Traveling Summer

This summer has been NON-STOP. Making up for lost time I suppose! In May, my dear husband (DH - which can also stand for a few other things) zigzagged actross the country with three of our sons from Ohio to California. I got a GREAT deal on airline tickets through Jet Blue (always look for a company just starting out in an area for the best deals!) flying into Long Beach.
I met up with him in California with the remaining five children where we proceeded to visit with our two Marines & their families stationed at Camp Pendleton; then joined up in Irvine with our Parish Life Conference.
Sure, the teens were skeptic about the PLC being FUN, but the very first day they received proof positive with an epic teen venture to the beach for a little fun and sunburn.
One of the BEST things that came out of it was Miss V decided to go to school at St. Katherine's College in Encinitas. Perfect weather, awesome professors, great scholarships... who could ask for more!
We hung around California until mid-July, when hubby took all but three of the kids home. I then took those three on a California venture to - of all places - Ventura, then St. Barbara's where they met up with a teen group; then to San Francisco and finally up to Manton, CA. In the shadow of Mt. Lassen volcano, it was a beautiful retreat. Then we zipped back to the LA area and hopped a plane home for a few weeks.
In mid-August, my son Eli and I took off again for California, where we visited my son and DIL at Camp Pen again, went to church with them on Sunday, then took off for the Grand Canyon, which Eli had never seen. That night we went to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ and enjoyed looking thru every telescope possible to see star clusters, the Andromeda galaxy and the moon so close it looked as though I could touch it.
The next day brought the Barringer Meteor crater, the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. From there we raced to Clovis, then made it the next day to Lubbock to see my hubby's mom. It's always so great to see her!
We left that night for Arkansas, and made it by 7:00 the next morning. One night's sleep there and it was further east, as we had a 91st birthday party to attend in Virginia, near DC!

... to be continued...

Lindsaykids7: We are not Crazy, We are Christians

Lindsaykids7: We are not Crazy, We are Christians: "Some might argue that being a Christian is crazy. I suppose then I should not mind when people say Jamie and I are crazy for adopting a fif..."

The Paycheck Changes... but the Work, not so much!

"Sometimes life gets in the way," is more than a saying to me. It's a mantra.

I have made a career out of temporary employment. I've had to. Over the past 32 years I've been raising 13 children, so many times the budget has needed a boost. So I go to work. Not counting the one day, or week gigs, I quit counting at having had 45 jobs. That was more than 10 years ago.

Recently I needed to put together an updated resume for contract work bid for the Municipality that I was part of. Over the years I have written MANY resumes. I've even done job-winning resumes for others. For myself, however, I was at the end of my rope with trying to make my experience and background fit on two pages. My husband and friends were enthusiastically encouraging how I could pretty much "do anything".

"Jane-of-All-Trades" isn't really a job description. It does not appear in the Occupational Handbook.

Finally, I threw in the towel and called a professional resume writer who also owns an employment agency. An agency I had actually not worked for, as I wanted someone totally unbiased. Someone who would be thinking of my resume from the viewpoint of a person looking to call me in for an interview (no one really gets a job through the resume, just the interview... then you have to sell yourself from there!)

For a mere $250, I too, could have access to this magical document.

For now I won't go in to how excrutiating the next three hours were. Well, other than I learned that I break a LOT of the rules when I look at writing my own resume. Flaws I wouldn't dare make on someone else's. All under the label of being "too thorough". So, one thing I learned was a few things about myself.

So now, I have an official resume.

Oh, and a really cool pen with multiple laser pointers on it.

And My Other Car is...

I'm a working mom with a difference.

"Duh", you say. "You already told us that difference. Thirteen kids is quite a difference there, too."

But, it's even differenter than that. Yes, I understand "differenter" isn't a word. It's a throwback to my childhood, a chuckle of remembrance of my kid's word choices (when they were younger, of course), and a nod to the great man and Inventor of new words himself - hey, words all originated somewhere! - Winston Churchill.

