the end

My Company is closing.
After 70 years, the Onthank Company has decided to shut its doors. And this is incredibly sad to me. I'm not saying that I love my job (because I don't) but I like it at times. I Love the people that I work with. We have gone through so much. We've had weddings, infertility, babies and grand-babies. We've lost coworkers to other employment and lay-offs. We've lost one friend to tragedy, something that haunts a few of us daily.
I had planned on being at Onthank for a while. Maybe long enough to move up the chain a little more, or to have the company compensate me for all the work I've done.
The last 2 years have been hard. Having to constantly talk around our situation to our customers, having to go against morals and honesty, losing friends to lay-offs.
I should be happy to be able to find another job with a company with less stress. Instead, I am scared to death. I haven't had to look for a job since 2003 when I moved to Sioux City to be with Scott, without any job prospects. It was terrifying. And things are different now, we have Weston. He has daycare, etc.
And to bring my personal feelings into this, because it is personal, it may be business, but it's still personal to me, this puts a real damper on our family planning. We had put into action all the beginnings to try for another baby early next year. Obviously, we can't go through with that at this time. Even the best company would more than likely require one year on the job before granting maternity leave. And there is no way I can have another baby without a job. Everything is dependent on the next job.
So, thank you Onthank Company - for giving me a career that I felt uniquely qualified for (and is becoming glaringly obvious that I will not find again), for now depriving me of spending 8 hours a day with people I love and customers I adore, and for sending my family-planning to the back burner because this in 2011 and not 1950, and we both have to be gainfully employed just to have children.
I think this Friday may be my last day, not that anyone has said anything for certain, and I am not going to promise not to cry.