Job Opening: Team Leader, Laborer, and Domestic Mastermind

Here's a little job description I amused myself with as I looked for a new job this spring.  Just in time for Mother's Day. . . 

The right person for this three-tier job will provide support to other team members to gain increased efficiencies and profitabililty by possessing skills in the following areas:

1. Prepare three meals daily for team members, using proper nutritional balances, fresh ingredients, and various ethnic styles. Must demonstrate skill within budgetary limitations.  Nutritious snacks as requested. Occasional gourmet meals for visiting guests. Provide on-the-job training to junior staff.  Tasks may include other aspects of coordinating and maintaining a 24-hour kitchen and dining room.
2. Maintain inventory including, but not limited to, the following categories: clothes, food, cleaning agents, office supplies, garden supplies. Demonstrate skill within budgetary limitations and stock rotation. Purchase new equipment and supplies as needed for maximum efficiency. Car and company credit card supplied.
3. Manage all aspects of laundry, including training junior staff and acquiring new garments as needed to surmount growth spurts, stains, carelessness, and changing styles.  Experience with mending required.
4. Ensure optimal cleanliness and appearance in building, supervising junior staff as needed. Daily tidying encouraged.  Organize and perform weekly cleaning as well as periodic deep cleaning.
5. Manage incoming paper and mail daily so that other team members can locate their papers up to one year later. Schedule appointments as needed. Handle accounts payable.
6. Manage social calendar, maintaining appropriate stature in neighborhood, school, church, and general acquaintances.  Explore and initiate proper enrichment activities for junior staff.  Transport junior staff as needed.
7. Provide assistance to the Significant Team Member as requested.  Duties and hours vary.  Flexibility and cooperation is key.
8. Provide assistance to junior staff as requested.  Unlimited hours.  Patience and kindness required.

An ideal candidate can perform these duties enthusiastically, consistently, and skillfully.

Daily hours:  6am-9pm, breaks by chance only, on call 24 hours a day

No salary. No sick days. Benefits package includes contentment, frustration, love, antidepressants, and coffee.  Health insurance provided through Significant Team Member (we hope). Disability insurance and 401-k provided through junior staff's future careers and largesse.

No opportunity for advancement.

Photos on this post from a trip we took to New York which included the Staten Island Ferry and Central Park.

And the job I was looking for?  I landed several freelance editing contracts that are just right. I am still getting the hang of working from home, but in general, we are doing well and I am very pleased. 

I Almost Left You Here

But I think I'm back to blogging. 

Not only was I struggling with the overwhelming nature of the holiday season (I mentioned it), but then poof, the company I worked for evaporated and my job with it.  So strange the way my lovely job came out of the blue and disappeared again just as suddenly. 

So I've just been feeling all the feelings and deliberately not making any decisions during this time of change. Truly I've been through much worse in my life, but nevertheless, I miss that job and the world it was in.

And I didn't feel like blogging since the layoff.  I just kept up with the daily house and family work and occasionally enjoyed a little creative cooking or sewing spurt - but I didn't pull out my camera and document anything. 

This blog was born from a chaotic change in my life and perhaps something new will be born out of this time, too.  I don't know.  But for now I'm sticking around to tell you about it.

The Week in Packed Lunches

Monday: 
I packed gado gado for myself, husband, and both children.  It was left from Sunday, so there was no additional prep to do. Gado gado is meant to be eaten at room temperature - perfect packed lunch!  I put a layer of brown rice, roasted carrots, green beans with sesame salt, diced cucumbers, chopped red bell pepper, and bean sprouts with a dollop of peanut sauce on top.  Dessert was a black bean brownie.  Pretty, travels well, and nutritious.

Packed my husband's in a quart jar with the peanut sauce on top.  By lunchtime, the peanut sauce has gone nicely throughout, and he ate it from the jar.  I only had a very cutesy jar cozy for a quart-size jar, so I whipped up a plainer felt one that evening.  I put a handle on it because the felt/jar combo was quite slippery.

