Grandma's Spoons

Sitting around waiting for a call for an interview can consume your entire day. It can even make you go a little nutzoid if you don't find an outlet for your body and soul. Since I was leaning more toward "you are going crazy" side of the wait-for-job-o-meter, I decided that I needed some adjustments to my daily grind.

I have finally (hopefully) gotten back on the weight loss track after a 3 month detour. This has actually allowed me to do something that I haven't been able to do in several years: swim laps in the pool. Okay, maybe not laps since my pool is pretty small and somewhat shallow, but back and forth all the same. However, it has been so hot and humid down here in South Texas that I have had to wait until later in the evening to get out in the 90+ degrees water. So what to do during the rest of the day became my quest.

I tried my Tae Bo Power Rounds but that darn Billy Blanks is hard to keep up with. Being a southern lady I could say that I gracefully perspired during the workout. But I'm not. I sweated. Profusely. And then decided that was enough of that for the day.

I then remembered that I had wanted to tackle something for quite a while. It took a little digging, but I finally found Grandma's spoons. I pulled out the big box and carefully began to sort through them all.

What is unusual about that? I bet you're thinking of those cute little spoons with a state name on top that goes in a nice little wall case. Nope. Not my Grandma. She was more creative. As I went through them all, I began to pray that she wasn't a kleptomaniac!

You see, Grandma and Grandpa (and the childhood version of my dad) were fortunate to travel quite a bit from the 1930s to the 1950s. Daddy used to boast that he had visited every state except the original Thirteen Colonies. And everywhere that Grandma stopped at a restaurant, she appropriated a spoon. She would then carefully tag each spoon with blue yarn and a note of who was with them, where they stopped, the date, and sometimes a little commentary about the reason for the trip.

Most of the yarn had rotted, so many of the tags were off their respective spoons. But a few remained. After reading the stories on the tags, I decided to see if those restaurants were still around someplace. I started off with the local chambers of commerce, and many of them were very helpful and all of them were amused at the story behind them. So far one spoon is en route to the Santa Monica Pier and the museum they are putting together there. Another spoon saw the Marfa lights, but we are still looking for Ramona's Cafe. By now the Nimitz Historical Museum in Fredericksburg, TX should have received a special spoon noting the time my grandparents took my soon-to-be dad and his girlfriend up to Enchanted Rock in order to propose to her. Another spoon from the just-across-the-border Mexican town of Piedras Negras marked the time they went to the bull fights. Tags from Colorado and Montana are still waiting. I have one from England that must have come from my Aunt Mugs, and I even found the one Daddy must have pilfered from his navy ship, the U.S.S. Jason, to send to his mother.

My memories of times past are somewhat more mundane, but to me very exciting. I have them all hanging in my closet or folded to give away. Memories of what I used to look like and what I hope to look like again. Memories of why I bought that special dress, and nightmares of whatever was I thinking when I bought that?! They represent almost 15 years of my weight struggles, and while there were many good times, there were also an awful lot of tears of frustration hanging in there.

I think I like Grandma's idea better.

Grandma is long gone, travelling the heavens, but my journey is still continuing. I wonder where I will end up?

As I continue to wait for a job offer and think about the new "me," I will keep on trying to find a home for all of Grandma's spoons.

Maybe I can bring a memory back to someone who needed a warm fuzzy that day. Ought to be fun!

I Am Not Functional

I have determined that my life is in a non-functioning phase. My biorhythms must be at all time lows. The signs have all been there, but I was lured into falsehoods and blissful ignorance on so many levels.

When I retired, I thought I could live on my retirement with a few hundred bucks earned through a part time job. I foolishly let myself believe that for over a year. Now the joke's on me. I must work full time in order to make ends meet. What was I thinking?

I was thinking that it would be easy for an older woman to get a part time job because we have all heard the rumors that this younger generation doesn't want to work as hard as I would. I was thinking that even though there is still a lot of misbelief that "those who can't, teach." I was determined that I would show them all.

They usually say, first the body goes, then the mind. Well, fellow readers, I am right on track to keep that myth percolating!

If my body hadn't gone south, I probably would not be writing this blog weekly. And I discovered this past week that my thinking has been just short of delusional for a very long time. Ergo, I am not functioning...

I didn't count on the economy being so bad that after forty years of working and still kinda young that I would be competing for an entry level position with CPA's and PhD's looking for any sort of income. I didn't think that I would have to explain myself so thoroughly because my well thought out resume said it all for me. And I had a killer cover letter. Or so I thought until I met with a professional job placement expert.

She told me that nobody writes resumes in chronological order, unless it is for a specific job requirement to show continuity. She further told me that nobody cared that I had banking and financial experience over 20 years earlier because technology has changed that field so much that my skills were basically archaic. And above all, I had absolutely no skills listed on my resume. That piece of paper that I thought gave a great picture of my professional life was bordering on being  prehistoric! She gave me "homework" to look up the definition of a functional resume and to start reinventing myself sooner rather than later.

My professional told me that my resume said "retired" and not really wanting to be "rehired." At that point I was hoping that  somebody would hire me out of pity. But the problem was, those other unemployed professionals were wanting a little of that same pity.

So I went home and started the reinvention of  "me." I turned my lesson plans in to planning and scheduling experience. I turned my grades into timely record keeping. I called my frustrated phone calls to parents to tell them their kids were non-functioning into "proactive problem solving to ensure success." Who says teachers can't "do?"

As I was stressing out over all of this, I found myself migrating to the refrigerator way too often. So not only did my professional life need changing, I realized my personal health and goals that I set were off their collective functional trails. I quickly determined that I seriously needed to get back on all the right tracks.

I have resent out all my updated resumes to everybody I could think of. I have four days until my regular doctor appointment to lose some weight to show progress. I fully expect a scolding and a fairly large "fill" in my lap-band. I have had very little done since March because of all the other stuff going on, but I didn't overly stretch myself into maintaining restraint in my eating habits. Not good at all!

I am not functional, and I ain't too proud of that right now.

Well, necessity is the mother of invention, so maybe by this time next week, I will have made a turnaround.

Wish me luck!