Indiana Visit

Busy day. We're at my father and Mary's home in Indiana. I may have underestimated the good sense of my parents--they're warm and sunny in Arizona, we shoveled knee deep snow to get to their front door in Indiana!

Kate sang a couple of songs with the Woodstove Flapjacks during their CD party last night. It was a good party at Duncan Hall.

Haylee turned 4 with the help of 8 kids and a ceramics painting place. Wiggling kids, a store full of you-break-it-you-bought-it stuff. Kev was a wreck.

Joshua spent some extra time with us after the party while Tante Kate cut his mom's hair. We had the absolute pleasure of taking him eagle spotting along the Wabash River. He saw 6 eagles, one flew downriver right in front of him. It was one of those grab and keep moments....a little Hoosier boy standing on the banks of the Wabash as an eagle flies past.

Had dinner with Patrick, Zelda, Joan and Charlotte after Mass. Was great to see them and catch up on what everyone has been doing. We'll see Hannah, Andj and Evan at Mass tomorrow, stop by the farm and head for home. Our weekends here go so quickly.

9 a.m. Camp Visit

Took my camera along for the drive out to camp for my job interview this morning. The ice is still covering everything and we had our first sunny day in ages. Here's what 9 a.m. looks like on a sunny winter day near Camp Joy.

The interview went all right. Dedicated people running a great camp. I think I answered their questions well and I'm certainly impressed by the facility and what it has to take to keep it running smoothly. I supposed it would be pushy to tell them how lucky they would be to have me so I settled for hoping to come off calm and unfazed by the four of them , one of me interview. Who better than me to organize, schedule, oversee, over-involve, pick up after, cajole suppliers, and generally make it work back stage? I've been doing this job my entire adult life.

Snow Day

The snow/sleet/snow combo killed my interview today. We've rescheduled for Friday morning. The county went to a Level 3 Snow Emergency in the wee hours of the morning and Kevin's phone went bonkers with people calling about getting in to work. We probably got 10 inches of snow total with 3/4 of an inch of ice in the middle.

With Kev at work 12 or 14 hours a day (and catching up on email once he gets home), I'm getting a little tired of my own company. I know it's bad when I turn on the TV and get lost in a fantasy where I'm sitting on Dr. Phil's stage and he's asking me about the alphabetized cans of soup in my pantry.

I lured up some company by filling the bird feeder close to the bedroom window. Who says you can't buy friends? The squirrels came in droves. The birds are harder. I don't understand why they don't understand there are no free lunches. If they want the good stuff on the feeder, I get to take a picture. Full frontal and those mousy looking sparrows better bring some of their more colorful cousins.

I got a few pictures. The snowy backyard, Kevin throwing out seed this morning to watch it bounce on the ice all the way down to the woods, ice almost an inch thick on the bushes and feeder hook. The best shot came after I had been sitting in front of the open bedroom window for an hour, fingers going numb from cold, camera on a tripod. Drooping below the feeder, like a furry icicle, was the squirrel's snow covered tail.

A Job, Weather or Not

Kevin is in his happy weather zone. He loves storms of any sort.

Issued by The National Weather ServiceCincinnati/Wilmington, OH 3:25 pm EST, Tue., Jan. 27, 2009
... A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 12 PM EST WEDNESDAY.
A MIX OF SNOW... SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN WILL CHANGE TO FREEZING RAIN THIS EVENING. THE WINTRY PRECIPITATION WILL CHANGE BACK TO SNOW EARLY TOMORROW MORNING... AND THEN TAPER OFF FROM WEST TO EAST TOMORROW AFTERNOON.
TWO TO FOUR TENTHS OF AN INCH OF ICE ACCUMULATION ALONG WITH AN ADDITIONAL 1 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOW AND SLEET WILL OCCUR OVERNIGHT. ANOTHER 1 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOW CAN BE EXPECTED ON WEDNESDAY.
TOTAL SNOW AND SLEET ACCUMULATION FOR THE ENTIRE EVENT WILL BE 8 TO 12 INCHES.
A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW... SLEET... AND ICE ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

We woke up to about 5 inches of snow this morning. The rain and sleet started around 3 this afternoon and continues tonight. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the morning. Typically a few inches of snow would shut this place down, add ice into the mix and we may be out for a few days. As as you can see at the top of the weather notice, the NWS has an office located here in Wilmington. It seems ironic somehow that the NWS is located in a place which seems to react so vulnerably to winter weather. I don't know what I expected...a tough guy shrug and a "oh, bad weather doesn't bother us in Wilmington; we have the NWS office right at the edge of town." Like it gives off some invisible weather barrier or something!

