10 Days in Austin

 Tomorrow will be 10 days. I’m exhausted. I finished the module training for my new job at the main office in Austin. Then this week, I went to the actual group homes in a town about 30 minutes west of here. I shadowed for two days. I met all of the residents, but there are two homes I haven’t been to yet. I also met most of the staff. Tomorrow night, I’m shadowing the overnight staff. Then, I will be on my own at night on the graveyard shift. 

Kevin is back in Waller and still working on the Houston crew “until they hire someone”. The thing is, they’ve hired at least six people so far “who didn’t show up”. To me, that’s a lot. Apparently, the company’s headquarters here in the Austin area is doing the hiring. Then they give the people’s information to the manager of the Houston office. The manager is claiming he’s speaking to people one time and then they don’t show up. It makes me wonder what he’s saying to them. I am suspicious that he’s trying to sabotage our move here by keeping Kevin there. Kevin disagrees adamantly, so I don’t push the idea. I keep reminding Kevin that “we already signed a lease” until October of 2027. We would not have if they hadn’t given him the transfer. Lord have mercy. I don’t think six whole people “didn’t show up” for no reason.  Kevin just talks smack when I bring it up. He said, “If he doesn’t want it to be just him and his wife” then he needs to retain people. And that he’ll be here “by September 1”.  

It’s very hard to leave a job and then have a spouse continue to work there because I hear about it still. And I can’t not hear about it because I can’t not ask Kevin how his day was. It’s not my place of employment anymore, so I should let it go. 

I also kind of want Kevin here with me. I want my furniture too. I am not going to buy an air mattress, because I have cats and their claws put holes in them. My back hurts from sleeping on the memory foam thing only. Good thing I have a bath tub now!  

I binge watched all 8 episodes of the Netflix adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. I loved it!  I did not like the CGI wolves!  Someone online said it would have been better with trained Malamutes, and I agree!  Aside from that scene, though, it was awesome!  Yes there was too much of an age difference between Laura and Mary with Carrie. But there was the same issue with the Handmaid’s Tale vs The Testaments. But I guess with adaptations, that happens. 

There are a couple of disappointments with my new job. First of all, I said I was glad that I would be working with adults who have developmental disabilities instead of elderly, because elderly people die on you too often. The home I shadowed most in is full of ladies between about 60-72 years old. Sadly, with developmental disabilities, that’s roughly the life expectancy, and the woman I shadowed said there was another lady who passed away less than a year ago. The other house was also ladies about 45-55 or so. I just let it go. I also believe we end up where we end up for a reason. They were willing to hire me even though I didn’t have an address yet, and that’s huge. Speaking of the Netflix Little House- one of the ladies who lives in the group home was asking me what similarities the Netflix adaptation had to Michael Landon’s Little House. She asked, “What characters are in it?  Pa and Ma?”  I said, “Yes, and also Mary and Laura”. She asked, “What about Carrie?” I gave the spoiler, “Carrie is born in episode 6.”  She said, “So Grace wasn’t born yet?” I said, “No, Grace isn’t born yet.”  She then asked, “What about Albert?”  I explained, “No there is no Albert in this one, because this one more closely follows the book, and Albert wasn’t in the book or in real life.  He was made up for the old show.”  She looked kind of shocked. I actually think she was disappointed to find out Albert didn’t really exist.  That expression passed though, and after she asked if Nellie Olson was in it, I explained, “Nellie Olson isn’t in it because they’re not in Walnut Grove yet. The Netflix show shows them living in Kansas, Kansas not working out, and them deciding to go to Walnut Grove at the very end. So Nellie will probably be in next season.”  She was so satisfied with that she forgot about Albert being fictional. 

I got a new audible credit, and with it I bought another book about writing. In it, there’s a chapter on tropes. The author asks, “What are some tropes that don’t seem realistic to you?” I thought to myself- the Woke Caroline Ingalls trope from this Netflix Little House. Caroline wasn’t woke!  

Another thing about my new job is that according to the ladies I shadowed, some of the other staff is going to be disappointed that I’m there and “taking their overtime away”. I’m a little worried they’ll take their disappointment out on me personally, but I’ve already met one of the ones who’s supposedly “so pissed” and she was very cordial to me. We’ll see how she is when I shadow her tomorrow night. Overtime is never permanent. 

One of my biggest regrets of the past year was allowing the Houston manager’s wife at my husband’s job to run me off. I’m never allowing that to happen again. If I could go back and undo that one thing, I would. So I’m definitely not going to let it happen again.  If someone is upset that they no longer get overtime, then they need to learn that overtime comes and goes. I’ve had to learn it, so will they. And the lady that trained me?  She is having surgery on August 4. Overtime is coming back. I’m digging my heels in with bitches. 

