The Nest and Baseball and employment these days.

I watch “my” MLB baseball team on TV quite often. It is the only real justification I have for spending money on satellite TV. When we were out of town for a week in May, the team lost quite a few games. Now they are surging, winning something like 9 out of 10 games, mostly against the other league. And now I’m not watching. There is no picture on the TV from the satellite. No signal. No reason. It is not the TV, as I can pull in an NBC affiliate even though we no longer have an antenna. We are suspecting a broken cable due to a ground squirrel, but we haven’t found the cause yet.

Actually, this will probably do me some good, since I’m not vegetating in the chair in the evenings.

The Nest: The empty nest won't be so empty soon. I have one adult child who lost his job today, mostly for economic reasons. And one adult child who has been successfully self-employed but who is done with her job within a week. This might be a difficult summer for me, as I know that kids revert to childhood when they come home, and there is bound to be some jealousy between the two of them, although they usually get along just fine. I can tell myself all the right things about how to talk to them and how to treat them as adults, but I also find myself reverting to old behaviors when they are home.

But I am vowing to make it clear to them that if they are going to live here, they 1) have to pitch in and 2) it won't be free. We've already told them that we won't/can't put up with them coming and going at any time of night or day and then expecting peace and quiet during daylight hours. There is no way that they can come into the house in the middle of the night and not wake us. And the older one gets, the more precious (and rare) sleep becomes.

It may well be that not having a TV will be just the incentive they need for not staying here too long.

Regarding my son's situation:
He was working, for a year and a half, in a business at a low level job, but they had told him that they would help him get the necessary training and license to move up. They never did that, and their excuse may be legitimate because there had been a change in management and there is a downward swing in the economy. But he was getting increasingly disenchanted with the management there and the ethics. For example, he had figured that if he stuck it out for 1 1/2 years, he would get the bonus mentioned in the policy manual. Now they say it isn't a contract. He claims that he was never reprimanded for poor work and the only time they weren't happy with him is when he came in on a Sunday to do some extra assignment, but they refused to pay him overtime.

The real kicker was when, just over a week ago, they told him that he'd be out in a month, but that they were hiring a woman (lower wages!) to replace him and he'd have to train her. Well, today is her first day, but the boss realized that he had created an awkward situation, so today is my son's last day.

My advice to him is to find a line of work where his affinity for senior citizens and his good values would be appreciated. Too bad it is such a difficult time in the general economy.