Busy-ness as usual

Brooke and I spent a good portion of time decorating for Halloween yesterday. "The house is all spooked up", she says. lol She enjoyed cleaning and hanging the window clings. I had a bunch of new decorations this year, because last year, in November, CVS had a 90% of sale on their Halloween items, so I made good use of it. :n) Ideally, I'd like to go buy our Christmas lights and get the outside of the house stapled up with Christmas lights. I've always wanted to really go all out and like, outline the whole house sort of thing, but we haven't done that so far. (Not just with this house, I mean for a long time.)

Our master bathroom shower is clogged up like crazy. I bought Liquid Plumr, but it doesn't seem to have helped at all. Tim used the snake in it, too, but it's still clogged. He's supposed to borrow my dad's snake and we're hoping that ours just wasn't long enough or whatever. It's the last resort before calling a plumber. :nb

Yesterday afternoon, Corbin said to me, "You know what? Mrs. Greco really needs to brush her teeth because she has a green tooth." My stomach immediately knotted. I said, "Did you tell her that?" He said, "Yes, and she said, 'Oh'."

Ughh I just took a deep breath and said, "Corbin. That wasn't very nice. It's not nice to point out how someone looks unless you're giving them a compliment. When you tell someone that something is wrong with them, it can really hurt their feelings."

He said, "She didn't tell me that her feelings were hurt."

I said, "I know, but it still probably did hurt her feelings."

So, last night I helped him write a letter to her. It's in an envelope in his backpack, but it says something like:

Dear Mrs. Greco,

My mom is helping me write this letter. Recently I made a comment about your teeth. My mom told me that it was inappropriate. I think it might have made you feel bad. I don't like to make people feel bad. I am sorry.

I like that you tell good stories, and that you sometimes wear different color lipsticks. I also like when you let me talk to you by myself. I think that you are a nice teacher.

Your Friend,

Corbin Swindler

I somewhat coached him on what to say, for example I said, "Recently I... did what?" and "My mom told me... what?" and "How do you think that made her feel when you said that?" and "Do you like to make people feel bad?" etc.

Afterwards, I asked him if he understood why we had to write the letter to Mrs. Greco, and he wasn't sure. I told him that when we do something that hurts someone, we always need to try our best to make it right. And sometimes there's nothing we can do to make it right, but we always have to try, and the least that we can do is to say we're sorry from our hearts. He understood. He said that he does feel bad that he might have hurt her feelings, and I believe him.

Yesterday Corbin finally had "Pizza with the principals." He was given a paper at KinderCamp, and was told that if he read and wrote down 10 books with me over the summer, that he (and everyone else who did it) would get a day where he got to have pizza (and a movie) with his principal and vice principal. He said that most kids in his class actually didn't get to go, which surprised me.

I was also surprised that they still did it yesterday, considering that they were on a 2 hour delay. I suppose that there was flooding and that was why, but I'm still unclear if the flooding was on the roads or at the school. Either way, though, they did that.

To be honest, I was a little bit chuckling to myself about the delay, evil as it may be, because if there is a half day at the school, Brooke doesn't get to go since she's in afternoon preK. However, if there's a 2 hour delay, morning preK doesn't get to go. I just feel like there are going to be wayyy more half days this year than there will be 2 hour delays, so I felt like it was helping tilt the balance. I know, I'm rotten.

Both kids have field trips coming up this month. I was planning to go to all of their field trips this year, but as it turns out, I may not be able to go to any.

Brooke's field trip to the cider mill appears to land on a day when I may be at training for a new job! I don't know for sure that I have the job, but I did have my phone interview. I have inside knowledge that the training days will be either the 13 and 14 or the 14 and 15 (I can't remember which) of October. One of those days is her trip to the cider mill. And the really suck part is that since she's still going to be 3 years old, she can't go unless I drive her.

I'm hoping that if I'm at training, Tim will be able to use 2 of his vacation days to stay home and take care of the kids those days, and if so, then he can take her to the cider mill.

The job itself is with a company called GoFluent. It's a corporate English teaching position. Basically people from other countries call you and already know how to speak English, but they want to be trained to speak it more clearly. So it's a work from home position. It's a permanent part-time position, with a minimum of 20 hours per week, at my discretion. Meaning, a couple hours here and there in the day, so long as I get my minimum of 20 hours in. Currently, there is a period of time (I think 5pm-midnight) that they don't allow you to work, but I know that they are actively seeking work in Japan, so that may change. For now, I guess I'll have to work 5AM-7AM and then 1:30PM-3:00PM monday thru Friday and probably 4 or 5AM to 7 or 8AM Saturday. So that would put me at about 20.5 hours per week.

Once the kids are riding the bus home (November 17!) they'll arrive home at around 4:15, which gives me basically one more whole hour during the weekdays to work, and if I decided to also work Saturday morning, that would put me at 25.5 hours per week.

IF they get Japan and I'm able to work evenings after dinner, I'd probably work 5:30AM - 8 or 8:30AM instead of 5AM to 7AM, because in order to do that, I have to move around working out, and I'd far rather work out in the morning than at night after dinner.

The interview for the job was interesting. She asked me some questions that I've never been asked in an interview, such as, "based on your life experiences, ezplain what you think about tact." She also asked me how I would explain to someone how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then she asked me if I'm "lucky".

At any rate, I'm looking forward to the opportunity. I'm not for sure that I'll get the job yet, of course, but since it's not like I need it, I probably will get it. Life just seems to work out that way.

I want the job basically for 3 reasons:

1. It will be nice to feel like I'm able to contribute to the household income, even though we clearly don't "need" me to. Just having money that I earned myself will feel really good.
2. I want to be able to be in the work force again. I do plan to go to school next fall, and I don't want to come out of school in a few years with no work history for the past decade.
3. I'm kind of greedy. LOL I want things, and I'll feel like I'm more "allowed" to buy them if I'm earning money. I don't really buy myself stuff now just because I feel like I can't because it's greedy and the money we have needs to go to the kids or the house. So this will hopefully help me feel more like I "deserve" to get things too, once in a while.

Of course there are other reasons that I want to start making money. I love Christmastime, and it's going to be great to have a bunch of money for that. I want to pay off some of the debt that we have. We're not swimming in it over our heads or anything like that, but we have a few things that are a a thousand to a few thousand dollars that I just want to get paid off, like our furniture and a couple of credit cards. And honestly, those things weren't mostly because we couldn't have waited for them, it was because we wanted to build up our credit after bankruptcy. Especially my credit, because I never had really established any credit. Like, I got myself a Fashion Bug card, and every so often I'll put like $100 on it just to pay it off again in a month or two. I like that a lot. :n)

Oh my I hadn't realized how late it is already! I have to get the kids around. Corbin has his dental checkup in an hour, and then my cousin John is getting married this afternoon. :n) It's busy-ness as usual around here.