OMG, my mom was right!

I had many different kinds of jobs during my career. After I was in the Navy, I worked at a major insurance company supporting the claims adjuster. I worked for a family attorney for a few years and learned a lot about wills, adoptions, and divorces. I eventually became a civil servant, or an employee for the State of Texas. I started working in the legal department of a university system, and eventually moved over to the accounting and finance side of the office. I finally made it to the position I had as a systems and business analyst for another state agency. Amazingly, all of my previously unrelated careers and jobs all contributed to the qualifications I needed to land the perfect job for me. So, as it turns out, my mom was right. Learn how to type and you can always get a job.

With this ring . . . .

The Husband made our rings when we got married and this is him holding mine. It was quite a process. We started by taking a class in jewelry making using the lost cast wax method. Then we went around to pawn shops and bought broken chains and rings to use the gold in them to melt down to make the rings. Then he sat at the kitchen table and carved the forms for the rings out of a special kind of wax. He wore these big, funny magnifying glasses so he could really see what he was doing. Then he would hang the wax rings upside down in a square form and pour a special plaster into the form around the wax rings. Then he would heat the resulting block of plaster so the wax rings would melt and drip out. This would leave a hole in the plaster that was the same shape as the original wax rings.Then he would melt down the gold in a ceramic dish with the blow torch and pour the molten metal into the plaster form. After everything cooled down, the molten metal became solid again, he would wash away the plaster, leaving the rings, now made of gold.

He wasn’t happy with results the first few times he made them, so he would make some more wax rings, another form, melt down the gold, and pour the rings again. This went on for weeks before the wedding, and I was just about convinced that we would have to go buy some rings. Then just three days before the wedding, he got the results he wanted.

To me, the making of these rings is kind of symbolic of marriage in general. It takes some preparation, some practice, a lot of patience, a little bit of cussing, and a lot of perserverance to get the results you want.

Happy Birthday HAM

Just a quick little post to wish Ms. Pretty and Smart, otherwise known as The Daughter, HAPPY BIRTHDAY. This is a milestone year, but it is shaping up pretty well so far.

Ms. Guardian Frog

During my career, I made a lot of friends. There were some really good times, professionally and personally, and there were some worse times. This picture is of what I call my “Guardian Frog”. I know it’s silly, but here’s the story. I was having one of those worse times at work, and it also happened to be my birthday. Birthdays at work usually just come and go without a lot of fuss. But, that year, my two friends from work gave me this cute frog to cheer me up. It meant a lot to me that they wanted to help. So, I always kept her close to keep a watch over me, and I’m reminded of how important friends are every time I see her.

Blue Bell

This picture is of a foam-rubber blue VW Bug. I believe I got it from a convention somewhere, from an insurance company or something. I always kept this blue bug on my desk as a reminder of some of the hardest times and some of the best times of my life. I was married for a short time during my Naval career, and when I moved back to my hometown, it was me and the Daughter. During most of the time she was growing up, I was working, working, working. I worked in a law office for a few years, in the insurance industry for a while, as an accountant for a while. I went back to school at night, then went back to school full-time and lived on student loans. During all of this craziness, I was driving a blue VW Bug. We referred to her lovingly as Blue Bell. She cost $400, which I could afford. She got good gas mileage. She was cheap to fix when she broke down, which was not very often. So, when I eventually went to work where all of my unrelated career paths merged into a dream job, good hours, good pay, and a great organization, the blue bug on my desk was a reminder of what I had come through. It was indeed the hardest part of my life, but I always remember those as some of the best and most rewarding times. And all because I could type.

Stuff, stories, and memories

The theme of my life right now is cleaning out stuff as we are preparing to take the longest way possible to Kansas. I first noticed this theme when I was slowly going through my desk while getting ready to retire. I was passing important working-stuff along to co-workers, taking other important non-working-stuff home, and throwing other junkie-stuff out (why had I saved that stuff, anyway?). I also had a lot of pictures and toys around my desk that had been in my space for many years, and were, in a sense, old frinds of mine.

