It’s been a while since I was last able to post anything here on Blade & Cauldron. Overall, things are going alright. We even came through Hurricane Irene unscathed. There were branches to clean up, and we lost our cable, internet, and phone for a little over 24 hours. The only other loss has been 2 days pay – the day of the storm itself, and today as our building was without power and phones. Compared to what could’ve occurred, I am not complaining.

That being said, juggling two jobs isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Its physically demanding. Its emotionally draining. I don’t see my girls that much. I don’t get that much in the way of downtime to unwind. I get even less in the way of time to get any household work (or even bill paying) done. The last time things were this hectic was back in 2007 when I was working an average of 53 hours a week and going to college at night.

This past week was really hard. The plan was to work at my telemarketing job 8-2 Monday through Thursday; 8-4:30 on Friday; and then 11-7 on Sunday. The plan was to work at my cashier job 4-11 Monday through Thursday and 10:30-7 on Saturday. There wound up being some flaws with this plan:

• I lost a half hour at job #1 right off the bat on Monday morning when flooded roads required a detour which turned my 15 minute commute into 45 minutes.
• Job #2 was supposed to be a cakewalk this week. The focus was supposed to be on computer based training, observation, and finally being put on a register with another cashier to shadow me and walk me through various procedures.
• The computer based training references the “old” register system. The new registers, while requiring very similar procedures, have a significantly different set up.
• Due to staffing shortages (which were compounded by massive crouds of people who used a coming hurricane as an excuse to shop as if stockpiling for the zombie apocalypse) I was thrown onto a register with only about 30 minutes of observation, and without not only a shadow but without any clue about how to get help when I needed it.

But, I survived. Friday morning dawned and I was thrilled to only have one job to go to. I was overjoyed at the prospect of having the next 2 days to catch up on my sleep.  However between being so tired that I was slurring my words and having little luck making any “sales,” I was sent home after only 3 hours for “low production”, despite the fact that I’ve worked there for almost 10 years, despite the fact that they know my situation, despite the fact that they could’ve moved me to a different task, and (most angering) despite the fact that they carried newer hirers who had less sales than I did but sent ME home.

The result? The money I earned from 21 of the hours I worked at Walmart this week wound up being cancelled out by losing a total of 13.5 hours at my telemarketing job.  And while I can make up some of the hours I lost today, I can’t make all of them up – so once again this week will find me “short” in spite of working two jobs.  So I’m just a wee bit stressed.

But, I am blessed in that our trees are still standing and our rugs are still dry.  I have electricity to cook our food.  My family has a roof over their head and enough to eat.  We are safe and sound and I am very very grateful.

Blessings

Jia

Worked a half day today at my primary job to make up the hours I lost to interview for Walmart earlier in the week.  The time went quickly as I got to sit next to a wonderful lady who I rarely get the chance to speak to.  I even made my target in terms of the number of leads I was able to generate.

From there I hit two supermarkets.  And then I came home and cooked for the week ahead.  I made two huge pans of macaroni and cheese with bits of steak, caramelized mushrooms, and sauteed mushrooms.  I baked some chicken thighs and legs.  I even roasted some eggplant with plans to make Bengan Bhartha later in the week and turned the meat from some chicken 1/4′s into chicken salad which Accolan can turn into something akin to tuna melts one night this week.

We are blessed with being able to have our niece AngelGirl over for the weekend, even if I’ve only seen her in passing.  All 3 girls have been holed up in one bedroom for most of the time giggling, though we did get them to go to the community pool for a bit.  Tomorrow while I’m at work (11-7) the plan is for them to watch a movie from the $1 a night Red Box, Beastly, and to bake cookies.  I can’t say how much it means to have them all getting along so well and seemingly enjoying each others company so much.

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend.

Blessings

Jia

As part of my continued efforts to make up for the loss of Accolan’s disability income, I have taken a second job.  I had orientation today at my local Walmart and begin cashier training next week.  For now, it looks like I’ll be getting around 26 hours a week, though I’m hoping for more as time goes on (especially as we enter the holiday season).  As it looks right now though, I’ll be working 40 hours a week at job #1, 26 hours a week at job #2, and up to 8 hours a week at “job” #3 where I can add another $50-140 a week when I can (for as long as it lasts).

My primary job is working with me in that they are letting my hours be a little more fluid than they would otherwise be to accommodate my need for a second job.  Now granted, while some of this is (as shocking as it may be) out of loyalty to me and the work I’ve done for them in the past decade, I know that most of it is because I’m a hard little worker bee.

In spite of this, more than 4 months later, they are still trying to find a way to justify cutting my hourly pay rate.  But, I’m hoping to escape it, just like I did over a year ago, and have been really keeping my nose to the grindstone.  The problem is in the fact that my pay rate is based on a chart that looks at how many successful “sales” we make on average for every 4 hours worked.  It takes nothing else into account – not length of service, not being cross-trained in other tasks, nothing else matters but your number.  To make matters worse, the reimbursement rates haven’t been changed to take into account inflation, or even how the nature of the job changed after the Do Not Call list.  I’ve been making the same hourly rate for 6 years – every year I have to work a little harder to hold onto it – every year it buys a little less.

While I am worried about my ability to juggle it all, especially when fatigue is already an issue for me, I am choosing to look at this as an opportunity as opposed to a burden and hoping that I’ve been led to a Path that will help lead me to my dreams after 10 years with my finger on the pause button.  I am choosing to believe that it will all be okay.  I am choosing to believe that, in the end, it will all be worth it.

