Anne
Initially, months ago, when I volunteered for this experience I had sincerely hoped that by the time âTODAYâ rolled around my life would be different (and better) than it was at that moment. I hoped that, by now, I would no longer be unemployed, that I would (once again) have decent benefits, a steady paycheck, and a sense of purpose or at least the absence of a lack of purpose. Alas, here we are. I remain un(der)employed, and I still feel like my life (tho it do march the fuck on) is way below where Iâd like it to be. I also feel like time has been a total clusterfuck this year. Previously, as a gainfully employed member of the ranks of corporate America, I could reliably map my years and months and weeks and days, however, with my ship cast adrift in the sea of uncertainty Iâve become entirely detached from The Work Week, and other outrageous temporal abstracts like Happy Hour, and Quitting Time. What is a day? What is a week? I have no anchor in the ocean of time, which is why my âday in the life of Philadelphiaâ is actually so much more.
12AM - Funemployed - As of today (12/21) I have been unemployed for 16 months. I have been an expert in Social Listening since 2011, and in August of 2023 I was laid off and had to lay off my entire team. Since then I have applied to thousands of jobs, and I can count the number of interviews Iâve had in that time on one hand. Iâve not been particularly selective about my job applications, Iâm neither lazy nor am I snobby, all I can say is when spots like Walmart, Target, IKEA, Dollar Tree, and Lowes deny you a job you sincerely start considering fraud and dropping that grad degree from your resume. Itâs been horrible. Itâs been the most emotionally draining experience of my life. Having to psych myself up continuously, repeatedly, after first dozens then hundreds of denials. Round after round of denials, and no other option but to resume and redouble my efforts. Like multiplying myself by zero over and over again. I had a few very good prospects and made it through a few rounds of interviews with opportunities which were very exciting, but no dice. No dice at all.
2AM - Double Digit Doodleboy - Our darling Aussiedoodle, Walter, turned 10 this year. Walter is charming, heâs smart, heâs got presence and wit, he loves everyone heâs ever met and no one whoâs ever met him could possibly dislike him. Heâs an elegant, hairy, goof. His comedic timing rivals that of any SNL savant, plus heâs got the swishiest tail. He is getting a bit older, and while he can still bounce and wrestle with the best of them (including my Momâs 9 month old spaniel) heâs a bit slower than he used to be and at the end of the night, instead of taking the stairs two-at-a-time, he stomps up all clumsy and hard footed. Heâs going to be 11 in January, hopefully weâll do a joint birthday party with my sister-in-lawâs family as they own Walterâs litter mate, Franklin. Itâs always a fun time, and thereâs always pupcakes.
Walterâs 10th birthday
3AM - Big Momma Moves In - Well, she didnât actually move IN, but she did move to town and she lives two blocks away from our house! Lots of people ask me if itâs good or bad, and I usually say YES! No joke, itâs been really great having her in town. Walter loves having Nana so close (and for a period of time wouldnât poop except in front of her apartment building!) and especially loves Nanaâs new puppy, Penny, who is fun to wrestle with.
4AM - @fishinfishton - After being unemployed for awhile, and feeling lost and floundering and sad, I decided I needed some fucking joy and whimsy in my life, and sprinkling toy fish in this neighborhood could make that happen. I was trying to Get Out of the House each day, and found that doing something mischievous brought me more joy than a boring daily walk ever could. Stashing and hiding these luminous fish toys in nooks, crannies, crevices, and alcoves throughout Fishtown helped me to feel joyful, purposeful, and wonderful. I craved the silliness and the sneakiness, and I coveted the connection I found with fellow whimsy hounds on Instagram. I reveled in the delight of my neighbors discovering these little fish, in their joy of discovery and their ownership of our secret. I relished their evolving my simple action into a more complex movement; dubbed âcatch and releaseâ, most neighbors who found a fish toy would promptly hide it again! My heart would soar with each disclosure of these activities, sure in my soul that this behavior was prevalent beyond what was shared with me on instagram. It was even featured on 6ABC and Fox29!
