Looking Glass

 Thursday, 7/31/14 became another pivotal day and a tough one to have under my belt. I turned in my Letter of Resignation with dignity, confidence and a bit of sadness. It was an odd day, to say the least.  I approached Kim and Brian (the director and his administrator wife) while they were both in Brian's office. I had a copy of my resignation letter for them both. I handed each one of them their copy in an envelope. Kim, "What's this?" Brian in a joking tone, "A letter of resignation?" Kim laughed, "Yea, right." I shook my head and said in a quiet tone, "It is." Kim, "What?" They both tore into their envelopes at the same time and read the letter. When I could see them reading it for the second time, I sat in a nearby chair, unsure of what was coming next. The opening line of my letter was, "It is with a heavy heart that I give you this Letter of Resignation and notify you that my last day of employment with GTBHC...

  I sit on my patio after a long day of work and driving. The warm evening air cuddles me like a shawl while the subtlest of breezes bounds at me, enticing a cooling affect, but failing. The vegetation remains green and healthy despite the lack of rain in recent weeks. It proudly stands to the evening sky; the rhododendrons, tall wild grasses, the ivy growing at a hare's pace, all embracing the boundary of the lawn and adding a variety of greens in worship of the sun. The water is a clear reflection of the sky with  shore side trees and the bright blue sky mirroring it. The sunset is still hours away. A distant lawnmower is the only sound heard and this is a perfect time for reflection, not just for the water.  I think back on this last year and am still grateful for the job offering I had and clutched. I think of the many things I learned, the excitement of new supervisor responsibilities and the connections and respect...

 Tuesday night while at my Toastmaster's meeting, I had to step out of the room to take two "on call" calls. They were easy, though disruptive. Then my personal phone rang and out of the normal brush off, I stepped out of the room to take the call. It was Sean, the Director of the SeaMar Clinic of where I interviewed two weeks ago. I had basically written the interview off but he called to offer me the position of Front Office Supervisor, of which I had applied. I was stunned and gracious.  We made arrangements for my time to be at the clinic Thursday morning to complete some new hire paperwork and background checks. I was above cloud nine but kept my mouth shut to anyone else.  When I got to the car after the meeting adjourned, I felt choked up and called my daughter in Houston. I had to tell someone! She put me on speaker phone so her fiancé' could hear as well, while I made the announcement. My daughter was especially thrilled because she has been around enough ...

                                           The view from my basement apartment.  I moved in mid October to the basement apartment of my dear friend, KP. It may be small and a bit outdated, but I don't have to share the space with anyone else. I have my own kitchen again, my own cupboards...no other's possessions hoarding most of the space, as my last two locations with Linda and Jill showed. But that is OK, I am grateful I had a place to move to and they found it in their heart to share with me. (Corny, but true.) I made new connections and friends and shared a space for the first time in 52 years as an adult, with someone other than my kids or husbands. We keep on learning, don't we?  Of course, this picture was snapped shortly after my move in date, before the weather darkened and grew soggy. It is peaceful and I am glad KP offered it to me for rent. I cannot w...

 Well, after a year of futile attempts to break out of the long term care industry and into something new-I had to reopen myself up to that old industry. I received an email from a Tacoma home care agency and a phone call from an Olympia agency wanting interviews-within 24 hours of each other. I accepted the job in Tacoma with a private company-they are so excited to have me. I had to quit smoking to get it too-should make grumpy happy-they only hire non smoking staff and caregivers. Interesting. At least I am employed and this is different enough from my old agency, I am excited. I started on June 4th. More details to come-thought I would check in.

 Tonight, at an earlier time than normal, I am feeling a bit fatigued. I have been working quite steadily these last few days. Of course, keeping with the momentum of the move, I have carted about seven carloads of belongings from my bedroom and storage unit to my new space. I have been doing this solo as it is a task I have under control. I have carted boxes and boxes of possessions up a flight of nine steps to the new room, from the car through the garage, prior to that. That is OK. I like work and have missed it actually. I have become quite the computer geek and not liking where it is heading, as I see my waistline thickening.  I went to the new place on Sunday and shampooed the bedroom and hallway carpets. Ready for a fresh start. Linda was nice enough to share the key code with me, gaining me entrance into the house and start the move prior to the 1st. Thank goodness. That has helped enough to when my friend Sam shows up tomorrow after work, we shall only have three ite...

 An old high school bud and I had reconnected on facebook last year. She and I had an occasion to get together and enjoy a cup of java together at a local coffee shop. She joined me at a Toastmasters meting and ended up joining the club. She participated for a couple of months, but has taken an absence. I emailed her a couple of times to do a well check. She was just very busy with life in general, and working early meant Tuesdays was putting in a 13 hour day by the time the club meetings adjourned. We earmarked trying to catch up over coffee again.  I believe in one of my emails to her, I noted I was still job searching and had to move because of landlord's circumstances. She nicely told me, if I needed a place to stay for awhile, she had an extra room. How sweet! She called one evening a week ago, and we ended up having a very long discussion. She had a proposition for me. As life has overwhelmed her with physical problems and some bouts of depression, she decided she'd lik...

 I have been learning  a lot of information from my advocacy training for SafePlace, Olympia. I have learned about society myths surrounding the crimes of rape, assault and domestic violence. My work as an advocate for my former employer was different than this traumatic work. Here, you believe the caller or visitor reporting the assault to you, without hesitation. Formerly, I had to complete fact finding missions when a client or employee reported an allegation. I still have tendencies to ask questions while role playing, and that is taboo. We do not want to make the victim feel, for one second, they aren't believed. Only a small percentage of these crimes are reported anyway. It's horrible the shame that society has burdened victims with. Especially children and men;straight or gay. Remember the sagas of the Catholic Priests molesting and sexually assaulting so many boys? We have discussed that topic on more than one occasion. The imp...

 I took a break from my "to do list," earlier and was scanning my Twitter page. I ran across a young gent who told a story about his hard knock life and endeavors to keep going through personal hardship in order to become a writer. Of course, some points may be enhanced to catch reader's eyes and like his website and all, but something about his smart ass ways caught my eye. He is Craig Stone and his Twitter handle is @robolollycop. He has written at least two books now, and his third is in the works. His second book is called "Life Knocks,", his first was called, "The Squirrel That Dreamt of Madness."  I will have to see about reading them, as I don't have a kindle and I cannot tell the price from Amazon. I didn't look too hard yet, either. He also lives in England or such. He was interviewed for a BBC station and an audio clip is linked to his page of this interview. Quite interesting, really.  http://thoughtscratchings.com/the-method-behind-...

 After the disappointing career fair, I schlepped my way back to the car and gently held Gia, in an attempt to make amends. I punched in my son's address, took a sigh and drove off from which I came. Now, I have noticed that Gia is slow on the rebound often, and again, she waits until the last minute informing me of my next turn. This time I listed the directions to see advance steps, which helped to a degree. Eventually, I purposely did not take a turn...or two...to avoid her putting me back on I-5 interstate. I hate the congestion despite my leisurely attitude in reaching my destination. Messing with her mind was not a big concern for me at this point. I wanted her to "recalculate route," to avoid that freeway. Which she did.  Gia did get her revenge. (laugh here.) When I followed her directions to continue LEFT on Market street, as I crawled up the hill, I saw that Market St. went right, not left. But trust me, I challenged her when I turned into a driveway, did a thr...

  I eventually did find the destination of which I had been searching. Of course, Gia landed me on a corner of the mega-plex not even close to the northwest rooms. I didn't know this until I hustled my way through this vast expanse of cement and structures, now walking as fast as possible to find these obscure rooms before time ran out. I couldn't miss my chance on finding a potential employer, ya know.  After aimlessly wandering through this park like area in search of the fair, I had to stop several people and show them my printed directions in hope of their deliverance of accurate directions to the rooms. Some of the Center's site staff didn't even know where they were. All of the maps of the Center did not have one building or spot marked with "northwest rooms." After another half hour of schlepping my way around, I found the building with one small banner naming it, northwest rooms. Not one sandwich board, sign or balloon hung anywhere in this sea of fa...

 Yep, you heard me right, schlepping. I was schlepping in Seattle yesterday with nothing but good intentions of making a positive turn with my life. I had connected with an online resource bragging of a Career Fair in Seattle. I armed myself with hard copies of my resume, general cover letters, five different reference letters, plus, I put them all on a thumb drive should that need arise of someone wanting to email my credentials to someone of importance...like Bill Gates. I had registered in advance for the fair, copied directions, imagined what I would wear and even practiced interview techniques. I felt solid and confident. The event was slated from 11am-2pm. I left my house at 10:30am, which ETA in Seattle would be around 11:30 or 11:45 am. Me and my little Honda propelled down a familiar path towards Seattle, via the I-5 freeway.  To play into this day, it is important to note, that a couple of months ago, I decided to upload a navigator system onto my cell phone, for a...

 As my regular readers know, I spent some time a while back googling each of us. I had discovered that there is an English actress named Claire King, an author named Claire King, there is a Mary Claire King...I decided I needed to change my pen name here because of them. Last night when I changed it to Claire MC King, (MC=Margaret Catherine) I felt it set me apart. Now that I've read my post and commented on others' posts as Claire MC King...it appears ridiculous. It looks like a woman who loves McDonald's and Burger King so much, she adopted part of the names. Not liking it at all.  You may make suggestions, or you may see something goofy turn up again.  (For me, when I started this blog about 3 years ago, Claire represented "clarity", of which I needed. King derived from the fact that I was loo"king" for a new path in life after the divorce. I like my blog title and the meaning of my catch lines...etc...)

 I met with Linda again on a Thursday night to turn in my application and $45 fee. The new tenant, Mary was present and we took some time to size each other up and carried on a great conversation, I facilitating it with my normal ease. I felt elated upon leaving. However, in the days that followed, not only did she follow through with calling my references, she emailed me on two other occasions requesting documentation to feel more secure about renting to someone who is unemployed. My retirement account funding, the apartment complex reference of which I had to go out of my way to confirm about, write and deliver a release letter about, have roomie sign her reference letter, and agree to an outline of all of the "in House" rules, and a copy of my driver's license, and a few other things...which I understand her reasoning for her request. I am unemployed and my credit isn't very good. But some of the things were a bit invasive, especially when my friends told me of the...

 So this little chicken stayed in her coop last night. I sided, in my own argument of course, not to look like a stalker or a goofball. Braving it on night #1 was one thing. I maintained true, valid reasons to be present; to enjoy the music, relax and not be cooped up. But two nights in a row? Just seemed like I would raise suspicion, and let's face facts, despite my great conversations with short guy, (Steve), I have no idea if he has a girlfriend or is spoken for. My friend told me he's not married, but that's all I know in that department. I wouldn't want to go and get bitch slapped or anything for persuing a tethered man. I also learned he's Italian, not Hawaiin as my previous assumption noted. That is why he has "golden skin". (I reread my post from a couple of weeks ago).  I will keep encouraging my friend from ole' town to come and join me. Maybe next weekend I can get her here, then, get her there.

 It surprises me how this computer consumes my time while job searching. I will start my on line searches and then recognize four hours has passed by.  The feeling of, "all for naught" trickles through my mind. I received another rejection letter the other day. The HR sender wrote a nice letter stating that they had 200 applicants apply for the same job and unfortunately, mine did not get processed to the next step. (sigh here). I shall persevere. I have tried to open my mind to settle for "lesser" jobs, such as a retail job at a local department store, and am ready to complete applications with local employment agencies for just about anything. The first step was searching out the 15 local agencies and calling each one of them. A few are no longer in business, so I believe there are about a dozen in my area. I had to go to my storage unit and find my social security card as they require proof of citizenship and ability to be employed in the US. That was not an easy...

 After that last post, I have continued to keep busy and am surprised by the weeks that have slipped away without my reading my friends' posts, or writing on my own blog.  The night after my last post, I met with my daughter and her boyfriend who arrived from Houston for a short visit. We met with my son and his girlfriend in Seattle, and a lone friend of my son's at my son's pad. We went for a lovely dinner at a harbor side restaurant on the piers of Seattle. My daughter picked up the tab which I know was over $200. Really? Really? Bless her heart. We had a great time and I got to know her boyfriend a bit better. Their next chapter in life is moving into together when they return to Houston. During a quiet conversation she and I had, she reminded me, this is the first time she lived with a guy, she's always had female housemates...true...so, I only felt it fair to ask him at one point, as an upcoming medical student with future student loan debts and many years of fin...

Life has been quite busy, these last few weeks, again. I have been trying to look for projects, pass times, and the like. I continue to be very, busy at work, and struggling to keep up with the paper shuffle, staffing clients and dealing with the day to day tasks. My "floating help" seems to be taken away on other currents, not  steered in my direction as planned, by my service director.The gals who were suppose to help me weekly, often do not make it to my office. I stay late at work at least twice a week, trying to focus on file management without the phones ringing constantly. It helps, but makes me go...blah... The volleyball on Sunday mornings has been fun, though I have been too slack to go the last couple of times. On Memorial weekend, I was on call and did not feel like going to play as the pager was going off all the time. Last week, I did not feel like going as I had been up on Saturday night until 3am...(smile here). Interesting night: My co worker from the O...

I just signed up to be a volunteer with an area Habitat for Humanity Organization. I hope they call upon me to help with a project.

In relation to my post; "All a Flurry" from 2/2011, I did meet one of my friends' guy friends last weekend. My co worker hosted a poker party, and invited me, as her guy, friend would be attending. It was fun. Simple change was the betting factor. I have accumulated a lot of change, and lost some of it there. I teased the other 8 people and said I was happy to contribute to their causes. I had a great time, laughing with new people. I went to a wine tasting venue at a local winery with the gent, to a nice dinner with him, then out with another friend to a birthday party and to a local dance club. Some kind of dance club! (He is bound and determined to open my envelope.) In reflection thinking of these minor, time passing events this weekend, I have mentally admitted to a life of small circumstances in measurement to some people. There are those who have had such adventures, such different lifestyles and merry go rounds of drama. My life has been very plain in comparison...