Itty Bitty Visitor

This morning our neighbor Nathan came over with little William to borrow back some stuff that Keith had borrowed from him, and I was so glad I had just vacuumed up all the cat hair on the carpet so that William could be plopped down on the floor. He's about 8 months or so and is just starting to scoot around, not quite crawling yet but able to pull himself along enough to go see what was in the cat food bowl. Most of the cats scattered as soon as Nathan knocked on the door but both Lucy and Pepper were very brave and very curious as to WHAT THE HECK IS THIS CREATURE ON OUR FLOOR!?!

William had his OshkoshB'Gosh overalls on, and is there anything cuter than a baby in Oshkoshs? I don't think so.

Well, Keith actually PASSED his tests at the BNSF meeting/interview thing, so now he and 11 other people are in the running for the 10 openings. He was there all day long, with first the BNSF guy explaining the job and the drug test and if you are not willing to work overnight shifts and every single weekend for the next 4 or 5 years or you've used drugs in the last year or so, you might as well leave now. Which quite a few people did. Then as the testing got under way, more people left when they realized that they'd never ever pass. Keith said it was the hardest job testing he's ever done and still can't quite believe he passed. He was interviewed and told to wait a few weeks for the results of the drug testing and if they want another interview they'll call. So, he's kind of nervous and will be waiting anxiously for the next few weeks. The training pay starts off at $11.00 an hour for the first few weeks, then goes up a few dollars for another few weeks, then up to $19.00 for the last few weeks. Then after the 9 week class, a big huge hard test on the rule book, which is like a million pages of rules, and if you don't pass you get another try, and if you don't pass that one, you are done and you go home. Kind of like a reality show.

So, if he does get the job, things will be even tighter than they are now, but we will persevere and eat beans and peanut butter if we have to for a while. Maybe we can teach the cats to forage for their food and go poop in the neighbor's yard (the ones whose cats poop in ours) so we don't have to buy cat litter.

He said that a couple of the guys were shaved head type guys so for the hair drug test they had to have underarm hair trimmed off. Ugh, can you imagine having to trim underarm hair from men who have been nervously sweating all day taking tests? What's even worse is that if they don't have underarm hair they have to get hair from even further down for testing. Double ugh.

Nobody got any lunch either, they got a short break after all the tests but there was no place in the hotel where the meeting was that had any food and the break wasn't long enough to go get anything, so all these starving guys were hanging around waiting for their interviews. I'm sure the BNSF people were smart enough to bring a lunch, though.

So, anyway, now it's a waiting game and a saving money game so that we can pay the bills during the even broker than we are now months that will be coming up if he gets the job. But it will totally be worth it in the long run.