Life Goes On, and EVERYTHING Changes

After 12 years of being a stay-at-home mom, with all the joys and frustrations that it has brought, crises survived, and some of them averted, I have gone back to work.  Not entirely voluntarily, not entirely willingly, and not entirely satisfactorily, but I have done it.  And no one has died.  Yet.

It all started in the fall when the kids were back to school and I was mostly recuperated from my sinus surgery. I had applied without success to the local school districts as a special education TA, and at online tutoring and educational materials review companies.  No dice.  Twelve years out of the job market is a high hurdle to get over.  Not to mention that every Principal I ever worked for is retired and hard to contact.  So I went and applied for holiday retail jobs, both with online applications and in person.  I soon figured out that online works better, because they actually do contact you.  Soon enough I was hired by both Kohl's department store, and by Payless ShoeSource, where I had worked for a year or so, over a decade ago.  Did I intend to have two jobs?  No, but when Kohl's hadn't scheduled me significantly for 3 weeks, I accepted the second job.  Then I went crazy.

Fast forward 3 months, past trials and turmoils that I will blog about later, and things are totally different again.  I am working 6am to 11:30 am at a local branch of a nationwide chain of daycare centers.  My job starts with filling bleach/water bottles and delivering breakfast to the rooms, then "floating" between rooms as they need me.  On the negative side, it's stinking early in the cold dark winter morning when I roll reluctantly out of bed and I don't see my kids in the mornings at all. On the positive side, The Alien is successfully getting the kids out of bed and off to school each day, I can still get chores and errands done before they get home, and I'm only paying half of my paycheck for someone to watch The Monkey while I'm there.

While I often get sent to spend a few minutes in a room where they are "over ratio" for a few minutes before a second teacher is scheduled to arrive, I am usually only in two rooms: one where intake happens for everyone age 3 and over, and a half-hour stint in the gym with the "school-agers" before they get on their buses and go to school.  Then at 9:30 I teach Spanish.  Yes, Spanish. No, I'm not a Spanish speaker.  Spanish story time at the library is a huge help--thanks, Sue-the-librarian!  The job was described as VERY early Spanish, "just one step more than Dora the Explorer".

It's amazing to me how much my attitude toward life has changed and how much it challenges me to be doing so much supervision and so little actual teaching.  I really miss having the opportunity to teach much actual curriculum-especially science!  On the other hand, it's been challenging and exciting to develop a curriculum from scratch, in such an unfamiliar subject, for such young students.  I am remembering amazing amounts of things long-buried in my head after so many years of teaching in a very multilingual school.  I love finding a new song to sing each week and the books to go with that theme, and getting to know the children. Teaching a new language in the far corner of the very noisy Exploratorium with the constant traffic, is to say the least, challenging.

I have taken steps toward renewing my teaching certificate, which will take a while, and hopefully getting an additional endorsement in the process to make it more likely I can teach public school again, but for now this is it.  Do I love it? No. Do I hate it? No.  Is it paying a couple of bills with limited sacrifice? Yes.  And so for now, this is the new deal!

Going to Goodwill for Great Stuff

I can't bring myself to use coupons.  For pizza delivery, or a buy-one, get-one at the shoe store, sure.  But the grocery store? Very rarely.  They give me anxiety.  Either I didn't clip the right one, or I didn't bring the right one, or I don't like that product better than the generic anyway, or I have to make an extra trip to a second store, or.....you get the idea.  Too many rules.  And don't even get me started on those people who do "extreme couponing".  That approaches a mental illness, in my opinion.  It's too much work!  Running to too many stores, on the right dates, buying insane quantities, being the "early bird" shopper or getting the limited-time-only deal is not on my agenda.

At the same time, we live frugal lives.  I have made a lot of financial and material sacrifices in order to be the stay-home mom I believe my kids need.  I don't shop much because it's hard for me to say "no" to a good deal if it's not in the budget.  If I don't have a list, I don't go to the store.  And if I do go, I try really hard to stick to the list.  We try to buy only what we need, not whatever looks good today or would be a fun thing to have.

