Today is a pretty significant day for me. It marks the second anniversary of my grandmother's death and the first anniversary of Jerry's return to the army. Both memories still suck the breath out of my chest: being in the break room of Best Buy as my dad told me over the phone that my grandmother had died and being in an empty car in a garage in Charlotte after Jerry had said his final goodbyes to me before leaving for training. As with so many things in life, these difficult times made way for better ones. It was my grandmother's passing and the subsequent separation of Jerry from me that prompted Jerry to propose to me and to promise to be there for me for the rest of our lives. And though the army comes with difficult things like deployment and separation, the greater impact on our lives has been for the better. Being in the army has allowed us to grow as a couple, see new parts of the world, and live in a beautiful home.
This past week also marked a pretty amazing and joyous anniversary. Still going strong, my grandparents celebrated 61 years of marriage on November 15! What an inspiration to us all!
You may have guessed that my new job has been keeping me too busy to update the blog. But you would be wrong. My career at the PX lasted seven and a half hours, one shift. Though I had made several inquiries regarding how much I was to be paid, I still hadn't found out when I was told to come in for my first shift. I arrived for the shift and found that I had been scheduled for a lot of hours, many of which were on the weekends. So I started off being pretty annoyed. During my interview, I had been assured that management would work with me on a schedule that would allow me to spend time with Jerry in these last few weeks before he deploys. As that schedule stood, I would be losing a significant amount of time with him. When I brought it up, they reluctantly removed two of the shifts. I worked the whole shift and found the work to be pretty enjoyable, with lots to keep me busy. The following morning I was finally able to speak to someone in human resources who was able to tell me my pay rate. I discovered that I was making $7.59 per hour!! When I told the person that that was way below the minimum that I had said that I would work for, she told me that I might be able to talk a manager up to $8.00. So I quit, after only one shift. As much as I need something to get me out of the house and add a little structure to my life, I feel like I needed to place some value on time with my husband, if not my work experience and education!! Grrrr! Arrrggghhh!!
The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that my once-again free schedule allowed me to help out Jerry and the legal team that he works with this week. This entire week, all of the soldiers being deployed are required to come through in groups to take care of all of the important pre-deployment stuff, including legal stuff like getting wills and other legal documents drawn up and executed. I've been helping with that and it's been a lot of fun. A lot more like the work I'd like to be doing here. And doing it has given me a few leads on employment opportunities that may be opening up soon. I have not liked getting up at 5:30 every morning! The only time I like to see that time of day is when I'm saying goodnight instead of good morning!! Other than the early hours, it's been good to do something that keeps me busy, is a little challenging and is helping people!
The long days have also been leaving me pretty exhausted! So I'm going to head to bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment