A Peine For Your Thoughts

My Perception

November 5, 2009 at 9:43 am | In Employment | 2 Comments
Tags: Interviews, jobs, lay-offs, unemployment

Back when I was unemployed, I applied for probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,235 jobs. I applied for so many jobs I couldn’t even remember which ones I’d applied for, so sometimes I applied twice. I’m sure this didn’t help my overall chances of actually getting a job. My resume probably stank so badly of desperation that it had to be thrown away in the outside trash cans.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from one of the companies I applied with. This company actually called me in for an interview downtown, didn’t validate my parking and also didn’t give me a job. Hold on, though. They never actually told me I didn’t get the job. Maybe they’re still considering me? Maybe, seven months later, they finally have it narrowed down to a few fantastic candidates, and they’re going to let me know soon. Any day now.

After all of this, I actually get an e-mail from this company that begins with: “Good Day.” Good day indeed, company. A good day would have been when you grew a pair and actually called me to tell me I didn’t get the job. And didn’t make an unemployed person pay $14 per hour to park in your parking garage.

Geez, is this sounding bitter? That’s so not how I mean to sound right now.

The email goes on like this:

“We are seeking to better understand perceptions of [this company] among prospective employees and would like to hear your thoughts.”

It then invites me to take a short survey. Tell them all about how I perceive them. Sit down, prospective employee. Get yourself a mug of hot cocoa. You can tell us. We really want to know.

And even though I’m a writer, I felt like a written response really wouldn’t suffice. So I created a video montage to tell them how I feel about them. But seriously, I’m not bitter.

A Neighborhood of Thieves

November 4, 2009 at 9:33 am | In Houston | 5 Comments
Tags: Heights, Houston, stealing

Yesterday, a friend of mine sent an e-mail out with this in the subject line: “You can’t own anything nice if you live inside the loop…” She sent this because the large wooden bench she keeps on her front porch had been stolen. Carted off. In broad daylight. This was a big bench. It was not a one-person job. This tells me there must be a big gang of these people in the Heights, strolling around while we sit at our desks in office buildings, treating our houses like unattended garage sales. I would tell her to get a dog, but we have a dog. And we’ve still had every single thing not attached to our concrete foundation pilfered. Maybe she should get a dog bred for something besides decoration. Maybe that’s the key.

All this makes me wonder about how these people grew up. I can remember being in the grocery store with my mom when I was growing up and passing by the bulk candy aisle. Why do they make the bulk candy eye level with little children? No parent hollers at their six-year-old, “Hey Junior! Scoop me out a pound and a half of those generic Mike and Ike’s!” It’s almost like there is an agreement between parents and grocery store owners to make the bulk candy aisle into the most universal teachable moment. It looks like you should reach your hand in and take a piece. It seems like no one would care. There’s not even a wrapper to undo! Not even a package to rip open! Will God really smote you on the spot if you have one single gummy worm for free?

God won’t. BUT your mother will. Even if it seems like she’s not looking, she is. That’s the trick of mothers. But what about the mothers of all the people who steal our stuff? What did they do when they caught their sons and daughters pulling one single gummy worm from the bulk candy aisle at the grocery store?

I have a feeling they looked both ways, then grabbed a handful for themselves, too.

All this is to say, if you’re Christmas shopping this year at a pawn shop for some reason, and you come across a beautiful wooden bench, an air conditioning unit, a leather briefcase, a garden hose, a road bike or an iPod, please let me know.

Thank you.

A Photo Gallery of Hideous Faces

November 3, 2009 at 9:22 am | In Guarantaryn | 9 Comments
Tags: biking, Dallas, Muddy Buddy, running, Texas

We’ve talked before about my complete lack of control over my own facial expressions. I’d say that small handicap is magnified exponentially when I’m in an uncomfortable situation. If normal life produces faces that prompt strangers to ask me if someone died, it’s no wonder uncomfortable situations produce facial expressions such as this:

And this:

Ooh! And don’t forget this!

