Morning All.

The ‘dipping a toe back in’ bit is obvious I suspect, can I string a coherant sentence together after communicating in barely more than grunts for the past 6 months? Well that’s for others to judge I suppose.

‘After the other shoe has dropped’ is a little more involved. Apparently waiting for the other shoe to drop comes from apartment living and thoughtless neighbours:

“Waiting for the other shoe to drop” We use this phrase to describe waiting for some expected occurrence…”Waiting for the other shoe to drop” is a phenomenon experienced by apartment dwellers. A person in the upstairs apartment is preparing for bed. He sits on the bed, takes off Shoe No. 1 and lets it drop on the uncarpeted floor. Then takes off Shoe No. 2 and lets it drop. This can all be clearly heard by the folks in the downstairs apartment. If there is a long pause after Shoe No. 1 drops, the downstairs people are stuck “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” (source)

In my case it felt as if the second shoe was most certainly going to land on my head and, as painful as that may have been, waiting for it was worse.

“A man who lives on an upper floor of a rooming house comes home late at night and starts to undress. First he takes off one shoe and drops it loudly on the floor, waking up the man in the room below. Then he remembers to be quiet. He takes off the other shoe and sets it down carefully and silently. After a long interval, his neighbor, who has been lying awake all this time, yells up, “For God’s sake, drop the other shoe!“

The shoes in this particular metaphor represent my 20 year career in the same company and my possible redundancy from it. Strangely I discovered that NOT being made redundant was more painful than being hit on the head with the joblessness shoe. I still have that bag of brainfarts to de-gas but, long story short, I requested voluntary redundancy and (because they really wanted to change my role significantly) it was accepted. I found out I was going to be jobless on the 25th Sept and, after my notice period, I actually will be jobless on the 18th Dec. I realise my emotional response to all this might change but right now it feels like the start of my next big adventure…scary, challenging, inviting, intriguing and right.

(I think my plan is to eventually return to higher education in some form, but that holds it’s own challenges because I am interested in so much stuff. Watch out all you Volcanologist/Artisan oatcake makers/Garden designers/Astronomers/Knitting pattern writers and Wandering philosophers…I’m coming for your jobs!)

I still have not been able to pick up a work of fiction to read, but some of the non-fiction I have managed has been interesting, so will probably prompt a post of it’s own, but my knitting and my gardening have saved me from complete insanity through all this, along with the company of the least judgemental person I know.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Another fact I discovered during this utterly ridiculous period of history is that trainee midwives now use knitted prosthetic breasts to help teach new mothers about lactation…so I knitted some for a friend…as you do.

My thoughts about all the other stuff that has been occuring are complicated, infuriating, stressful, difficult and painful, but maybe I will be able to write them all out of my head now that the other clog has landed.