Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Qwerty-itis

Being solely a housewife, housewifing around, is as bittersweet as I ever thought it would be.  It's okay, I like bittersweet.  It's the only chocolate consumption that I have control over.  But not having a mandatory, preset hour to rise, scheduled lunch hour, and clock-out time has me all over the map.  Now, I could definitely see myself enjoying this unemployment if our income remained the same:
  • Coffee rendezvous
  • Charity work
  • Gourmet meals everyday
  • Expensive hobbies
  • "Lunching"
  • Raising babies
Nope, I'm confined to a 5-mile radius to save on gas and eating more rice and beans than my country people back in El Salvador.  Being forced to take it easy is nice on my energy levels, but the bone-works still creak and spasm.  I still clean-up in the same manner I did during the good ol full-time days, in tiny spurts.  I've gotten more workouts in, more reading, more rest, and family time.  But I'm spending plenty of time plugging away at the keyboard as if I still had a job to get out of the house as soon as possible.

My one rule when I got canned was to wake up and get dressed, including makeup, even if I don't plan on going out or felt like poop.  Some days I dress casual, some I get in gym clothes, as if I could still make the treadmill cry.  It makes me move at a steady paced as opposed to PJ mode.  And sure enough, I've signed up at staffing agencies, scattered my resume across the Tampa-metro, and gave monster.com a good spike in web traffic.  In between brakes, I cleaned kitty litter.  They're so much happier now that I have time to refresh their potty box more often.

Progress update:

I'm still avidly searching with hints at a slightly better future.  Not too much.   Let's not get carried away here.  I'm looking for part-time so that my body may live 5 more years than if I had the full-time job, but those gems don't abound.  Administrative skills call for "9-5" days which are really8-5.  What a deceiving term.  Focusing on the Downtown Area so that I'll land in the heart of the city and feel more spunky than I did in an office with three guys burping and farting.  Making sure that this time there is a balanced gender environment, for sure.  I got a go-ahead from the county to take a Civil Service Exam and see if I can squeeze into a position for Library Assistant.  Dream. Job.

I immediately drove around my alloted perimeter and checked out books on the information I will be tested on and have been practicing my typing skills.  It is required to have 75 words per minute with 90% error rate allowed.  Haha, yeeaaaaa.

The next two days I will be practicing my little fingertips off and refreshing my multiplication skills (since I've had Excel do all my math work in the last 10 years).  I find the task challenging and exciting and it keeps my day mentally busier than killing the 30Rock Seasons on Netflix.  Even if I fail this time around, I love any reason to go to Downtown government buildings; and there is always next year.  I want that job.  I'm already practicing bossing people around, telling them to "Shhhhh!", and visualizing myself rolling around in a pile of books when the lights are out.

via blog.calgarypubliclibrary.com
So, what's your typing rate?
http://www.sucss.state.il.us/etest/itest.asp