Now Entering...Full-Time...

Not sure if I should be jumping up and down, or questioning what I was thinking as I venture, potentially, into the world of Full-Time retail worker. It's not all 100% official just yet, they still have to get all the big wigs to sign off their approval, but yesterday I had my interview with the "District Manager" and she seemed pretty excited to get me on the fast track to the management team. This rather surprised me since in all my other dealings with her I wasn't worth the time of day. Suddenly, I've entered into the realm of reality in her book. Ah well.
So here's how my day went yesterday. I came to work at the normal time, got started helping organize everything as it came in off the truck, and then received the call. Originally the interview was going to be at our store here in Moscow, but since things have kinda gone insane at the Lewiston store due to staffing changes, it was requested that I head over thata way. It was agreed that I could be spared at the moment by my own team, so I hurried out to my car, thinking that I'd just do the interview, maybe help them out a wee bit (they get their truck at 4:30 or some such ungodly hour and I figured they should be just about done by then anyway) and then be back to finish things on our end. Listened to a little Sufjan Stevens to help soothe my nerves, and headed over the mountain and down the wickedly winding road (think Walk Two Moons people)to Lewiston.
Naturally, when heading to an interview, you expect to be, well, interviewed. However, when I arrived I was informed that the person I was there to meet wasn't there after all. Instead I was instantly ushered into their stock room and expected to just pick up where I'd left off at my store. Only things weren't the same. Everything was slightly askew, as though the entire process had been tilted. Didn't exactly help to speed up my processing time. Plus, I ended up doing shoes, which I've only done a total of twice at my store. Not exactly an expert on that one. I was the chosen one for apparel, and that's pretty much where I've stayed.
Anyhow, after a couple hours of hanging I did have the interview. As stated before, it went well. While I did fumble a bit over a few questions, like why I wanted the job, etc. she seemed well enough impressed. It was quite obvious that she hadn't read my application, because when she asked about my past jobs, the list and locations had her pretty much flabbergasted. Always fun to blow people's minds with the sheer randomness of my life itinerary.
Once the interview was complete I was sent back to work. At my lunch break, where the "DM" had graciously bought pizza for those who worked late, I checked my phone and learned that my normal boss had called, begging me to come back quickly because we had 36 boxes of apparel. For those not in the know, when we have 20 we know we've got our work cut out for us. 36? That's just not even reasonable. So as soon as I helped them get their truck settled away, I hurried back to Moscow to take on a few more boxes and run them to the floor. I'll confess, I did feel a little like Superwoman today. (A much better title than the acronym insinuated when my manager dubbed me "Super Sarah." Yes, there were a few tasteless jokes tossed around that day.)
The moral of this story is, yesterday was a long day, and I'm now running rapidly down the path to full-time/management position. I wonder if this greater authority role will give me the right to start teaching grammar lessons? Just sayin.'

Proofreading with a Purpose

Just when I thought my life was going to be nothing but hardtags and hangars from now on, I had the opportunity to proofread a thesis paper for one of my former Czech students. She's studying linguistics and wrote a very interesting paper covering variations in the English language in England. It was pretty fascinating, and brought back memories of my History of English class in college. It was really so nice to be able to reach out and help someone. She was also pretty much in awe of how fast I was able to do it. Guess my English degree still counts for something ;)
I'm now almost to my Friday of the week. I've only got four short shifts total for the week, so I've made it through three. At the beginning of today I thought it was going to be a real drag. There were a few things from yesterday that I'd done wrong and therefore had to fix today. Let's just say making errors has never been something I enjoy. That's part of why I could never understand bad kids in classrooms, or misbehavior in general. I hate hate HATE being in trouble. Therefore, I always try to do things right in order to avoid any awkwardness. I can accept that it's all a part of the learning process, something everyone has to go through that will make life easier in the future, but it's still a bummer.
Fortunately, by the end of the day we'd done everything so well in the stock room (we were also blessed with FAR fewer boxes of clothes to rehang and tag) that we were awarded "star cards." Wahoo! Seriously, I feel like one of those elementary school kids with a green card. I did good Mommy. I got a Star card. That means I'm special and can maybe win some money in a drawing. Honestly, it totally boosted my esteem and made me feel like the whole day was a bit more worthwhile. Yeah for positive motivation. It works WAAAAAAAY better on me than the negative variety. Yes, make me learn from my mistakes, but making me miserable by telling me how much I suck is never helpful. That would be the reason I quit working at the Maids after one month. That and the fact that I kept getting stuck with this lady who didn't speak any English so I had to do extra customer service work for her while she still got paid for it. (sigh) Probably better not to go there. It'd be pretty lame to still be bitter after like 8 years.
Anyhow, I'm slowly getting into the swing of things. I still don't think getting up at 6 is exciting, but it could be worse. Much worse.
So this day is rounding out well. Kudos at work. A proofreading project I can feel really good about, and a dinner that doesn't really require any effort on my part because we just have to throw it in the oven. It'd be great if all days were so balanced in the end.

