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"Something great and awful happened on Friday. My boss decided to take me to lunch, rather spur-of-the-moment. You&amp;#039;d think that would be a nice thing to anticipate when you see it come across your calendar, wouldn&amp;#039;t you? He sent the meeting notice out late on Thursday, inviting me to lunch the next day but offering no other details. You have to understand a few things to know why I was nervous. First, this is a boss who isn&amp;#039;t big on taking people to lunch. Second, he&amp;#039;s still relatively new to the position so things are still being re-arranged a bit, and finally, I&amp;#039;ve been in corporate America a long, long time. I&amp;#039;ve seen a lot of layoffs that came completely out of the blue and even been affected by one or two. My company is doing very well, and the boss and I get along great, but re-organizations can happen anytime. So I worried and fretted all night Thursday, and by Friday at noon, my stomach was in such a knot, I wasn&amp;#039;t sure I could even eat. And it turns out, he felt bad that he hadn&amp;#039;t taken me out to lunch for the holiday (as he had his other direct reports) and he felt like he should do that. That&amp;#039;s all. Just a nice lunch. He even told me he nominated me for a special committee that I was interested in being a part of. Whew. The world got a lot rosier after that lunch. That is, until my oil light came on in my new car over the weekend. I hope it&amp;#039;s just that I&amp;#039;m low - I haven&amp;#039;t had the oil changed in awhile and I really need to. Two near-catastrophes, or so they feel to me. Ever since Peter left, I have no fall back plan. If I lose my job, I&amp;#039;d better hope I find something quickly that pays what I make here (unlikely) or I lose my house. If the car needs work instead of an oil change, I have to hope my beat up van can shudder along and I&amp;#039;d also better hope that I can pay for the extra gas it takes till I can save up enough money to pay for the car. I feel like I&amp;#039;m always riding the ragged edge of disaster, and the slightest thing can utterly derail me. When we were together, a job loss or a car dying was a major inconvenience, but not something that could jeopardize everything, not really. Just the new reality that I live now, I guess. Do you feel like you&amp;#039;re only one blown gasket or one company reorganization away from having your life yanked out from under you? What sort of things do you do to try to insure against that kind of thing? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a46707/living-on-the-edge/>