First Jobs--June

 I'm beginning a new series, First Jobs, in which I ask people about their first work experiences.
Today, I am going to tell you about the first work I did when I was a teen.

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Like many teen girls, my first work for pay was babysitting. My older sisters paved the way for me by being responsible, good babysitters. Thus I didn't have to look for work. Jobs came looking for me.

When I first started, I sat with older kids—meaning no infants. As I became more experienced, I also cared for younger kids who needed their diapers changed and bottles warmed. I remember during one of these early jobs of watching a baby when there was an unfortunate incident with an overflowing toilet. I won't go into the details, but let's just say there were several things that needed dried out after I left. The parents blamed themselves for not telling me everything I needed to know, but not surprisingly, they never called me back.

The most regular customer I had was a little girl named Sue. She was an only child and loved to preform. She often grabbed a hairbrush to use as a mike and belted out a song. One of her costumes was a set of pigtails her mother fashioned for her out a towel and two rubber bands. She thought she looked glamorous in this long, straight “hair” which was nothing like her short, curly hair. She also loved books, however her mother, a kindergarten teacher, didn't believe in teaching kids to read until they were school age. So Sue didn't learn to read until she started school even though she really wanted to. One day when Sue was four, she asked me to read her a particular book, but she couldn't find it. She said, “Oh, well. I'll read it to you.” Then she accurately recited the entire book. This was not a picture book. This was a chapter book and she knew every word. When she finally learned to read, she was soon reading at a fifth grade level and not long after that jumped to an eighth grade level. Sue had the biggest vocabulary of any child I knew (and bigger than many adults.)

ROFL Cat

There was one bad babysitting night that I remember vividly. I was watching a little boy named Oliver. His family had several pets and actually ran a tropical fish store in their basement. On that dark night Oliver burst into the room crying, “Max killed my hamster!” Max was the cat and he had indeed somehow unlocked the hamster cage and “played” with the hamsters in there. One was dead and I nursed the other one along until the parents came home. That was not a night I wanted to relive.

Even though babysitting was a more informal job than some, my mother said that I should treat it like a real business. She had me send out letters stating my rates and policies. One I remember was that my rates went up after midnight. At first, I didn't want to do this, but I did, and it taught me that being professional and having things in writing are very important. Knowing this has served me well since then.

I had many other adventures in babysitting, but that's enough for now. Another time, I will tell you about the important job that I didn't get paid for.

Thankful Sunday--June 7, 2014

I am thankful for sunshine and my cats.

After a rain, there is nothing like the warm feel of sunshine. I am thankful that my cats remind me of this sometimes when I get caught up in the busyness of the day.

A Second Look--June 4, 2014

Here are some things I saw this week during a

 Second Look.

The bearded iris are almost done blooming, but the Siberian iris are still showing their beautiful purple color.

The tulip poplar tree is blooming.

Ward and I had an interesting show one morning as we watched a neighborhood cat stalk a groundhog.

The very fragrant wild roses are blooming. 

The golden garlic is blooming. Every year, I never remember we have these plants until they bloom. So they're always a nice surprise.

The chickadee is starting to lay eggs in the new nest that was built on top of another chickadee nest.

The bluebird box was starting to get crowded with the growing babies. Three days after this, the box was empty. Now we're not the only ones with an empty nest. :)

After having a big serving of suet, the squirrel cleaned up seeds under the bird feeder.

Thankful Sunday--June 1, 2014

I am thankful for Theo, 

and Theo is thankful for a good bargain.

Yesterday, Ward and I visited Theodore to celebrate his recent birthday. He was excited to show us the latest acquisition for his future clock shop--an almost new shop vac that he got for a very good price. We are thankful that Theo is our son, and he is thankful that he got a very good price on this shop vac. :)

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--May 30, 2014

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions. (Thanks to Jo from Simply Being Mum for sponsoring FWF this week.)

This Week's Food Waste

I knew that we had some potatoes that had to be used soon, but I didn't quite make it to them soon enough. We had one potato that was unsalvageable. If it had only been shriveled, I would have soaked it and used it. But alas, it was rotting too. Oh, well. The other two made some good fried potatoes.

This Week's True Food Confessions

I grew up in a time and place when bacon was king. Every morning, my hard-working, lineman father would have bacon and three eggs, over-easy, for breakfast. This meant an accumulation of bacon grease in our grease can. Some people kept their grease can on the stove, but my food-safety-conscious mother kept ours in the refrigerator. But nevertheless, we always had a delicious supply of bacon grease to cook with. And, boy, did our food taste good. However, we eventually became enlightened nutritionally, and my father started having a bowl of Total cereal every morning instead of bacon and eggs.  That made it hard to fill the grease can and at some point it was gone all together. We adapted, but we still occasionally drooled over the thought of over-easy eggs and potatoes fried with bacon grease.

So last night, I was having a bit of nostalgia and we had bacon for supper. This was for two reasons--one was to try out some naturally cured bacon (it was good), and two was to have some fried potatoes and wilted spinach-- both of which can't really be done properly without bacon. At least, not from my perspective. And to round it out, we had roasted asparagus. We were lucky because the spinach and asparagus were fresh from Uncle Billy's garden.

I got a bit distracted with my malfunctioning camera, and burned some of the fried potatoes, but the rest were good.  Almost as good as I remember Mrs. Shepherd's were. Mrs. Shepherd was a neighbor who kept her grease can on the stove and had fried potatoes every night for supper. I loved visiting her around that time. I also wilted the spinach in the bacon grease. Yum. So last night, we had a delicious supper where I managed to slip some vegetables in with our bacon. :)