Household Manager Needed

This ad was in our local paper today.

Household Manager

~~

Busy executive needs PT Housekeeper

for home and office. 20-25 hours per week.

Must be able to cook from recipes, maintain

a cleaning schedule for non routine chores,

tend to pets, minor repairs, light gardening,

and yard work, light sewing, interior decorating,

painting, run errands, complete records.

Mostly M-F, with some weekend chores when

owner is out of town. Must be organized and detail

oriented. Generous pay for the right person.

Send email letter describing your interest and previous

work history. References required.

 

I have many thoughts. But will refrain from commenting.

What say you of this ad?

 

grace surrounds us

Olive

I Read Therefore I Am

When I worked as a RN in a large teaching hospital and wore those colorful scrubs I always wore a pin in addition to my name tag. I have a collection of pins that numbers somewhere close to one hundred. Some are nice vintage ones but most say cute phrases. One of my favorites said “I read therefore I am.” You see, I am passionate about reading and have been this way as far back  as I can recall.

~~♥♥♥~~

I can travel to countries and places I will never get to in real life in my books. I love to read about old England. No one in the world writes mysteries like British authors. P.D. James, Agatha Christie, and Ruth Rendell are three of my favorites. C.S. Lewis is one of the most articulate writers I know of. His clarity of thought and mind always inspires me. In Mere Christianity he argues the existence of God apart from scripture. It is an intriguing book. Then there is Jane Austen. I adore her Emma.

I read many American authors but one I am particularly drawn to is John Irving. His Cider House Rules spoke to me on many levels. His characters are richly drawn and who could ever forget The World According to Garp ? The Southern authors, Harper Lee, Flannery O’Conner, Rick Bragg, and Jan Karon are not to be missed. I know I am skimming the surface.

~~♥♥♥~~

Bookworms are more likely to be involved in the world around them than those who do not read for pleasure. This was found in a recent survey by the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington D. C.

Readers are more likely than nonreaders to visit museums, musical venues, and volunteer in the community. Maryanne Wolf is an investigative author of a book on the science of reading: Proust and the Squid.  She states that the brain is programmed to see, speak, and think but not to read. So the act of reading forces the brain to “rearrange its original parts” and learn something new. You see, reading keeps you sharp, engaged, and helps you think in new ways.

~~♥♥♥~~

A  government British study conducted on a huge scale in 2009 found that 86% of people in the study reported that reading improves mood and boosts happiness.

What book are you reading now?

 

 

grace surrounds us

Olive

 

some excerpts from this post taken from Weight Watchers magazine Sept/Oct 2010

Painting at the Old House is Not For Wimps

When one of the infrequent tropical storm systems that make it to central Georgia came through several years ago it brought rain and lots of it. Joe and I were painting the central hallway. I can look back on our years together and mark them in paint! Painting in the old house is not for chumps or lazy folk. The plaster is covered with forty or fifty year old wallpaper and must be ever so gently removed.  The bead board makes me crazy. Frankly, I just paint over small spiders. All those little grooves are mind numbing.

On the day of the storm, the outside of the house was wet from blowing rains. We were rinsing brushes on the front porch. I stepped onto the porch to rinse a brush and went STRAIGHT DOWN  through the porch. I was stunned. I broke the fall with my right wrist. My right shoulder was already injured and needed surgery but I was waiting for oh I don’t know maybe a porch.

 

Joe immediately wanted to pull me out. The nurse in me said hold on a second. I checked myself for something like an avulsion injury. It seemed everything was intact. Joe pulled me out. The boards were wet and had original hand forged nails. I had not one scratch, nail or piece of wood in me. My good friend and doctor said I was fortunate in this regard. I did have a twelve inch bruise on my right hip for a long time. Man, was I sore. The warden at the prison where I was a nurse administrator asked who I had been boxing with. I replied “a house.” He never got me. You know?

The next week I fell again in front of the washing machine. I suspect this time it was because I was sore from the first fall. Joe was about ready to request a CT of my head! However,  not one surface of our old house is level. I can trip on a flat surface. Just saying.

Joe replaced the porch floor.

grace surround us

Olive

Freak Show Scene One

Sometimes a person needs to choose her attitude. Whether to cry or to laugh for instance. When I transferred to work at a different state prison it was never mentioned that I would be the mental health nurse on the weekend. I would be the only one. The one in charge of all the psychiatric inmates.
 The prison has four crisis stabilization beds. Which means inmates who are suicidal, unstable, or generally terribly whacked out are placed there. Sometimes they are naked and tied with leather restraints to a mattress. An officer checks them every fifteen minutes. The nursing and medical staff checks them all the time as well. Needless to say it is a freak show. There are an additional twelve step-down crisis beds in another building the mental health staff supervises. The mental health inmate population in this prison averages around six hundred inmates. The weekend RN can be called to see any of them at any time.
The first weekend I had to work I did have the wisdom to insist that another RN orient me. I had never had mental health training outside of college.
My first day, a Saturday, a regular frequent flyer, was there. Let's call him Derrick. He was twenty years old. White, deathly so, as he had not seen the sun in many many months. His favorite distraction was masturbation. Most inmates do this. But Derrick had achieved a special status as a master at this among the staff. Dr. Tice, seventy years old, said one day that he almost envied Derrick his ability. We laughed out loud at this. I was being oriented by Linda, a RN, a character in herself. We walked back to that CSU first thing. I said hello to Derrick through the thick prison glass. He said " Shut the Hell Up You White Motherfiiing Bitch" and threw urine under the three inch space in the door onto my white shoes. I don't recall what I said to him at that moment. I did back out and clean my shoes. Linda was howling with laughter. She said that was typical and not a bad start really. Really? This is when you choose your attitude. I laughed and laughed. Then I called Joe and he laughed with me.

The remainder of that day was uneventful. I learned that everything done for the mental health patients had to be written in triplicate. That right there was worse than Derrick by far. Linda and I walked out those six locked gates with satisfaction because we finished on time. Joe was sitting in the parking lot on his big motorcycle, he took off his helmet, smiled handsomely and said "I'm here for my bitch."
Olive Out