Aside from spontaneously losing weight without trying, the ability to look exceedingly handsome with a shaved head and the obnoxious way they can get ready for their own wedding in seven and a half minutes, the thing I hate most about guys is the way they can look fantastic, hot even, wearing a bike helmet and covered in mud after 45 minutes of biking and running.

And me? I look like the hippos at the zoo during the summer. Someone sling some on my back! I can’t reach it!

Along with the ugly faces I didn’t mean to make come the happy faces I didn’t mean to make either:

I still look like the kid who won the Most Improved prize at Band Camp, but I’ll take it:

So there you have it. I did the Muddy Buddy with Drew. Again. Even though I hate mud. And I hate exercising, if you want to get right down to it. My only explanation?

I’m working on five carats friends. Did you hear that Drew? FIVE!

Tweedle T & Tweedle Drew

November 2, 2009 at 9:39 am | In Love & Marriage | 4 Comments
Tags: Comcast, German, home repair, humor, love, marriage, Oktoberfest, plumber, plumbing

They say when you’re searching for a life partner, you should look for someone who is everything you’re not. Someone who is right where you’re wrong. Someone who is strong where you’re weak. The yin to your yang. The peanut butter to your jelly.

But the heart wants what the heart wants, friends. My heart wanted Drew. Drew’s heart wanted me. The only problem is neither of our heads wanted to know anything about technology repair, home repair, car repair, or repair of any sort, really. So when something needs repairing in our house, we sort of bounce off of each other. Things get done, of course, but not in any linear, logical way.

[Image found here]

One example of this would be the reason you didn’t hear from me much last week. Our internet was down, and we were LIVID. Comcast is right up there with the people who steal things out of Drew’s car, as far as our hit list is concerned. But, we’re too lazy to explore any of the alternatives, so we just settle for cursing them loudly any time our cable blips or our internet goes down. Individually we both logged long calls to Comcast, trying to figure out what the problem was. We re-booted things, we refreshed things, we plugged an unplugged.

So imagine our surprise when we discovered the modem. On the ground. Unplugged.

Another good example would be last night. Last night we had some folks over for an Oktoberfest-themed dinner. Drew cooked everything and it was delicious. I found Polka music on Pandora, Truman wore a bow tie and we drank bottles of German beer. As we were starting to do dishes, Drew discovered the sink wouldn’t drain. It was filled with gross German cabbage-scented water and it was just sitting there. We both stared into the sink, as if by staring hard enough, we could unclog the drain with just our powers of persuasion. We Googled “how to unclog a drain,” which is why later, we stood over the sink again, this time alternately pouring baking soda and vinegar down into the murk. The water bubbled and fizzed, then sat there, now scented like German cabbage and vinegar. Vomit.

Finally, Drew looked at me with a look of defiance and said, “I’m going in.” He pushed all the crap we keep under the sink to one side of the cabinet, placed the little bucket I use for mopping under the pipe, and began to unscrew the thing that holds the pipes together. I watched as he did this, and only broke the silence to idly wonder, “What happens when that bucket is full?”

Drew looked up at me and said, “What?” just as the dam broke loose. Mucky water poured into the bucket, into the cabinet, onto the floor, onto Drew, and all the while Drew was hollering, “Get me another bucket! Hurry!” I looked around and saw every single pot or pan we owned seemed to already be filled with water, thanks to Drew’s method of doing dishes, which involves five or six hours of “soaking.” I picked a pot up and went to pour the water down the drain.

What? Didn’t I graduate from the gifted and talented program?

Thankfully the one working brain cell I still have control over stopped me, and I found one empty pot to hand to Drew.

We finished out our evening by mopping German cabbage water out of the cabinet, out from under the dishwasher, soaking every towel in the house.

They say that success is all about surrounding yourself with good people. It might be a good idea for Drew and I to surround ourselves with IT people.

And plumbers.