I have a job interview tomorrow with a local camp program. About a 10 minute drive from here. We'll see if they close the roads down out in the county. I'm all geared up for the interview so I hope it's not postponed. Wish me luck--they're looking for someone to assist in scheduling and general organizational tasks. Part time. Decent pay for the hours. Work in a program serving children but not actually with children. An integrated program of local day campers, inner city kids and MRDD programs from surrounding counties. There are some medical camps too. Plus an entire other aspect I wouldn't be serving too much which focuses on corporate training programs. I think it would be a perfect fit; me for the job, the job for me. We'll see if I can convince them I'm wonderful.

Don't look so damn skeptical. I've pulled off bigger tricks.

Employment Impossibilites Revisited

The Sunday Enquirer brings a new, and ever shorter, list of employment possibilities. The problem with job hunting through the Enquirer (once you move past the point that I am, apparently, qualified to do nothing) is the distance factor. Driving to the outskirts of the city suburbs is a 60 mile round trip. Four or five days a week times 60+ miles a day at 25 MPG times 2 bucks a gallon means multiplication is not my friend here.

I'm not sure I can afford to work. The age old problem of the unemployed has become a startling reality for me.

I keep looking though. A few more things have cropped up locally, although with a newly created 8000 employee pool in the area (see http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/22/60minutes/main4747832.shtml for a recent 60 Minutes story on our little town) I am not likely to be a forerunner for most positions.

What I suspected for years is proving to be true. Nurturing someone's kids for 10 or 12 hours a day is not considered real work experience. Nevermind that a good number of those kids were the product of a dual working family where at least one person worked simply because they found it too overwhelming to be at home full time with their kids. The same people who hired me 15 years ago to raise kids they found too wearing to raise on their own now thinks I don't have any real life work experience.

It's no wonder we're a nation in crisis. On many fronts.

I remembered today that I moved here a year ago anticipating I would be job hunting at some future point when Kevin was out of treatment. At the time I cast a skeptical look on many of the obvious local employment possibilities. It's not that I thought I could land a job with ease; I've always known the value, or lack thereof, that would be granted to my former self employed life.

But I did imagine I had some marketable skills and could avoid having to consider certain jobs. In this new reality of no marketable skills, a tanked economy and Kevin's salary cut, I may have to revisit the impossible.

Check out this blog post from early last year:
http://whatdayisittoday-ls.blogspot.com/2008/01/another-day-another-box.html My big concern now is not that this might be the only job I'm qualified for, it's that there's a very good chance I'm not.

Plugging In

Three a.m. and I am wide awake, laying in bed and trying to decide what day of the week it is. I know the inauguration was Tuesday. Tuesday THIS week. So that would make today.....sometime after Tuesday. Thursday, maybe. Or Friday. I'm pretty sure about that.

It was my premier "oh crap" moment of the month--and this has been a month full of "Oh Crap" moments. I didn't name this blog "what day is it today" some 18 months ago for nothing. With Kevin's cancer diagnosis and all that followed so quickly, many of those early days morphed into a blur.

Or into a time trudging march of waiting, waiting, waiting which wears on me worse than a busy blur.

So I wasn't pleased this morning to realize that I, again, don't know the day of the week. Briefly I didn't know the date, the week in the month either, as I spent two days reminding Kevin of an appointment this Monday, February 2. Thankfully, something jolted me into the moment and I realized there is another week before his appointment. This is good. Arriving a week early for a 7:30 a.m. appointment wouldn't have started his Monday on a high note.

The goal for today is to get plugged back in. Find some sunshine in this dreary month of a dreary winter. Start something. Finish something. There are 30 some draft posts that I haven't posted here. Those will start showing up once I've edited some of the colorful language. (I told you it had been a month of "oh crap" moments.)

Oh, and in case you're wondering, it's Friday. All day.

Things We Learned and Forgot...

"Enjoy yourself. Roam around. Don't break anything."

I read an online report which claims President Obama greeted a White House visitor this week with those words.

This is like one of those "Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten..." things. Something we knew and lived by when we were 5 or 6 and somehow forgot along the way.

There's no denying the new presidency begins with plenty of things broken. But politicians through the decades have shown a remarkable ability to add woe to our woes so I'm certain more harm could be done, more could be broken.

Here's hoping our new president will abide by his own words.
"Enjoy yourself. Roam around. Don't break anything."