April 14, 2010

I'm playing hooky--again--from cleaning my floors. They don't get very dirty, but the tile could definitely use sweeping, and it's time to vacuum, too. I always take a page from my grandmother's book. She used to say, "I'm not a bit afraid of housework--I can lay right down beside it and go to sleep." For my grammarian friends, yes, I know it's 'lie', but that was a direct quote.

It didn't take me long to fall back into my routine after returning from my family reunion in Texas, but I did have a task to perform that turned out to be more of a big deal than I would have thought. While I was gone, 'my' job at the park was posted. Before I could get to the application, Budd informed me there were already 20 applicants. Yikes! I wasn't sure I wanted that much competition! Luckily, I have a secret weapon. My good friend Kathy is a retired 'fed'--30 years in administrative positions in various agencies made her a wealth of information. Much of my 'spare' time over the past week has been reading the info she has sent me, engineering my resume to present the most relevant of my experience at the forefront, sending for my college transcript and getting in the various documents. It's been years since I applied for a job, so it was a bit shocking to realize that most of my former supervisors prior to my real estate career have retired, and I know that one at least is deceased.

I thought I would never apply for another job--I'm entrepreneurial after all--but I'm actually looking forward to some structure for a while. With Budd wandering here and there, I can't really get my teeth into anything business related that isn't portable, and 10 weeks on the reservation made me lazy. I have gotten a bit excited about Kathy starting a business. She could make a fortune consulting people who want to get into federal employment. I haven't convinced her to do it yet, though.

I finally got around to taking pictures of all the flowering shrubs and some of the cacti in our yard. The owners, my landlady and her husband, had it professionally xeriscaped [hmm, this application doesn't like that word no matter how I spell it], and it is drip-irrigated. All we have to do is pull a few weeds now and then, which is easy because the sandy soil won't hold the roots. I have to wait until they are a few inches tall before I can see them against the gravel in the strong sun, but 10 minutes every 4 or 5 days clears them pretty well. I put a few of the better pictures on Facebook.

Also finished my cross-stitch project. I'll have to work from kits until I can get back to Salt Lake, as I didn't bring my entire collection of books and floss with me. I've already got the next project basted onto the scroll rods and will start this afternoon. Tomorrow in the late afternoon, I plan to join some other stitchers at the library for their weekly meeting, and see if it's something I'd like to do on a regular basis.

Budd came home with the news that I will be starting a different temporary position than the one originally planned, on the 26th of this month. Things have changed so much and so often over the past month that I will not hold my breath waiting for it, but I'm looking forward to it if it does work out. In fact, I'm going to stop doing this and call the AO for more details right now.