Progress.

About 2 ½ months ago I was cooped up on the couch nursing my bloody knees and sulking in my unemployment. Now I’m partially employed and functionally healed.

(Don’t mind my gangsta check-ma-scars face. Also, yes those are Halloween boxers I’m wearing.) 

I had two interesting conversations recently. One was about the fact that unemployment is difficult. I know, I know, how can doing nothing all day every day be so difficult? But doing nothing was the hardest thing I ever had to do. It’s a perpetual feeling that you should be occupied. And everyone asks, “what do you do?” and as an honest individual you’re required to answer, “absolutely nothing,” or as a clever individual you get to answer with something like, “I contribute to society by shopping local,” or “I’m getting really into crocheting,” or “I convert oxygen to CO2 on a momentary basis.” Moral of the conversation, being unemployed is ridiculously obnoxious and extremely tolling in the do-it-yourself/constantly-better-yourself US culture.

The other interesting conversation was about having good health. I was talking to a 60 something woman who recently went through mystery health problems and experienced internal pain for about a week. After that week of pain was over, she said she had energy to do everything. She wasn’t in crazy better health or anything, it was simply that she’d experienced life with pain and then was uber appreciative of life in a healthy body. Occasionally, since healing from my longboarding accident, I’ll look down at my body and realize I’m completely healthy and I’ll just stand there and revel in it. One day my roommate Wendy caught me staring at my hands for a solid minute. She asked me what the heck I was doing and I proclaimed, “The human body is an incredible thing!” because it’s true. A couple months ago I had half a hole in my left hand, couldn’t use my wrist, and was unable to walk. Then my magical body healed itself. Go body!

So if you’re currently employed, even if it’s a tedious job, and you’re rockin’ a healthy body just look at yourself and cheer. Maybe high five your able body. Seriously. Because once you’ve been immobile and unemployed even being able to get up and go to a job of any sort feels like the greatest accomplishment. I may not be fully employed by a job that puts my education into practice, and I still have some gnarly scars on my knees, but I’d say it’s progress. 

New Characters in My Life

Due to the obtaining of my job, a lot of new characters have been added into my life. I see approximately eight children on a regular basis throughout the week. They’re all beginning to develop individual personalities in my eyes. And I gotta say, babies and toddlers are an odd bunch.

I’ll explain to you a few of my favorites, er, perhaps favorite isn’t the correct word:*

1. First, there’s The Baby Pusher. The Baby Pusher just turned two, and upon that birthday she promptly earned her sassy pants. She thinks she’s big news around the daycare and uses this attitude to push down babies. I really mean that. There are a few nearly one year olds that are barely learning how to stand and they stabilize themselves on tables and chairs and whatnot until The Baby Pusher comes around and knocks them right down to the ground. Those babies must be thinking, “I’m doing it! My legs are sustaining me! The next step is mobility!” and then BAM—The Baby Pusher strikes again.

2. Second, there’s The Potty Dancer, who’s a little boy close to three years old. I don’t remember this special phase in life, but apparently when you’re first learning what it feels like to need to pee your body does peculiar things. When The Potty Dancer gets the urge to go, he can’t quite seem to control his wiggly movements. He starts doing this little squirmy, twitchy, antsy potty dance and everyone in the room knows what he’s gotta do. The most humorous part of all this is that The Potty Dancer would much rather pop, lock & drop it in place than stop what he’s doing and give into his body’s urges by going to the restroom.

3. Lastly, there’s The Bully. The Bully isn’t too much of a bully to everyone else, but he certainly is one to me. He’ll be playing all fine and dandy and then suddenly he’ll stop, seek me out, point a tiny yet stern finger directly at me, and yell “NO!” for no apparent reason. Or, while on his way to do something else, he’ll make a special pit stop purely to b-line it for me and hit me. Granted, it’s a fairly powerless hit, but still, no one likes to be sought out for a sucker punch. Perhaps this all comes with me being the new kid. I gotta earn my in with this munchkin crowd.

*I didn’t use real names because I felt like that would break some unforeseen law of child exploitation. 

The Next Step of My Future: MIT Program

Good news everyone, I’ve begun something that will occupy much of time. It’s an MIT program. At this point you must be thinking, “Wow, Kate, how impressive that you got into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I didn’t know you were such a tech-savvy genius!”…but that’s not quite the same program. Rather I’ve begun what I like to call the Mother In Training program. Ok, ok, enough joking around the bush. Moral of the story, I got a job! I’m now employed as an assistant teacher at an in-home daycare in Corvallis, or more like a training course of how to mother seven children at once.

Here’s how the obtaining of the job went down:

Last Sunday I was teaching preschoolers in DoxKids (like Sunday School at my church), and one of my fellow teachers informed me that she runs a daycare out of her home. I asked her plenty of questions about it simply out of curiosity and without any alternative motives. She asked me what I do in life and the conversation went something like this…

Me: “Well I just graduated from Western Oregon University back in June and I’ve been searching for a job ever since to no avail…blah, blah, blah, useless English/writing degree, blah, blah, standard post grad sad life spiel…”

My now current employer: “You want a job? I’ll GIVE you a job!”