Yay, Sleep (& Work Training)

 Yesterday after work, I went to HEB. I knew this little fact about the city of Austin, but I forgot- the grocery stores here don’t give plastic bags. You either have to BYOB, buy canvas ones at the checkout, or throw individual items into your car. I bought five and stored them in my pantry. I told my daughter this last night, and now she wants to make reusable bags for herself and for me. 

I slept about 12 hours last night, which felt great. Some of the training modules at work looked like the print was shrinking about 2-3:00 pm. It wasn’t. It was just me. 

A lot of the training modules are common sense, but there are a lot of them that are teaching things I’ve never learned before. For instance, I know what discrimination is, I know about how to prevent falls and what to do in case of falls. I know about seizures, I know about choking and safe swallowing, etc. But this is a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. It’s not something I’ve done before. I have worked with elderly people in their homes, and I have worked with kids. Not this, although I have cared for younger adults in their homes who had developmental disabilities through the other company I worked for in the past. 

This is something I didn’t know- back in 2014, there was an entire federal law passed to ensure that people with disabilities aren’t kept out of the community like they have been in the past. I don’t remember the exact name of it, but it’s basically saying they have the right to go places and do things. You might often hear older people say things like, “Everyone is disabled now!” And act like it’s a new epidemic or phenomenon. I’ve heard my mom say that before. But this isn’t the case- it’s just that when they were younger, disabled people were kept away from society in institutions, and they weren’t aware of them. 

Another training module was on “PBS” or “Positive Behavior Support” and it was a handful of terms from ABA. Some might remember this, but in the beginning of this year I spent 8 days as a trainee in an ABA facility, and I found it extremely weird, counterintuitive, and unethical. This was a center that did ABA on very young children from M-F 8-5. Not a group home for adults like this. I did some googling for “Is PBS ABA?” And discovered that it’s just sort of-semi based on it?  But it’s nowhere near as controlling or arbitrary. There are also several training modules on the importance of these individuals having choices and autonomy, so it can’t possibly be the ABA I remember from that horrific 8 days in February. 

I also found out that there is an actual ABA company called Positive Behavior Support- and it’s the worst of the worst. But it’s not the “method” of PBS. It’s the actual company name, and they do ABA. 🤦🏻‍♀️ There is a lot of information to dig through. If anyone wants to educate me in the comments, please do. 

All in all, I am thankful for the opportunity to work full time with the same people in the same place every day. Trying to learn the routines of different people constantly was stressful. This is also going to be the night shift, midnight until 8:00 am. So what my shift will look like is probably 3/4 watching people sleep/oversee if they get up at night and 1/4 morning routines. I can definitely deal with that. 

Hopefully I can get more housework done today!

First Full Day as an Austinite

 I’m totally exhausted. I do not have my bed here in the new apartment, so I’m sleeping on a mat with my blanket. I couldn’t sleep at all last night. Never have I ever moved to a new city one day and started a new job the next. 

When we moved from Chicago to Houston in 1993, it was about three months later that school started. When I moved from Phoenix to Houston in 2002, it was about ten days later that I found a job. 

Two things about this job that stood out- we actually aren’t allowed to wear scrubs!  Wow!  Usually you have to wear scrubs. They do not want the residents feeling a stigma because of us wearing scrubs. When I asked what to wear, they simply said “Whatever is comfortable.”  This morning, I actually thought about wearing scrubs but didn’t. I thought it would make me look like an ass-kisser. Turns out, it would have made me look like a stigmatizer 🤷🏻‍♀️

If you date a coworker, you must report it to HR!  Hahaha well they don’t have to worry about that with me since I already married my supervisor from a previous job. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I texted Kevin as soon as I could about the “report it to HR” rule. We would have both gotten fired haha. 

Orientation and training is the whole week. I am so exhausted. 

JJ is loving the new place, but he doesn’t seem to like being an only child. He does like the perpendicular mirrors in the bathroom that make it look like TWO other cats are staring back at him. You should have seen the shenanigans he did when he discovered this. 

I really hope I get good rest tonight!  

Move-in Meltdown

 I am moved in to the new place, but not Kevin!  He has to work on the Houston crew a little while longer, whereas my new job starts TOMORROW!  

It was impossible to move over the weekend with Saturday being the Fourth of July and Sunday being Sunday. 