It Starts Today...

Today I will return to the world of the employed. I always get such a strange feeling in my stomach when I get to this point. Once again, I'm entering into something completely new. Uncharted territory so to speak. I've had such a strange collection of jobs to file away on my resume, and today I enter the world of retail.
It's really not surprising that I've found it hard to get a job over the past couple of months. Besides the fact that all my work experience comes from different states of countries, it also all covers different fields. I have service jobs in both janitorial and housecleaning fields. I have manual labor experience from the mill as well as farther back when I worked in Italy in High School. I have child care experience at Mother's Choice, food service experience from Great Harvest, and a bit of a professional turn with my teaching jobs. It's a pretty mismatched collection, and with the exception of my ESL job, most of it has nothing to do with my college English degree.
As I think back over my career history I really am in awe of all I've been able to do. I've worked with so many different kinds of people. Let me tell you that the people in the mill and those cleaning toilets are a far cry from the fresh young university grads that seek to teach English on foreign soil, or the European gap year girls who want to hold babies in Hong Kong. I've been so blessed to learn from all of these people, to get a glimpse into their hearts and their worlds.
Of course, I file all these experiences away with the hope that they will serve to bolster my writing career as well. I've collected instances, stories, characters, scenery, etc from around the world that I hope will one day allow me to speak to more than my little blog or e-mail following. While I won't allow myself to be deluded, to believe that the world is going to be so interested in what I have to say that I'll suddenly find myself the next big literary star, but I have a voice, I have some vision, and a unique selection of life experiences to draw from.
I'm curious to see what this new job will add to what I've learned already. I'm curious to see how it will shape and form me, how it will educate me in yet another facet of life. The future is still a misty veiled question, but at least I have a little security for the moment, a chance to throw myself back into the world of productive citizens and to support my little family. Strange that I'm no longer dependent solely on and for myself. My time is no longer just my own, nor are my interests.
It's funny to look briefly ahead, to know there will be those learning curve days soon to come, those days when I can still count how long I've been there, and then slowly watch them turn into a line of predictability and routine. I'm starting off part-time, so I should still be able to focus on things at home as well as the writing I've been trying to do. But at least it's a start, a move in the right direction.
Now if I can just keep my "teacher voice," in check and learn to take instruction, criticism and direction all should be well :)

A few notes on revision

Well, I've pulled through. I've managed to get all the way through Daughters of the Pond and to make some much needed changes. I can't believe the number of times "once again" or "for a moment" or just the words slowly, gently, etc. were repeated. Maybe it's because I just wrote it in small segments and didn't remember the exact phrases I had already used about a bazillion times. Or maybe I just couldn't think of any better way to say it. There is something to be said for doing book revision more than a decade after the first draft. While I'm still attached to the story, I was much better able to be harsh with 17-19 year old me in order to straighten some things out.
I just have to add how much it always drove me crazy when the books I used to teach English in the Czech Republic would use the word "revise" in place of "review." Okay, I can accept the fact that this is the word used in British English, but it was one of those differences that always wore on my nerves. Sorta like "have got." It always worked it's way up under my skin and gave me the shivers.
As a little report on the progress of life, I've managed to make it on the early morning school walk three days in a row now. The kids don't have school the next couple of days, so we'll see what I manage to do for the rest of the week, but I was pretty proud of me for that. Today was all about worm carnage. It was rainy and gicky and the worms had fled to the sidewalk. Little thin ones, enormous fat ones, all strewn willy-nilly. There were so many that it was hard not to step on them if you lost your concentration for a moment.
I was holding Rowan's hand and he was intent on finding the biggest and fattest one. He picked it up excitedly, telling me how it kept trying to wiggle and squiggle out of his hand. He had big plans for this worm. He was going to take it to the bridge we have to cross and throw it into the swollen creek so it could have a "wild death." I wasn't too sure this was the best idea he ever had, but I wasn't exactly going to pull the worm out of his hand either.
The worm, it seemed, had other ideas. After maybe five minutes he opened his little fist to check on it and noted that he had been slimed. There was white goo all over his hand. His first reaction was to fling the worm into a little puddle by the sidewalk, but his mom stopped him and he hung it in a bush instead. Not sure how better that was, but Julie seemed to think it would be able to find it's way down better than it could have swum out of the raging creek. Oh the joy of kids.
After two days of making dinner in a row, there are enough leftovers tonight for that to suffice, and I'm definitely glad for that. It gave me more time to really focus on getting this book all finished up. Now I get to start the ever so thrilling task of trying to find a publisher. I remember the futile experience I went through back when I was a Junior in High School, and must confess I don't look forward to this very much, but you just never know. Maybe good old DOP will make it to the best seller list ;) Never fear, I'm still on the search for a day job...
One final note, last night Mark and I watched "Demolition Man." If you've never seen it, it's a futuristic crime/action flick from 1996 with Sylvester Stalone and Wesley Snipes. My main reason for bringing this up is because there is a huge thing about Taco Bell in it. Mark had seen this movie many times when he was younger, and since Taco Bell isn't the international superstar that McDonalds is, he had no knowledge of it except as portrayed in this movie. If you're in the need of a good laugh, just imagine Taco Bell as your image of American fine dining. Ha! But I love it all the same!

