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+--- Thread: you just keep on trying till you run out of cake [sid moods] (/showthread.php?tid=59)
you just keep on trying till you run out of cake [sid moods] - errin - 05-20-2013
It's a dismal, rainy Monday morning when Sid finally trudges through the front door. It feels like she hasn't walked through that door in a month. It feels like everything should be different, things should be out of place, but everything is as it should be. There's the L-shaped couch, massive and comfortably situated in front of the large flat-panel television docked in the wall. Behind the couch there are shelves and shelves of movies. Beneath the TV is a low entertainment center full of consoles and controllers. All Frank's, of course. Sid can barely afford to put food for herself in the fridge most weeks. It's thanks to her roommate that she can afford to live in a place this nice in this part of town. As she stands in the doorway she wonders for the third time this year how long this can possibly last.
Her roommate is still getting ready for his own day. He's in his room, standing in front of the mirror he keeps next to his door, halfway done twisting his tie into a Windsor knot. When he hears the front door open he has only to lean forward a little to peer out and see Sid there, just closing the door behind her.
"Sid?" he asks, stepping out into the living area, tie still undone. She looks up when she hears her name, her brows furrowed above her dark-rimmed glasses. When she sees her roommate, peeking at her curiously from out his bedroom door, suddenly she feels like crying. And that's so stupid. She didn't cry in the motel room. But Frank is different. She's known Frank far longer than she's known anyone that was in that room. He's the best friend she has in this life. She ducks her head and starts for the door to the basement, but Frank isn't having any of that, not today.
"Whoa whoa wait, hold up," he says, moving to block her, holding up his hands to the height of her shoulders, stopping just short of reaching out to her. His presence is enough to halt her attempted escape. Standing there in the middle of the hall, feeling absolutely uncomfortable, Sid keeps her head down and away. Frank, momentarily imposing, asks, "What happened?"
What happened. What can she tell him that he would understand? Certainly not the truth, at least not all of it. So she settles on the thing she can share that he will understand. "I got fired again," she says softly, brows tensing, bottom lip sucked in.
Frank's entire demeanor shifts, the protectiveness melting away into the warm comfort Sid has come to expect from the man. He doesn't wrap her up in his arms, though it's clear he wants to. He's felt a sense of older brother protectiveness for the redhead ever since she first crossed the threshold into this house, asking about the Craigslist ad for the downstairs room.
"Oh, hon. Come on, sit down." He moves forward, arms outstretched, preparing to herd her backwards toward the couch by the power of that impenetrable bubble of personal space she keeps around her like an invisible wall of iron. After living together for a few months they've reached a point where sometimes, occasionally, if Sid has been having a particularly good day or seems to be especially relaxed, he can nudge her shoulder or bump her arm with his elbow. Now, clearly, is not one of those times. Except, maybe it is? He's able to get a few steps closer to her before she turns away and goes where he wants her to go. She can't see the way his brows lift at this, or the surprise in his eyes. Best not to draw attention to it. It could be a fluke, after all. They sit on the couch, he on one side of the L, she on the other, hands folded into her lap, her head down. Moments pass in silence before he says gently, "Talk to me, Sid."
She tucks her hair behind her ear. "Uh, well." A moment is spent chiding herself for not coming up with a believable reason behind being fired before now. She can't tell Frank what happened, of course, that would open doors she's not sure she wants him to open. His life is ordinary. For a while, hers was, too. Then she started tripping over Willworkers everywhere she went.
Don't matter what show you want to get cast in. You've been cast. And the curtain's going up, Sid.
She doesn't like to lie, especially not to Frank, but if she wants to keep him in the dark, keep him protected, she has to. But, how long will all of this last?
"My manager said that maybe Target wasn't the place for me." The truth, but not really. These are Sid's thoughts presented as someone else's.
