The Lost Week

A week ago today, I started to write about Winter Storm Uri. I just couldn't get through it. I'm glad James beat me to the punch (apparently he finished his the day after I started, and I just haven't had the oomph to log back in until this morning). Now I don't have to. But I'll share a couple of things that I want to remember.

First, our neighbors were absolute heroes, and I've heard the same about neighborhoods across the state. My parents' friends who never lost power picked my parents up at the end of their first full day with no electricity, when the house had gotten down to about 50 degrees. Knowing that they were somewhere safe helped me be able to narrow my focus on our household.

For us, our next door neighbor was amazing. James mentioned that he gave us wood. The following morning, he was driving up and down the street with cut wood in the back of his truck, asking people with chimneys if they needed any wood. This was after I'd asked him, "Will you guys have enough to get you through this?" and he admitted, "I don't know. I can't really tell."

Also, Mal's friend's grandma, who lives a couple of streets over, saved our butts. James mentioned a plumber getting here on Sunday, February 21... but that wasn't the plumber I called on February 14. THAT plumber has not been out yet (today's the 27th). We'd be closing out two weeks without water if it weren't for this neighbor.

We'd gone on a walk last Saturday, and she mentioned that the builder who's bought several of her vacant lots and built houses on them was sending out his subcontractor plumber to check the new homes for leaks after the freeze. I wondered if he'd check our house. She texted the builder. The next morning, when I was at my parents', she asked me if I'd heard back from the builder because the plumber was in the neighborhood. I said I hadn't and that if I were home, I'd walk over and talk to him myself. 

She took it upon herself to put our name, phone number, and address on a card and take it to the neighbor's house. James explained the rest; while he was in the neighborhood, the guy came to our house and capped the leak, allowing us to turn the water back on.

We've been fortunate on many counts. Luck, having good neighbors, being part of the actual rolling blackouts (as opposed to many in Austin whose power was cut and left off for almost a whole week), having been prepared for no water, and being in a healthy household situation so that being even more isolated at home than Covid usual was tolerable.

But it was an intense week. The not knowing: how much longer will the power stay on? will our heater be able to keep up when the power is on? what damage is happening right now that we won't know about until later? will the forecast change for the better (or worse)? what will happen if we run out of food and drink that Mal likes (the rest of us could lump it, but he's a little... less stoic than the adults in the family)? is this still a rolling outage or did something else happen? 

I remember thinking, "We only THOUGHT that the lockdown was an intense change. This is out-of-body."

We did have some fun, though, and ultimately we're fine. Here are some pictures from the week.

After the first ice storm on Friday night/Saturday morning 2/13.

Monday, 2/15

The birds were prepared; fat and more than happy to have supplemental snacks.

A couple of sunny days were nice, even with highs in the teens.

Snow ice cream!

No electricity, but we had some battery-powered string lights from vacation.

We slept in front of the fire one night, then realized we were only having rolling blackouts and the bedroom, with its smaller size and lower ceiling, was warmer overall, with periodic power.

Tuesday, 2/16. Our walk to the park in the snow and sun made us sweaty!

Tuesday night; last night of rolling blackouts.

Then it just stayed cloudy and mostly under freezing for the next 3 days.

On Friday, I remembered that we had 40 gallons of water in the front and back yards! We could flush!

Winter came to Texas

We had ordered groceries last week, but the supplies just weren't there. I went shopping on Saturday. 

The  grocery store was nuts. Everyone (including me) was super focused on getting what they needed and getting out. There were a few times I found myself on the verge of yelling at someone for just parking their cart in a place that jammed up everyone from going around them. Or for moseying around just a smidge too quickly to go around without running into people going the other way.

At one point, I felt like I was suffocating. My first thought was that one of the idiots wandering around with their mask not covering their nose had given me Covid. I realized pretty quickly that this was ridiculous: you can't get symptoms that quickly. I decided to just relax and make the best of it. Laura said that's exactly how she feels when she gets stress asthma.

I took pictures of the egg section. It was empty except for a few broken ones that people had left behind. One of the stockers apologized for the emptiness and explained that the truck hadn't been able to get through. I shrugged it off and told him it wasn't his fault. He deflated a little and told me he was glad I felt that way. He'd been chewed out for it twice already.