Safe and Sound

One day I think I was teaching my CAE class about sayings like "safe and sound." It's kind of a strange thing to try and translate. Anyhow, I just thought it would be good to inform everyone that we are now in America. We had a bit of a time getting here thanks to the blizzard that hit the Czech Republic right about the time we were leaving. The drive to the airport was rather harrowing. We left at about 11 and were in flying snow the whole way, but arrived in plenty of time to have a bite to eat and say the ever difficult goodbyes. Definitely not an easy thing to do, but we made our 5:55 AM flight with no problems.
Of course we then sat in the plane for more than an hour while the de-iced the wings. It was a pretty serious event actually. We were rather amused to watch it all, and thankful that we had a couple hours scheduled between our flights in Frankfurt.
When we got to Germany the airport looked decent. There wasn't much snow and things seemed to be moving pretty smoothly. They were a bit intense at the security check, freaking out over drinks we bought inside the Prague airport and making us chug them, as well as doing a special check in a separate room of our wireless keyboard, but we passed the inspection and got easily onto the plane. Only to sit there for more than two hours. That's right, two hours of just sitting on the tarmac waiting for them to de=ice the wings. And the pilot originally told us it would take twenty minutes. As our four hours layover in San Francisco began to dwindle I was a bit worried that we'd have a tough time making our connecting flight as well as making in through customs. Hard to hold on to the truth that God is in control, isn't it?
The flight was long. I think it's even longer when you're 6'4". They don't make it easy for tall men, and the plane we were on was kinda ghetto. We're talking seatbelts from I don't know when, and the old TVs in the middle of the aisles. The one closest to us happened to be going out and had a strange red glow around it. People wearing pink on the screen were wearing red on the functioning screen up the way. Ah well. One way or another we made it to San Francisco.
I tried to chose a decent line for Immigration, and failed. We ended up being almost the last through, even though we went there as quickly as we could. But we passed through it in really no time at all. All our papers were great and they didn't even look at us as we went through customs. In the end, we had an hour to breath and make some phone calls before heading over to catch our plane.
So after a whole lot of stress, the trip itself went as perfectly as possible. There was no running in airports, no lost luggage, and no strange questions along the way.
We were happy to meet my parents, get a little food in our bodies, and head off to bed.
There is definitely some jet lag in there, but at least we're through the process. Today we're taking it easy. We met up with my nephew Ryder for brunch at Shari's so Mark had his first big American breakfast, as well as seeing his first yellow school buses in person. It's so strange as I'm seeing all these familiar things and he's seeing EVERYTHING for the first time. It's literally like an "American" dream. The scenes from the movies are suddenly right in front of us. Rather surreal for him.
This afternoon we're hoping to see Jessie and then tomorrow we're hitting the road for Idaho.
Thanks to everyone for your prayers for safely and we'll see what the next chapter has in store for us here on this side of the world.

An American Breakfast

Few people who know me well would do more than laugh at the thought of me being a cook type person. I'm just not. It's not in my nature. Partly because of perfectionist tendencies. If I've never made something before the probability of a massive FAIL is just to high. We're talking astronomical. There are people who like to say if you can read you can cook. Perhaps there is something to be said for that, but there is also much to be said on the side of, say, natural talent. Not to mention interest.
There was a brief phase in 7th grade when Mom thought it could be...interesting...maybe beneficial, for me to join her on forays in the kitchen. I think it lasted 2 or 3 Friday nights. I mostly remember the time we made pizza from scratch. Did I mention my mom's a wizard in the kitchen? Um, cause she is. And that partly led to the end of these little ventures. You see, it was a whole lot easier for her to make the masterpiece without the meddling little apprentice there to screw the whole thing up. Do you all recall what happened to Mickey when the wizard left him untended for a moment? Yeah. So.
I had to enter the world of domesticity when in Hong Kong. In fact, my first attempt at feeding 15 people involved that same homemade pizza. I told myself over and over that it was true, if you can read, you can cook. I followed Mom's recipe to the best of my abilities. Now, I suppose I should give myself a few honest excuses. Hong Kong and Horse Creek exist in totally alternate realities. There is little comparison between one of the largest, most densely populated cities in the world and Horse Creek, CA population 115 on a good day when all the livestock has had a good breeding season. Hong Kong is located in a tropical climate and is rather ridiculously high on the humidity chart in the middle of summer when this little disaster took place. Horse Creek is located in a mountainous region of Northern California. Through the winter months the sun never shines on the little nook where our house and church nestled up against the mountains. They just aren't the same, and, believe it or not, that causes differences in the ways that cooking happens. There's a reason that there are elevation charts in cook books. All this to say, the crust that was supposed to spread out enough to feed 15 people scarcely covered one and a half pans...
It is true that, in the nearly three years that I lived in Hong Kong my skills got better. I learned how to chop veggies and fruit which led to some truly delightful salads ;) I also mastered the art of vegetarian spaghetti, tacos, French toast, and my mother's biscuits. All rather awe inspiring when you consider the half hour it took me to make 15 minute rice in my Redding apartment because I had to read the instructions so many times. Add rice to bottom of pot. Add twice as much water. Add a little salt. Boil. Keep boiling. Boil some more. When water is gone you're done. Tough people. Seriously tough. (And I'm pretty sure Jessie is still laughing at me 8 years later! Ha!)
Since leaving Hong Kong I've not done much to develop my culinary skills. I became the master of cheese, crackers, and those famous chopped veggies. Not to mention my mean Asian noodle boiling skills. Wild. Simply wild.
Those who've been following my blog for some time know that this summer my family took it upon themselves to improve my domestic qualities. There was a blackberry pie, orange and cinnamon rolls, and numerous dinner helping occasions. Funny how a man comes into your life and suddenly you're expected to be a woman of all things. I mean, I'd always managed to skip out of the womanly duties at family events. Granted, I can clean with the best of them. See, cleaning you can't really screw up. Water, soap, and elbow grease. These are things I can understand. I mean, I was a maid for several summers. (Two to be exact, with an extra month thrown in for bad measure just to remind me that it's a job I'll not likely do again unless the recession means that it's a choice between that, cleaning grease vats, or cleaning out the sewer.) But enough of the asides. I was thrown into the oven, and came out lightly browned on top...well, not exactly.
Basically, after the summer of preparations I came back and haven't done a whole lot with these recently brushed up skills. Sure, I've cooked for Mark a few times, but not enough to really make it look like I've at long last become the cook type person that my mother may of dreamed that I could be. Instead, we've eaten out a lot, or had my now famous open-faced sandwiches (shades of Great Harvest).
This week, however, I've had a little extra time. You see, last week my colleague decided that it was perfectly all right for him to ditch out on a week of school. Yes, that's right. Just two weeks after our Christmas holiday he took off for a week to ski in the Alps with a couple of students. Now, perhaps this would be all right at a normal school. You know, one in which there are a full staff of teachers who can wiggle their schedules around and fill in a class or two here and there. But at are school there are 3 full time teachers. That's right, 3! So when one of those is missing that means the other two of us have a LOT of slack to pick up. We even had to call in some extra help, which is scarcely heard of in a country where they don't have substitute teacher hot lines. (One more side note: I have to confess that it's nearly impossible to help students figured out compound nouns. The truth of the matter is, were it not for spell check I'd constantly make errors. Sure, I know that fire engine has to be two separate words, but fire man and fireman both look perfectly all right to me. The only way I know that it really is just one word absolutely for certain is the fact that when I type in fireman there is no squiggly line underneath it, unlike when I just typed in hotline as one word and there was one. End Side note.)