Frank says nothing. He folds his hands together and leans forward, becoming a taller, darker, better dressed and far more relaxed mirror of the woman sitting across from him. "What are you going to do?" he asks in a way that, on the third time, has the ring of habit, or tradition. This is what they do. Sid gets fired, comes home, complains, Frank asks what she'll do, she says she's going to find another job, he tells her he'll cover her until she's gotten one, and then maybe they stay home and watch bad daytime television together. Except she's already broken the tradition. Without saying when she was fired, Frank assumes it was Thursday night. Instead of immediately coming home to complain she'd gone away somewhere. He doesn't ask. He doesn't need to know unless she wants to tell him.
Sid shrugs in the way that she does, her head tilting down toward her lifted shoulder, looking momentarily ten or more years younger than her years. "Look for another job, I guess."
"Can I make a suggestion?"
Sid turns to him, brows lifting and then crashing back down into her wary and suspicious look. "Yeah," she says, her voice low, tentative, as though she's waiting for the trap to snap up and claim an appendage.
"I think your manager is right. Ex-manager, excuse me." Planting his hands on his knees, he pushes himself up off the couch and heads into the kitchen. Pitching his voice so that she can still hear him in the living room, he continues, "This is, what, the third time you've been fired since you moved here? It's obvious, Sid, that retail is not the place for you. Now, you know I don't mind picking up the slack for a couple of months while you find something else and get settled." He's back now, an open fresh-from-the-fridge bottle of beer in hand. This he holds out to her. "But maybe this time you should really think about what you want to do and go do that." When she doesn't immediately take the bottle from his hand he waves it a little, gives her a Go on look.
"Frank, it's not even eight o'clock in the morning."
He shrugs this off, holds the bottle a little closer to her. "So? You're unemployed, embrace it. Go put your PJs on and dissect the neighbor's cat." Frank has had a long-standing grudge match against the neighbor's tomcat, who routinely hangs out around Frank's bedroom window calling out to the ladies of the neighborhood, despite supposedly being neutered. That he hasn't been eaten by a coyote yet is a constant surprise.
Sid grins. Not a little half-formed, flitting thing, but actually grins up at him. "Thanks," she says, accepting the beer at last. He leaves her to alone then, claiming one of his meetings today is too important to blow off, no matter how much he may want to catch Fresh Prince reruns on TBS.
Sid never gets into her PJs, and she definitely doesn't try to dissect any animals, particularly not the neighbor's cat. She did think about the other thing Frank said. What she wants. That's easy, Sid knows exactly what she wants to do. Unfortunately, she lacks the credentials for some of the lowest ranking positions in the field. Still, maybe it wouldn't hurt to look and see what's out there.
Sometime before noon she pulls herself together, gets her ass up off that couch, and heads to the library. The sun is already shining. It's Denver. Grey skies never last for very long here.
RE: you just keep on trying till you run out of cake [sid moods] - errin - 06-11-2013
Monday, 6/3/13
It's not been a good day for Sid Rhodes. She met a man in City Park. Their encounter was brief, but terrible. After their encounter she ran all the way home, almost literally. And when she got home she ran down to her room, and she bolted herself in, and she did not emerge for almost a day and a half. Frank tried to check on her once, came all the way down when she didn't respond to his texts and knocked quietly. Her door is always closed and sometimes her truck is in the drive when she's not home, but somehow he knew she had to be in there. She did not answer. So he went back upstairs and he left her alone. She would come out eventually, she had to.
And she did. Very late the next evening she climbed up the steps into the dining area, her hair bedraggled and her skin ashen, in a t-shirt and an old pair of boxers. She looked worse than she would have if she'd just sat in her room all those hours, crying and wishing she could disappear. That was only the first day. After that she'd tried, again, to force her Will on reality. She has a greater understanding of some things, she knows she does, but the application takes everything out of her. Maybe practice will make it easier. Maybe it will always be hard. But she wouldn't be who she is if she didn't experiment.
Frank, sitting on the couch and watching a DVR'd episode of Regular Show, heard the basement door creak open. A few minutes later, the timer on the microwave went off, and a few minutes after that, Sid shuffled her way into the living room to curl up on the opposite leg of the L-shaped couch, a plate with a few leftovers and a huge pile of Oreos held in one hand, a tall glass of milk in the other. Both are placed on the coffee table so that she can peel the blanket from the back of the couch and wrap herself up into a fuzzy black coccoon. Reclaiming her plate and her glass, she turns her face toward the television.