Tuesday:
Gado gado for the kids again:  rice, broccoli, red peppers, bean sprouts, cilantro, peanut sauce.  Wasabi peas on the side (the kids are currently in love with them).  I rarely pack the same lunch in a row because we usually don't have that many leftovers - curious to see what they say.

Last week's shepherd's pie and an apple for my husband.  In the tiffin. I picked this up at a local discount store for $11 a while back.  It's great: doesn't leak, no plastic, and travels well.

I'm not telling you what I ate at home - I eat weird scraps and read novels, very happily, when I'm alone.

Wednesday:
What happened with the same lunch for Genevieve on Tuesday is that she didn't eat it. So I gave her the choice of eating her gado gado for supper or Wednesday school lunch.  She chose today. I'm not saying this is the ideal way to handle this, but we talk about how we don't waste food.  Also, carrot cake muffin for her.
For Ben, hummus sandwich, grape tomatoes from the back yard, carrot cake muffin.


Thursday:
Kids:  red beet egg, hummus sandwich, applesauce
Adults: red beet egg, sourdough bread, Swiss cheese, apple (and someone bought ice cream during her work day)

Friday:
Children want to get school lunch pizza on Fridays.  That's cool.  For one day a week, I don't mind a break and the school-lunch crap.

Husband: leftover taco beans from taco salad supper; rest of rice from gado gado. Green salad with 1000 island (down the side!). Blueberry muffin from freezer.  Apple.

Thanks to Carrie for the original idea of the week in meals!  I thought a real snapshot of packed lunches would be helpful to us all.  I'm going to try to write more about packed lunches on the blog - they're a big part of our week and we could all use ideas and tips.

The Navy Dress

At a bargain fabric store, I spied this polka-dotted navy cotton.  It has a gorgeous weight and feel.  It was $2.50 a yard.  I bought everything they had - a little over 2 yards, I think - and much less than most of my dress patterns required.  I could not find any more of the fabric online and I had no interest in a skirt, a blouse, or another navy dress for Genevieve.  No, I must have a sleeveless dress, and I must have it now, even though I'm getting my cold-weather clothes out.

I love his sandals and socks - like a little vintage boy.

So I cut a dress on the fabric width, instead of length, and sewed on a few inches to make the dress long enough.  The vision I had in mind was a simple, almost elegant dress, that could be dressed up or down.  However, the panel did not lay right with the dress (I knew it was going to be a challenge), so I squeezed out a few more inches of the scraps and turned the bottom panel into a ruffle.  Sure, it's cute, but it's not my original vision and I'm still disappointed.

My favorite detail of the dress is the button.  I could only easily get a 22" zipper instead of the 24" zipper that the pattern specified, so I kept the extra 2" and turned it into a keyhole and put in a tiny elastic loop and a sweet vintage button.

The dress can be worn unbelted because it doesn't have belt loops, but I much prefer the waist definition from a belt.  Rebecca gave me the idea to use nice ribbon, but then I couldn't decide between two in my stash, so I sewed them together!  A reversible belt on D-rings.  My husband also helped me drill holes in some other belt options (fuschia! mustard! red!), because most of the time, my belted waistlines are not at my true waist, so my belts were too big.

But I think this dress will be a real workhorse in my wardrobe. I wore it Sunday like a summer dress, and put tights and a cardi with it Monday to the office.

Thanks to my husband for most of the photos on this post.

 

Batch Cooking For the 6pm Days

My schedule changed overnight (okay, one week from job offer to start date).  Suddenly, two days a week, we all screeched home at 6pm, supperless.  And typically, we start the bedtime drag at 7pm, with the schoolkids in bed by 8pm.  So, it didn't make sense to start dinner preparations at 6pm. We needed something to - poof - appear on the table at 6pm, ready to eat.

So what I do is cook double the amount of food I normally cook on the days I'm home.  Some of it hangs out in the fridge for the 6pm days, to be reheated in the microwave, and the rest is packaged into the freezer to be defrosted for other 6pm days.