So this week Jonathan has to fill in some extra morning hours for me. That meant time for my mind to think again on the culinary arts. The result? I made mint chocolate chip cookies for Mark on Monday. Well, I mixed up the dough Monday afternoon and then cooked them up Tuesday morning so they'd be ready in the afternoon when I went to see him in his town. They turned out fabulous this time. Quite a relief after the disaster cookies I tried to make my students last year. Those ones ended up puddles. Seriously, it was not a pretty picture. I ended up shoving the rest of that dough into a pie pan and trying to convince them that it was now a bar cookie and they really should give it a try. Ugh! But this time they came out beautifully. Sadly I didn't get a picture, but I saved some of the dough and plan to cook up some more so we can have fresh hot ones with our team time tonight so maybe I'll snap a picture of those.
After this baking high note, I felt prepared for the next step. You see, unbeknownst to me my colleagues decided that today, Wednesday the 27th of January, would make a lovely day for a ski trip. I. Don't. Ski. Period. Yeah, I tried it. Once. Last year. And it's going to stay at once thank you very much. So they decided, again this was ALL done without me, that I could do something with the students who weren't interested in skiing. They'd offered up swimming. Um. It's January people! And I don't really swim either. Allergic to chlorine, remember? But at least it sounded a bit better than skiing.
I, on the other hand, thought up an alternate activity. So on Friday, when trying to sell the idea of watching a movie with me and being nice and warm, rather than freezing cold (consequently today is the coldest day of the year so far. Jarmila informed me it was -20 C on her farm this morning. That's cold. We're talking snot freezing cold.) I added that I would also take them to my house for the movie, and would serve an American breakfast. (So I accidentally just wrote sever instead of serve. Good thing I caught it since spell check would have been okie dokie with that little slip up.)
Now I didn't win over the whole crowd, but once the words had come out of my mouth, those who didn't want to ski sunk their claws into them and I was stuck in the promise. And so, today, I pulled out my mom's award winning biscuit recipe. Okay, so she never actually entered her biscuits into a county fair, but she could have. These biscuits are the reason I didn't starve as a child at potlucks. To say that I was picky as a child would be the understatement of the new millennium. Many apologies to all the people whose homes I entered only to turn my nose up at their gracious edible offerings. I think sometimes I was the bane of my parents existence at social calls. Here people invited the pastor and his family over to dinner only to have their adorable little girl turn into a demon at the table. At least I never threw up at other peoples' houses...
Anywho...I was an olive on every finger, deviled egg, and jello eater at potlucks. Good for the figure I suppose, but when you're 5 no one really thinks about that. They're more concerned that you aren't getting your four food groups. Thankfully Mom's biscuits always came to the rescue. She'd usually slip out of church just as we were all singing "Bless be the tie that binds..." and hurry to the house to throw the biscuits in the oven. She'd bring them down, piping hot, and be rushed by the frenzy. There were never any left over. Truth be told, they seldom even made it to the food table. People rushed to get at them and devour every last golden morsel. They were rather like the manna that rained down from Heaven. At least the first few days when the Israelites were still being thankful. Truly a blessing.
So I pulled out the recipe this morning, as I said before, and set about making these show stopping favorites. I mixed up the dough and then had to go to school to pick up my students. I didn't want to cook them in advance, since fresh is DEFINITELY the way to go. I rushed through the cold, watching my breath turn my hair gray as it froze immediately, after leaving my biscuit dough in the closet which is substantially colder than the rest of our flat.
I collected a grand total of three students. Honestly, that was the sort of number I was hoping for. My house isn't exactly designed for crowds. We headed back to my house with a disappointing stop at the not yet open video store. I had three L1s in tow, that means three people who really don't speak English. They're getting a lot better, but for the most part I had to scrape together what I know of Czech to follow what they were saying as we walked. Not that it was all that hard. I'm sure most people who speak English and not Czech would be able to figure out that "autobus" and "taxi" relate to modes of transport other than feet. Clearly the ten minute walk was not to their liking in this Antarctic climate. But we did make it, and I made them fruit tea to warm them up while the biscuits were cooking. The closet did it's work and kept it from turning into a fluffy monster whilst I was away. Twenty or so minutes later I had them seated at my table with a glorious spread.




Delightful!
Mom's biscuits did it yet again. They all sang the praises, and I knew it was the excellent recipe and not any ability of mine that could have pulled it off. We then watched Twilight which one of my other students had brought to me a couple months ago, because it was the only DVD I had with Czech subtitles. They seemed to enjoy that as well, so it all worked out.
American Breakfast.
Success!