerate stress. Setting aside the fact that it is the worst thing ever for a person with depression, the physical side alone shows that stress is absolute poison to me.
And everyday, I take another slug of the Koolaid.
But what choice do I have? I have to have a paycheck, and there are not opportunities springing out at me from behind every bush here. The economy is tanked, I�m in an industry that�s holding on by its fingernails, and I�m 44 years old.
Spouse is feeling quite blue over the news that one of his childhood icons is disappearing to make way for a damned Costco. The Maurice Lenell Cooky Co.� (Yes, I know. But that�s how they spell it!) has sold their factory on Harlem Avenue to a developer, who is turning it into yet another strip mall.
Trips to the Lenell factory have always been a tradition and a real treat for Spouse�s family, and I�ve been a part of it sine 1983, when he first took me there. It has always seemed like a relic of another time, from the glassed-in cooling belt where you could watch the endless rows of cookies go by, to the free samples of every kind of cookie in the little store. The bags of broken cookies, priced rock-bottom. The old-fashioned package-tying machine that tied string around your cookie boxes to keep them closed and together. The women that work in the store are pretty special, too. Crotchety old Chicago dames, one and all. None of them are ever young, because working there has always been like a pension plan for retired line workers. Well, that�s the end of that.
And the end of them for me. Bye-bye, boy in the cooky jar. They�ve been baking cookies in Chicago for over 70 years, but they are not moving to another facility in the city; word is they are off-shoring the production. Great. So I wonder, are they going to be offering �Lead Pinwheels� hecho in Mexico? Or are we going to be seeing some Chinese travesty made of shit and poison?
Reading: "Northanger Abbey", by Jane Austen, and a 1994 issue of Alfred Hitchcock�s Mystery Magazine, from my huge collection of AHMMs and EQMMs.
Surfing: Bowling Trophy. Another fun �found items� site.
Listening: Jann Arden, �Blood Red Cherry�
At Random: click here
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