I don't understand why anyone would think it was his fault. Then again, they were probably just looking for an outlet.

Laura sent me with a list, and I improvised around it. She said that I bought a lot more than she would have, which turned out to be a very good thing.

 I went out again to try to get brunch for all of us on Sunday, but everything was closed. On the way home, my car had a lot of trouble making it up a couple of hills.

We turned off our water to try to keep the pipes from freezing. Our side of the cut off didn't work. We filled up our bathtubs and pretty much every glass, bowl, pot, and pan in the house. Again, this turned out to be a good thing. Then Laura decided to try the city-side cutoff. I was planning to get out in the morning and buy a tool for it, but it's loose enough to turn by hand. Apparently, this is a fairly serious crime.

Laura put in a call for a plumber to see about fixing the cutoff valve that didn't work. They were supposed to show up on Friday.

Laura and Mal spent the first night with me in our bed. Mal's the opposite of a blanket hog: he just kept kicking them off.

When we got power on Monday morning, I let my manager know that we'd been without power for most of the night and didn't know how long it would last. He told me not to worry about it because almost everyone was in the same boat.

Monday night was really the worst. I think it was the coldest, and the one where the snow really hit. We pulled Mal's mattresses into the living room and camped out in front of the fireplace. This is the first time we've used it. Mal was really scared of it. He was afraid one of the cats would jump in. Or that, after it went out, it would spontaneously combust.

On Tuesday morning, Laura went next door to ask our neighbor if we could buy some firewood. I was going to do it, but the thought of asking for help was just too much for me to handle on top of everything else. She told me that it probably worked out much better that way. He sells firewood, but wouldn't take our money because of Mal. He loaned her his wheelbarrow along with about a day's worth of wood.

Power flickered on and off enough that I didn't even bother trying to work.

We mostly had power Tuesday night, so I signed in to work on Wednesday morning. They sent out an early email telling everyone who has power to act like they don't to reduce demand. They told us to just take a couple of days off. Then they sent out another message late Thursday night telling everyone to also take Friday off.

It must have been Wednesday when Jonestown sent out a boil water notice, with a warning that the treatment plant didn't have power. They said they could get everything going again once they did have power for 12 hours, but begged everyone to take it easy to give the tanks a chance to fill back up once they did.

Austin did the same, about the same time frame. People started getting irritated about then. It's tough to boil water when you're also trying to minimize your electricity/gas usage.

I just saw a message one of my team members sent out on Thursday: he still didn't have water, but he had power for the first time in 3 days.

The water situation didn't matter to us, since we didn't want to turn our water back on until we were sure the freezing weather was past. Actually, I'd have risked it when we started running low. But Laura managed to capture enough snow melt to keep flushing the toilets (I helped by bringing in pots full of ice and snow to melt before anything thawed), and we had plenty of drinking water.

That next door neighbor showed up Wednesday morning. He'd loaded up his truck and was driving around the neighborhood to see if anyone needed firewood. We offered to buy again, but he still refused to take our money. We hadn't used his first load, so we told him to take it to someone who didn't have any.

It could have been a nice week long holiday, if we hadn't been worried about minor details like freezing to death and flushing the toilets. Shutting down the Austin part of Indeed was probably a really good decision from a business perspective. I know that I was too wrung out and emotionally exhausted to do good work.

Once it started thawing, we wound up with a lot of water dripping out of one of the light fixtures on our porch. We knew we needed to do something about it. I was too scared of the electrical implications to do anything about it. While I was waffling about what to do, Laura opened it up. I was worried about a water gusher. But the glass is cracked, so there really wasn't much more than the dripping. It extended from that fixture to both sides of the seam in the wood.

Laura got in touch with a friend who does roofing (and has worked on ours a time or two) to get a professional opinion. He told her something about ice dams, and that the Texas building code just isn't up to handling these sorts of events. He figured that everything would be just fine after it had all passed and the roof had a chance to spring back into normal shape. She read a little more about ice dams and got paranoid about it getting worse once everything froze again over night.

