BECOMING A CONNOISSEUR OF THE "DELI" SANWICH AND WORSE.

There are times in our lives in which we don't get to eat as we would like. Illness can get in the way. When my wife wasn't subsisting on IV fluids during her stent with the severe Hyperemesis Gravidarum (look it up) that accompanied both pregnancies, she enjoyed small amounts of boiled chicken, green beans and pound cake daily. My son, as with many young struggling college students got quite creative with the 5 and 6 for a buck packages of Ramen noodles. During earlier time in our lives, we also stretched our budgets along with our culinary skills with the likes of cheap hot dogs, Spam, an instant Kraft noodle dinner we affectionately called "chicken glop", and the proverbial pinto beans.

Lately, my wife and I, along with many in her family have been entertaining foodlike substances which we would not regularly ingest if left to our own choices. My Mother-in-law, Cindy, has been in the hospital truly fighting for her life after complications developed from what was supposed to be a "slam dunk" surgery almost four weeks ago. She has been spending more days in the surgical intensive care unit (SICU) than out of it for the duration of her stay. With this being the case, the whole family around her has focused their lives on being at the hospital with her whenever possible. Children have flown in from out of town, regular job schedules have been scrambled and rearranged to allow for time at the hospital to support Cindy and each other through this ordeal. With this being the case, many of the regular parts of "easy" day to day life have been set aside. Houses may not be as clean. Laundry may not be caught up. Groceries may not be bought, or at best grabbed little by little as truly needed. One of the most neglected parts of our lives recently has been cooking and eating regular meals.

My wife, Gayle and I have been eating way too many "deli" sandwiches lately. Now when I say "deli" sandwiches, I don't mean high end deli sandwiches. There's a reason I put the "deli" in quotation marks. I'm not talking that classy, up scale little deli you pass on the way home. I'm not even talking Jimmy Johns, or down the scale to Subway here. I'm talking about prepackaged sandwiches which you can buy at the hospital snack bar/coffee shop/ deli or worse. By worse I mean quick shop type places, gas stations, roach coaches, and heaven forbid the ubiquitous carousel vending machine standing always at the ready when nothing else is open or available.

Gayle and I seldom share a meal at home on week days lately as she heads to the hospital immediately after work while I head home to take care of the pets. Not wanting to waste precious time she usually grabs a sandwich at the hospital snack bar. As for me, not wanting to waste effort on preparing a full meal for myself alone, I usually forage or grab something more or less grotesque on the way home. I have, however been to the hospital enough to sample just about all of their deli meat, cheese and bread combinations. Honestly the sandwiches at the snack bar are not bad for the first 5 or six times one uses them as a substitute for sustenance, but they do start to wear on a person. The price tag wears on the pocket book as well. Five bucks a pop seems a bit extravagant for what you get.

To try and vary the selection as well as mitigate the damage to our budget, we have tried other options to the snack bar. The quick stop type shops--with attached gas pumps or not--between us and the hospital have produced lunch or dinner with differing levels of satisfaction or complaint. All I can say is you gotta watch the dates. As the under-inspired, underpaid employees don't seem to care much about stock rotation or clearance, you have to not only know what day it is, but what month, and sometimes what year. Just the other day, as I was quite late in getting to the hospital, and needing gas anyway, I stepped in to peruse their bread wrapped offerings. I had already picked out a reasonable offering with an acceptable date stamp on it when I looked down and found some marked down sandwiches. It makes one wonder how old a sandwich has to be in a place like this to earn it a place in the marked down bin, but I digress. Considering the Dirty Harry question of "do you feel lucky?" I honestly could answer for that day that yes, in fact, I did feel lucky. I probably wouldn't need this extra sandwich this evening, but just in case I did, it didn't look that bad, and the price was right if I ended up discarding it. So out I went with my hospital dinner for the night.

The waiting room for us has taken on quite a communal atmosphere at times as we sit around and take turns stepping in to visit Cindy. Fresh baked Molly Muffins are shared. Muchies of different types get passed around. Chewy candies, licorice, and gummy bears all get shared. As the day passed, I realized that though I had brought two sandwiches, I was lacking something to drink. Not wanting something with caffeine, my sister-in-law, Ruth, offered an extra soft drink matching my requirements. That's the way it has developed lately. Later I tried to return the favor. Ruth realized that she was hungry for something more substantial than the usual finger fare and the snack bar had just closed for the day. It being my turn to commune with the family, I offered my second (reduced) sandwich.

Ruth has a bit of a particular taste but the circumstances lately must have worked to temper her culinary requirements. She reached for the sandwich, then noticed the marked down price. Drawing her hand back slightly, she remembered her hunger and the distance from better options. She gave the sandwich another look. "What kind of lettuce is that?" she queried?
"The green stuff? I think it's ham," I said.
"Oh," she winced, "well, at least the guacamole looks good."
"That's mayo," I corrected.
She really must have been hungry. She took it anyway. Not really. She decided to live with her hunger, which was OK by me. I ate it today while on my way to the hospital on my lunch break.

Oh, well. It's hard to be too choosy or to complain too much lately. With Cindy still being fed through a tube, our little discomforts really don't seem that great. Here's looking forward to the day she can share a "deli" sandwich with us all.