I take a jet to work. An Alaska Airlines jet leased by the oil companies to bring their personnel to work and back to Anchorage.

Working on the north coast of Alaska, in a place called Deadhorse, but more commonly referred to as "Prudhoe Bay", it's about 850 road miles from my home. And unless you're an ice-road trucker , you're not gonna drive here during the winter; which sets in the end of September and here at the end of March there is no end in sight.

The actual Prudhoe Bay is about three miles north from where I live and work for two weeks at a time.

I work in a three-story "Man Camp" that is raised up on pilings to keep the heat generated within the building from transferring to the ground, which is a thick gravel pad. That gravel serves to insulate the ground, and prevent the permafrost from defrosting. This would be bad, as it would remove the only solid structure within the ground that holds up the buildings, on ground which is otherwise mucky.

And yes, that is a bear at the bottom of the stairs looking for something to eat. My office is right above that post.
There are reminder signs posted to take care when opening doors to the outside, as they like to go under the building. The brown bears are seen in the summer when they come down from the Brooks Range to the south.


Built in the hey-day of the North Slope building, the building decor is mid-80's and looks like a massive mobile home from that era, right down to the panelled wallpapered walls. Despite the age, it's held up rather well, and the rooms are like being in a college dorm. There are 4 double-wide lockers, and two under bed drawers, and two beds in most rooms. Each occupant gets the use of one locker and one drawer. When on R&R, we put our locks on and hopefully leave most of our stuff at work. That's why one sees so many people traveling with small bags for their two- or three-week hitches.

Ideally, the dorm room serves as home for 4 people; 2 sets of alternates; but not everyone has an alternate, and shift changes vary and change and 10-25% of our population is non-permanent: waiting for rigs to move or jobs to start, or are inspectors, are workovers, etc. And then there are the seasonal changes, with January to March being "Exploration Season". This year's Exploration Season has been a bust with good-ol' Obama closing up American exploration and giving the opportunities to his buddy, George Soros, who just happened to invest $900 million into this company, Petrobras .

But I digress.

I'll bet George Soros' other car is a jet too. But I'll also bet he doesn't have to sit in the middle between two healthy oil men.

Nothin' Like the Present

So I start a new blog... only to not post. How like me to get so busy with the every day I forget to have the fun too. At least I used to write for fun.

Or did I?

Or was it because it provided cheap counseling?

Eww. That wouldn't be a very good idea, counseling oneself. That sounds like a quick trip down the path of self-delusion.

Ah well, I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time... nor would it be the last.

That said. I have now gotten thru the dreaded first post. Where's the bottle of champagne?

I'm a Working Mom

Ho hum. There are a lot of working moms in the world. From the mom who is a CEO to the stay-at-home mom who humphs because she's a working mom too (just doesn't get the paycheck), there are a LOT of working moms. I'm just like them. And then again, not.

Even a-a-a-all the way back 25 years ago, when I only had three children, and was a working mom who also went to college. There were those people who looked me over closely with squinting eyes and demanded, "HOW do you DO it?" or would tilt their head as tho' trying to imagine how the pieces of the puzzle fit together and ask, "HOW does that WORK?!"

And over those years, there were many, many challenges, mostly medical in nature. Some so severe that I have few to no memories of a handful of those years. And the questions still came. And I had no answer... I just kept waking (most) every morning.

And here I am, 25 years later and finally have the answers:
I don't.
And it doesn't.
But it has to.
So it does.

People eat, bathe and breathe. I struggle to complete a thought. Most of the time they are interrupted by the interjections of children, dogs, telephones or something burning.

I go to work. Sometimes for two weeks at a time. 867 miles away. On the north coast of Alaska 3 miles from the Arctic Ocean. I know what some of you are thinking. Probably because I thought it first.

This is just the beginning... and this is where I explain it: not how it works... but how it is.