Your Fired! TUESDAY

For the last 2 years, I have had a part time job with a local newspaper. The job came about by accident and it ended up being one of the greatest jobs ever. At times, it was difficult to juggle with doing real estate full time and popping out a baby each passing year, but one that I really loved. On behalf of the paper, I traveled to close to 100 different schools each year around town and did a 1 hour writing activity with the students from grades k -12. Each week from my home office, I took the material that the students worked on and formatted it on the computer, scan in the art work and emailed it to our office. Every Thursday, one page of the weekly paper published the work of the students that I had visited. It was an awesome program that the teachers and students loved and I loved being able to meet so many students around the valley and reading what they had to say.

The only time I had to go into our main office was to pick up papers to take out to the students when I did the workshop, so I should have been concerned when I received an email saying that there was a mandatory meeting on Tuesday. I was really more annoyed than anything, because that meant that I would have to get up super early, iron my fancy work shirt and ugly maternity dress, fight with my panty hose (dress code requirement) and drive in rush hour traffic to get to this mandatory meeting. Imagine how shocked I was to sit all cute with 16 of my co workers, only to find out that I got all dressed up to get laid off along with everyone else in the room. They did not just lay us all off, but they closed down the entire paper all together. I have never been laid off before, and once I realized it was not a joke, my body went numb. I sat there and looked around the table as silent tears feel down the faces of several of the employees. No one had a clue about it. When I first took the job, it was extra income, but as real estate slowed down last year, it became necessary income and I started to panic. Mr. B's over time had been recently been cut and baby number4 was on the way.

I spent the day in a fog but little did I know that the bad news had only just begun.....It is true when they say bad things happen in 3's.