Blessings

Jia

One of my favorite things about Facebook, despite the fact that it is so much of a time suck, is that I am connected daily to so many wonderful people.  People, for the record, that I am proud to know, be that knowing irl or online only.  One of the benefits of these connections is that I am almost daily reminded of wisdom I have forgotten, or pointed to truths I wish I could forget.  Today Cat (who I’ve known through her blog Quaker Pagan Reflections and more recently No Unsacred Place) posted links on her Facebook account which spoke of the death of the middle class.  How much harder it is to attain than it once was.  How many people are finding themselves slipping away from it.

I had a fairly typical childhood of the 1970s.

My dad worked and my mom stayed home.  Dad brought home the bacon and mom fried it up in a pan.  I went to school, watched TV (back when there was only 7 channels and changing to another meant getting up and walking across the room), and played outside (when mom could get my nose out of a book).  Knowing when to come home didn’t mean checking my cell phone (or even a wrist watch) but, instead, listening for my mom to call out my name.

My mom went back to work (making me a latch key kid) when I was in 4th grade (1978-1979).  No one talked to me about why.  But, looking back now, I’m sure it more a matter of needing the money and less a matter of mom wanting fulfillment.  Looking back, from that time forward financially life just got harder and harder for them.  Again, no one talked to me about why.  Maybe I should’ve asked, but that wasn’t the kind of relationship I had with my parents – to sit down and talk about deep things.

• I know that debt was a problem for them.
• I know that my mom had to work a second job at one time.
• I know that money was often a source of frustration, and fear, and fights.

Fast forward to today, when I was led to an article about how 30 years ago today the death knoll was first sounded for the middle class as it was known then.  Suddenly a lot of things became clearer.

For a brief shining time I was a SAHM (1995-2001), not because we could really afford to, but, because my wage was so low that it made little sense to hand 3/4 of it over to a day care center so I could go back to work.  While we joked to friends and family that it was Accolan’s job to make the money and my job to make it seem like more, as the years passed it got harder and harder and our “joke” became more of a statement of my weekly struggle.

During a lay-off I rejoined the work force, so Accolan could go back to school for web-design.  Unfortunately, school ended right around the time the Internet bubble burst and jobs in his new field didn’t exist.  Even after he found a job in his original field, there were bills to play catch-up on, so I kept working.  Then he got hurt (2002) and went out on disability.  Eventually, for me working part-time became working full-time.  At first, it was simply to cover health insurance.  As time passed, it was simply to survive.

Recently his disability provider decided that he should go back to work.  His chronic pain makes this impossible, so we are appealing.  I am struggling to hold on to the one way I’ve found to boost our weekly income.  I am struggling to find a second job. I am struggling to keep everyone’s spirits up, to keep Accolan from sinking into an abyss of self-blame, to keep the girls from being afraid.  I am struggling to keep my own head above water, emotionally as much as financially.

At this point Accolan and I have accepted that the worst case scenario is that we go into foreclosure or declare bankruptcy.  That we start over.  I will fight to prevent it, but if if it comes to pass I can live with it.  I have my beloved, I have my children, I have what really matters.

But, that doesn’t stop me from feeling betrayed by my country forgetting the fact that America was once a place where “working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent’s income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer … that no matter how “lowly” your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.” source

Now?  It’s a place where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class has been redefined as requiring two incomes just to make ends meet.

Now? It’s a place where too many people are expected to be so grateful to have a job at all that they won’t complain about the hours they are expected to work, the wages they are expected to live on, and the benefits (that were once common) they are expected to do without.

Now? It’s become a society where we are still expected to trust in the theory of trickle down economics, when we all are too well aware that corporations run under the model of Greed Is Good and the only economy grown by tax cuts for big business is that of their owners, officers, and stock-holders.

And that, just isn’t right.

Blessings

Jia

It’s been a hard week in terms of keeping myself on track financially.  I’ve been exhausted, truly bone weary.  So much so that the extra 15 minutes of sleep seemed so much more important than the ability to make my daily sandwiches that I found myself at the WaWa on my way to work more than once.  Additionally, this week the young man that Reya has been “seeing” since last fall came back from spending July at the academic camps his parents had sent him to out of state. I splurged and ordered a couple of pizzas (spending about $28 incl tip).

What this means in that I had to make up that money by spending less at the grocery store this week.  Luckily,  still have food leftover from last week’s cooking, this worked out just fine.

I raided the pantry for a bunch of canned crushed tomatoes (purchased at $.88 to $.99 each), minced a bunch of garlic and onion, and picked some basil from the backyard and put up a pot of marinara sauce.  Some of it will be served over pasta, and some will (with the help of a block of mozzarella I defrosted and some rolls I have yet to purchase) turn some lentil balls I made last weekend into meatball parm subs.

I also took a bunch of zucchini I harvested last weekend and made zucchini fritters.  The main changes to the recipe involved frying them in the last of the olive oil (I will be using vegetable oil from here on out as it runs about 1/3 the price of the extra virgin oil I prefer) and adding more zucchini to the batter than was called for.  They are crisp and tender and savory and so good I want to eat all of them all by myself.

I still have to make a batch of saffron rice (to keep us in deconstructed tacos), but other than that my once a week cooking is done.  The only food shopping yet to do involves picking up some fresh tomatoes, a dozen eggs, and some rolls – probably no more than $15.

Next weekend?  I still have some chicken meat in the freezer to turn into pasta salad, and the ingredients for potato salad.  I have hot dogs in the freezer and a bunch of frozen vegetables.  Ah!  The joys of a full pantry.

Blessings

Jia

image thanks to Blueclayfarm