What Heels do to My Balls

So....okay....thank you so much for all the encouragement, first of all. Second of all, about three hours after posting my previous blog, I got a call from my temp agency offering me a two and a half week gig as a receptionist. The pay is crap, but the hours are good, and the work is fairly simple...and it affords me time to read (and that is confirmed by the other receptionists). Now lets talk a little more about professional wear in London:

As I've said, I immediately ran out and bought a blazer to wear to do all the important telephone answering that I'm set to do, and on the morning of my first shift (i.e. this morning) I gussied myself up and slid into sexy two and a half inch heels that I bought at payless a few years ago (do not attempt to teach me a lesson that I have already learned by this point). I stepped out the door to your typical windy, spitty, London rain, and cleverly pulled my umbrella out of my bag. However, said umbrella must have cost me no more than about $3 and was constantly getting inverted by the wind and leaving me looking like a blustering idiot. Another siren went off when halfway to the Tube, I realized that my shoes were killing me and that there was probably a river of blood running over the ankle of the shoe. There was not, so I kept going. I arrived at work to a poor girl that was sniffling and sneezing (they're EVERYWHERE...like POD people...trying to take over our immune systems and force us to create inordinate amounts of mucus) the entire time that she was explaining my duties to me. I'll tell you more about the other girls in another blog. I'd like to stick to the theme with this one, and I certainly don't want to wear anyone out. After limping around the office, following the girls around to different destinations to do odd jobs, I decided I needed to have a look at my ankle. They set me up with some band-aids (plasters...in this crazy backwards country), and I locked myself in the ladies to bandage myself. What I found was a nickel-sized little bastard just begging to be drained. SO...I got a safety pin, some alcohol swabs, and a cup of seriously boiling hot water (from the handy instant coffee machine) and set to work. It popped quite easily and drained slowly into a little splotch on the toilet seat. I then commenced cleaning it with the alcohol, which, for an instant, stung me worse than anything has ever stung me. I had to sit down it was so startlingly painful. Then I bandaged her up and walked with a fair bit of ease for the rest of the afternoon. By the evening, however, I honestly thought I was going to die. There are no words...NO WORDS, I say, that could describe to you the agony of the pressure on the balls of my feet as I staggered home after work. Of course the Tube was rammed, and I was forced to stand, crammed up against the door willing myself to balance on my heels. When I arrived at my home station, I swallowed, dreading the next seven minute walk to my door-step. I was standing, and I was walking...but inside, I was crawling along the side-walk (pavement...in England), reaching out, begging for aid, crying for relief. I felt like the bones in my feet were going to pour out my toes, and while I tried to walk on my heels to relieve the pressure on my balls, I found actually moving forward to be far more difficult than I had imagined. I made it, in the end, took the shoes off the minute I stepped over the threshold, and vowed never to wear heels unless I was safe at work, and safely behind my desk. It's sneakers all the way to entrance for me. Flaunting my professionalism to the lemmings on the Tube be damned (for some reason...I love "be damned" at the end of a sentence...it makes me feel like a wizened old man...smoking a pipe, stroking his beard, and soaking his feet after a long day in sexy black heels).

I am no longer a valuable member of society, or at least, that's how I feel

There's something odd about leaving your home country to live and work in another country...it's something that is incredibly hard to admit...being an American is way easier, and feels much better when in America. I cannot get a job. I can't even get a temping job. I was pretty much guaranteed work on Monday morning, but I ended up waiting around in the agency for three hours until they sent me home because they just couldn't find anything. Well, they found ONE job, but they gave it to the other "sit-in" that arrived fifteen minutes late, because she had a blazer on (and mind you, I was dressed up pretty darn good)...she also had a cold which she may have given to me. We shall see. So, at the moment, I apply for jobs and wait to get the rejection that inevitably comes. I also get up in the very early a.m. to call the temp. agency to tell them that I'm available, and then never get called. Sometimes I cry because I feel so bloody useless, and sometimes I think about coming back to the states so that I can pretty much get a job right off the bat. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I'm so eager to give up any chance of opportunity to be with a guy. I mean, I could be teaching right this instant, but instead I'm in a country that has no use for me. This guy is great, don't get me wrong, and wants to do whatever he can to help me, and is doing whatever he can, but pretty soon, I'm just a drain on him too...so what do I do? Do I wait? Probably. Life is never easy, and, as I've said to many of my friends: anything WORTH doing is going to be difficult, but when does it become just plain stupid? At the moment, I've no desire to do anything. I have the will enough to lie in bed and try to sleep off this lovely gift of a cold that was given to me by Blazer woman who, by the way, was told that a hot toddy would make her feel better, so she had one ON HER WAY TO WORK...so....I'm also smarter than she is. Drink a hot toddy at night because it will help you sleep and it will help your symptoms so that you can comfortably get to sleep. I may not have had a blazer at the time (I've got one now, dammit), but I wasn't drunk. I'm a little more career minded than that. This blog turned out to be way less blubbery than I thought it would be. Surprisingly my mind has taken a utilitarian turn...it may have been the academic writing that I just spent a year trying to perfect. Creativity be damned, I've got a worthless degree!