So I'm back to looking for a job.  Craigslist seems to be the most direct way of finding independent pharmacies. Maybe it's my age, but when I see these byzantine online forms that corporations are requesting you fill out, I just say screw you, who are you to ask me to complete an application that will take more than an hour and you will never even open.  At least Craigslist reminds me of the 80s, when applying for a job was just a phone call away, where you at least get a sense of the personality of the company.  So it is that I cold call UMR Pharmacy in Jersey City and speak to the owner Zia.  Right away he sounds sweet, giggles when I say I'm looking for a laid back pharmacy, not so busy, no tension, no screaming bosses.  He suggests I start right away and then we'll see how it goes.  When I walk in I feel comfortable immediately, Zia introduces me to his sixty-eight-year old father Mohammed and to Bilal, a 23-year-old  pre-med student, who is working to earn money for coursework on a semester by semester basis.  Bilal will be my teacher.  He is so bright, knows more about pharmacy than anyone I've ever met and it dawns on me, I've landed in pure shit.  Not only can I learn from him in a stress-free environment, I have the perfect setup, I'm learning from a kid who basically has to answer to me.  And soon, he too realizes that he's lucky, that I will never be anything but thankful for the knowledge.

The little stuff

Ben won't help me on the computer.  We have just two more months before his Bar Mitzvah and we need to go over his party list and correct mistakes from the stationer.  It's the same old story, we sit side by side in the den, the annoying voice of Cartman from South Park as backdrop, and begin to go over our list.  I ask him a question and he won't lift an eye towards me.  "Ben, how do I line up the stationer's list next to mine?"  I know it's a simple minimizing and dragging, but I just can't seem to do it.  He will not make a move to help me.  I want to walk out the door and say the hell with this.  We don't need a Bar Mitzvah, what we need is a therapist.

We just came back from four days at Tanglewood before which I had orchestrated the purchase of one-hundred 65 cent stamps plus forty 45 cent stamps from Zazzle.com along with beanie cap samples from Lids.com to arrive perfectly timed when we got home yesterday.  Only nothing arrived.  I checked our stamp order and it said cancelled.  Apparently an e-mail had gone out to us while we were floating on our backs in Laurel Lake at the Berkshires explaining that the printing had gone poorly, was cropped wrong and did we still want it.  Ben showed me the e-mail once we got home and the halloween moon and cat on the 45 cent stamps had a larger boarder.  Now I was screwed.  It would take at least three days to get it printed again and by then we'd be in Seattle for the next ten days.  Which would put us a week behind schedule. Big deal.  I wonder when I got so fussy.  Somewhere around menopause I know for sure.

Rona can't believe I'd go to Zazzle anyway and pay so much for stamps.  She's right, USPS would have been fine, only our local post office only had "Dogs at Work" and a wedding cake.  But later that night I look online on USPS one more time and find a 65 cent butterfly stamp which surely would be the perfect metaphor for a boy's metamorphisis into manhood,  and a 45 cent celebrate stamp with candles and streamers which reminded me of a Chorus Line logo and is a perfect homage to the late Marvin Hamlisch.  None of which anyone will get.