So she broke out the ladder to see what we could do about it. I started out just holding the bottom (which is my normal job while she cleans the gutters), but she couldn't really accomplish much. So I climbed the ladder to see if I could come up with anything. I wound up sweeping a bunch of snow into the gutter, and dropping a bunch of ice chunks straight to the ground. I'd forgotten how terrifying ladders are. I couldn't really tell whether I'd made things better or worse, but we didn't have any problems after that.

In the process, I did something weird to the ball of my foot. It hurt for the next day or so, but feels better now.

Laura took that wheelbarrow of wood back to the neighbor. I think she also made him a plate of cookies.

That Friday plumber appointment flew right out the window: they sent out messages and updated their website to tell people they were swamped. They asked people to not call or message them. They were working their way down a prioritized list and promised a 24 hour warning. They did contact Laura at one point to try to figure out how bad our situation was. She told them to move us down the list, because we were probably out of danger. Though we really hoped someone could get out soon to check for leaks.

We finally turned our water on yesterday. We could tell there was a slight leak, and Laura was really nervous about it. I was thrilled enough about just having water that I didn't care and was willing to just live with it. Even though I've had that job and know better.

I went back to the grocery store (this time in Lago Vista) and bought another car load of snacks and instant meals. It was even more packed than things had been pre-storm. But this time everyone seemed giddy and just thrilled to be interacting with other humans. The cashier seemed pretty shell-shocked. She didn't actually react to me until I told her how grateful I was that she'd come to work that day. She warmed up and told me that they're doing their best.

 

This time I was able to bring home some food from Sonic. The car hop was pretty disgruntled that they still can't serve drinks, but agreed with my excitement about having running water again.

Laura kept going outside to check the water meter. So she noticed the gushing leak sound.

Well, Mal noticed it first. He tried to tell her that he heard a scary noise outside the bathroom. But he's terrified of everything (including my old recliner and my bathrobe), so we didn't really pay any attention.

Anyway, Laura turned the water back off. Then she led me out to see whether I had any ideas. I didn't.

We could tell that it was coming from under the porch by Mal's window (and the bathroom). It was really close to one of the sections I just fixed. It was obviously too big to leave the water on. So we shut it all back down.

This was pretty crushing for all of us (except possibly Mal who just felt vindicated that he'd told us so).

Laura decided to throw in the towel and go to her parents'. It took me a while to process through the bleakness. I decided that I didn't want to try to work from there on Monday: I'm too attached to my two extra giant monitors to be happy with just my laptop. D decided to stay behind in case anything major came up and I needed help.

So she bundled Mal into the car and headed out last night. Oh, and she let the plumbers know that everything had changed (they did tell her to call if that happened).

I got up this morning and went to brunch. There's a Mexican place down the road named El Rey that I try really hard to patronize (because restaurants in Jonestown have a terrible time staying in business, and I really want to do what I can). Normally, I try to get there every other week. I was planning to eat there last Sunday, but they weren't open. I pulled into their parking lot and thought about what I wanted. I decided I actually wanted an omelet from Gloria's, which is probably my favorite breakfast place in the vicinity. So I went there instead.

Lots of people had the same idea. There was quite a wait list. Most of them don't respect Covid enough and wanted to sit inside. I got a patio table almost immediately. The hostess was a bit upset about the conditions out there (everything was wet, with lots of tree debris blown in), but I assured her it was fine. I ordered an omelet for me and the burger that I was planning to get for D a week ago. Then I settled in to read.

I'm not sure why I checked my phone when my food arrived. Laura said the plumber was at our house and couldn't get anyone to answer. I told her to stall him, because I could be home in about 10 minutes. I got a to go box and asked them to hurry up on the burger and fries. While I waited, she told me that he'd already pulled the porch apart and thought the problem was this lousy irrigation system that someone had half-baked. We've never used it, and we tear up the lines whenever we run across them. He offered to cap it off.

I rushed home, but he was gone when I got back. The leak was fixed, but he wasn't willing to leave the water on with no one home.

