St. Ardalion

You can tell it’s been a busy week when you’ve been trying to write a blog post for days, but somehow it just never gets done, and suddenly it’s Saturday again, and you still haven’t hit the magic Publish button.  And for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what made the week so busy.  Just it somehow was.  But now here we are on the other side, and to make up for my non-blogginess, here’s a picture of Sweet Pea being ridiculously cute, as she is wont to be.

Seriously, I think this kid may be the cutest baby who ever lived.  I know that, as her aunt, I am contractually obligated to say this, but still.  She is still so tiny, but already full of so much character.  She likes having her hands free so she can curl them up by her face, and she likes to push her head out of her bunting, stretching her neck out to try to see everything around her, for all the world like a little turtle sticking its head out of its shell.  She makes the most ridiculous faces, including the best little baby scowl that I somehow did not mange to take a picture of.  When she squinches up her face, she gets a little wrinkle just on the bridge of her nose which is amazing because I get the exact same wrinkle on my nose too!  We tried to get a picture demonstrating this miraculous likeness, but instead it just looks like we’re scowling at each other.

As for the news, well, Easter was good.  On Friday I got to go down to see Sweet Pea and Sae and Mr. T.  I brought Pizza Factory, and got to hold the baby, and hang out some.  On Saturday most of the clan gathered at St. Anthony’s for the Easter Vigil.  This year’s Easter Vigil bet was a tie between me and Mr. T – it came down to the seconds, and since all of us use our cell phones as our watches, none of us had a watch with a second hand.  If I were a little more unscrupulous I would declare it in my favor, but that darn conscience… gets in the way all the time!  14 even texted his bet in from Missouri, and he would have won, but he got it in too late, so it didn’t count.  Sunday was lots of family time.  Since we didn’t get to have the baby with us (she’s still much too little to be exposed to large groups of people), Boy-O brought the sugar glider he and his roommates adopted, and we got to play with it instead.  Which was also adorably cute, though not nearly as cute as Sweet Pea.

The rest of the week has flown by.  Thursday night was the first night of the Spring Theology On Tap series.  Adam Pasternak gave a really great talk on religious freedom, particularly as it applies to the current political situation.  I kinda love Adam, whom I knew back when we were both at UD, and it was a really great talk.  Unfortunately, I didn’t pay very much attention to it.  I was sitting in the back whispering and having fun with Pippi, and drinking really, really delicious Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, which had a little higher alcohol content than I realized.  After a while Pippi and I decided to order a pizza, and when the break came, various vultures of the male variety came over to try to steal some.  Lately I haven’t been in the most charitable mood towards persons of the male gender (this may also have something to do with the not-blogging), so I really rather enjoyed denying them all access to the pizza.  All in all, it was one of the most fun TOTs I’ve been to in a long time!

And while we’re on the topic of Men Are Strange, it’s so bizarre that right when you’re feeling cranky about men in general is right when all the guys start coming out of the woodwork.  Friday morning, our new maintenance guy was totally flirting with me while I made his badge, and then the guy who comes to empty the shred box decided to tease me about my somewhat battered door sign.  I ended up chatting half the morning with Atlas, during the course of which he said he might start coming to TOT himself, and then when I went down to lunch the pretty cute and slightly geeky (a good thing) lab manager decided to sit with me.  In the afternoon, one of the other maintenance guys (the much too young for me but pretty cute one) decided to come hang out in the HR office for a while, just, you know, for kicks, and then the topper was getting a message from Sarge saying that he was very sorry he hadn’t been able to come see me yet that day, but they had a situation in the ED they had to deal with.  It reminds me of when I started wearing makeup, and suddenly had the two single guys at my old work in my office building towers out of empty pop cans.

Men are strange.

St. Anthony Mary Claret

It’s been a while since I shared some pretty, pretty pictures with you.  My increased work hours, combined with the decreased daylight hours, have made it difficult to take them.  However, this past weekend turned out to be incredibly picturesque, so I thought I’d share.