I've read where some people do an enormous batch cook on one day a month and make their meals for the rest of the month.  That alternately overwhelms me and bores me.

Here, I am making a double batch of BBQ (as it's called around here - the rest of the world calls it sloppy joe).  I subbed in cooked lentils for the fourth pound of ground beef.  I also experimented with putting all the ingredients in the slow cooker, not pre-cooking or frying anything first, and cooking it on high for about 5 hours.  The texture was very soft and soupy.  Not terrible, but I now know I prefer the stovetop method.

Mennonite Community Cookbook

I split it into four portions, and we had one for supper. The other three went in the freezer.

All the schedule pieces that flew up into the air in August are slowly settling into place.  We are happy.  We generally have homemade, hot suppers that almost appear on the table at 6pm.  There is generally clean laundry. The house generally gets vacuumed. I get time at home alone while the rest of the family is out in the world learning and working (bonus:  with everyone away more, the house is less dirty!).

But I'll take any 6pm supper tips you want to offer. . .

Breathtaking

I'm coming back to this space with the thing that keeps taking my breath away:  four years after he was laid off, my husband has a job.  A full-time job.  We are giddy as we lay out all our plans for the money, deferred for these years as he snatched every tiny freelance job that came along, including landscaping and church cleaning (he's an architect). 

 

This blog, although I never stated it explicitly, was born out of the chaos of my husband's layoff.  All options were on the table and we tried, oh, how hard we tried! to choose the life-giving, hopeful options. 

But I couldn't blog about the job situation because the pain and fear were too close.  And the newness of my husband's new job keeps washing over me, changing yet another plan or fixture of my thrift.  Because I do wonder:  how much thrift will I retain now that it's not urgently needed?

I'll keep you posted.

 

Perfect Green Salad in the Brown-Bag Lunch

When I pack salad for a brown-bag refrigerated lunch, I don't dress it in the morning (it would be a disgusting slimy mess after a few hours).  I don't put the dressing in a separate little container either (which usually leaks; plus, most of the dressing seems to stay in the container when I try to pour it out). 

Instead, I pour the right amount of dressing  down into one corner of the plastic container I'm packing the salad in.  At lunch, I just mix up the salad and dressing and hey presto!  a crisp home salad for lunch.

Is this a trick that everybody knows?  It was a new thought to Rebecca, too, but maybe the world is made up of rolling epiphany waves and we're just on a different one from the rest of y'all.

The Week in Suppers: mid-March

Monday: My husband cooked Red Lentil Coconut Curry (Simply in Season with the spices amped up). Raisins, sunflower seeds, and cilantro as toppings. Rice. Pickled lemons.
notes:  This recipe makes a big batch - we're having round 2 tonight for supper.  I have never told you about our pickled lemons!  It's a recipe from Julie Sahni.  They are fermented and keep in a glass jar on the counter for months - years, I bet. (I think they freak my extended family out a little bit).  We adore these pickled lemons and have to limit ourselves to one or two at a time because they are very salty.

Tuesday:  Back-yard dandelion with hot bacon dressing.  Roasted potatoes. Sour cherry cobbler.  Vanilla ice cream.
notes:  I like to have dessert with light meals. I also baked bread and made yogurt today.

Wednesday:  My husband made two stir fries:  one with bok choy and radish tops over rice, the other with cabbage, carrots, and peas over noodles. 
notes:  My husband usually cooks on the nights I get home from my job minutes before dinner. He is the stir-fry king.

Thursday:  supper club (a fabulous pumpkin lasagna with mushrooms - I'm getting the recipe)
notes: I love to cook, but I also love the extra hour or two on nights I don't cook.  I sewed instead.

Finished this French press cosy for my etsy shop!

Friday:  My husband and I had dinner out at one of my favorite restaurants to celebrate a friend's birthday.  At home with grandparents, the kids ate black-eyed peas, corn muffins with honey, and dandelion with hot bacon dressing.
notes:  Am I really an introvert?  Or maybe I just have wonderful friends.