6AM - Ten Years Married - J and I have been married for TEN YEARS, although weâve been together for seventeen. Throughout all this time, through the ups and the downs and the sideways, good golly do we LAUGH. We live in a tiny Kensington rowhome with paperthin walls and we KNOW that our neighbors hear laughter all day long. Some days we wake up (mid-snore, crusted with drool, aching with middle age) and find that weâre holding hands, that weâve been holding hands since the early hours of the morning, since the last one of us came back from the bathroom and stretched and curled back into bed, finding that loving clasp. Fuck if weâre not lucky.
7AM - Derby Girl - I was inspired by my @fishinfishtown activity to join the fun with the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby! I, naturally, crafted my getup as a fish (although some people thought I looked more like a butterfly). I was able to use my ebike, and I had a great time!
8AM - Hospitality - J wasnât feeling so hot, so he visited his primary care doc who then, based on some labs, referred him to a specialist. A month later we went to that specialist appointment and were promptly sent to the ER. We spent 24 hours in the ER waiting for J to be admitted to the cardiac department, where he spent a whole week. Heâs fine, and he will continue to be fine. Heâs taking his medication, and weâre being careful about diet and exercise. Weâre gonna be ok, but damnit if itâs not a wild experience to know that youâre going through a major life event while itâs happening. Understanding the gravity of a moment as itâs passing. Feeling every second click by in real time. We just had a major watershed event in our lives and god lord it was intense.
10AM - My Best Friendâs Wedding - One of my oldest friends, Cristen, got married this year! It was a glorious day, hot as hell, but it cooled off to a beautiful temperature and ended with the most refreshing rain showers after dark. The Morris Arboretum was amazing, the bride was gorgeous, the groom was handsome, the food was great and I was the Best Lady!
12PM - Dog Days - Iâve been working as a dog walker/cat sitter for a popular app and itâs been mostly bad. Iâm good at it and I get great reviews, but the pay sucks and I wind up having to book a ton of jobs to make up in volume what I donât get through decent rates. While I do get to set my own rates Iâm restricted by the standard of the market. I have to stay competitive with the temple students who do this for beer money and if I raise my rates beyond a certain point I stop getting booked. Itâs a crap situation, and can we all just agree that wet cat food is among the most disgusting substances known to humanity? And no matter what kind of container itâs in it WILL spit when you open it, it WILL get on your hands. And CHURUs, do you know about these? These are little tubes full of fishy goo, like a treat. Itâs gogurt for your cat. Itâs so gnarly. Ugh. So gross. All of it is so gross. Below is an assortment of my deeply gross mis-adventures in pet care. Enjoy!
A client was fostering a cat who had worms, which is very common and even though the dewormer worked and all the worms were dead the cat still had to go through the process of shitting out all the worms, and this process stinks. Actually stinks. Worst smell ever. But, the cat was really sweet and very cuddly. At one point we were cuddling and he hopped off me and I smelled that smell very strongly and I figured he was using the litter box, but he wasnât. Nope. I had a giant skidmark all the way down my shirt. I gagged for ages and washed my shirt in their powder room. I then had to go walk another dog in the freezing cold with a wet shirt that smelled like cat shit AND pumpkin spice handsoap.
I was working for a woman with three cats, one of whom is a rescue that is quarantined in the basement not because sheâs an infection risk but because sheâs on a diet and canât eat the other catâs food. The first booking I did with this client is during a heat wave and her apartment is hot as hell for my first visit. I flip the lightswitch and nothing happened, no lights went on. I flip a few more and there are no lights. I check her refrigerator and, you guessed it, the electricity was off. Usually folks are pretty responsive over the app but I canât seem to reach this girl and have to resort to calling the rover emergency hotline, because I donât want to be on the hook if something goes wrong, and it is a heat wave, afterall. Eventually it comes out that this is the second time her power went out THAT DAY because sheâd plugged in three AC units in her 1br apartment. The landlord canât replace the fuses for a couple days but we agree that as long as the cats have plenty of water they should be fine, except that the water fountain isnât working because, yâknow, no electricity. Which means Iâm using her mildew sponge to wash water bowls in her sink which is filled with dirty take-out containers and cockroaches.
