Hired-Up

My interview for work went well enough on Monday that I was offered the job on Friday. The job I was iffy about for more money, not the library job I was excited about for less.

So after mulling it over for a few hours, I decided to sign on and re-join the working class, take the plunge, and as Dr Strangelove would say, "How I stopped worrying (about $$$) and learned to love the bomb," or Job. Whatever. Being two terms into the student experience, and actually looking at graduation for Summer 2009, I am not as worried about being sucked into a work situation that I enable by making myself indispensable to my boss, then finding my feet captured by quick-curing cement into the foundation workings of the established business. I can balance things better now after the hiatus and back-to-school trail, and I'm actually thinking how higher income can help me out with some things, like modern dentistry and and the urban homesteading ideas germinating in my noggin.

This Spring Term was tougher on me than I'd have thought, the astro-physical strain was high, and all those many equation-analyzing hours would not have been available to cover a real job and still squeak out a decent grade for this degree-requirement class. It's somehow all working out, and when the hiring manager replied to my acceptance email, she said my current class schedule was perfect for their scheduling needs for now, and being term oriented, schedules are always readjusted to accommodate the students' classtimes. I like this. Going forward, I'll be packing together as many Anthropology classes into each term as I can and don't see anything ahead as brain-reconfiguring as teaching myself Trigonometry by doing forensics on equation fragments to determine cause of impossible results. All that effort will now go back into my major classes, and brainspace for learning a new workplace culture and software system.

And it is summer, after all. Finally picked up some plants for the garden yesterday morning, some hearty tomato starts at Fred Meyer's Founders Day sale, and those quaint forget-me-nots I've been craving since forever for that shady corner under the mock orange bush. In Michigan my grandparents had a pink version of it too, and the blue with some pink carpeted the shade under the huge lilac bushes by the rhubarb patch. The cheerful purple and yellow faces of johnny-jump-up pansies rounded it out as a border. They all reseeded and came back after every harsh Michigan winter. Slowly, but steadily, I am gaining ground in the ultimate conversion of this home into a facsimile of the family 1902 homestead that I loved so much growing up. Okay, a mix of that and the Bath Street house, the two old houses I hated to leave behind. We double Cancers are just a mess with this house business, I've surrendered completely to it and have much more peace now. It just is this way.

Four cucumber plants, five types of tomatoes, beans, peas, peppers, sunflowers, herbs, and now I'm thinking potatoes. A trip to the Limbo organic market for some specimens to let go spiky with sprouting eyes, to cut up and plant in a big pot like Kathy does, and where can lettuce fit in, and a bush soybean? Sprouts of Texas red grapefruit seeds are working in a shallow sushi tray and I started another avocado pit in water. These of course are hot climate dreams, or the beginnings of cultured trees in a conservatory to be built when the neighbors gather to re-claim the lot where Steven's house is. He still plays along that it's okay to have his house moved off the lot and donate it to charity, so his 'friendly' neighbors can converge on the plot and create the communal garden space with bamboo tea house I've been dreaming of. What a great sport.