stage clooney

i have cramps. george clooney is still dating her. i’m pretty sure the pimple on my chin will never go away.

and starting february 22nd, 2012 i’ll be laid off.

and here i was feeling far too franchised with the stable job and good benefits and paid-off car. now that i’ll be job-challenged, at least i have some street cred with the 99% movement.  and i’ve always wanted to buy a che guevara-shirt.  and most importantly, since my life is now imitating george clooney art, perhaps he’ll be more apt to cancel the restraining order return my emails?

so as you can imagine, it’s been a less-than-amazeballs week for me and the rest of my soon-to-be 86’d colleagues.  the mood swings have been more erratic than britney circa 2007-8.  the hangovers…epic.  the use of words that even truck drivers would blush at…impressive. and the sense of loss…perhaps almost as great as kris kardashian humphries’ back account heart right about now.

while public health types are driven by the need to heal others, we’re exceptionally bad at healing ourselves. and since we’re doing god’s work for peanuts and have a lot of education and are totally better than our for-profit friends and drive crappy cars and can talk about body fluids without blushing, we like to believe that we are indispensable. but alas, like a hugh hefner girlfriend, we are all replaceable.

a bunch of us with the pink skips were remarking that it’s been more difficult than we expected.  and that’s when someone started talking about seven stages of grief.  while i started to roll my eyes, i actually realized that coco’s invented her own version of the 7 stages. they’re something like this:

stage one: shock and return those cute, new boots. as most (including me) assumed i wouldn’t be impacted by the layoffs, this turn of events was more shocking than the fact that i actually did laundry last weekend. and those cute, non-public-health-professional-priced boots that i bought a few days before the pink slip?  yup, those had to go back to the store.  which of course, lead me to stage two.

stage two: pain and pinot grigio.  dear producers of pinot grigio, pinot gris, and other similar varietals.  please consider donating product to la vida coco.  at the rate i’m going through the stuff, i feel as though you should consider giving back to a worthy cause…me.  and as a thank you, i’ll totally give you product placement that will be very visible to my four many readers.

stage three: anger and dance party!  thankfully, my irish temper flared up right around the time of my friend’s birthday-cum-halloween party. this allowed me to look trampy wear a costume, drink A LOT of champagne with some of my favorite gays, and dance my a$$ off.  there’s no better antidote to feeling P.O.’d than wearing a wig and dancing to kylie minogue while you molest flirt with the straight waiter.  and note to self…when security asks you to get off the go-go dancer’s podium, you should comply. immediately.

stage four: depression and tater-tot addiction. i refuse to admit that there might have been a few nights where i put my pjs on at 6 pm, watched old buffy the vampire slayer episodes, ate an entire bag of tater tots and cried over my lost boots.  i blame the pinot grigio (see above).

stage five: the upward turn (inclusive in kicking the tater-tot addiction).  we’re working on this one.  stay tuned.

stage six: working through and joining linked-in.  i did the latter. thinking of wearing pearls and getting my MBA now.

stage seven: acceptance and hope.  aka, “i win project runway and marry george clooney”.

so as we work towards stage clooney seven, please send love and light towards all of us impacted by the sucky economy.  in return, i’ll totally invite you to the clooney-coco nuptials–which will feature tater tots, champagne, and sarah michelle gellar and tim gunn as my bridesmaids.

——————

for mimi