Yesterday was Sunday the fifth, and not only did all of our old neighbors around my in-laws’ property decide to set off fireworks a day late, but both my mother and my mother in law decided that the day before I leave was the perfect day for both of them to express disapproval and disappointment at our decision to move to Austin. Each of them thought the other one was moving in with us!  Why!  

I decided to hold off on freaking out about their disapproval until after I signed the lease so I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Then Kevin and I moved all my stuff into the apartment, he left for Houston area, and I went to Walmart. 

All of our appliances are black so I picked out black items for the apartment- bathroom decor, a dish rack, a new frying pan, kitchen towels and potholders etc. Then got all the toilet paper and paper towels. A broom and swiffer starter set, the Clorox toilet wand set, paper plates and bowls, etc. I got to the check out and the chip reader isn’t working. I’ve had this problem at Walmart before- the cashiers deal with it by swiping the card 3-4 times and then because of that, the card gets declined. You end up having to call the bank to say that’s really you and Walmart is being shady like that. 

The last time this happened, I was getting an oil change so I was stranded and had to walk to a bank to make a withdrawal with my identification and clear up the debit card. This time, I just had to be disappointed that I spent 2-4 hours in Walmart on moving day and got all this cute semi matching black stuff. I didn’t get any of it. I ended up going to Costco.  No cute black decor, and I had to get massive quantities of stuff like toilet paper and paper plates and ziplock bags. Sometimes I like getting massive quantities, but not after that Walmart fiasco. I am seriously never going to Walmart again. 

I really wish I could have had the weekend here to set up and shop more, but nope. I have to do onboarding the rest of the week from pretty much 9-5 and then start on the graveyard shift the following week. 

In between Walmart and Costco, I called Kevin and cried my ass off about both of our moms not liking that we moved here. He honest to God seriously doesn’t care what they think. I do!  I told him, you know what, when we got engaged and then married and NO ONE I KNOW had any problem with it, even though he’s more than a decade older than me and even though he’s was my supervisor- and even though no one has EVER been ok with the idea of me with any man at all, ever- still no one had anything to say about it. People just let me do what I wanted and that was CRAZY. At the time I asked my mother why so many people were ok with me getting married like this and she said something to the effect of, because I was older now and had “all these life experiences” (never mind of course that all those life experiences were also things most of them were against). Since then, I just assumed that a perk of being this old was that I got to do what I wanted. I’ve been wanting to move to Austin basically since 2020 or so. I just couldn’t because of my daughter. But now my daughter is in college in San Marcos and has also decided that she wants to settle here in the Austin area or the Texas hill country. There are other reasons too, which I’ll get into, but as soon as I brought it up to Kevin, he thought it was an AMAZING idea. 

He has been more pumped about it lately than me. I was even starting to get cold feet about it, but he’s excited for it. I’m trying to get as pumped about it as he is. Which is weird because it was my idea!  

It was a setback to disappointment both moms. Also, it must be said that two women in their 80’s should have learned to deal with change by now. 

I invited my mother up for my birthday on July 17th. She then actually mistook my birthday for the 10th and said she had plans. I asked her if she forgot when my birthday was, and she got more mad. Then I asked her who her hot date was with, and it was Armageddon. I thought, might as well, she’s already mad I’m moving. 

Two things about living in a blue city-

I only have one cat with me right now. The leasing agent referred to Jordan with they/them pronouns. I actually am not sure if she didn’t know that only one of the cats is with me or if she was doing that because she wasn’t sure the sex of the cat. 

He was in a carrier big enough for only one cat. I’m still not sure. 🤔 

Five More Days

 I moved to the Houston area right before I turned 24. Now I’m coming up on turning 48. That means I’ve lived in the Houston area for exactly half of my life. In five more days, I leave the city I spent exactly half my life in. That’s daunting, but my mom was also turning 48 when she left Chicago, and she’d been there her entire life. She used to guilt me about that, too!  

I’m ready to go right Meow.  I’m actually thinking of calling the leasing office and paying from my own checking account for two more days of “pro-rated July”. It would just be nice to have the weekend to be doing all of that. I also do not want Kevin to think I’m trying to get rid of him. I’m not. I just want to get moving activities out of the way. He is off this weekend and can hang with me over the weekend regardless. He’s staying until his Houston manager hires new people. I have a feeling he will not hire anyone just to make it hard on Kevin to transfer. 