I went to get the taxes done last year and had donation receipts from Goodwill to claim.  Our tax preparer shared a story about immigrating to the US as a child and his family starting over financially.  I believe his exact words about purchasing clothing at Goodwill were "and then I knew we were destitute."  I can sympathize with his feeling of radical change in circumstances, but for me shopping secondhand is a totally different experience.


I love to dress my kids in hand-me-downs, because while they look great, if they get painted on, or gluey, or messed up playing in the mud, it's not a financial hardship.  We can have a wider variety of styles, and a wider array of choices in the closet than I could find in the number of store trips I get before I run out of patience and money.  I get beautiful holiday dresses for my daughter at garage sales, for less than the price of dry cleaning one of them.  I use Freecycle and other recycling sites to find toys, clothes and books.  We use the library A LOT.  So it feels really neat to go go to Goodwill or a yard sale and find beautiful things, often brand-new things, at a guilt-free price.

Most notably:

• Black stretch wool, satin pinstriped slacks from The Limited, with $98 store price tag attached, $3.99.  After I shortened them, they are probably the best fitting, most comfortable slacks I've EVER owned.
• Plum suede, knee high,cuffed boots for my daughter, never worn and still tied together from original store, $3.99.Not practical enough to pay full price, but a real fashion trophy she will enjoy, and I will enjoy watching her wear!  These became part of her costume for Seussical, the Musical Jr.
• Chocolate brown microfiber velour couch, full-size and factory-new, $325.  A perfect match for our living room with the antique piano in the same deep brown!
• Plaid purple windbreaker for my daughter, Kohl's store tags attached, $3.99
• The exact same royal blue leather purse I drooled over at Kohl's, but didn't buy, unused with matching wallet still attached by manufaturer  for $4.99.  I smile every time I see it.  Perfect size, perfect color, and doesn't fall off my shoulder!
• A beautiful winter coat for Caveman, green and black with LOTS of pockets, like new, $4.99
• Gorgeous lime green silk blazer/blouse with chinese figures on it, with designer/manufacturer tags attached, $6.99 (that one I came back for twice-when it was still there on the 3rd visit I knew it was for me. It was in the Halloween costumes!)  Like the suede boots, something I thoroughly enjoy the uniqueness of without paying the price.
• Brand-new brown loafers one size up for Monkey-boy, $3.99 Church shoes are so easy to get there, they so seldom get worn out before they are outgrown-and that makes it hard to pay full price for them, too.
• Like-new black dress shoes for Caveman, $4.99 in the same trip.
•  Antique, teak desk (or maybe it is a buffet with out the hutch) in lovely condition, $12.99.  Made a perfect computer table for the two boys' gaming computers (for Christmas) and still looks pretty in the family room.
• Student desks for both of the big kids' bedrooms for homework, art/drawing, etc. $12.99 each.

I don't always find the department store overstock items, but when I do it's a score!

On a slightly different note, Flylady (look her up if you don't know who that is) published a letter she got once from a follower of her home organization method that made me a fan of donating to Goodwill (or Deseret Industries, St. Vincent De Paul etc. Goodwill is just closest here).  The general idea was that getting rid of your clutter was really important because having too many "things" holds you back from enjoying the things that are most important.  She said that holding on to "stuff" created chaos in your home and life and that giving up what you no longer need or use gives you freedom.  The points that hit home to me though were that holding on to things:

• prevents you from accepting new blessings into your life because you're "full" or "busy"
• prevents things that were once blessings to you, but are now not needed, from blessing someone else,  and
• can even be a sign of a lack of faith.  Faith that the Lord will provide you the new blessings that you need at the time that you need them.

Having personally seen this last part in action, I know that letting go of things you can't use, or don't use can be a great blessing.  And that the Lord does indeed help us find what we need, when we need it, if we ask.