Chicken-Fried Backstrap

October 28, 2009 at 7:18 pm | In Guarantaryn | 2 Comments
Tags: career, job, oil and gas, Oklahoma, work, writing

Drew and I have been having a lot of discussions lately about how your path in life sometimes finds you. You can prepare and plan all you want, but sometimes, the right path is a path you never even knew existed, so how can you really plan to take a path you don’t know about yet? Right? You can only be prepared so when the right path makes itself available, you are ready to take it.

This little conversation occurred to me today as I sat in a rig trailer in a pink trucker hat embroidered with the words “Route 66,” eating fajita meat grilled by a small man in coveralls over charcoals behind the rig. The thing is, I planned to take a glamorous career path. One that smelled like perfume and tasted like champagne and felt like free samples of expensive clothing I would wear and test out and review for a glossy magazine. Somehow, five years later, I’m in my trucker hat and steel toe boots, interviewing a guy about a bear he shot in Arkansas that he’s turning into a rug by decomposing it in his own garage. He tells me he usually hunts deer, and when I ask him how best to cook deer meat, he says, “Ah, chicken-fried backstrap is where it’s at, but really, you take any piece of that deer and pound it out real flat, cover it in flour and dump it in hot grease, that’ll be the best eatin’ you’ve ever done in your life, guaranteed,” and I am utterly charmed. There’s nothing douche-baggy about a guy who hunts bears and deer and loves chicken fried back strap. Nothing.

Five years ago, I never would have believe you if you would have told me I’d be bouncing along in a pick-up truck, visiting with rig hands who don’t speak much English and rig managers who have managed every type of rig hand, including the type who get arrested for killing an Indian hitchhiker. (Apparently before he died, the Indian wrote their license plate number on his arm. In his own blood. Busted. You can’t make this stuff up.) I never thought I’d be throwing a frisbee for a rig dog named Booger. I never expected to meet a mechanic with an enormous dip in his mouth who is irritated at how much the price of dip has gone up. A can of Copenhagen was thirty cents when he started dipping. Which was when he was seven.

So, the truth is, this part of my job smells more like oil than perfume, it tastes more like beer than champagne, and it feels more like canvas coveralls than designer clothes. But I am always amazed to discover that I love every minute of it. It makes me wonder what my life would have been like interviewing fashion bigwigs and ritzy people on the cultural scene. I’m sure I would have been happy. But I wouldn’t have any idea how to cook chicken-fried backstrap.

You Can’t Go Back…In Steel-Toe Boots

October 27, 2009 at 8:09 pm | In Guarantaryn | 5 Comments
Tags: Classic 50's, college, Houston, Norman, Oklahoma, OU

This week, to my sheer delight, I’m back in Oklahoma. The only thing missing from my trip is Drew, and although he’s assured me he misses me, I don’t really get the feeling he’s upset to be missing Oklahoma. I guess he won’t be ready to move here with me this year. Maybe next year.

Since I left, I haven’t been back much. After I graduated, I was a broke journalist, and even if I had the money to fly back on the weekends for a visit, I couldn’t. I had to make sure I was in my leaky apartment to position mixing bowls under the drips. On the rare chance I do get to cross the Red River, I very nearly vibrate with the excitement of going back to where I’m from. Many of my very dearest memories exist within the frying pan-shaped borders of this state. So after work today, I drove straight to Norman and did all the things I always loved doing when I was a college student. The leaves were changing on campus. The leaves never change in Houston.

I drove past the Kappa house, thought about getting out, and cursed myself for having steel-toe boots on. I couldn’t rush across the lawn and greet my sisters in steel-toe boots. Loser.

Finally, it was dinner time. I am convinced the ultimate test of being comfortable with yourself is eating alone. Can you do it, or do you need props? I need props. A TV. A magazine. A newspaper written in Spanish. Anything to distract me from my sudden attacks of “everyone in this restaurant is looking at me and wondering why I can’t find a dining companion” paranoia. But I used to work in the best restaurant ever in Norman, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to see the owners, reminisce on the three years I spent serving pulled pork. So I ducked inside and asked for a table for one, convinced that as soon as I did so, one of the owners would pop around the corner and save me. “What! She don’t need no table for one! Come on over here girl and tell us about yourself!”

Instead, I was simply shown to a table for one. So certain was I that I would know everyone in the restaurant, as I had circa 2003, that I hadn’t even brought props. A hostess I’d never seen before handed me a menu. A waiter I didn’t know asked for my drink order. Didn’t these people know that I used to be where they were? I knew the table numbers! I know how much each sugar packet costs because I got in trouble for dumping them on the ground! I was a waitress, a student, a sorority girl! I wasn’t always a loner in steel-toe boots!

Finally, I couldn’t remain incognito any longer. I had to reveal myself. When my waiter came back, I let him have it.

“Where’s Val and Doug?” I asked. It was a leading question. Surely he’d want to know how I knew the owners.

“Um, Val is on vacation and I think Doug just left,” he said. I looked up at him expectantly, and he shrugged.

“I know them. I used to work here. For three years. I went to OU too. I’m here on business.” Everyone in my vicinity promptly lost their appetite as they overheard my word vomit.

“Cool,” he said. “Are you ready to order?”

Three years of waiting tables, and all I get is, “Cool.”

After a completely prop-less dinner, I decided to drive back up Lindsey Street to one of my other favorite haunts, Classic 50s Drive In. I ordered a Coke with gummy bears, just like I always did.

As I sat in my extra-compact rental car, which was specially stripped of features just for me, a white SUV pulled up next to me with a Kappa sticker on the back. Out of the windows hung four cute girls, all wearing different date party t-shirts, the same red lipstick still covering their lips. My first instinct was to wave. After all, my steel-toe boots were not visible from the car. We could talk about the sleeping porch! Our house Mom Gerry – is she still dating her boyfriend, Jerry? But then I stopped myself.

Those girls were so…YOUNG. They were probably born in what, 1990? They probably had computers in their kindergarten classrooms. They probably never even wore slap bracelets or permed their bangs. I scoffed at their complete lack of life experience as I backed my rental car out of the drive-in. I thought about my life since I’d really belonged on Lindsey Street in Norman. Five hair colors, three jobs, two cars, one husband and a mortgage later, I’m no longer a sorority girl or a student. I’m an adult. I’m a WOMAN.

This thought made me cry a little.

So I called my mom.

The Family Business

October 26, 2009 at 12:57 pm | In Sewing | 3 Comments

Recently I saw all three Godfather movies for the first time. The third one? Come on. What a mistake. But the first two were amazing. I wished I had a family business to go into, except without all the double-crossing and offers you can’t refuse.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when my mom offered to help with my new little Etsy shop. And then my dad offered to help me with my website. What does that make me? The kingpin? Don Maxwell Peine? Lucky for them I’m a pretty easygoing boss. I can never refuse a favor on the day of my daughter’s wedding.

So now, expect to find all manner of machine-embroidered treasures within the virtual walls of “to a T.” (Click here to go to the shop.) Right now, we’re celebrating the holidays with precious little goodies like these:

We’ll also be able to do much more with custom orders! Mom has often threatened to embroider anything that sits still for too long, so the next time you need a unique personalized gift, think of us!

My sister has contributed tons of great ideas, so she’s in as well. The only one who is holding back so far is my husband. He’s anxious to build spreadsheets to figure out exactly how much this is costing him, but other than that, he’s been a little shy about getting involved.

It’s nothing a little horse head in bed with him can’t fix, I’m sure.

Why You Should Major in Accounting

October 22, 2009 at 8:09 am | In Guarantaryn | 4 Comments
Tags: humor, journalist, poor, rain, writer

As I gradually became conscious this morning, I noticed it was raining. I was awake before the alarm, for once, so I flopped over on my side and watched it come down sideways across the street light in front of our house. As Drew slept beside me and Truman politely yipped to be let out of his dungeon, I realized how much I love the rain, and how thankful I am to finally be able to enjoy it.

