Let the Interviews Begin

It is a step of faith. In many aspects. Mostly financially, of course. But for me, except for a year when I finished my degree, I’ve worked at least one part-time job since I was nineteen years old. I’m not sure what life looks like without a job. And I’m pretty confident in front of a computer working on an Excel spreadsheet. I’m not half that confident I’ll make a half-decent mother. But, I will stop working at the end of January. Like I said…a step of faith.

And, so, this week I have been interviewing prospective candidates. I have seven total over four days. From those, I hope to slim them down to three for round two with the owners of the companies. Thus far, it’s been an adventure – and that’s only two days in.

For starters, let me explain what part of Pittsburgh I work in: not the nice part. Not the most terrible part either. There are worst locations in Pittsburgh than “Duestch Town”, but you have to know you’re not in the safest part of the City when you pass someone sleeping on the sidewalk, you have to have a key to unlock the door every time you enter the office and I once watched a drug deal go down right in front of our front door. (The entry way is right in front of my desk, two glass doors in a short hall of about six feet in depth. So, you can see why I could see them but they couldn’t see me.) Welcome to East Ohio Street!

I’m sure if you’ve always lived in a city (which most Pittsburghers have as way more than half the population are natives), such things don’t shock you. However, the very first girl I had come in to interview marveled at all the cops out arresting somebody or other. The third woman I had in this afternoon said a man stopped her on the street and asked, “Do you have a man?”

“Um, no.”

“Do you have a dad?”

It crossed her mind to be smart. Of course she has a dad. After all, she is standing right there, quite alive and breathing. But she just answered, “Um, yes.”

The man must have realized she was completely thrown off her guard for he replied in some frustration, “Lady, I’m trying to sell you a watch.”

All I could picture is the stereotypical guy in a trench coat, opening it up and showing the inside full of who-knows-where-he-got-them watches.

Thankfully there are laughable moments like these in the midst of several hours full of interviews, because this whole process is really not my cup of tea. Honestly, I think I’m as nervous on my side of the table as they are on theirs. But the Lord is gracious, as I discovered just before leaving work today:

Tomorrow I was to have an interview with a woman who, from her resume, looked like she had great potential. I opened her last e-mail to reply and send her a reminder for tomorrow’s meeting. As I did, I realized I had never clicked on the link she has next to her signature. I knew from reading her resume that she had started and directed a non-profit, but I hadn’t bothered to research it and assumed by it’s name it had something to do with art. Since I had a couple of minutes, I clicked on it. It wouldn’t connect me (which is not surprising when you run Office Suite 2003) so I Googled it. And found my virus protection wouldn’t let me on the website. Why? Well, it’s a Lesbian/Gay non-profit for the arts.

I was a bit stunned (to say the least) and had a moment of crisis: I don’t work at camp anymore. I have a secular job in a wicked world. I can’t refuse anyone the opportunity of a job for any reason. But I have never sat across the table from someone of that “persuasion” and had a friendly conversation. Good grief, I have enough trouble having a pleasant conversation with my mother-in-law and her live in boyfriend. How was I going to get through this interview as if I didn’t think something was wrong? How do I keep in mind that this is a fallen world and I’m just as much a sinner, although thankfully forgiven by God’s grace? I didn’t know what to do except sit at my desk and pray that God would, indeed, give me His grace for tomorrow.

But no more than 20 minutes later, I had a response from that same women, telling me she had found another job and would no longer need the interview but she hoped we would find the person we were looking for. Praising God I happily replied, telling her I was glad she had found something and hoped it suited her very well.

Isn’t God great?

Home for Thanksgiving

It has been a huge blessing to be able to be home for Thanksgiving…even if that does mean a full house of ten adults, four kids, two cats and four dogs. I’m not sure which group is causes the most ruckus. I mean, it’s not the dogs or the four kids bringing home the Nerf machine guns!

We drove out to Indiana on Friday, making good time. Abby and her little Benny (8 months) have been here for the weekend. Katey and her two boys Jay (age 3) and Curtis (7 months), plus my grandfather, joined us Monday. Emry is the only little girl among her boy cousins. I think she’s also the smallest of them all, even if Benny and Curtis are a year or more younger. For while she’s taller than the youngest two, she weighs in about the same. Curtis doesn’t bother her (he’s smiling and easy-going), but Benny can be a bit aggressive. He doesn’t mean to be, of course…he simply wants to grab, touch, push, yank and pull up on anything. Jay is at least twice her size, being large for his age, but he loves “Aggie”. And “Aggie” loves following him around, happy to be a part of whatever the bigger kid is playing.