She offered the position to me in that kind of you-don’t-know-what-you’re-asking-for voice, but she was nice and I was desperate so the rest is history!

Except it’s not really history because now I’m living it. Plus I’m going to keep telling you about it. I started the job on Monday and then continued to work the rest of the week. It’s only a part-time position (my official hours are 9am to naptime) and I really only have work when there are a lot of kids, so it’s a need-basis kind of a deal. But basically I chase around 1-3 year olds and hold babies for half the day. It’s great and pretty much exactly what I’m looking for right now in life.

While I was sitting in all those literature and creative writing classes just a few short months ago, I never thought to myself man it’d be great if I could use this knowledge to eventually go into a job of diaper-changing. But it’s a job, it occupies my time, and the kids are really stinking cute. So I may not have earned my MRS in college, but I’ve moved on to the higher education of a Mother In Training program. 

Technicalities

This is my, er Katie Arnold's, official job rejection letter:

Technically, technically I didn’t get rejected from that credit union I interviewed with. Katie Arnold did, not I, Kate Arnold. What a slap in the face. Not only was I rejected on a premature phone call to the company, but two weeks later I was also rejected via snail mail in a standardized letter and the only personal touch to whole thing was incorrect. I guess I didn’t make as good of an impression on them as I thought I did. It’s ok, I don’t want to work for anyone who calls me Katie anyway.

In other news, in my hunt for a future career or a passion/direction in life, I considered being a mentor. I tried typing “become a mentor” into the google search bar, but instead google guessed I wanted to become a mermaid. I ran with it. I’ll be getting my scales in seashell bra in no time. 

Attempting to be an Oregonian

For about four years now, I’ve been a Californian masking as an Oregonian. Sometimes I think I was meant to be an Oregonian, and other times I think they should kick me right outta this state and back down to the big ol’ golden state. As far as I can tally, there is one reason why I’m a close to being an Oregonian and two reasons why I can’t shake the CA stamp on my forehead.

Reason 1 for being considered an Oregonian: In an attempt to become more like a real Oregon resident, I bought a Bi-Mart card. I’m aware that Bi-Mart isn’t necessarily a super Oregonian thing, so let me explain: you need a Bi-Mart card to get into the store, and for four years of college I refused to spend the $5 to become a lifetime member because I didn’t think I’d be in the state for life and because I’m cheap. Once I moved into a real-person house in Independence and was no longer a student but rather a townie, I decided to make the leap and splurge for the card. I’ve used my coveted green piece of plastic about three times since making the purchase and I already feel more like a perma-Oregonian. Plus it’s green, so I consider it my green card for the state. Worth it.

Reason 1 for being considered a Californian: Speaking of plastic cards, my CA license makes me feel like a 17 year old with a fake ID every time I try to buy alcohol in Oregon. I’m 22 years old and yet I still get twitchy and nervous when I go to buy a six pack of beer or a bottle of wine. Every checkout person takes about a full minute (I’m really not exaggerating) to examine my license. They usually can’t find my DOB or they bend and twist it a lot to see if it’ll burst into flames revealing all its fake glory. The other day I actually had a young register attendant ask me, “um…where’s your birthday?” and I had to point to the highlighted & centered DOB. So every time I try to buy a little 21-and-up beverage, I’m blatantly reminded of my California roots.

Reason 2 for being a Californian: Getting gas still makes me awkward (and I’m not just referring to the bodily kind). For those of you who don’t know, in Oregon it’s illegal to pump your own gas. You actually have to be waited on while a gas attendant pumps it for you. So. Awkward. I still can’t get down the sequence of events for proper gas retrieval. Is it car in park, ignition off, radio off, card out of wallet, window down, card to attendant, gas request? Or window down, car in park, ignition off, radio still on, card out of wallet, gas request, then card to the attendant? Am I forgetting some steps? Did I do too many things? Does every attendant I deal with get a kick out of my awkwardness? Probably. I’d really just prefer to drive to any other state border and do it myself.

-Final score-

Oregonian: 1

Californian fo life (and an awkward one at that): 2  

Middle Schoolers Are a Weird People Group

I had the privilege of chaperoning a middle school dance at the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis last night. Apparently schools stopped hosting dances a couple years ago, so the BGC started putting them on as a way to provide safe weekend activities as well as an outlet for all that pent-up dance frustration that middle schoolers harbor. It was a hilarious good time. I used to think airports were the best place for people watching, I now think any gathering of middle schoolers is.

