She Walked Away

reflection and the luxury of choices

At the end of tomorrow, my birthday, I will have finished my first three weeks at my new job. I reflect about things every day, but this feels like an appropriate time to document my thoughts about all the change in my life.

First and foremost, I love my job. I love the company I am working for and the culture there. I am pleasantly surprised daily about how my education has prepared me for managing the complicated systems and specific details of my day-to-day responsibilities. I love that my department and my manager have confidence in my abilities and patience as I surf the learning curve.

I looked around the office my first week or so and looked at the items people had on and around their desks and offices. So far, this picture shows what I have decided to bring to and leave at work. I could bring photographs, but bringing paintings of my critters tells people a little more about me than snapshots would. I am working on a way to display paintings or sketches of Lys and Wilson to compliment the two pieces I have there.

Most days I get home from work and make sure everyone is fed, walked and fauned over to the best of my ability. When  sit down, I read a few blogs. Most of the blogs I read regularly depict the lives of people I admire and sometimes envy. Some are purely for entertainment, but the lifestyle blogs are the ones that inspire me and cause me to examine my own life carefully and thoughtfully.

Recently I have shared with friends that I can separate what I do for a living and my life - people have been doing that, successfully and otherwise, for years. It's true - I can learn this new industry, work hard when I am at work, then come home to what matters to me personally. I'm getting more used to my new routine, and I have permission not to check my business email and voicemail from home.

While it would be great to try to carve out a life as an artist, I know that by having a career I can make a living then come home and paint and play with my dogs and cats. Working, for now at least, will allow me to pay my bills, buy a new car (nothing fancy, but a great treat to me), buy good pet food and art supplies, and maybe put something away in case I ever have room for a donkey. Don't laugh. I want a donkey. Maybe I'll need two, or maybe the one donkey will need a second.

As long as I am able to work, and I am happy doing it, I see no need to daydream about something that's not an option yet. I haven't given up on things that could happen in an ideal world, or if I won the lottery, I have just put it in perspective for the time being. This type of thinking will inform my work as an artist, and that has to be a good thing.

Finally, I won't lose sight of the desperation I felt in July and August of this year. It puts a knot in my stomach just thinking about it now. Who knows what the future holds, so I will be grateful for today, remember the lessons I learned yesterday and look forward to the triumphs and challenges in my future.

Full Circle

I've completed my first full week at my new job (and one full Saturday), and I can share with you that I love it and I don't plan on going anywhere.

I had lunch with a friend from library school on Sunday before my first day at work. She shared with me some of her frustrations about her first job in a library, and she very sweetly congratulated me on finding a job outside of the profession. That got me to reflecting - not necessarily a good idea when I wanted to get a good night's sleep - about my choices.

My new job is in the mortgage industry. The company is relatively young and stayed above the fray with the turmoil that took place in the industry in recent years. Now that I have gotten a sampling of what I will be doing, I realize that my library degree has prepared me for this job in many ways. For now I am taking notes and looking for ways I might be able to bring something new to my department. Editing will be key.

The dogs were happy to have me home most of the day after a week of schedule adjustment - likely harder on them than on me. I only made a quick trip to the post office early, then out to the grocery later. Tonight I have been doing a little housework, I'll get some laundry started in a bit, then I plan to dig in to an ARC of The Art Forger that I won on LibraryThing.

You can take the girl out of the library, I guess, but I'm still a librarian.

Today is gone forever.

I start my new job on Monday. I'm thrilled to be heading for work, and adequately concerned that I live up to their expectations of me and that I am fulfilled by this, a job I never imagined myself doing, or prepared to do.

This week I set out to organize things in my house. I needed to assess my wardrobe and plan for things I can wear to work. Funny, yoga pants and Beach Boys t-shirts won't cut it. I realized in a hurry that I wear that ensemble most of the time.

I meant to go through my closet last Saturday. The best laid plans, they say. The remnants of Isaac dumped a lot of rain on my house, though, and in anticipation of the rain I scurried up my rickety extension ladder and cleaned out the gutters. The drought this summer had them filled with dead leaves that had not been a problem with the very small amounts of rain we've had here over the last several months. The rain arrived, and it rushed into a weak spot in the foundation of my house, filling my basement with water.

Not one to give up easily, I stomped down the basement stairs in my Tractor Supply Muck Boots, to investigate why the floor drain wasn't *ahem* draining. I decided to run the toilet snake into the 1-1/2 inch drain to see if I hit anything. I ran it out completely - 15 feet - and retrieved a handful of tree roots. I tweaked the end of the snake coil and sent it in again. More roots. After the third grab, a gurgle, then the water seeped out.

Tomorrow my favorite plummer (aka my Daddy!) is coming with a commercial auger and we're going to properly clear the drain. He and I used to auger the main every year before I had the old ceramic tile replaced with PVC. Compared to the sewer line, the floor drain will be a piece of cake. Well, not cake. A food comparison is NOT called for here.

Okay, so the closet was postponed until later because of the floor drain. And other distractions, too, if I'm being honest.

Today, I woke up with the phone ringing. It was my friend Judy, wanting to get together for a power walk on the trail. I left the dogs at home - to their loud disapproval - and she and I walked and talked and sweat in the shade of the trail and the escalating humidity of the day.

Back home, I took the dogs around the neighborhood then gave them both backyard baths with the garden hose. Neither of them care for water, but they're both sweet and obedient, so they sulked and pouted until they were rinsed. After they were both bathed, they romped through the back yard playing like they haven't all summer - as hot as it was.

In the house, both dogs plopped down and took naps while I emptied the closet. The closet is back together tonight, and after a little reading (blogs and Every Love Story is a Ghost Story), I am watching the DNC and having a big glass of iced tea. The dogs are still strewn about the room with both cats nearby. I'll be heading to bed soon, too, that auger is a bitch to get down the stairs.

 

Snake!

Yesterday was my last day at University Library. Maybe my last day ever as a professional librarian - who knows? I am so grateful for those who enabled me to work there over the summer and pick up extra shifts until I could find a job.

My last day in the library did not disappoint. Bizarro reference questions, substantive reference questions, and a rare compliment from an undergraduate who told me that she had talked to people in three different places and I had been by far the most helpful to her. My day started with a patron who came to the circulation desk and said, "There's a snake upstairs." He then showed me the picture on his phone of a small-ish garter snake (not the one pictured, obviously). Unable to leave the desk, and not my responsibility anyway, I watched and listened to several library staffers, a couple of campus police officers, and a few patrons as they tried to find the snake and take it outside.

They never found it.

The floor plan of the library makes it a little unlikely that the snake came in on its own, but its possible. The existence of mouse populations in every building on campus makes it very likely that if the snake stays out of sight, it might live a long, well-fed life in there (provided he or she can find water, too). I'm not crazy about snakes, but I'm not afraid of them, either. My vote is for the latter. Stay out of sight, enjoy your mice and maybe you can co-exist in the stacks for a long time. If you are captured, I hope you're placed in the campus garden or the nearby park so that you have a decent chance of hanging around.