If she’s not following Jay around, she’s following one of the dogs or cats. The cats and Aunt Grace’s old Golden Retriever Keats are her favorite to follow about for they don’t turn around and suddenly lick her or knock her off her feet. She’s busy all day long, happily roaming about Grandma and Grandpa’s huge house, playing with the different toys and eating her weight in Clementines.

Meanwhile, Ed gets to sleep as late as he wants and nap as he wills. I get to play Scrabble and Rubikub. And we all get to enjoy a creative Thanksgiving meal, which is what happens when the oven gives out Tuesday afternoon. We quickly learn that you can make both stuffing and sweet potatoes in the crockpot. And we’re all thankful for Caleb’s girlfriend who let us use her oven to bake the pies, rolls and other things today. So, it will be a wonderful Thanksgiving meal tomorrow – a good ending to a week at home.

“Aggie” and Cousin Jay at the playground.

Emry and her Great-Grandfather Sturm.

Emry – the future artist.

 Emry and Jay drawing on Aunt Jenny’s “special wall” while Curtis and Benny provide the musical accompaniment.

My Friends

I don’t believe I was a lonely child – even when I was an only child. I’ve always been happy by myself, content to play whatever game I could find (usually to do with sorting something). So why I called my collection of Little People “my friends”, I’m not sure. But even the box Mom put them in was marked “Melissa’a Friends”.

I am happy to say that Little People were one of 2016 inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame. They were my favorite toys when I was small. The National Toy Hall of Fame accredits their popularity (since their creation in 1959) to the small reality they bring to a child’s world. They allow children to play in miniature versions of farms, houses, schools, airports and lots of other things. And while this is very likely true, my favorite dynamic of these toys is that they can be so neatly organized.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I was a strange kid. Just ask my younger sister Katey. If we played with “my friends”, set up time was a half hour max. Why? Well, each item had to be sorted into piles – chairs in one, tables in another, vehicles in a third and people arranged by age and sex. After this fun part was done, everything had to be evenly separated between Katey and I. Only after this meticulous process was complete could playtime begin. Tedious? Let’s just say I taught Katey patience…

I was more than sorely disappointed when Little People changed. Apparently, my small little figures (the same ones Emry and her cousins now play with at Grandma and Grandpa’s house) were choking hazards. At first, Fisher Price made the “little” people bigger. (I’m sure that did not prevent any child from putting them in their mouths, but you know….) Then they started to resemble people – really short, fat, round people that were no longer one color but actually wore something resembling clothes. The ones that live in Emry’s house, and barn, and Christmas village are very cute little people with unique haircuts, facial features and outfits. I honestly think they are quite cute and love watching Emry play with them….however, they aren’t very handy if you want to sort them into categories of color, age and sex. Personally, I think that is quite sad. Emry, who is very good at cleaning up her toys but doesn’t sort anything, could care less. She just loves to play with her “people”.

19 Months

I’ve gotten so use to saying “18 months” when someone asked how old Emry is, it’s a bit surprising even to me that she is actually 19 months now. I know, that’s not a big difference (although it might be when you’re as young as she is), but it makes me realize that soon I won’t be counting her age in months anymore – all too soon I will be counting years.

18 months has been a huge time of growing and learning new things for our little girl. Not in size so much for we still wear 12-month clothes but in every other way. She walks about quite well now. Honestly, it doesn’t mean she gets into anything more than she did crawling and pulling up – it simply means her things are scattered about in every room of the house. Thankfully, she’s good about putting them away when I tell her it’s time to. She even knows where they all go.

That’s fun to. Her vocabulary has grown considerably. While she doesn’t string more than two or maybe three words together, she can communicate better. (Not perfectly, of course, as we work a lot on the asking for something versus whimpering for it.) And she understands us. I can tell her to go to a particular room and she knows where to go. I can tell her to fetch me something and she knows what to bring. She’s relating things to one another in her little world. She’s sees a picture in her books and points to the things she owns that are the same. One book reminds her of another on her shelf she pulls out to read. When we say it’s time to go to church, she says, “Silas!” (A little boy in her class.) And when I pull out the hymnal to sing, she immediately begins her rendition of “Holy, Holy, Holy”. (Which is pronounced “’Oly, ‘Oly, ‘Oly”.)

