End of April Musings

Since Grace, the "foster" (according to the neighbors to the west of us) chocolate lab is once again confined to the second-floor deck and is communuicating her frustration with said confinement with a massive tirade of barks and howls, I find it too difficult to plug away on Lycentia: Harrak's Scrolls.

So instead, I will allow myself to just "free associate."

A March that consisted of more than a few days of temperatures into the 80's or above had me wondering if April would have more than a few days of temperatures into the 90's. Thankfully, that hasn't happened. I can remember maybe two days this month where we had to run the A/C because of the heat. And since we've been in this house since 2001, we've had to run the A/C more than a few days each of the previous Aprils.

I'm no longer an English teacher: hung that hat up in 2005. Since then, my job title has primarily been bookkeeper. And what training have I had in the keeping of books? How about 6 hours of college accounting? Basically, when I was hired at the MFA in Freeburg, I have been learning not only what a bookeeper does, but quite a bit about agri-business that I never planned to learn. When I was in HS, my mother worked at a grain elevator close to Topeka. I think she did some bookkeeping there. And I don't remember ever asking her exactly what she did at that job. So, am I now "paying" for not wanting to know anything about her excursion into agri-business by having to be a agri-business bookkeeper?

When did I start cleaning windows? Was it 1974? The summer of 1974... the Vietnam war was not officially over but it was windiing down. Who was president? I think Nixon was still in office that summer but he was on his way out as well. I worked for Paul Nitcher who was the sole-proprietor of a cleaning business. I was already working for him as a night-time and weekend custodian, and when school was out for the summer, he asked if I wanted to learn how to clean windows. When he offered me a 10 cent/hour raise to help him with the window-cleaning aspect of his company, I couldn't turn it down! But, to make a long and boring story short, the summer of 1974 was the beginning of what now looks like to be a major future source of income for us here on Merry Lane. My boss at MFA a few weeks ago said to me that I could be grossing $70/hr via cleaning windows. I told him that even if our competitors are grossing that much, I really don't want to gouge people. So far in 2012, the cleaning of windows is grossing a bit over $40/hr for MFA Freeburg.

(I sure would like it if someone arrived next door real soon to remove Grace from that deck; I really need to get some work done on that novel!)