A quick Baby J update before I continue with my story. Baby J was ok today, not as good as yesterday but he still took his 6oz and 5oz of milk but his naps were a bit on the light side today only managing a 15 minute nap in the morning before waking up, and a 40 minute and 60 minute nap later in the day. I did get him out for a walk despite the cold weather.
Drunken Hysteria
I left of last, JL and I were just laid off and we were making our way to a local bar. We walked to the bar, which turned out to be the best decision we made that day. We got to the place at 11:00am in the morning, which is on the early side to start drinking but this was not your typical day so time was irrelevant. We hopped up on a couple of bar stools and started drinking, JL with a gimlet and myself with a cosmo. At this point we proceeded to call everyone that we knew in the company to inform them of our untimely demise. This took some time as a matter of fact my battery ran out from conversations because these weren’t your typical conversations, people wanted to know details… specifically if they were next. Like we would know! Anyway after we finished calling those people we wanted to call we sat back and chatted. On our third or so round a group of people from our company came to this restaurant to get lunch, these were the fortunate few who still had jobs. The group consisted of my cousin (who worked at this company), a peer, and about six lower employees. I’m not sure why they took a seat right next to us but they did which was annoying. My cousin was the first to come by and give us a big hug and tell us how the company sucks and that we should have never gotten laid off. She is such a sweetheart. It was nice of her to come by and I think she would have rather stayed with JL and I than go back with her team to have lunch. But we urged her to do the right thing while she still has a job. The next person to talk to us was our peer DD, he gave us a monster hug, one of those hugs that breaks a few ribs or bursts implants if you had them. DD proceed to tell us how sorry he was about us getting laid off and that he was disgusted with this whole situation. The funny thing about talking to DD was that two days ago when JL and I knew we were getting laid off we asked DD if he knew anything. He emphatically denied knowing anything, as it turned out he was informed about the layoffs but did not say anything to us. There is a part of me that is unbelievably pissed about this because JL, DD, and myself were peers and DD should have had some respect for us and said something. It’s also a shame that he didn’t trust us enough to tell us this information. At this point I had put it all behind me and asked if he would kindly pick up the next round for JL and myself. He said he couldn’t, so with my biggest fuck you smile I said thanks DD. I was a bit stunned that he didn’t pickup 11 bucks worth of drinks, ah well when things are bad they are real bad. JL and I put away another couple of rounds a bit incredulous that DD didn’t have the balls to pick up a round. We were about half in the bag at this point and needed to leave this place. But the bartenders knew our story, which resulted in lively conversation with the staff, the bartenders and anyone in the general vicinity. We couldn’t leave. At some point during the afternoon we left the bar and headed to the back area to drink, thinking a change in environment will slow down our alcohol consumption. Then another group from the company comes in but they sat out front. One of the guys, MB, saw us in the back and offered his condolences; he sat for a little while and we all chatted it up. I then asked if he would be buying the next round, which he responded, of course. So he said come up front and drink with us. JL and I managed to stumble back to the front of the bar and were confronted with the most memorable site of the day. The entire layoff team was sitting at a table have drinks after a long grueling day of laying off 40 people. At this point we were too wasted to even give two shits, as long as they were buying the drinks, we were gleefully joining the table. I’m sure they were not at all pleased with us joining them, as they probably wanted to recap the days’ events in privacy. Besides the fact that JL and I were loud and acting so affable with everyone had to irritate them a bit. I had switch to water at this point because I wanted to sober up in order to drive home, but JL never passed up a single round, especially the free ones. We talked for the next two hours like we were old pals. I’m not sure what prompted our departure but around 5ish we headed out of the bar. JL was full in the bag and I was only 1/4 in the bag. We got back to our cars and I headed home, JL got in his car and stayed in the parking lot for the better part of the night and at some point managed to stick his head out the door to throw up, I believe a few times. So this is it, life begins or maybe it ends, after 8 years I’m out of work, what next???