Of course the biggest thing is realizing that she is watching. Always watching. I was in the kitchen the other day, and in she comes with her thermometer in her hand, holding it to her ear like a phone and jabbering away to whomever was on the other end. She loves to talk on her “phone”, walking all around as she does so. “Just like you,” Ed told me. “You do know you walk all over this house when you’re on the phone.” Yes, I know…

She also covers up her stuffed animals with her blankets, takes them to the potty (we’ve just started the potty training process, slowly until we get back from Thanksgiving) and hugs and kisses them. She carries her little ball bag around on her arm, as frustrated at it as I am at my bag because it never stays up on my shoulder.

But today she did something I expected would come about in time. I had left my phone on my chair, so she grabbed it this morning while I was in the bathroom putting my contacts in. When she brought it into the bathroom, holding it up to me (which usually means she needs help finding the pictures of herself), I realized it was talking. Since it sounded like two people talking, I thought she had somehow gotten into one of the music apps and turned on some radio broadcast. (She has turned on the music before.) The problem was, she had tried once too often to put my passcode in (which she doesn’t know – she just hits numbers), so I was locked out for a minute. I decided just to put the phone aside when I heard a, “Hello? Hello? Melissa?” I picked it up. “Hello?” I wondered who in the world I was talking to. It was my Aunt Lynn. And I wasn’t just talking to her – I was facetiming her. Because I couldn’t get into my phone I couldn’t see her, but she could see me (in all my radiant I haven’t brushed my hair or gotten out of my pajamas splendor). And because Emry had somehow Facetimed Lynn, Lynn couldn’t hang up…and I was locked out of my phone. So, we chatted for a few minutes until I could get back into my phone and say good-bye. And we all had a good laugh…but how Emry did that, well, I simply don’t know.

It's Over!!!!!

If you look at a political map of Pennsylvania, I lived in that little blue area out west surrounded by all the red. I guess that’s as it should be since Pittsburgh (which is the entirety of Allegheny county) is a blue-collared Union city. Here, even the Republicans run as Democrats.

I have voted in many different states. I have seen lots of different things at the polls. In New Hampshire, you can easily run into one of your dozen local reps at your polling place – shaking hands, wearing different political buttons, gossiping. In Texas, I once had to e-mail the Secretary of State’s office to file a complaint when my polling station didn’t open on time because they were having trouble with their machines. (Legally they have to open on time and do paper ballots until the machines are working again.) There must be a law in Pennsylvania about campaigning outside of polling stations because you never seen anyone, only signs. But voting yesterday was certainly my most exciting adventure at the polls yet.

The polls are less than a mile away, so Emry and I jogged over. When I arrived, I thought a couple of police officers from the station across the way were simply coming over to vote. Guess not. They were actually coming over to possibly remove a purple-haired lady from the premises. Said purple-haired lady (and I don’t mean that like “little old blue-haired lady”, I mean – literally – bright purple mixed in with dark black) was causing a bit of a ruckus, declaring “we/they/whoever” were suppressing her right to vote. Since one of the voting officials was having to attend to her (she was presently on the phone talking to the secretary of state’s office insisting that she was registered even though she apparently had no card to prove it), the line moved a bit slow. For the next ten minutes, I was thankful Emry isn’t quite old enough to stare at purple-haired ladies who shout one minute about their rights, speak perfectly rationally the next as if trying to understand the situation and then burst out into teary sobs right after that. Truly, it was quite a scene. Just not enough for the cops to drag her off – for she wasn’t truly harming anyone, simply embarrassing herself. That was around 10:30. When Ed dropped by the polls an hour later, she was still there… Maybe there’s something to our Founding Fathers restricting voting privileges to people of  “a sound mind”.

Aside from that, it was not a thrilling day of voting. Even some of the Democrats I work with stared at their ballots wondering if they should vote for the person they really don’t like over the person they really, really don’t like. Of all the offices on the Pennsylvania ballot for our district, only one did I vote for with a happy, clear conscious. The rest I may as well have closed my eyes and eenie-meenie-miny-moed.

But, Ed was right. Just to have voted and have it over with was a relief. And we certainly weren’t the only ones who felt that way. Even though I know some of my workmates voted for Hillary, even they were more relieved today than upset. For, it’s over. It’s decided. It’s done. And regardless of the outcome, God remains on His sovereign throne. In the end, what more do we need?

The prayer that moves the arm of God is still a bruised and battered prayer, and only moves His arm because the sinless One, the great Mediator, has stepped in to take away the sin of our supplication.   – Charles Haddon Spurgeon