On Saturday a bunch of us headed off into the wilds of Indiana for the CL/TOT Fall Party at Hayes Arboretum.  Some of you may remember this place from the Winter Fun Day we had last January, plus building our St. Patrick’s Day float.  AnniPotts and I, along with two of AnniPotts’ roommates, arrived early so that I could put the chickens I was fixing for dinner in the oven.  This gave us lots of time to explore the arboretum, including the fountain out behind the main house.  This is a view of the house looking up from the fountain.

We even had time to go for a hike.  AnniPotts wanted to see the old growth forest that is located on the property, so we set out for it.  We were super proud of the roommate in the middle, who was willing to let herself be immersed in so much (shudder) nature purely for love of her roommates!

It was utterly beautiful, with the late afternoon sunlight shining through the Fall leaves like stained glass.

I couldn’t seem to stop taking pictures.

Our trail led us past the Woodland Chapel, so we had to check that out too.  And, you know, pose for pictures.  We decided that was God’s Holy Light shining down on them.

We weren’t the only ones taking advantage of the loveliness to take a few pictures.  One of our friends has started a small business selling the hair accessories and jewelry she makes.  It’s called Unfolding Rose Boutique, and the lovely things are available on Etsy as well as various local craft shows, etc.  She and The Girl Next Door were having a photo shoot, with Little J taking the pictures.  As various girls arrived for the party, they got pulled into the photo shoot too, and before you knew it, we were all decked out in headbands, earrings, bracelets, rings (I loved this one), and more.  We even took some pictures on the tractor that was pulled up for the hayride.  It looked like something out of a posh catalog.  Anyway, this is The Girl Next Door, modeling shoe clips (on the tops of her boots) and a lovely hair ornament.

Afterwards we headed into the house for the incredible spread that everyone had brought.  The only thing missing in this picture is the huge pot of venison chili that filled in the empty spot in the foreground.  The picture isn’t great (I really wish I had a camera that could handle low light situations), but I love this picture just for how it caught Sugar Ray canoodling with his girlfriend in the background.  :D

After dinner we had cake (it was Fitz’s father’s birthday, so we needed to sing to him), and then piled onto the wagon for a hayride.  Then there was karaoke out back by the fire in the fire pit, complete with s’mores and Sugar Ray’s homemade beer.  The evening seemed to fly by, and before I knew it, AnniPotts was pulling me away from the mob of people trying to sing Don’t Stop Believing (it was having a little trouble loading), and telling me that it was time to go.  She and her roommates had a long drive back to Cincinnati, and they needed to get started.  So we headed back to the house, packed up the remnants of the chicken, and headed back home.  And it was good.

 

Bl. Adeline

I just woke up from a three hour nap I did not intend to take.  I had planned to come home from work, eat dinner, maybe change my clothes and do a little work around the house, and then head out to Theology On Tap where Bishop Binzer was speaking.  I got to the dinner part, and the changing clothes part, but at that point I was pretty much falling asleep on my feet, so I decided to take a short nap, and set my alarm to get me up again in twenty minutes.  Famous last words…

This has been a kinda crazy week.  There was all the orientations (I have never known an organization so orientation happy before – I even have another one still to do next week), and then I plunged into my on the job training.  Frankly, I never knew that working in HR could be this intense.  When I stop in at the HR office over at UD, it always seems very quiet.  There’s no other customers waiting, and the receptionist seems in no hurry to get me through.  At this HR, though, there is always something going on.  The phone is ringing with everything from questions about benefits (I happened to start at the time of year when everyone in the hospital has to re-enroll for their benefits package) to paychecks to how exactly do we get those discounted tickets for Disney On Ice, or there’s someone stopping by to pick something up, drop something off, or ask a question.  Then there’s people coming in for interviews, or for their pre-employment screening/paperwork fest, and calling people to schedule interviews (that’s my favorite part so far).  Sometimes you’ve got a line of people out the door and the phone ringing off the hook, and a new hire who just got to the automatic deposit section of his paperwork and has a question all happening at the same time.  So far everyone has been very nice, and it’s been fun and exciting instead of awful and stressful.  Still at the end of the day, I find myself very, very tired.

