After a couple of months of gradually becoming completely unhinged since Jamie lost his job and Lilly was diagnosed with ADHD, (and me getting back on my "crazy pills" -- and then waiting for those "crazy pills" to kick back in again), I now finally seem to be pretty much back on my feet and ready to face the world. (For the most part. I hope). No more going off of the "crazy pills" for me, ever, ever again!!! Whew! Obviously I can't function at all without them! (Curse ye, damn defective brain)! Lesson learned!
Anyway, first of all, let me tell you what happened a little while ago. I was sitting here in the living room on the loveseat just minding my own business eating a raw potato (don't judge) when all of a sudden I hear my dogs (who are currently locked up in their pen) barking at something. Now my boxer, Maddie, will bark at anything and everything and nothing at all. But my shepherd/husky mix, Lucky, if you ever hear her barking, you'd better sit up and take notice, because she only barks when there's something definitely worth getting up and going outside to see what's the matter.
So when I heard Lucky barking, I immediately hopped up (potato still in hand) and took a look out the windows to see what was going on outside. I didn't see anything. So then I went to the back of the house and looked out the bedroom window at the dogs so I could tell which direction they were looking and barking at. OK, they were looking and barking toward the left side of the house.
So I go outside on the porch (still crunching my potato) and looked toward the woods at the left side of the house, but I still didn't see anything. Finally I shut up crunching the potato long enough to hear the sound of leaves lightly being stepped on in the woods (like an animal; not a person). I stood still, looked and listened. First I noticed a squirrel, and thought it might be what was making the leaf-crunching noise, but that wasn't it. Then I thought maybe it was a little deer walking around back in the woods. But THEN I finally saw some movement, and I got to see for myself what the dogs were barking at.
There were at least 2 of them; maybe more. TURKEYS!
Then I realized the hilarity of the situation, because here it is only 3 days before Thanksgiving, and there are turkeys traipsing around in the woods next to my house!
(Well, I thought it was funny, anyway)! :/ LOL!
And now, onto the topic of My Job.
I've known for a while now that I probably needed to get at least some kind of a job, but I didn't really know what it would be. After my 16-year stint in banking, I really never wanted to work in an office setting again. It's not fun being chained down in a cubicle, and chained to your telephone, and chained to your computer every weekday for 8 hours a day. Not to mention the fact that almost all offices (especially banks) tend to be soul-crushing, zero-morale, politically-driven, gossipy, back-stabbing, shark-tank workplaces, and I've had more than my fill, thank you very much. That kind of workplace lifestyle is just not for me.
Anyway, my main concern was that I really wanted to be available for Lilly almost all the time, which became even more important to me since she was recently officially diagnosed with ADHD. I've been having to take her back to the doctor pretty frequently because we've been working on getting her medication dosage tweaked to be just right. So in other words, if I got any kind of job, it would be best for me if it was flexible enough to allow me to take care of Lilly while I worked too. And there's really not that many of those kinds of jobs around, especially in this small town.
Well.
The other day I happened to get one of those automatic e-mail notices letting me know that Lilly's school lunch money account was getting low, and that I needed to make a payment. So I logged in to the account online, and in order to figure out how much money I needed to put into the account, I looked up the school's lunch menu to count up how many days from now 'til the end of the year that I needed to pay for. Well, when I looked at the menu, I just so happened to notice printed on the bottom, right-hand corner, this:
The strange part was, though, that I had talked to Dad on the phone just the night before, and he told me that I should get a job working at the school doing something; that way it would fit in with my schedule of taking care of Lilly. And of course I said "YEAH RIGHT, what would THAT be"?!? And Dad replied, "Oh, I don't know, maybe working in the lunchroom"?!
And I'll be danged if the very next day I saw that ad on the school menu asking for help working in the lunchroom.
Well, all of these stars that seemed to be lining up was just too flukey for me not to go for it. So I called them about it.
The first lady I talked to was just filling in for the main lady for a couple of days, so she didn't have a whole lot of information. But she did tell me that the job was to just be a substitute lunchroom worker. I wasn't aware of that fact, so I immediately became disappointed and stumbled around like a dork and told her that I'd have to think about it, because it caught me off-guard and I didn't know if I should do it or not, since the job wouldn't be every day.
But after being persuaded by numerous people that even if it was just a substitute position, I should still do it anyway, I went ahead and decided to apply.
So this morning, I called back, and this time got to talk to the correct lady (the actual head of the Nutrition Department) who was back in the office. I went to their office in person this morning and submitted my application, and they are going ahead and putting my name in for the Board of Education to approve for me to become a substitute lunchroom worker at their next Board Meeting, which is next month. They also set up an appointment for me to get fingerprinted on December 18th, so I've pretty much got the job!
I'm guessing that since school lets out for Christmas Break just a couple of days after I have my fingerprinting done, I probably won't be called to start subbing until sometime after school resumes on January 7th. But anyway, it's something...it's a start!
The head of the Nutrition Department lady told me that if the job turned out to be something that I decided that I wanted to do every day (and not just be a sub), that if a position were to come open, they only hire subs to fill the positions. That way, they can be sure that it will work out (not just for the school, but for that person also).
So who knows? Maybe this is the start of a little something kind of fun for me to do that isn't soul-crushing! Fingers crossed! :)
Jamie has had a few different job interviews in the past couple of months, and he's actually got a temporary job right now that he started on Friday of last week. It's a job working with a crew of guys installing solar panels in a field here in our town. The job will probably only last for 3 to 4 weeks, but the pay is great, and if they complete the job ahead of schedule, all of the guys are allegedly supposed to receive bonuses. So we'll see.
The only really decent, fairly promising job interview Jamie has had is with a company called Star Foods, and the job would be for Jamie to drive a refrigerated truck on a route which I believe would mostly encompass a lot of places in North Carolina (which is OK because we don't live really all that far from the North Carolina line, and if he got the job, he would be parking the truck at our house anyway). They deliver cold foods like lunch meat and frozen pizzas and bacon and stuff like that (not milk or ice cream) to Dollar General stores and a few Wal-Marts. Jamie would get a 6% commission on sales, too. The Star Foods man told Jamie that if he worked it right, that the potential was there for Jamie to be making anywhere from something like $800 to $1,200 PER WEEK. Jamie has already talked at length on the phone to the Star Foods man, and they are scheduled to have a face-to-face meeting/interview tomorrow afternoon.
So fingers crossed on that one, too!
Hopefully there will finally be a big light at the end of the tunnel soon!
The turkeys knew where to go to be safe!
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