Toss Me That Book

I love to read cookbooks.  The list of ingredients, the measurements, the step-by-step directions.  If you follow all of the steps, you can achieve a wonderful meal to delight family and friends, thereby immediately rendering yourself a Domestic Goddess a la Nigella Lawson.  Or, depending upon how your anxiety is that day, it will help you regain a sense of control.  "See, I made chocolate chips cookies.  I can handle that.  I can handle whatever it is.  And also, let's eat these cookies." There is no doubt about it - if a genre called "Comfort Reading" exists, then, for me,  this cookbook is absolutely its poster child.  The author's voice is warm and open.  None of her directions are overly technical, and in fact, she encourages you to use your own sense of taste and to practice, practice, practice.  It's less "Follow these exact steps to make XYZ," and more "Here are the general steps.  Follow them while also using you...

So, I guess this isn't really a book blog-style post, but real life creeps in sometimes.  I was laid off from my job of nearly 6 years on January 31.  And, it came as a complete shock.  Now, I consider myself as pretty good at reading people and situations, I shouldn't have been, and on some level, I wasn't surprised.  Without breaking my confidentiality agreement which would render my severance agreement null, the duties of my position were moved to an office overseas.  Which makes sense, because why pay US wages when you could pay developing nation wages to someone already on staff. If no one has ever referred to you as "redundant," and then told you that you are "eliminated," consider yourself fortunate.  Especially if that someone had, within the last 2 weeks, assured you that you would not lose your job when operations because to transfer overseas.  Because that would sting most of all.  Until that person tells you that your health insura...