Saturday:  Southwestern Corn Chowder (Simply in Season) made with roasted corn from last summer's corn roast.  Avocado.  Cilantro.  Cheese quesadillas.  Salsa from the Bowmans.
notes:  It was a rainy day and the soup was perfect. . . .but wow, I thought I made a big batch and I only have a pint left over.  I used up a lot of freezer food to make this meal, though.  I also made bagels today.

Sunday:  Make-Ahead Chicken Casserole.  Cranberry applesauce.  Green salad with vinaigrette.
notes:  I repeated the menu from the February fundraising meal. A comforting meal with an interlude to help friends who got a flat tire in front of our house.

Thanks to Carrie for the title and content idea!

My Face After 10 Miles

In the dusk, just home from a day at my job, after biking the 10 miles home.  I am so proud of myself!

I am fortunate enough to take the bus out to my job in the morning, with my bike on the bus rack.  Then in the evening, I bike the 10 miles home.  It's a beautiful ride, a perfect antidote to a desk job (even a desk job I love).

I aim to bike home once a week, but between a rainy summer and wintry dark and cold, I don't get out there so often anymore.

I bike because
1.  my husband thinks it's cool
2.  it's exercise
3.  it feels a little like flying
4.  I'm proud of myself (10 miles was a really big deal to me when I started)
5.  I get to pass buggies sometimes

The equipment I use/acquired to make this bike ride possible:
1.  my old Schwinn bike
2.  helmet
3.  sunglasses with mirror attached
4.  padded biking shorts
5.  running tights to wear under the shorts for warmth
6.  blinking taillight and headlight
7.  bike rack with saddlebags for change of clothes, lunch, and book to read on the bus

Riding my bike home from work is not directly thrifty (the equipment, even carefully researched and bought, cost money), but the way it soothes my mind and exercises my body is a wonderful bargain for me.

The Job Effect on my Family

It's been a month now that I've had a parttime job.  On those two days, I get home at 6.  Normally my family eats at 5:30.  Lord help me, I am learning to go with the flow.

Usually I cook one of those job suppers and my husband does the other, and then I do the rest of the week because in our kitchen, it works better if there is a primary shopper, planner, and cook (that would be me - happily so - I love it).  My husband and I are learning to communicate better because I need to buy groceries that he wants to cook with, and he needs to know my menus so he and the kids don't eat it for lunch or something.

My husband does really enjoy cooking - we shared it pretty equally before the children were born.  When he was working fulltime and I was staying at home with the children full time, it made sense for me to do all the housework.  Now we are slowly divvying up some chores because we are fairminded people who like proportional play and work -

Our version of a reasonable house:
1. dishes done before bed
2. vacuumed at least once a week
3. meals at home, local food in generous supply
4. children helping around house
5. cleanish bathroom
6. trash out
7. bills paid weekly, inbox sorted

So those things we pitch in equally and take no offense when the other person issues a reminder.  Notice that the list does not include laundry, clean sheets, dusting, or the myriad other small tasks of housekeeping.  I am content with these things in my domain.  I haven't done zone cleaning for months (filthy windows and corners), can't keep track of the children's clothes, and wonder how much preserving I'll actually get done. . . but overall, I am happy.  I love the partnership and I haven't lost my home haven.

(photos here by my husband - he usually is the park parent!)

My First Day

. . . as an assistant editor working on cookbooks.  Surprised?  I was!  I was offered this plum little job after my new employers read my blog.  Apparently The Record I created here for myself is also A Resume.

I had not envisioned working outside our home for a long time yet, but economic circumstances and out-of-the-blue job offers changed my mind.

Too soon to tell how this part time job will affect my life, although my priority is still my family and our homelife.  I'm not sure if the etsy shop and the local sewing consigning will survive, but you all have made this blog such a happy place that The Record, however abbreviated, will continue.  Thank you, dear readers.

I am taking things one day at a time right now, an unusual method for me and a real blessing.  And yes, my first day as an assistant editor was lovely.  I look forward to more.

P.S. Sandals, $3 (!!!),  comfy, leather, stylish, and in my size!  Wow.