I do think that this is going to be a good job for me.  It seems ideally suited to satisfy both my ADD side (no shortage of stimulation here!) and my ‘satiable curiosity.  HR people know all the dirt.  It’s true.  Everything from who’s paying child support to exactly why so and so got fired.  I’d give you examples, but I’m pretty sure that would be a violation of privacy, even if I didn’t name names.  But still, HR knows it all, and some of it is pretty darn juicy!  Plus, I’ve always thrived on situations where I got to know a lot of people.  When I was on the TOT Leadership Team, I was the one who passed out the nametags, and knew 80-90% of the people who came by their first name.  At swing dancing I could always look around a crowded dance floor and tell you exactly who everyone was, sometimes along with what city they were from, and who in the dance scene they had dated recently.  So the kind of job where you get to know half the hospital is really rather perfect for me.

The big challenge right now has been dealing with my car.  On Tuesday when I got in it to head out to my second day of orientation, I noticed that the stick shift was really, really stiff.  In fact, I had to use a lot of strength to force it to come out of one gear and into another.  The clutch was weirdly soft, with almost no resistance.  Sometimes the gears would grind, even though I had the clutch pedal pushed all the way down to the floor.  It had been just fine when I drove it home from swing club the night before, but the drive out to orientation was a bit nerve-wracking, to say the least.  I drove it back from orientation to my old work (we only had a half day, so I was heading back to catch up on some things), but when it came time to head over to the radio station for the interview with Crossroads, I ended up asking Sweet if she would come pick me up.  I had planned to have her drop me off back at work so that I could drive it home, but at the last minute, I started having flashbacks to when the brakes on my car failed, and I couldn’t do it.  So Sweet took me home, and my car is still parked at work, waiting for me to have it towed to the mechanic.

I tried to call my Hero Mechanic, but the phone number I have for him isn’t working anymore.  So I called the mechanics my parents have gone to for years (they kept multiple ramshackle vans running far longer than they really should have).  They said that it sounded like a hydraulics problem, which is something they can probably fix for not too much.  However, the soonest they could get it in would be next Monday.  In the meantime, my parents are letting my drive their huge, 13 passenger Jesus Van.  I’m deeply grateful to them – if I hadn’t been able to find alternate transportation, I would have been in deep trouble.  The van does get something like 11 miles to the gallon, so I’m not looking forward to filling up the tank!

In a way, I’m somewhat relieved that my car chose now to break down.  I am not used to good things happening, so all of this work-related good fortune happening all at once has made me very nervous.  I keep waiting for the catch – for something to go wrong, for the other shoe to drop.  The most worrisome thing that had happened was that it turned out that I’m not immune to Measles, Mumps, and Rubella after all, which just means I’ll have to get the shots from Employee Health one day next week.  It had started to be a little nerve-wracking waiting for whatever the Big One would be.  My car breaking down, as completely inconvenient as it is, is, however, exactly the kind of luck I’m familiar with.  I know how to deal with this, and it makes me feel more confident that everything else will be just fine.

St. Therese of Lisieux

I may have discovered the secret to getting guys to bring you chocolate.  Yesterday I teased The Shy Engineer about his age (he had just walked into the front office and announced that he’d forgotten what he needed to tell the main secretary), and this morning he showed up at my desk with a whole bag of Hershey’s miniatures to restock the mug of candy we keep on the ledge in front of my desk.  (It was a very Jim & Pam moment.)  I would field test this on more guys to make sure whether it works universally or just on The Shy Engineer, but the sad thing is that I don’t eat anything that has added sugar, so I wouldn’t be able to do more than admire the chocolate from a distance.  But in case you’d like to get a little chocolate from that cute guy down the hall, try teasing him about getting old and see what happens.

