Rooful.: I try to do everything Arianna Huffington says.

"If you lose your job, you have more time to blog!"
she quipped with Antoinette-ish verve
on a late-night talk show last fall.

Well, here I am.
So what does that tell you?

I'll take you through that fateful Friday,
the nineteenth of December.

It was the last Friday before Christmas.
The costume shop holiday party was scheduled for the late afternoon.
Then, after nightfall, the opera-wide company gala
would be held on the Grand Tier.
I had my dress picked out and prepped--
a cocktail slip-dress encrusted with
muted silver sequins on gray georgette.
Chandelier earrings, silver evening sandals...
In my line of work, I don't get to dress up often;
when I have the opportunity to look girly
I try to take full advantage.
I was looking forward to a night of feeling pretty
and drinking lots of free champagne
with my friends from work.

I just had to get through the ultrasound first.

Before you get excited and start wondering when I'm due,
I should let you know that wasn't the sort of growth
they were looking for.
I'd had a couple month-long periods,
and my doctors wanted to take a look around my uterus
and see what was going on.

I was scared of what they might find.
But most of all, I wanted to avoid The Wand.

Back when my sister was pregnant with her first baby,
no one told her that a full bladder makes for
a better image of the womb.
She didn't drink anything before her first ultrasound.
The doctor ended up handing her
a dildo-style camera-on-a-stick,
that apparently gets good images even if
the patient doesn't have to pee--
The Wand.

She had to insert it herself.
She found the whole experience vaguely traumatizing.
Immediately after her appointment,
she called to tell me all about it.

The Wand sounded decidedly unpleasant.

I started drinking water Thursday night.
Friday morning, I got up and had some more.
By the time I made it to the basement lobby
of the hospital radiology department,
I was already thinking fondly of the bathroom.

"Have you been drinking water this morning?"
the receptionist asked as she handed me
a clipboard of forms and a pen.

Well, I had been.
But was it enough to avoid The Wand?
"A bit."

"Maybe you should have some more?"
She gestured to the cooler in the corner.

"Okay."

Four glasses later,
I jiggled in my seat,
watching Regis and Kathy on the wall-mounted set,
wondering what sort of secrets
they were hoping to extract from me
in exchange for a little privacy and some toilet paper.

Finally an exam room opened up.

"Do you have to go to the bathroom?"
the technician asked as she ushered me
towards the exam table.

Apparently my manic two-step
wasn't enough to clue her in.
"Yes. Yes I do."

"Good. So here's what's going to happen:
I'm going to put some jelly on your stomach,
and we'll take a look at your uterus from the top.
Then, you'll go to the bathroom and pee as much as you can.
Then you'll come back here and we'll take a second look
using this trans-vaginal wand."

Curses.
She'd even rolled a condom over it in preparation.
I drank myself near to death by water-poisoning for nothing.
Nothing!

Sometimes there's no avoiding The Wand.

When I finally broke the seal,
my pee wasn't even yellow anymore. It was clear.
I was gone so long,
I think the technician was worried
I wouldn't come back.

It was tempting.

Leaving the hospital, I couldn't walk a block
without having to duck into a Starbucks
for another trip to the Ladies.
I decided to take a cab home so I could
sniffle a little about being violated by medical equipment,
and finish my peeing in peace.

Besides, I needed to pick up my dress for the party.

When I got to work,
some of the ladies in our little work-room
mentioned our boss was looking for me.

She found me.
Well, actually, I found her.

"I heard you were looking for me."

She gave me a look that was hard to interpret.

"Yes."

She gestured me to a seat in her office.
Then she took a deep breath,
and shut both the doors.

The long and the short of it is that
it wasn't me, it was them.
Them, and their widely publicized
gigantic budget shortfall.
After all, someone can't go on stage
without a dress to wear.
But maybe the diva doesn't need
a custom tiara and necklace set.

Well, that's not what was said.
That was my understanding of it--
an understanding based more on what
wasn't said, than what was.

I know the score.
I'm the art teacher in the town
that just voted in a tax override.
Unless I kick up a fuss and
play my seniority
and insist I can teach math, too,
I'm first on the chopping block.

And I don't really want to teach math.
Metaphorically or literally.

In short, she assured me they would
keep me on if they could,
that if things worked out
maybe they could call me back in a month or two.
If I hadn't landed somewhere else by then,
was how she put it.

There aren't too many places to land these days.
But I'll see what I can do.
I'll even teach math if I have to.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Literally allowing me to teach math
would likely be a horrible mistake.

I wandered out of my boss' office
in a state of mildly punchy shock.
I got back to my work-table
just in time to answer a call
from my doctor about the results
of the ultrasound.

There's a cyst on my ovary.
It might be nothing.
They'll look again in six to eight weeks.
Not much else of what she said to me made sense.
I was distracted by trying to control my gaspy,
pre-cry breathing. I thanked her,
and hung up.

Then I explained to my co-workers
that I wasn't upset by the call from my doctor--
though I was, a little bit.

I told them I'd gotten laid off.
Then I told them I planned
to get very drunk at the holiday party.

I decided to use the rest of the hours I'd banked
against my trip to the doctor
to get gussied up for the evening's festivities.
I painted my toenails scarlet.
A soon-to-be-former co-worker, a sweet, quiet woman,
joined me in the ladies room during her break,
to let me know that I would be missed.

She's not demonstrative by nature.
An awkward silence followed our exchange.
I turned to the mirror.

"I think I might have taken my smoky eye
a little too far. What do you think?"

"Oh, I don't know--
Smoke away is what I always say."

So I did.
And I did get very drunk on free champagne.
In the end, I'm a woman of my word.

"Wow! You look fabulous!
What are you doing getting so fancy
for the company party?"

"I was hoping they'd look at me and say
Wow, she's so pretty...
Why'd we lay her off again?"

"Are you guys going to make sure she gets in a cab?"

They did. One of them even walked me to my apartment door,
where my husband, previously informed both of the layoff
and my inebriated state, waited to offer a shoulder to cry on,
or a hand to hold back my hair, depending.

And there you have it. Friday the Nineteenth.
It will live in infamy.

I just wanted to get through the day without
having something shoved up my snizz.
Instead, I got it twice--
literally, then metaphorically.

Metaphorically is better, I guess.
I'm not sure.

Maybe I should ask Arianna Huffington.