At the same time, I was approached to give a little ice-breaker speech about myself, and I realized that the stuff on my desk could help me tell my story. Well, the ice-breaker speech went pretty well, so I think I will take the same approach in the blog as I clean out the stuff that has accumulated over the past few decades. You can learn a lot about someone from their stuff and the stories that are attached.

I had a picture of my mom pinned to the wall of my cubicle. It was taken when she was about 17 or 18 years old. She was really beautiful. Our relationship when I was a teenager was pretty typical. I didn’t think she knew anything, and she didn’t think I knew anything, and we pretty much disagreed about almost every topic. However, as we all know, moms are really pretty smart. When I think about what some of the best guidance or advice I ever got from my mom, one of the many things that sticks out in my mind was when I was in the eighth grade and she made me take typing in school. I had already filled out the forms to take homemaking. "No," she said, "take typing. When you can type, you can always get a job. Then, you won’t be trapped in a situation only because you can’t take care of yourself."

So I took typing.

Our family moved around a lot when I was little, and I believe that’s why I have the wonder lust now. However, by the time I was in high school, we had pretty much settled down to where we live now, and adventure was everywhere except where I was. So, as soon as I was old enough, I joined the Navy, and saw a small bit of the world. I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan for a few years. It’s really hot and humid there. Really hot and humid. I worked outside as an electrician for fighter jets. It sounds really fun and exciting, right? No. It was really hot. Really, really hot. And humid. And, being a fair-haired girl, I was pretty sunburned all the time. So, one day, I just happened to mention that I knew how to type. Most of the fellows, probably all of the fellows at that time long ago, did not know how to type. So, I was miraculously whisked inside (into the air conditioning) to keep track of all things that needed to be typed.

Thanks, mom.

The Revised Plan

I just retired a few months ago (the week of Thanksgiving), and my husband is retiring at the end of April. We are both still pretty young, as far as retirees go, and in really good health. Our original retirement plan was to sell our house in the big-city boom town where we currently live and move to Kansas. There are two good reasons why we made this decision. First, the Husband is from Kansas and almost his entire family still lives there, where they are awaiting us with open arms. Second, the cost of living is much lower there, and I would not have to get another job. I was fortunate enough to retire young, and could reasonably have another career. So, it was decided.

Then, I starting turning over in my mind what our life might be like in Kansas. I became more and more concerned with my happiness quotient living there, considering my tendency to get very bored with monotony. The Husband would probably be very happy, with his best-friend and first cousin there to pal around with. He lives in a very nice farming community where it’s pretty fun to drive tractors around and talk about growing hay a lot. It’s a nice place to visit.

My retirement date got closer and closer. I absolutely wanted to retire, and was working to get my replacements trained to take over the duties I performed, but I was having a lot of anxiety about the whole moving to Kansas plan.

While talking to the Daughter one evening, I was saying how I would like to travel a little bit between moving-out here and moving-in there. I just know that when the Husband gets back to Kansas, he will never leave again. Somehow that evening, the discussion progressed to where a new plan emerged, and it was very exciting. I would just have to sell it to the Husband. The Daughter would have to sell it to the Son-in-law, too.

So, here’s the revised plan:

The Husband and I would travel the world for a while (at least two years) before we sell our house and make the big move to Kansas. During that time, the Daughter and her husband could lease our house and take care of the place. That would give them the opportunity to save some money to buy their own place when we return.

So, that very evening, when the Husband got home, and we were sitting on the porch talking, I asked him what he thought of the revised plan. I had envisioned having to work to persuade him by using some tears, some pleading, some bargaining. But, after I outlined the revised plan, he paused a minute, and said, Okay. Just like that. Okay.

The Son-in-law had the same response. Okay. Just like that.

Well, okay. So, that is why the name of this blog is called The Long Way to Kansas. We’re going to Kansas, but we’re taking the very longest way around that I can think of.

So, the next few months will be spent getting ready to go. I’ll let you know the progress of cleaning out all our stuff, giving away the furniture (I hate the living room stuff), packing up and storing the stuff we can’t part with, getting our documentation together, settling on destinations, and all the rest of the fun stuff to come.