I turned it back on and felt a little sick because it looked to me like it was still leaking. I couldn't hear anything ominous, so I sat down and ate. It hadn't even had time to get cold. When I finished eating, the water had stabilized and stopped.

And that was pretty much that.

I started the dishwasher (which is bursting at the seams), then reveled in being able to flush the toilet and brush my teeth.

I still felt pretty lethargic and overwhelmed, but I decided to try out an anti-procrastination technique. Just get started on something. Give it 5 minutes and see.

So I broke out my bookshelf and started working on my latest problem. I had so much fun sawing the wood that I kept going. And then I chiseled out a place for one of the pieces I'd just finished sawing. Before I knew it, it had been over 4 hours, and I was racing the sunset to get that piece glued into place.

It amazes me how good exercise and sunlight are for depression. Now I feel happy and excited about getting back to my day job in the morning.

In the morning, we have groceries scheduled for delivery between 10 and 11. Laura's planning on heading home as soon as Mal wakes up, but she figures they'll still beat her here.

The thought of getting back to "normal" is almost overwhelming.

On that note, I'm finally going to wash my glasses and take my first shower in over a week.

Central Texas weather scariness ft. power outages and no water

Thursday morning, we woke up to ice thunder. There was frozen precipitation most of the morning. It did this:

Everything was covered in a layer of ice, and there were no temperatures in the forecast for above freezing for a week.

That day there were a lot of accidents. The main road into/out of town was closed for sanding. It took forever because there aren't a lot of sand trucks in Austin.

Friday, the roads seemed okay. James went into Cedar Park to buy the groceries that Walmart wasn't able to deliver, because they'd had a power outage for 15 hours and lost everything in their cooler section. We were fortunate enough to have power, but figured it was just a matter of time before it went out.

James tried to find firewood while he was out, but no one had any. I looked online and everyone was sold out. I asked on "Buy Nothing," and the neighbor who cuts our grass did have some left over from a beach trip. It was enough for probably one night.

Saturday, I was panicked about our water lines. We have a pier-and-beam house. Our water lines are only superficially buried. We decided that on Sunday afternoon, we'd shut off our water and drain the pipes to avoid freezing and bursting. 

I also grilled out the steaks James had gotten for our Valentine's meal. It was actually warmer (at 28 degrees) Saturday than it was supposed to be Sunday.

Sunday afternoon, James filled up a ton of containers with drinking water, then I filled up a bathtub and the bathroom sinks with flushing/hand-washing water.

We shut the water off, and I turned on the water in one bathtub to drain the water heater... after I turned off the water heater at the breaker. We opened all of the faucets, and they just kept running. For hours.

I called a plumber but at that point, it had started sleeting and no one was going out at all. But I got an appointment for this coming Friday, which was their earliest appointment. It's apparent that our shutoff has mineralized, and won't close the whole way. We need to replace the handle with a ball valve. 

We watched 9-to-5 during all of this, and it holds up. But I was stressed about all of the work we'd done, and the fact that the pipes were just filling back up (but slower). I decided to go out and see if I could turn off the water on the city side. I took the tool bag, and it was sleeting again. The door to the meter was sealed, but just enough that I was able to pry it open.

I figured that if I couldn't get the shutoff turned, we have one neighbor who likely has a t-bar or whatever and we could try the next day.

But guess what? I was able to turn it with my gloved hands, and that was it. We opened all of the faucets, which drained for a few moments, and we were done. I slept a lot better that night.

Until 3ish on Monday morning. James, Mal, and I were all in the master bedroom when D came in and asked if we had a portable charger. I got up and got one, and saw a message from our electric provider that they were doing rolling blackouts. 

The power was out for about an hour, then on again for a while, then back out until 10:30 Monday morning. Monday, it was brutal but GORGEOUS outside.

I learned that many people whose power had gone out on Friday had not had any since then. People were posting pictures on the Austin subreddit of apartment windows that were iced over ON THE INSIDE. People with children were worried about how to keep them warm... I had to get off of Reddit because when you're an empath, you internalize everyone's struggles, and logically I can do nothing for these people but hope for the best.