One of my regular clients needed me to stay overnight and I was reluctant to do it because coordinating care for my dog would be difficult, but I made it work. They were considerate enough to make up their bed for me, however, I was not allowed to use the bedroom AC because it was leaking and damaging the floor. So I slept on their gross, dog-smelling couch instead because the temperature in there was bearable. I have not done any more overnights for any client.
One of my regular bookings went a little nuts one day when the family was having some work done outside and the workmen had to come inside to complete a task. I was wrangling the two dogs (a blonde mutt and a grey pitt) and this guy comes in and spooks everybody which causes a fight between the dogs! These boys regularly rough-house but this was the first time Iâd ever seen them actually aggressive at all and I was kind of lost as to how to limit the carnage. Eventually I hooked a foot under the pelvis of the mutt and lifted him up and away, even though the pitt was the aggressor I couldnât use the same tactic because heâs a tripod. This disrupted their warring long enough for me to separate them totally. Iâd been working for this family for a few months at this point and the first and only time theyâve ever tipped me was after this happened.
Over the summer I was working for a very nice lady, and if it werenât for her dog biting me I could really see us being friends. This poor deaf, blind, fourteen year-old dog required medication and a diaper change at least twice a day and half-way through her weeklong vacation he and I still hadnât figured out a suitable routine for all this. He got surprised by the diaper once and wheeled around and bit me. The good news is that he only had three teeth and while he did puncture my thumbnail itâs FINALLY growing out!
I had a one day booking for a cat who needed thyroid medication twice a day. In addition to medicating her cat, the client had me disassemble their automatic cat litter machine and replace the filter. The machine hadnât been emptied in weeks and the filter hadnât been changed maybe ever.
I booked a job with a couple and the booking featured two dogs, and one kitten who was fecally incontinent, which was disclosed in the booking details. What wasnât disclosed was the other two cats that lived in the apartment. The kitten was also far sicker than they led me to believe, requiring a daily bath and a ton of cleaning in addition to all the other care responsibilities for the other animals there. I called the emergency hotline about all this after my third visit (out of fourteen total visits). As I was dreading the final few visits I was told my services were no longer required- the couple broke up while they were on vacation and one of them was coming home early. The other one asked if I could bring his dog back to his place, in NEW JERSEY. I refused. They didnât tip me.
1PM - University of Farts - What a soul crushing development. J and I both went to Uarts. We met my freshman year, we were both photo majors, but we didnât start dating until after I graduated. I was not a very good artist, but I was a VERY good student and I worked hard throughout my whole time there (I worked full-time in the library, I was a TA my Junior and Senior years, and I graduated with honors!) and J was, well, he was the exact opposite. It was outrageous how this whole thing came about, the way that students, faculty, and staff were notified, how few answers were provided (then, and now!). I went to visit on the last day UArts was open, I tooled around campus and visited my old colleagues. I sat in on a call with my old boss, in which they were told about unemployment and their benefits and stuff. The call lasted 20 minutes total. Before heading to the main building for the final Big Shot (a massive group portrait featuring UArts community members in costumes, holding signs, making faces- a fine tradition!) I wandered around, seeing what I could see. Eventually I found myself inside the old health office, where I used to be an admin, and discovered several enormous UArts banners, the kind they would hang on lamp posts down Broad Street. And I took âem.
2PM - Ceiling Racoon - I was sitting downstairs and watching TV with Walter when I hear a massive *WHUMP* in the bedroom right above me. Being home alone, aside from Walter, I was understandably mystified and alarmed as I climbed the stairs to investigate. Peering into the bedroom I notice what happens to be a gorgeously fat racoon suspended upside down from a hole in the ceiling that wasnât there before. Heâs very surprised, as am I, and I believe I shouted/screamed/yelled, I donât fully remember. I did NOT want to enter the bedroom, but I DID need to take a picture, because obviously. The âWHUMPâ I heard from downstairs was actually the bedroom light, which is why I was using my phoneâs flashlight⌠And it dawned on me, far too slowly, that in order to use the camera on my phone Iâd have to TURN OFF THE FLASHLIGHT. SO I DID. And nothing happened, thank god. I got my picture, with flash. The Racoon did not move. And I was able to back out of the room and close the door and call my husband. When he arrived we did a thorough check of the bedroom, our guest had evidently receded back into our ceiling. The exterminator looked for holes in our roof but eventually wound up capping an open chimney stack several houses over thereby protecting our entire row from further similar rodent visitations. YOUâRE WELCOME, NEIGHBORS!