You see, in chapter 4,562 of “Why you should be an accountant and NOT a journalist” we read about my first apartment, which, among many MANY other issues, had a constantly leaking bathroom ceiling. When I lived in my apartment and I woke up on days like this, I didn’t have the luxury of lying there in the dark, listening to the rain. I had to get up, run to my kitchen, and grab my biggest mixing bowl to put under the vent. Like clockwork, a brownish stream of water would begin dripping from the ceiling. I could always go back to bed and listen to the rain after that, but believe it or not, the sound of rainwater PLONG PLONGING into a metal mixing bowl isn’t quite as relaxing as you might think.

Also, the rain would sometimes drip down my bedroom walls, and I had to get my furniture out of the way.

I could have gone to bed and enjoyed the weather after that, but the apartment wasn’t the only non-rain-proof item in my life. There was also my car. Oh the indescribable joy of owning a Volkswagen Jetta, of unlocking the doors after a long day at work, of putting one three inch heel into the floorboard and of suddenly noticing rain water is almost deep enough to cover your heel. In the floor of your car. The windows weren’t open. The sunroof wasn’t open. The doors weren’t wet. It was almost as if the car had flooded itself from the ground up.

When it didn’t rain hard enough for standing water to accumulate, things just got damp. And you know what happens to “damp” in Houston. Mildew. Actual hairy white mildew grew on the back floorboards. The whole car looked like a science experiment.

How did I ever attract a spouse?

Anyway, that car is gone now, and so is that apartment. On the way to work this morning, I congratulated myself on surviving that time in my life. That time when all my shelters had holes in them. That time when I needed to open an umbrella in my apartment, no matter how bad of luck it might give me. That time when I had to use my coffee cup to bail water out of my car as if I was piloting a leaky boat.

And then. Then I unlocked the door to my office.

As you can see here, I’m back to employing said coffee cup for jobs other than holding coffee. Maybe I should write a blog about that. The many, many uses of a coffee cup, when you’re poor. By Taryn M. Peine. Use #1: collect dripping rainwater from your ceiling. Use #2: begging for spare change…

All this is to say: tell your children. Tell your friends. Tell every kid you know who hasn’t yet graduated from college.

Major in accounting. Please.

Fire Safety

October 21, 2009 at 8:41 am | In Houston | 3 Comments
Tags: fire, Heights, Houston

Yesterday I was proofreading an article on fire safety. I know, you guys. I know. Stop asking me where I work. Stop sending resumes to me. Stop pounding on the door of my office. We have no positions open over here. One person to edit fire safety articles and articles on Arctic drillships is quite enough, thank you.

Anyway, as I was reading this article on fire safety, I was thinking how nerdy it was. Does anyone out there actually sketch out three different escape routes and post them near the exits of their house? Does anyone actually practice said escape routes? Or do people smell smoke and just get the heck out of Dodge? Is someone going to stop you from hurtling yourself out the bedroom window because it’s not one of your three approved escape routes?

It reminds me of tornado drills. If you grew up in tornado country, you are familiar with the dreaded day every couple of months when the tornado siren went off and your teachers instructed you to calmly get under your desk, fold yourself up in Muslim prayer position and cover the back of your neck, so falling objects didn’t decapitate you, naturally. We only did this in elementary school, and in elementary school, I only sat next to the smelliest kids in class. Every time they show Muslims praying on TV, I have a flash back of peering up from my tornado drill position into the filthy denim butt of the very kid who told me there wasn’t a Santa Claus. Even then, I thought to myself, really? Is crouching like this really going to save me during a tornado? Or are my teachers just setting me up for a lifetime of foot phobias by having my face this close to so many kids’ muddy shoes?

So, I edited my nerdy fire safety article and went on with life. I went home, I did some stuff, I went to bed. And at 5 a.m. I was awakened by…FIRE TRUCKS. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s a serial arsonist in the Heights. He’s burned something like 14 houses down, and as far as I can tell, the police don’t really seem to care. I searched for an article to link to from the Chronicle, and all I could find was an article boasting how there hasn’t been a murder in Houston for 11 days. ELEVEN. Basically we’re on track to be the safest city in the nation.