"Is this new?"
Frank looks her over, looks like he wants to ask her something, how she's doing, where she's been, why she's been hiding. Instead he says, "Yeah." He doesn't press her. Sometimes that gets her to open up, or at least to talk.
Sid doesn't want to talk about it. An hour later she puts her dishes away and shuffles back downstairs. This time, though, she reemerges after about twelve hours of hard sleep.
Life goes on, after all.
RE: you just keep on trying till you run out of cake [sid moods] - errin - 06-25-2013
On a Friday two weeks back Sid was found sitting on a bench on the Auraria campus, staring out over the courtyard between the science buildings and the north building. She was not dressed as usual in ragged, falling apart and faded clothing that was probably old before it came into her possession. She was wearing a dress, light and green and airy for summer, white leggings opaque enough to hide her legs from all but the most intent stares, and nice shoes with a definite heel. Her hair was down and brushed and mostly straight and pinned back to her temples to keep it out of her face. She looked nice. She looked like she tried.
The reason for the brief change was a simple one. She had an interview that day, the first one she'd gotten since she was let go from her last retail job. It was also one she really wanted, not for what it was but for what it could do for her. If she got the job she would be someone's, or some people's assistant, which in itself wouldn't be terribly exciting. At least she'd only have to face the same few faces day in and day out. No, the thing she wanted was the place. She'd be the administrative assistant to CU Denver's science department. If she got it, and if she worked there long enough she could earn college credits for free. She could work and pay her bills and buy her own food and clothes and pay back Frank and she could work toward a degree.
So. There was a job, and she went to an interview, and she made herself look presentable and she tried really hard to keep from clamming up. Then when she left she allowed herself a few quiet moments of hope before she squashed it all down. There was no way they'd choose her, not because she thought she didn't deserve it but because on paper there were surely other candidates better suited to it than her. Other people had the experience, other people weren't so shy.
That's what she thought, anyway.
Yesterday morning she went in for a second interview. They talked about science and Sid blossomed open suddenly. She was sort of engaging and almost charming. Last night she ran into some friends while out looking around for things to blow her first paycheck on. Just in case. Just in case they called her back. She allowed herself that much hope and then she went home.
This morning she gets a call from someone from HR. They're not sure about her, they tell her, there are after all more qualified people who applied for the position. But they wanted a cultural fit, and in that department no one else came close. They were willing to start her off part time for the summer term and see how she did. When could she start?
Today, she replied, tomorrow they laughed. Come in tomorrow and they'll get her started on her paperwork.
Sid ends the call feeling an odd mixture of wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because it's better than whatever retail job she would have tried to get next. Awful because it's, well, because it's awful. Starting over, starting outside the box she wants to be in, and at her age.
She tries not to let it get her down, but it's a weight none the less.
RE: you just keep on trying till you run out of cake [sid moods] - errin - 08-22-2013
For Sid Rhodes, August was a quiet month, at least to start. Then a friendship cracked and splintered apart. Then the friend of a friend was hurt. Then there was a frantic struggle to make sure she had everything in order for classes. Continuing education classes? Graduate studies?
No. Sid will be going for her Bachelor's degree. Again, but for the first time according to her records. According to her records Sid Rhodes only has a high school GED, something she went online and earned a mere three or so years ago. Beyond those records, though, is a different story altogether.
Which sucks. She tries not to think about it when she goes to the UCD bookstore to drop a paycheck on textbooks. She tries not to think about it when she boots up her workstation computer first thing Monday morning.
And she certainly tries not to think about it when she's in a classroom Monday evening, sitting somewhere near the back with her notebook out and her head down, with a person younger than her passing out a syllabus of the most basic course structure.
She probably won't last. It's too much to ask, putting her back at square 1 when she had already stepped off the board and was preparing to step onto a new one. But if she wants to do something meaningful in this new life, she has to try, right? At least she tested out of the lower level math and English courses, and at least most of her classes take place online.
So she goes, and she tires, and she does what she must because she can.