3PM - Dadâs Semisesquicentennial - Happy Birthday Dad!! There were a couple of events to commemorate my dadâs birthday. One was a visit from all his brothers over the summer and I was lucky enough to join them in State College for a couple of days. The other was a massive effort on behalf of my sister and I; we made him a book full of photos and memories from his friends and family. It took all summer. I was also able to join while he opened the book on his actual birthday, an event which my sisterâs family attended via Zoom. Dad totally cried, which was definitely part of the goal.
4PM - FLEAS - Iâm going to say as little about this as I possibly can, but we got fleas and it was horrifying. We donât know if I brought them home from dog walking/cat sitting, if Walter caught them in Philly or at Dadâs house, or if our Racoon friend gifted them to us. Be we had them, and now we donât.
5PM - Big Backyard - Weâve lived in our home since 2013, and we were lucky to join this glorious community in the three abandoned lots behind our houses. There was a core of about ten neighbors who used this space as a backyard. A few years prior the horticultural society came through and cleared out all the garbage and put up a fence. After that, a neighbor did some landscaping and put up a gate and (critically) would mow and weed wack. We would have bonfires, we would feed each other, weâd let the dogs run wild until they fell asleep in exhausted, dusty, heaving heaps of fur. We planted tomatoes and squash and pumpkins, and so many flowers. We had a pig roast one summer and that pig was basted in so much beer!!! J and I are the only ones of the old heads remaining, most everyone else has moved on and away, and new folks have helped change and evolve the space. Thereâs always been tensions between public and private space back there. None of us own it, none of us ever will, and while itâs clearly always been occupied and maintained thereâs also always been interlopers. Walter once woke up a drunk guy who fell out of our hammock, and weâve found various unhoused folks back there from time to time. This summer there was a persistent presence of a woman who absolutely terrified me. She was so angry and mean and chaotic. She threatened both my husband AND my dog, and I can honestly say Iâm not terribly sure which threat scares me more. She also had one eye which really lent credence to all her menacing behavior. She vanished just as quickly as she arrived, and not soon after her disappearance we learned that our yard was going to be renovated again by PHS. They cut down all our trees (except the two figs), and removed our âkenzeboâ (a ramshackle structure erected by some neighbors to provide shade, and honestly, itâs been a safety hazard since the beginning). They put down a layer of topsoil and grass seed and installed a new fence. Iâm still concerned about increased traffic; some kids stashed a moped in our alley, and there was recently a small encampment back there until it was all washed out by some truly awful rain storms. This space has always been changing, it will always be changing.
6PM - Election Day
7PM - Open Enrollment - What an enormous pain in the ass.
8PM - 1984 Baby! - I turned 40 this year! Mom threw me a lovely party and I had the greatest time in a lovely room filled with all my favorite people eating and drinking and laughing! I felt well and truly celebrated, and I am so ready for the new decade.
9PM - Thankful - Another visit to State College! My sister and her family came to visit from San Jose so I got lots of time playing and chatting and snuggling with nieces who refuse to stop growing up.
11PM - Eleventh Hour - These last few weeks have been just jam packed with excitement. A bunch of scary lights switched on on our dashboard, so the car had to go into the shop. I started using the ebike to commute to my dog sitting appointments, slipped on a patch of wet leaves, and flip/rolled right on Richmond St. Fortunately there was a school bus behind me and the driver (angel!) flipped on her flashing stop sign, halting traffic in both directions while I picked myself up. I was phenomenally lucky not to have hit my head, broken any bones, or cracked my phone and/or glasses. I DO, however, have some truly spectacular bruises which will not be fading away anytime soon! The car is out of the shop after a $$$$ repair and itâs gonna take a minute before I get back on that bike.
PLANS FOR TOMORROW:
Get a real goddamn job with decent benefits
Focus my own health
Prioritize joy
Find purpose
Get back on that bike
Anne is a social listening expert who is currently walking other people's dogs for a living.