Anyway, as I tried to clear the fog from my brain all I could think about was that fire safety article. I couldn’t smell smoke, but I had just installed a Glade Plug-In by our bed, which was basically obliterating every other smell from our house. I watched four fire trucks scream by our house, and I thought, what’s my escape plan? Where are my three approved escape routes? I am going to burn up in this fire!

Thankfully, the fire was not at our house, but I learned a very important lesson.

Fire safety is awesome. Safety doesn’t take a holiday. If it’s not safe, it’s not worth doing.

I’d rather be nerdy than dead.

Feminine Wiles

October 20, 2009 at 11:04 am | In Love & Marriage | 3 Comments
Tags: chores, humor, husband, love, marriage, wife

Even though I joke about being high-maintenance, I’m not high-maintenance in the way you might expect. Mostly, I just need attention. I don’t need presents or expensive vacations all that often. But I do need attention, almost all the time. I’ve been alive for 27 years, and I’ve needed attention almost as much as I’ve needed oxygen for every second of every one of those years, so I have a lot of tools in my arsenal. I don’t just try to get attention in one way. That’s for amateurs.

The trick about being married to me is that most of the responsibility of paying attention to me is heaped on one person. Drew. If he does his job, I walk out into the world feeling paid attention to, and I can keep my loud-talking and not-funny-joke-telling and hey-did-you-hear-odd-storytelling to a minimum. And all the people who didn’t promise God they’d pay attention to me for all of eternity are off the hook.

But the other trick is that Drew is with me most of the time, and it’s only natural that eventually, he becomes immune to most of the ways I try to get attention. My quiet groaning when I need him to ask me what’s wrong. My exaggerated happy face when I need him to ask me if something good happened. My woe is Taryn face when I don’t want to do something.

Friends, to be honest, I’m a little worried about how fast this immunity has happened. I thought the expiration date on most of my moves wouldn’t come up for at least 15 years, but here we are, only three and a half years in, and as eternity stretches before us, I am continually going to my arsenal only to discover it’s nearly empty.

Last night, for instance. Last night, I fried pork chops and roasted potatoes. I had a glass of wine while I was doing this, and when it was all finished with, when the grease was splattered all over the stove, when potato remnants were fused to the baking sheet, when the grease was hardened in the frying pan, I found I simply couldn’t go on. My will to live had drained completely without me even realizing it. The wine had left me woozy, the smell of frying pork had turned from inviting to putrid, and I found myself thinking that at that moment in time, I would rather pluck every single hair from my head than do the dishes.

But oh, the humanity, dishes are MY job. I traded them for never having to do an ounce of laundry ever again, and Drew is from solid Midwestern stock. He’s been true to his word. My hamper has never been full again. I’ve never had to wear my underwear inside out the way I sometimes did when I was in charge of my own laundry. A load has never had to be washed twice because it’s been left to grow mildew in the washer for a week. He is the angel Gabriel when it comes to laundry.

But come on, folks. Laundry does not have to be done every single night. Laundry does not beckon when you have a full stomach that threatens to turn on you at the sight and feel of wet leftover food. Laundry doesn’t involve grease, or spoiled milk or the gross maxi-pad-like thing they put under the meat.

It suddenly occurred to me that I’d agreed to a bum deal. I had gone to the car lot and bought a lemon. I was a poor negotiator. But, as luck would have it, the person on the other side of the negotiating table was my HUSBAND. He promised to love me forever! He said I was beautiful that one time I got my hair cut in a mullet on accident! Sometimes he gets things for me all the way downstairs when I leave them there! So, I set about employing my feminine wiles. I lay back on the sofa with an arm flopped over my eyes, as if even the soft lamplight of our living room was too much. I groaned intermittently. I answered his questions weakly. When I was sure the bait had been set, I waited.

And I waited.

Finally, at 10:00, the dishes were finally done.

By me.

I’m going to have to change my approach.