Interviews, Back to the budget, Potty training

Job interviews are not fun. I took two this week - both on the same day. I was pretty pleased by the first, not so much the second. Somewhere during the second interview I got the very distinct impression the interviewer lost interest in me. There was nothing I could do to recover. Since most interviews are one shot, make-it-or-break-it, looks like I broke it. The worst part is it is difficult to get any feedback in order to improve the skills needed to do well in an interview. So we struggle from one interview to the next doomed to repeat the same mistakes until someone looks beyond the answers and sees us. Such is life!




I have discovered the worst part about coming back form vacation – having to get back on the budget. It is so much fun not to worry over the everyday things like the electric bill, the cable bill or the car insurance bill. But, alas, reality sets in rather quickly.



We spent cash for our vacation so we do not have the added weight of credit card bills. We planned carefully and prepared well for the past vacation, but we spent it all. Looking at our account balance was a little sobering. Unlike our current president and congress, I had to tell my wife and family we would have to greatly limit our spending for several weeks.



The frightening caveat if that at the end of that several weeks we will be going on vacation again – this time to our daughter’s wedding. So the process will begin again. By the time we go on vacation the third time, several weeks after the wedding, to see our third grandchild born I will have to make cardboard signs for my son and I. “Will work for food.” I know just the corner each of us will stand on. It could be fun to see which one of us brings in the most cash. For fairly obvious reasons, I will not include my wife in the scheme…besides she will be collecting shells.



The wonderful child my wife watches is now deep in the throws of potty training. I had forgotten what a delightful process this is, when a child can collect stickers or pieces of candy simply for going “poo poo in the potty”. It is a magical moment of reason when they decide that they do not like sitting on the very item they are now being rewarded for, simply by making it to the toilet in time to deposit it there rather than in their pants.



Timing is the critical issue. I foresee us desperately racing to a McDonalds simply to meet the incredibly urgent deadline since there are very few places we could safely pull over to do #1 by the side of the road. In this area that would constitute reckless endangerment. I look forward to the times of long waits while the baby finishes #2 in the fast-food bathroom and the giddy excitement of a job well done. But what I look most forward to is the recounting by my wife to the child’s mother later that afternoon of just how well the baby did, how proud she is. Her excitement is contagious…my wife’s, that is. It is why she does so well at potty training a little one.



Oh, the story will be told over and over to every mother that will listen and all of them will revel in the moment; All because a little child had to go poop. I am so glad it is mommies that take care of this.