Monday, February 28, 2011

Another Reminder of How Old I Am

Now, I know that this company is just trying to make a buck here but it is kind of depressing to get this in your mail box, another reminder of just how far that foot is sticking into that grave.


Anyway.

Another dull weekend here. We were supposed to have the storm of the century blowing in on Friday night with roads closed because of snow and rain and cold and all that. It did snow in the mountains and San Francisco got a dusting of snow for the first time in 35 years or something like that, but here in the high desert it was all just kind of a yawn. It rained overnight but by Saturday morning skies were sunny again although it was a little nippy out there.

We did get an email on Friday from the medical review board at BNSF saying that Keith passed his medical part of the pre-employment checks (despite the fact that he is DEAF) so now we are just waiting to see if he passed the background check. Hopefully we will hear something today. We are hoping that the tentative start date of March 7 is not going to be his actual start date (if he does get the job that is) because that will only give him a few days to give notice at his work and all.

We are both a little nervous about the possibility of him taking this job because with all railroad jobs there is always the chance that you'll start and then the work will dry up and you'll be laid off and scrambling around to find an open position somewhere else in the world, and then you'll have to pay your own way to get there and sleep in your car while you're working because who can afford to pay your mortgage at home and then pay for a motel while you're working somewhere else? It's hard to go from a stable job to an unstable one despite the $5.00 more an hour that they pay and the better union type benefits that they offer. But, as we all learned when the economy crashed, no job is secure these days and sometimes you just have to gamble on an unknown.

Mimi has a couple of new tricks, one of which is rather annoying. We (meaning ME) clean our cat boxes twice a day, right? Because six cats poop a lot and the cat boxes really do need cleaning twice a day. So, while squatting down to clean the cat box, Mimi sees the opportunity to jump onto my shoulder because she is not a lap cat, she is a shoulder cat. But, she doesn't just sit on your shoulder, she has to walk around on you trying to find the most comfortable position on your shoulder, walk around while trying to hang on which means lots of sharp little claws digging into your shoulder. So, now you are squatting by the cat box scooping poop with a sharp clawed little cat walking around on your shoulder.

Her other trick is that she likes to play with the little coated rubber band ponytail holders that I keep in a glass jar with a lid on the bathroom counter. A glass jar that she can see the ponytail holders through but unless I take off the lid can't get them out of the jar. So, she scrabbles at the jar thinking that because she can see them she should be able to get at them. So, I take the lid off the jar for her. And then she likes to fish them out and drop them in the nearby water bowl. So, I fish the now wet ponytail holders out of the water bowl and put them back on the counter so that she can drop them in the water bowl again. It's a never ending source of amusement for her.

1 comment:

PussDaddy said...

I had a cat named Boo that every time I bent over he would jump on my back like that. Then he would put a paw on each of my shoulders and ride piggy back while I walked all around with him.

PD