Bail Out--Oh goody hand me a bucket

I don't think anyone would argue that our economy sucks right now. It has been officially deemed the worst economic downturn since the great depression. That should be a bit scary and it is. Banks are failing. Big banks. Auto companies are struggling to the brink of failure. People are losing jobs and houses faster than the Detroit Lions can lose a football game (for those uninformed, Detroit has really sucked for the last couple of years--the football team, that is, not just the auto and music industry). One of my best friends since youth, a chronically, very gainfully employed person got laid off for the first time in his life recently. It really does suck, and I feel for him since I have been in the same boat before. I have had the wonderful distinction of having ridden in the funeral procession of four companies as they proceeded to the grave of financial failure (I was only an employee, not any part of the moronic management who couldn't run a company unless the economy was so strong it was impossible to fail). The result of being employed by such an organization is one day everyone is called into a room and given the bad news--"Oh, and by the way, as of now, you are unemployed." No "thank you." No "we're sorry we sucked so bad at running a business and that our heads were up our butts so far that we didn't see the writing on the walls before it was too late. And oh, by the way, you're whole life will suck for the next 2 to 18 months (the amount of time I have been unemployed due to these circumstances). Just, "That's it. Turn in your keys and clean out your offices/cubicles." So I do feel for my friend, and like so many others, wonder if I will be in the same boat trying to bail and stay afloat long enough to reach the next solid landfall (or landfill) of employment. Your arms do get tired, and your will does grow weak.

Yes, the economy is in terrible shape and it is effecting nearly every part of our lives. What is interesting in this particular "recession" is there has developed the concept of the "bail out". The government is "bailing out" banks, and auto manufacturing companies, and insurance companies. Yes, the government sees the economy as being so bad and the possibility of such major stalwart institutions failing as "not a good thing," so the government is bailing them out to the tune of BILLIONS of our tax dollars. I'm not sure what I think about all of it, but I do believe that in offering such "bail outs" in the way they have been offered, the government is just rewarding the poor judgment, and stupidity--oh all right, let's say it straight, greed, and corruption that produced this massive recession in the first place. The idea is, "we have to bail them out. We can't just let them fail." Hey, wake up! They have failed. It's right there in black and red. Lot's of red. They have failed in a gargantuan way. They and the government just don't want to face it.

But honestly, as far as the bail outs go, I've reserved opinion and judgment for the most part until yesterday. That's when the idea hit home very hard. That's when the company I work for demanded me and my coworkers bail them out. No, they didn't ask. They just said, in effect, "things are so bad, and the only way we can keep them going is to bail the company out in the form of pay reductions, to the tune of 5-15 % (an average being 12.3%). Oh, and by the way, you don't get to stay home 12% more of your time. No. What you do get to do is to continue not only working full time hours for less pay, but due to the needs of the company, all salaried employees are expected to continue working long hours and for some, Saturdays in order to make this all work. That's like being punished twice for someone else's crime. Which is exactly what it is.

Do I sound a tad bit bitter? Maybe it's because it's not only the economy that has landed our company in this position. It's been very poor choices and performance in upper levels. Our illustrious leader admitted in our meeting where all of this was spelled out yesterday, that a big part of our problem is due to one specific BIG project that wasn't quoted and conceived well. Imagine that. Who knew that if you didn't conceive and quote a large project well you may lose lots of money on it? I'm guessing the upper management should have known this. I'm thinking it's their jobs to know this kind of stuff, but I may be mistaken. If they, in fact, did not know, all they had to do was ask any of us in the lower levels who have worked on projects for years and we could have let them in on the secret. I was intimately involved in the design and build of this particular "difficult project". I wasn't brought in at the beginning, however. I was brought in after the conceiving and quoting was done, and along with the rest of the team told, "here it is. Now, design and build it within the insane budget and time constraints quoted." We immediately knew it was impossible, but any voicing of such was not accepted. So here we are, with a massively over budget project, hemorrhaging cash every day while we struggle to correct the remnants of it's poor concept. I have personally worked one and a half years on this project. I've put in long hours, late nights, and Saturdays. I have wrestled, on my "off time" with design issues while I'm supposed to be paying attention to my wife and others around me. I design in my head as I creep along the paved pathway leading to work every day and while slog through a consistently congested route home. I have dreamed incessantly about this project and it's endless debug efforts. And now, I get to continue doing all of that for 12.3% less compensation. Yes, I get to bail out this project and my company. I get to pay for the stupidity of those above me. But we don't want the company to fail! Listen up people! The company has already failed. It's right there in black and red. Lot's. . .of. . . red! And now the powers that be are putting the rest of us in the red to prolong the agony and keep it on life support for a while longer.

There are those who will say, "well, at least you still have a job." They are correct, for the time being. It's hard to look at this in a positive light at present, however. Whether one tends to be a glass half full or empty type person depends a lot on where the glass started. If it was full or at least more full than not, then yes, the glass is half empty. If it was more empty than not, then yes, it is half full. It's not a matter of attitude, it's a matter of motion--progress--or regression. My pay has now regressed, so you see, the glass as I see it is definitely half empty. And yes, I still have a job, but the basic problem remains. The company is doing terrible and those at the helm helped navigate it into shallow, rocky waters. They are still at the helm, and I'll guarantee you one thing, if I had done this poorly in my work here, I wouldn't be around any longer. I've been here before with other companies whose leadership were just as inept. On one such occasion we got our pay cut 20% with an additional poke in the eye of postponing our pay period 2 extra weeks right before Christmas. Did that help save the company? No. The company went out of business shortly thereafter. Luckily I jumped ship before the waves came over the boards. Not many of us have much faith that this will end any differently. It's just a matter of time. How can it come out differently with the same leadership at the helm? As it stands right now, they have driven the ship onto the rocks and are asking the crew to bail diligently after having cut their rations significantly.

I wonder if he'll go down with the ship? Oh, I hope so.