I worked Sunday with a new client. When GCboss asked me to work with a brand new client, I cringed all the way to McCringey town. I’m leaving!  Why!  But it was ok. The lady suffered from sundowning, which made it a challenge. During her sundowning episode, I asked her if she needed to use the restroom. She told me, “Feel free to use the restroom any time you’d like!”  “Thank you, I will,” I replied. “But what about you, do you need to go?”  

“What business is it of yours?” She asked. This is common with dementia and sundowning. I gently reminded her that I would help her in the restroom. She cursed me out. That’s fine. Once it was time to leave, though, she didn’t want me to. She said, “Thanks for a lovely visit.”  After that, I decided if GCboss asked me to work with anyone else except for the “usual” 89 year old that I was scheduled with M-F, then I would not. Friday is my last day. 

Unfortunately though, Monday she had to enter the hospital. I went to Starbucks by her house, had a coconut Ube Macchiato and worked on my spiral notebook. She texted me asking me to come early because she wasn’t well. Her nurse was there when I arrived. She took a nap after the nurse left and then wanted me to call EMS to take her to the hospital. The nurse also said to go. So I’m just staying home now in the event she gets home before Friday morning. I am not responding to GCboss unless it’s about her. I think she’ll be ok, but honestly I’m not sure. 

I’m going to work in a group home, and this is what this 89 year old told me (mostly because she’s upset I’m leaving.). She said, “Now listen! You Be careful of those mental cases!  You be careful of those mentals!”  I had to stop and laugh because of her Boston accent and the way it sounded. Then she caught herself and said, “I know!  I’m also mental!”  I reminded her that I, too, am “mental”.  It’s fine. Who isn’t? 

I will be working M-F from midnight to 8 am, which likely means Sunday night to Thursday night. I have a feeling I’ll end up working with Kevin again, but we’ll see. It’s more of a priority for him to transfer. But working at a facility is going to be wayyyyyyy less stressful than going to different peoples houses all the time. 

0.8 miles from my new place is also a quilt shop with lots of classses. When Kevin and I checked it out, they were holding a long arm class. Long arm machines intimidate me. If I ever did piecework that needed to be quilted I’d find someone to do that to them. 

And as much as I have been to Austin in the last five or six years for retail audits, I must say that the slight cultural differences between Houston and Austin are more apparent to me now. It’s only the closest major city to me now, but it still seems like a whole new culture. I’m going to have to adopt some “when in Rome” mentality, but not sure what for yet. 

Our New Apartment

Kevin and I just walked out of a nice leasing office of a nice complex on the north side of Austin with an official move in date of Monday July 6. 

Well, for me anyway!  I’m moving in by myself for a couple weeks so that I can start a new job on 7/7 and he wraps up with the Houston crew of his job. The apartment has a built in desk! 

Some other things it has that his parents’ guest house doesn’t have: Bath tub (guest house only has a shower stall), central air (guest house has window units), a dishwasher, washer and dryer, pest control services, a pantry, a whole fitness center, and walking distance from this beautiful park. 

I’m so drained from the anxiety. 

Kevin is now taking me out for margaritas. 

It’s also 0.8 miles from a quilting store with tons of classes. 

 

Five Free Sub Sandwiches

Today I did five mystery shops at five different Subway locations in about two hours’ time. Four of the jobs I did paid $8 plus the reimbursement of the sandwich, and one paid $23 plus the reimbursement of the sandwich. I guess they needed that one more, which makes sense. She was extremely rude!  (The other four were great.)  When doing these on the field agent app, you have to order an all American club and make no modifications. 

The sandwich comes with turkey, ham, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, and American cheese. 

I ate one for lunch and came home with four.  These mystery shops were in Brenham(2), Bellville, Chapel Hill, and Hempstead. There were no homeless people to give these to. 

I also did a separate field agent job in Belleville that paid $13. 

They put way too much mayo on these to justify saving them for later. They’d be too soggy. So here’s what I did. First, I took off all of the bacon and fried it. Lord knows it doesn’t seem like Subway cooks their bacon. It really seems like raw bacon. That’s why I always asked for toasted. But two locations has non working toasters, including rude girl’s location. So I fried it myself and used whatever mayo I couldn’t scrape off as the fat to cook it in. 

Then I chopped up half of an onion I had in a ziplock in the fridge. I cooked it with the bacon. Then when those looked soft, I added a package of refried beans. I let it cook a little while then added all tomatoes and lettuce from the sandwiches, minus whatever had too much mayo left on it. 

I added the cheese on top after I turned the heat off. Then I set the bread aside, wrapped in foil for Kevin to make his own sandwiches if he wants to. He’s a vegetarian, so I cut up the ham and turkey for my three cats.