Turquoise Hair and Nude Models

Well, my daughter (who is 18), is finally a working person. She managed to land her very first job, on her very first interview...with an eyebrow ring and turquoise hair (which
she'd tried to cover up by re-dying it brown, but it was a classic failure which was to go from bad to worse.) All of you poor, unemployed people who have been faithfully and
daily pounding the pavement for a job: please do NOT come to my house to kill my daughter!! Her new employer is a major chain of toy store and she is going to be a sales associate for $10 an hour.
HMMM. I think I got paid ummm:$3.00 and change an hour for MY first job: as a legal secretary! haha. Well, in all fairness, that $3.00 probably got me much more than her $10 will today.

And here I sit. At home. Jobless. And broke. Collecting Social Security Disability which I am praying will keep on existing until I die or miracles happen and I can work again. And to add insult to injury...she just got hired to baby sit a sleeping child for two hours--for $40.00!!

EXCUSE ME????

I got paid $1.50 an hour...worked several jobs a day after school and on summers and if I came home after a job with $5.00 in my hand, I was rich!...and no, that $5.00 did NOT get me as far as her $40 will get her!! Oh well, when you're young, smart and beautiful--I suppose you're marketable. I fell into a couple of pretty cushy situations in my day, I guess, as well...so maybe it's just her turn center stage.

It's so hard to see my daughter at the age that I am still in my head. I do NOT feel like a 47-going-on-48 year old disabled woman!!!
Nope. I'm maybe 20 and still good looking and fit...(okay, and crazy too, but hey, you have to have some faults.)

Those years should have been the best of my life...and well, while looking back on them, does bring a sense of nostalgia...they were pretty-freakin-miserable. No, I would have to say that the BEST years (okay, it only lasted like two years...) of my life was when we lived in a NY upstate suburb in a rented condo with a pool and a town that actually had a main street within walking distance of our home ...(don't get me started on how we now drive 30 minutes to get a gallon of milk...and that is NO exaggeration!).

My daughter was in 5th and 6th grades then (not at once, obviously) and I was recently sprung from a wheelchair having been stuck in it for close to two years. (That's a whole other story...) And I went back to my chosen profession, for which I'd been trained, as a fine artist. Now, I'd worked before for many years as a freelance artist...even working for some major companies as temporary help for a couple of months at a time...or for smaller ad agencies and such. But I'd never had the nerve to go and pursue my first love, which was painting, as a full-time career.

I don't actually recall what prompted me to move into that choice. It was really a matter of something that just morphed. I'd been home, in the wheelchair, and picked up a pen and paper or paintbrush and started - after a hiatus of over 10 years - to draw and paint again simply because there was nothing else to do. And then, after I regained enough strength to walk, I joined a few art groups...who met together, like a life drawing group and a plein aire
(painting outdoors on site)_ group. My work began to gain attention and soon, I was invited by the art society of that town, to have my first one-person show. And that was the beginning of about two years of many, many showings and sales. And they were blissful. I especially loved it because my daughter, who is also talented in art, used to accompany me on my painting trips and brought her own to work alongside me.

She once modeled for my Life-Drawing group (clothed of course) and made, once more, a GOOD amount of money...Just a foreshadowing of her potential earning capabilities, I guess. And maybe I was a tad jealous then--I mean they never asked ME to model! haha. No, I was the proud mommy and loving every minute of it.

So now, I am in the sad spot of saying goodbye to my years of beauty, freedom and indepedence...as I wave goodbye to her every night as she leaves to work or on the arm of her
boyfriend...

....And I wish her, with all my might, a better life than
mine.