The end is near

I think I have to stop waiting to write posts until I have pictures. I’ll catch up on pictures soon. But for now, there are updates to be had.

Kenny did something extraordinary and exciting last week. He went to work! Yay! He got a contracting position last week and we all breathed a big sigh of relief. He’ll be there for at least 3 and half more weeks—maybe forever. We shall see. The two most interesting things about the job, from my perspective, are that they made him take his tragus piercing out and he has to wear a tie Tuesday through Thursday.

In other news, I’ve had “take infant CPR class” on our to do list for several months. We totally cheated and crossed that item off of our list last night by watching a variety of online video demonstrations. While we were at it, we learned how to give CPR to dogs and got a refresher on CPR for adults. We also finally picked out a pediatrician. According to all books and movies, I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to interview a bunch of them first. We instead started from a list of four that have been recommended to us, looked at their office hours and Yelp.com reviews and chose one. Find daycare remains on the list. I wonder how we’ll manage to shortchange that process J. Actually, I think that’s why it remains on the list—we haven’t found a shortcut yet. I think I’m going to have to actually start calling places and scheduling visits.

About a week ago I was having lunch with coworkers and talking about how great I am at sleeping. I of course have not had a good night of sleep since. I’ve apparently decided to start worrying about everything we need to get done before IT happens, and my stomach and joints are all broken. I look forward to sleeping a year or so from now.

People at work keep asking me when my leave starts. My leave starts when this baby shows up. Statistically speaking, I have about 2 to 7 weeks left. I’ve been spending some time staring at this chart. I think it’s a bit early for this, but I’m starting to feel a bit like a ticking time bomb. Who knows when she’ll go?

The state of Kenny, the sequel

As of late, everybody asks me how Kenny is doing. I think he should get some weekly pictures too perhaps. This is Kenny two weeks after having been let go:

He has a tendency to do this when he's unemployed. And by this, I mean grow facial hair and cut back on showering. See exhibit A. I am not a fan of facial hair on him. It hurts to kiss him and he's just so pretty clean shaven. Luckily, a day or two after this picture was taken he got an interview with a design temp agency.

Couldn't you just eat him up? He looks just like Darren from Bewitched only cuter. He's been very busy networking and applying and signing up with agencies and working on his self-promotion campaign--not to mention all of the work involved in taking care of me. I am a handful.

Speaking of me, this is 31 weeks--I call it the bumblebee picture.

We're in the single-digit-week countdown now. The baby has shut down all normal operation of my stomach. I can now eat bland food in small quantities dispersed throughout the day. It's like the first trimester is back only with less vomitting and more pain and difficulty sleeping.

This whole birth thing is coming so soon and there is still so much reading and preparing yet to do. I have entire books on infant sleep and breastfeeding to read not to mention another one on birth. Oh, and we need to start weening affection from the dogs. We'll start that any day now I'm sure. At least we have a place for the baby to sleep and way to bring the baby home. I'm sure we'll work the other details out.

Oh yeah, that

Since we made the decision last fall to move to Chicago, I have been applying for jobs. I opted to not sign on for another year-long contract with the World Bank since we were not planning on staying in DC. I had my last day there in February. Yes, February as in NINE months ago. My resume and profile are on every job-finding site ever created. I've been on twenty-one interviews in Chicago. There were multiple interviews for several of the jobs. I've been close to getting about six jobs.

I did a search of my gmail and found 30 emails where I wrote, "Please find my application for the...position attached." In addition to those 30, there's about a gajillion jobs I applied for through companies' websites. I am 100% sure that Gallup, Amnesty, and the University of Chicago have no interest in hiring me, ever. I know this because I believe I have applied for every job they have posted for which I felt even remotely qualified. I wrote so many cover letters. Like most people, I really really hate writing cover letters.

So I think it's funny that the job I ended up getting is one for which I never applied. I did not come across the job posting. I did not write a cover letter. The people with the job contacted my people (the temp agency). An interview was had and voila! I'll be a research analyst at a company that helps rich people (which of course is similar to my life long dream of helping the poor and saving the world--only different). I start December 1 unless my background check turns up something bad I did in the past of which I am totally unaware. I will continue to do the organizing thing on the side. I have a feeling it will not be too much to handle since I have had a whopping one job this month.

Does this mean I'm gonna have to help do the laundry?

Every morning I remove about five pillows from the top of Kenny's head so that I can find his face and kiss him good bye. If Jack has relocated himself to the couch, I pick him up and put him back in bed with Kenny.

When I get off the train coming home from work on most days I find Kenny and an excited little black puppy waiting for me on the corner. I really look forward to that part of my day.

I guess we'll have to come up with a new routine since yesterday somebody decided to hire that husband of mine.

Careers I ruled out...

I've talked myself out of lots of careers in my life. It's good thing I narrowed all of my options down to...temping?

1. Interior Decorator: My friend, Erica, and I used to use old design books and random counter top samples to play pretend when we were little. I rearranged my room weekly and watched Designing Women incessantly. I later decided that I did not need to be a decorator professionally and that I could always just redecorate my own house.
2. Journalist: I was on the newspaper in highschool. I ran for Editor (did not get it) and had a column that I really enjoyed writing. I went to the University of Missouri-Columbia for college. Sure, it's the oldest journalism school in the country and is often ranked as the best--but I decided that I didn't need a journalism degree to be a journalist or at least to be a columnist, which is what I really thought I wanted to do. I decided to go get a degree in something else that would make me more qualified to write about things later. I ended up getting Sociology and International Studies degrees instead--because those are a million times more useful, right?
3. Teacher: This one I only briefly considered. I think I would enjoy it if I could teach Social Studies or English and only teach children who were nice. I would like the summers off. My mom picked this career because she wanted to have the same schedule as her kids. Makes sense. But. There are all those kids that aren't nice and also those ones that are just annoying? And all of that grading and lesson planning in the evenings?
4. Lawyer: It might be completely impossible to be a high school debater (shut up) and not contemplate this career path. I looovveeed debate. A lot. I liked building and dissecting arguments. I'm not really sure why I decided initially to get my Master's instead of a law degree. However, while I was working at the law school to pay for tuition I witnessed the mess that is your typical law student. Law school can be grueling and really competitive and people just didn't seem happy. Also, you graduate with big debt and then have to try to get one of those jobs where they pay you lots of money but make you work 80 hours a week. Or maybe I've watched too many movies.

