an interesting week

Most of last week, we were out of electrical power at el Rancho. I was out to eat with a neighbor during a 10-minute storm that appears to have included a small tornado throwing trees around in the hood. Our house was spared of any fallen trees or large branches but most of my neighbors were not as lucky. Powers was out until Saturday and then out again Sunday & Monday after a thunderstorm. Everything I could not put on ice in the cooler either melted and/or spoiled in a couple of days. The freezer is still empty and will remain so until we see all the broken poles, fallen trees, and low-hanging wires cleared out of the neighborhood. The refridgerator has mostly things that will not spoil immediately if the power goes out again, like fresh fruit & veggies. The pantry is stocked up in soup now. We still need to restock some batteries and re-think alternative devices and chargers when the power goes out again.

Looks like I've finally found a job this week at a company I have been familiar with for quite a while - several printers I have worked with in the past have outsourced work to them. It is going to be a bit of a commute now, since it takes me an hour & 15 minutes to drive home in the evening. The hours are generally long, starting at 7:00 a.m. for me. Hopefully, I can continue to come into work that late. Some of my co-workers come in as early as 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. and recently have been working 12-hour shifts. (This is one reason I was hired, no doubt, to relieve the work load a bit.) I am very happy to finally have another full-time position that I can count on. The adjustment to the commute and new hours will be hard but I need work and income more than anything else these days. I'm just happy to be there. This job offers the opportunity to catch up and reacquaint myself with the type of work I've done in the past and to get my skills back up-to-date and compatible with everyone else. This is a hard industry to survive in these days.

MonsterMustDie is already grumbling about my 8:00 p.m. bedtime but it is necessary for me to be up and running by 5:00 every day with less time in the evening to catch up on things. Time is suddenly quite important and he will eventually adjust. He'll be going to Alabama to visit his mother tomorrow. His cousin phoned yesterday to tell him that his mother is not eating now. She's apparently lost a lot of weight and she doesn't want to be here anymore. Her Alzheimer's disease has progressed to a point where she is in a lot of physical pain and she just wants to be released from this life. It's hard to watch both of them go through this but I really don't know of anything I can do to help.