In other news, this week I’ve been learning a little how it feels to have a Fairy Godmother.  Tuesday afternoon I got a call from a total stranger.  She identified herself as working for a company I’d never heard of, and said that she had a job she wanted me to apply for.  It seems that she was a corporate head hunter who had found my resume in her company’s database (as far as I know I’ve never applied for a job through them, although I’ve applied for so many random jobs in the last year or so that who really knows anymore) and thought I’d be just perfect for a position she’s trying to fill.  It would be for a local non-profit that works with pregnant women and children, helping them with housing, health care, education, etc.  The position sounded like general administrative support (which I could do in my sleep), and she would like to interview me at my earliest convenience.  I made an appointment to come down to her offices, hung up the phone, and then just stared at it in my hand for a moment.  I wasn’t sure if this was legit, or if it might turn out to be a scam of some kind (usually too good to be true is, well, not true at all), but I figured it was worth investigating.

So the next morning I dressed up in my business-y clothes and toddled on down to their offices in a building overlooking the river downtown.  There I quickly discovered that this wasn’t a scam or a sales pitch disguised as a job interview.  In fact, the company that was recruiting me was a reputable firm that mostly specializes in placing professionals in the accounting and finance fields.  This job was a little out of their area of expertise, but they had taken it on as a special project for the client, with whom they’d worked before.  The client was a local home for low-income single mothers with 1-2 children under the age of five.  Women who enter the program have their own apartment in which they live usually for about two years while they work to develop educational and employment plans, and receive counseling and other assistance to help them achieve their goals, including child care at the day care center on site.  They need someone to be a sort of facilities manager, processing work orders for maintenance when something goes wrong with an apartment, collecting rent, and conducting periodic apartment inspections.  There is also a sort of supply depot of diapers, formula, baby clothes, etc. that I would manage, and a banquet facility that I would be in charge of scheduling.  The program has a strong faith aspect, and is influenced by Catholic roots but officially non-denominational.  The recruiter thought my background, from my current administrative position, to working as The Kiddo’s nanny, to my experience in youth and young adult ministry (NET, TOT, our Catholic Life young adult group) made me just perfect for this job. 

I thought it sounded kinda perfect too.  It sounds like a job that would be interesting and challenging.  It plays to a lot of my strengths, particularly being able to interact in a loving way with people.  Plus, it’s doing pro-life ministry again.  I haven’t done a lot of pro-life activity in the last few years since I’ve been so focused on other things (school,swing dancing, and trying to make ends meet), but before I went off to NET I volunteered for five years as a peer counselor at the local crisis pregnancy center, and before that I was a pro-life activist.  So helping women choose life, and making that choice possible on a practical level, is one of my core values.  Being able to do this on a regular basis would be deeply fulfilling.  Plus, the money would be good (no more struggles to make it to the next payday), and I would have that most coveted thing: Benefits.  So I would love to get this job.

I left the interview feeling a little lightheaded.  After all the job related stress of the last year or so, to have someone present me with the perfect job opportunity on a silver platter was surreal.  It was so out of the blue, so unexpected.  Surely things don’t happen this easily?  And yet, so far they have.  By the end of the work day, the recruiter had already called at least two of my three references, and I’d completed the paperwork for the background check and sent over a few letters of recommendation I have on file.  The recruiter said that she would be passing my information on to the organization Wednesday afternoon, and then it would be up to them when to schedule the interview (she was very certain they were going to want to interview me).  This morning I got a message letting me know that they did want to interview, and this afternoon we set the time for next Wednesday afternoon.  So that’s exactly a week from when I first heard of the job to having an interview.  It’s all happening very fast, and it’s a little dizzying, but in a good way.  I’ve been praying for months now for a job that would really pay all my bills, and it looks like maybe I’m getting it.  It all depends on how this interview on Wednesday goes.  It will be a group interview, which will be interesting.  I’m a bit nervous.  If you could say a prayer for me, I would really appreciate it!

In the meantime, we roommates are having our Big Party tomorrow.  There’s a lot to get done between now and then!  Ani invited me to go down to First Friday in the Oregon District with her tonight, but I think I’m going to stay home and work on getting the house ready.  I’m really looking forward to this party – it’s the first big thing we’ve had here at our apartment.  I was talking it up at Theology On Tap last night (and did I tell you how marvelous it is to go to TOT and not have to do a thing?!  Marvelous!), and I think we’re going to have a really great group of people.  It will be very interesting seeing my Catholic young adult friends interact with my swing dancing friends, and all of the above interacting with Rosie and Johnnycake’s friends.  Plus, the word on the street is that MDoS and The Beautiful T are going to be there.  Fun times ahead!

