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.