Allow me to set the scene of the night: There were about 450-500 middle school age kids from all over the area. The hundreds of kids dispersed themselves among four different rooms that were open for the night. Room one was a small gym for basketball and volleyball, room two was a game room with foosball type activities, room three was the Teen Room that consisted of computers and videogames, and room four was the main attraction of a dance floor. The theme of the night was a black light party, which meant neon colors, white clothing, and special highlighters for body decorating were abundant (most of the boys drew mustaches on themselves since facial hair is still about a decade away for them). The dance floor and Teen Room were both black-lighted for the evening. I spent my night rotating between the Teen Room, the dance floor, and hallway patrol.

There’s no way to recap all the awkward awesomeness that was last night, so instead I shall mark my top five highlights:

1. In the Teen Room, my first post of the night, a girl walked into the room with the brightest neon yellow shirt with some kind of animal print on it. It was potentially the most obvious shirt of the night. About ten minutes later, after that girl left, a guy came in wearing the most brilliant neon yellow pants. Later, while I was on hallway duty, I spotted those two walking down the hall holding hands. I was glad they neon-completed each other.
2. As I moved to the dance floor, I quickly realized I was too short to be a chaperone of anyone over the age of five. The majority of the room was taller than me, so I really didn’t have much authority when I tried to tell the kids they were dancing too close (I actually never had the gumption to do that—I did yell at a boy for slapping a girl’s butt though, now that Mama Kate shall not stand for). And for those of you who are curious, no I did not get asked to dance. I may be short, but I either have an old face/stance or I’m still not appealing to middle schoolers. 
3. Middle school boys smell. Bad. A lot of the boys didn’t really know how to dance, but they did know how to fist pump, which caused a pumping of odor throughout the room. I had to back myself into a corner near the door just to breathe.
4. It was interesting hearing the music that kids dance to these days. Most of it I listen to or it’s just popular on the radio. Two songs were shockers though. One of which was “SexyBack”. I was so proud that my JT, though out of the music bizz for nearly five years now, is still bumpin’ on the dance floors. The other shocker was Rebecca Balck’s song “Friday”. I thought that song was a joke, not a real play-it-at-dances song. And all the kids knew the words and sang at the top of their lungs. I still can’t get over the lyric about trying to decide which seat to sit in. Most of these kids are still too small to sit in the front seat of their mom’s minivan, so easy choice there.  
5. One of the best awkward moments encompassed everything that makes middle school great…and awkward. In the hallway, I caught the tail end of a convo in which an elaborately decked out girl was apologizing to a boyishly dressed girl. Her apology went something like this: “I’m so, SO sorry! I really thought you were a boy! I’m so sorry I hit on you, it’s just you looked kinda like a boy, and a cute one too! Like totally the ones I usually go for. I’m so sorry GIRL!” It was pure hilarity. Normally I would feel really bad about this incident, but the boy/girl had a Justin Bieber kind of haircut and was wearing exactly what all the boys were wearing. The boy/girl wasn’t phased by it and just wanted to get away from the weird hitting-on-her girl and go dance. Oh middle school, what a special, magical, awkward time in life. 

Goodbye facial piercings, hello…continued unemployment

Ok, Interneters. I’ve been keeping something from you. A couple of weeks ago I had two job interviews with a local credit union for the part time position of a teller. This job had everything I want right now in life: a salary that pays the bills, real person benefits, customer service interactions, the draw of the potential dangers of bank robbery, and much more. Once I got the second interview, I thought I was in. I was so convinced of this that I went around telling every brother and their mother about the interviews (simply because I was excited to tell people something more than “I’m just searching for a job” when asked what I’m doing in life). I also took out all my piercings: the rook, the lip, the nose—everything except two classy pearls studded in my lobes. I got my hair cut, I neglected to paint my nails any brash colors, I pondered an entire new professional wardrobe…the whole corporate shebang. But, as you probably could have guessed by the title of this blog entry, I was kindly rejected from the position. I was in a park next to a river when I got the rejection news, and if it weren’t for the old lady walking/talking to her dog I probably would have burst into tears right then and there. I was crushed. But the more I thought about it the more I realized I wasn’t actually crushed. I stared into the flowing Willamette before me and I was overwhelmed with these hymn words:

“When peace like a river attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll,

Whatever my lot,

Thou hast taught me to say, 


It is well, it is well with my soul”

And then I realized I was not crushed. I was momentarily thwarted, but certainly not crushed. For a period of time, I had put my hope in that potential job rather than in something much more hopeful. I don’t even want to be a credit union teller. From this small experience, I’ve learned that I want to help people. I don’t even need to get paid for it (of course, I say that mid-month when I don’t have any bills to pay and my cupboards are fully stocked), I just want to make people feel good about themselves and to make days brighter. So that is what I shall seek: a way to brighten days and The Hope that I know is more long-lasting than any part-time position.

“So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.” –Ecclesiastes 8:15

 As a small rejection coping method/professional rebellion, I painted my nails all the colors I could find.