Bl. Rose of Viterbo

My family has been burglarized twice in the last week.  It’s a little shocking, and more evidence of it never rains but…, etc.  First it was AnniPotts, who came home from running an errand to find her front door open, one of her windows forced, and almost everything of value taken.  In the end she caught the burglar herself (he was so stoned he came back around), and recovered almost all of her stuff (it’s quite a story, but I think hers to tell), but then a few days ago someone broke into the Family Homestead and made off with Boy-O’s X-box and video games, plus Indy’s beloved laptop.  We’re pretty sure who did it (there’s this neighborhood boy with a grudge against Boy-O because Boy-O isn’t interested in being his best friend who we think figured out where we kept the spare house key), but we don’t have any proof and the cops aren’t going to do much beyond filing a report.  All we can do is change the locks and hope the homeowners insurance will cough up enough to replace what was taken.  In the meantime Indy is left without a tool she relied on for everything from processing her photographs (she had been doing some work as a freelance photographer) to managing her schedule and To Do list, and AnniPotts is trying to figure out how to feel safe again in her own home.  So, you know, if you could pray for them.

I’ve been thinking some about why being stolen from is so traumatic.  Some of it is the loss of your goods, and the hassle of trying to replace things that often aren’t replaceable.  However, I think a lot of the trauma comes from the betrayal of trust, the knowledge that someone deliberately did you harm.  It’s especially hard when you suspect that it was someone you know, someone you’ve been good to.  I really hope that kid wasn’t the one who stole from my family, but I have to admit I’m pretty sure it was him.  I’ve never liked him much (he kinda creeps me out), but I always tried to be nice.  Now it will be that much harder to trust the next needy, somewhat awkward kid who crosses my path.

Other than that, and this cold that’s been plaguing me, it’s been a pretty good week.  Yesterday, in particular, was a good day.  Mom had been wanting to do something with me for my birthday, so yesterday we headed out to Yellow Springs for lunch at The Winds, followed by a little used-book shopping, and then a jaunt over to the yarn store, where I discussed the possibility of teaching a class in toe-up sock knitting with The Proprietor.   It still boggles me a little that she wants me to teach, but it’s looking more and more like it will happen.  So,  you know, if you’d like to learn how to knit toe-up socks, or even how to knit period, just let me know!

When I got home I was so tired, but I had Adoration with my Catholic Life Leadership Team at 5:30.  It’s funny, but it’s always the same: before I go to Adoration I’m tired and not excited about spending an hour in prayer (unless it’s what some of us used to call “horizontal meditation”), but afterwards I feel peaceful and refreshed, and I’m very glad I went.  We finished in time for all of us to head over to Theology On Tap, where Fr. Larry Richards was speaking.  He was really, really good, and said some things I’ve been needing very much to hear.  I was also delighted to find out that we have a mutual friend.

Almost as soon as TOT was over, Rosie called and asked if I was interested in going to go see Death At A Funeral with her and Indy.  I was, and headed out right away to go pick them up.  The movie was really good, even if perhaps not quite as good as the original.  Truth is, the original was so awesome it would be difficult for a remake to even come close, so I figure they did very well.  Also, I must say that I love James Marsden.  I don’t understand how a guy as funny, talented (that voice!) and, frankly, criminally good looking as he is doesn’t get better roles.  (I mean, 27 Dresses?  Really?)  He’s one of the most underutilized actors in Hollywood.

Tonight I’m heading down to Cincinnati with The Duchess and Mariah to see An Ideal Husband at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival.  It’s been a while since I was down there, plus I love Oscar Wilde, so I’m looking forward to this very much.  It’s funny – I was telling Mr. Zoot about this, and he thought I was going down to Cincinnati to see a man who was an ideal husband.  And while I know a few guys whom I think would fit that bill, they’re in Wisconsin, DC, Minnesota and heaven, so I don’t think so, no.