In the middle of the day, I went next door to ask our neighbor, who always has a fire going if the high is going to be below about 65, if we could buy some of his fire wood. He said, "No, but you can have it." I asked if he was sure. He said, "You have a little kid! I can't turn you down." I said, "Sure you can!" But he gave me enough firewood for one full day. 

Yesterday, we played out in the snow a couple of times. Then we took advantage of our internet and electricity when it came on. The way it works is this: We plug in all of the devices, Mal streams video, and we cook food so we can eat something hot. Otherwise, we're snacking on string cheese, nuts, granola bars, etc. It seems to be that the rolling outages for us are two hours on, one hour off. It seems like our house loses 5 degrees per hour. We don't know what the temperature is until the power comes back on because we don't have a thermometer except for on the thermostat.

Meanwhile, my parents' house has been without power since early Monday morning. Fortunately, Monday late afternoon, friends of theirs who still have power picked them up to stay with them. That was a relief. My sister's house hasn't lost power at all, which is great. Interestingly, Mal's friend's aunt's house (which is near Round Rock) also has had power this whole time.

We lit a fire this morning at 1 AM, and let it die when we got up. As long as we keep "rolling," we'll probably not use the firewood. The thing is, tonight and tomorrow night, there is a majority possibility of freezing rain. Our power lines survived the first bout of sleet and frozen rain all over the place. Will it stand up to it the next two days? Who knows. It might get worse before it gets better. This is bizarre.

Our power provider got up to 86% of meters with power early this afternoon, but now it's back down to 80%. It was 53% when we got up this morning. The outages do not include us, even though we're having power cuts, because we DO have access to power.

James went out to see if he could get water at the water/ice dispenser across the street, and he had to come back. The roads are treacherous. We'll just have to get creative about the toilet situation or maybe try to turn the water back on before the plumber gets here Friday if we run out. Then again, we might be able to try for water again tomorrow afternoon. It's supposed to get up to 37. Last week, the forecast for tomorrow was a high of 60. Sigh.

After taking the wheelbarrow back to our neighbor this afternoon, Mal and I walked to the park. It was beautiful and weird! He loved playing "maid" and cleaning the icicles and snow off of everything.

Toward the end, he realized that he had snow in his "boot" (grocery bag) and we pulled off his shoe and socks, and put one sock from his other foot on the wet foot, then we hurried home. It was a lot of work to hustle in deep snow! By the time we got back, I was sweating! It's the warmest I've been since a week ago.

Pretty stuff, but I'm ready for it to melt because things are warming up. Austin is not built for a weeklong hard freeze. Texas and Texans are suffering right now.

Unambitious

Every once in a while, I jump onto LinkedIn to see if a person I no longer have access to through other social media has an account there so that I can check in with them. Today, I happened to notice that an old friend of mine had founded a new business, called Beyond Motherhood. Amy's a very neat person, and it's super cool that she's helping women figure out what they want to do with their lives. But a lot of things I have realized about myself recently have helped me know that this site isn't for me. 

For one, there's this quote: "Motherhood is holy work, but the hands-on, active phase only lasts 20-25 years for most women. If you still have half your life left when the kids leave home, doesn’t that make you think you have a purpose beyond motherhood?" When Mal is 25, I will be 67. I will not have half of my life left, unless medicine progresses ridiculously rapidly over the next couple of decades. (I know this is one reason she said "most" and not "all." Then there's the moms of special needs kids. And the ones who become grandmas raising grandkids. Etc.)

Beyond that, though... I have this pattern of basically not caring about jobs. I mean, I'm an over-achiever and if I have a job, I'll do what I need to do, and I will try to do it very well. I will probably even do more than is strictly necessary. But I've never had ambitions, or fantasies about a dream career.

Well, I wanted to be an astronaut until I realized that you had to have uncorrected 20/20 vision (at the time; this has changed) and it broke my heart. Then I wanted to be an actor until I was in college and saw what some people had to do to get jobs. Then I realized, "Oh, I don't want it *that* bad." And I'm not talking about anything super shady, just the networking and knowing who to know and interrupting someone's dinner plans to insist on an audition.