Pretty sure the list could go on. I wonder why I felt like I had to talk myself out of everything--why there was this big need to cross things off the list? These days I just need there to be something on that list. Something that people will hire me to do.

The state of Kenny.

I was sitting in the living room while Kenny was taking a bath, and I kept hearing a strange sound. It sounded like he was underwater blowing bubbles. I went in to check on him and found this:

















He had finished his MGD Light (that he took to the bath with him?) and had decided to use it as a bath toy. He was submerging it and then pouring it out and starting over again.

















This is not just Kenny being messy. This is where he keeps his pants now--next to the couch--because he doesn't need to wear pants when he sits on the couch. Also, chances are, if he needs to put pants on, they will be close to him if they are close to the couch.























Thank God this experiment is over.

4 Things

1. I got fired.
Except that is an exaggeration and completely not true. My temp job ends next week so it might be back to the couch for me.

2. Maybe we're just on vacation.
Or maybe we should act like it. I think we should go to the beach and if lastminute.com can make it happen, we just might. Nothing quite gets your mind off the finances and joblessness like an all-inclusive getaway.

3. Kenny is buying Jack's affection with copius amounts of food and treats while I'm at work.
I think the tide is turning and Jack might love Kenny more than he loves me now. I can't compete with the daily bits of lox, spontaneous peanut butter kongs, and hamburger grease Kenny's been feeding him.

4. I just asked Kenny for a glass of water and some brownies.
He's in the kitchen baking now. He's the best. Maybe he buys everybody's affection with food?

Bubble Wands

Ah, Friday night. I have my Aldi brand "Mexican" beer and we're watching Yentl. Jack has knocked all pillows off of the luv seats and beds. Booger is squarely in the middle of the bedroom floor once again.

I've spent a lot of the day contemplating an Oprah I watched last night. It was a show about the Law of Attraction and the Power of Positive Thinking and how the universe will give you what you want if you think about it and want it in the right way. There was a lot of discussion of this one time when Oprah was thinking about how she'd like to blow bubbles and then she went to her dressing room and there was a bag of bubbles and a Tiffany's bubble blowing wand sitting there. That's not the part I was contemplating.

I was thinking about how it makes sense that I find little job/career gettage/satisfaction. It's because I have no idea how to really answer the question I get asked all the time: What's your ideal job? How am I gonna get it if I don't know what it is? So. I'm gonna figure that out real quick, and I think everything should work itself out nicely. If you have any thoughts on the matter, I'd love to hear them. As previously indicated, I'm kind of lost on this matter.

That Oprah, she's always making me think.

And the results are in...

Kenny wins the contest for fewest pairs of underwear in a round of laundry. In the approximately 2.5 weeks since we last did laundry, Kenny generated 6 pairs of underwear. I lapped him coming in with 12.

As you can tell, we've been up to all kinds of fun things around here. We experienced the magic and wonder that is Bubbleland. Actually, magic and wonder might be overstating. With a name like Bubbleland, I was ready for a room filled with soapy foam and furniture made out of bubbles and bubble themed food. This was not the case, but we did get our laundry done a million times faster than when we use the crappy machines in our building. Oh my, am I writing a post about laundry?

In other news, we encountered the Illinois DMV this week. We're all official now with Illinois plates and drivers licenses. The process was less painful than we expected and each DMV employee we encountered was...chipper. Each except one guy who saw that I was from DC and said eww. That guy was kind of a jerk, except not really (he was still friendly), but he was wrong. Kenny had an extraordinarily great time.

Entertainment for when the TV fails us

You know how you're tired when you get home from work and don't want to exert energy cooking so you just make something out of a box or go out to eat? We didn't bathe today. We didn't leave the house for any non-dog-walking purpose. We didn't put on any clothes that weren't also worn yesterday. But, we did roast a pepper and grill marinated flank steak.



































Well, really Kenny made it. I watched and also ate it, but I made citrus-braised chicken yesterday.

















Kenny made the guacamole.























All of this chicken cost 3 dollars. We found the cheap place to buy meat. I'd say we go to grocery stores at least 4 days out of 7. It's kind of a hobby.

















Kenny has also taken up baking.

Desperate times

It's 8:45 am, and I've already showered, put a suit on, gone downtown and come back home. We're in the midst of a big push to create income this week.

It began on Tuesday when we returned to our old, trusted part-time jobs--plasma selling. They pay more here than they did in Columbia. Of course, it took us five hours so I'm not sure if we still ended up ahead.

We are also looking into becoming mystery shoppers. I think most websites for this are scams, but if we can find one that is not, we'll do it and it'll be great. Also under investigation is getting on game shows. We've been watching lots of them lately and I really think we can win. Kenny is looking into how much he can make selling other bodily fluids--we'll see about that.

Collectively we've been to 3 interviews with temp/placement type agencies. I might have one more tomorrow to follow-up on the crack of dawn one I had this morning. I think things are turning are looking up. We're not inches from the poor house or anything, but it would be nice if the flow of money were not so one-way right now.