My first job, at age 16, was at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, or KFC for you young 'uns. I was very bad at being able to tell the chicken breasts from the chicken thighs, and I got so stressed working the drive-through. I could not focus on a conversation with the person in front of me while also taking an order over the headphones. And I could NOT upsell. "Would you like a hot buttered corn-on-the-cob with that?" If they wanted it, I'm sure they would have ordered it. Fortunately, I got strep and my doctor told my mom it was probably from the filthy environment there, so I got to quit after six weeks.

Next, I worked at a grocery store. I did bagging at first, then went to (I kid you not) checker's school. I learned the codes for 200 different produce items, how to count up change in case something went wrong with the register's calculations, and also that I had to call someone to help me when someone bought alcohol, because I was too young to sell it. I worked with a good friend, and that was fun. 

Then I got what I felt was an upgrade and worked at TCBY for the remainder of my high school years. I adored that job. People who are going out for frozen yogurt are rarely in a bad mood. And we got to eat as much yogurt as we wanted, for free.

When I was in college, I worked at a baby and pregnancy clothing boutique, then a day care, and finally at Sonic. I LOVED working at Sonic. I was a carhop, so I got to be outside. I learned that if you're really nice and they're having a good day, sometimes people will tip you a generous amount. Man, what a wake-up call that was, and I apologize to every carhop I had as a teen because I genuinely had no idea.

After I graduated college (with a BA in theater, so that was a lucrative choice), people seemed shocked that I didn't immediately quit Sonic. I got tired of being asked, "When are you going to get a 'real' job?" so I applied for a starter position with the local newspaper, which was owned by the media group for which my dad worked as their HR director. In my interview, my boss told me, "I'm going to be honest with you: you're getting this job because of your maiden name."

So I was working in an office... but because of the Sonic tips, I was making LESS money. I felt like I'd been duped by the idea that somehow office work was more mature or honorable than running food.

The next job I had was because we moved, and I quit the newspaper. I signed up as a substitute teacher in the then-small town of Siloam Springs. It was irregular and stressful, and after one day subbing at a junior high, I called the office and told them I'd do elementary or high school but NEVER jr. high ever again.

Then we moved to Las Vegas, and I got a job working at Sam's Club. I was at the registers first, then worked freezer/cooler for couple of years. When the company decided that I was too much trouble and wanted me out (I had a problematic coworker and kept reporting him for creating a hostile work environment with his incessant sex talk), they moved me to electronics with no training, and let me flounder answering questions about computers about which I had no specialized experience. Then they wrote me up when I wasn't "the same employee" I'd been when I was helping customers locate the frozen chicken I'd just stocked an hour beforehand.

The job I got after this was the one I had the longest: I started in a temp-to-hire position as a receptionist for Terra West Property Management. I got fully hired, served as the receptionist for a few years, took a blip of time off to work as an "expediter" for one of our tech vendors (I had to call the lead tech up every morning and make sure he was awake and out of bed to be on time for his appointments). Then I returned to Terra West as a property manager. I got my real estate license, and enjoyed the work enough... but I didn't take it nearly seriously enough for one of our biggest clients. He insisted at one point that the company fire me, which they did not. But they did bury me far away from him in a completely different department. I worked as the main internal tech person at the company for almost a year, before I had D and quit work entirely.

Kind of.

The idea was that I would stay home and D's dad would find a job to make up for our shortfall, as I was the primary bread-winner at the time. That didn't really pan out, so we got a job together working as house parents for Girls and Boys Town of Nevada. Staring a job like that with a 2-month-old was stupid. We lasted half a year.

I was mostly home for 9 years. When we moved to Texas, I signed up to do some mystery shopping. Over time, I signed with more companies and typically had at least 6 jobs a week. I loved it because D could come with me, and I could accept jobs as I willed. I often didn't do the jobs that didn't seem worth it, and I relished the jobs that included things like spending a night at Great Wolf Lodge; or having dinner at Rainforest Cafe, then doing their internal Build-a-Bear. We got to go to Ripley's Believe It or Not! and Mme. Toussaud's Wax Museum. I did a battery of mystery shops at Six Flags once. I'd pack a bunch of fast food jobs in a big old circle around north Texas, and D and I would get food and listen to the Harry Potter audiobooks.

And then something kind of unbelievable happened. I'd been writing skits and things for church for years, and from that ended up with the opportunity to write for commercials and even a television trailer for a reality show called "The Shot" that was to feature former athletes who'd almost made it, and were competing for a second chance. 

But something interesting happened during that time: 1) I didn't really enjoy the writing when I was getting paid. It wasn't as fun as, say, writing this blog. 2) When the paid gigs came, that was cool... but when they didn't I wasn't upset. I'd written some for "Travel Weekly" when I lived in Las Vegas. That was very lucrative. It was infrequent, and I just never thought, "This writing thing is great. I could totally freelance for a living."

When I got divorced, I needed to work. I didn't want D to have to go to school amidst all of the other upheaval, so first I just had friends hire me to do cleaning and organizing. That was going pretty well, and then I got the call from the insurance agency offering me a job as... a receptionist (again!), and with an empty adjoining office for my kiddo. It was perfect.

After I'd been there a while, my boss started encouraging me to get my insurance license. I couldn't legally sign people up for policies unless I had my license, even though I was doing most of the practical work up to actually starting the policy for auto insurance at the time. Eventually, I dragged my feet enough that he gave me a deadline. I studied, and I passed the test on my first try. Minimum score to pass: 70. My score: 70.

They were kind enough to retain me when I moved to Austin, which, as you might imagine, put a dent in my "reception" abilities. I did customer service, virtual filing, and some newsletter and website stuff remotely. My boss again encouraged me to try to sell here in Austin, and he'd move me to commission, and I had the potential to make a lot more money. But I was satisfied with my reliable pay and familiar work.

Once again, I just didn't have higher aspirations. I was content.

I quit that job shortly before I had Mal, and have been full-time mumming ever since.

Then over the past few months, a friend of mine who is a copyeditor has been dropping hints about throwing some work my way. Finally, she told me that she had a book she thought I could help a guy with. I thought about it and talked it over with James, and realized that I had some editing baggage left over from another situation. But when I talked about this with my friend, she took it upon herself to decide that she'd pressured me too much (she hadn't) and that she wasn't going to mention it again.

I was *so* relieved. I wanted to want to do it. I thought the extra money might be nice. I wasn't confident I could commit any more than about 2 hours per day to it, and even then I wasn't sure where I was going to find those 2 hours. 

But I am just pretty satisfied with the pace of my life, and my responsibilities, and don't have any kind of drive to add anything new.

I have another friend who was very frustrated about having been put on light duty with a fire department where she worked after she'd had a baby. She could have stayed home on leave, but she wanted to get back into the action. She told me, "I am not the kind of person who can be satisfied with having gotten a load of dishes done during the day. I need something more." She ended up moving to another fire department so she could do actual fire stuff instead of just dispatch. And I'm glad she's getting the workouts and professional socializing that are so important to her.

I don't have that. I don't have the drive, or the need, or whatever it is that makes people antsy about being home.

When (if) my kids are up and out, I'm not particularly worried about what I'll do. I won't feel "aimless." I can think of MONTHS worth of stuff I could do if my time were strictly my own. I don't feel overwhelmed by the possibilities, or the unknown, and I am not worried that I need to be "more" than I am. I'd say that maybe I'm just lazy, except I'm not. I work hard every day. I guess I'm just not entrepreneurial or ambitious. I don't care what job I have, much, as long as it's not soul-sucking. If we need money, I'll go out and do something where I can work for a day, and come home and do whatever I want. If not, I can volunteer, and to out and take pictures, and maybe live in an RV again. 

I don't think that all people are called to be parents. I am glad that some people have work that they absolutely love so much that it's a big part of who they are. I definitely want my services and food and healthcare and everything else delivered by people who can't imagine what they'd do without their jobs. I appreciate that in the folks who have it. I'm just not one of them.

Speaking of taking photographs, I wanted to share this one because I love it so much. These are a trio of young ladies at a homeschool hangout. I love how "Texan" it looks. And I love how it shows that you can do mostly nothing and have a great time doing it.