August 17th, 2014

08/17/2014, my baby girl Cherokee turned 22 years old today. It was just me, her and her cat, Echo, celebrating. Nothing too fancy. She picked out a cheese cake yesterday for today and ice cream of course. I bought a toaster over yesterday so we can do some baking. The oven in our apartment seems to be a bit of a fire hazard. I've only tried to use that oven twice. The first time something that should have only taken 15-20 minutes took over an hour. The second time it caught on fire. Electric ovens that make fire bad. But the stove top still seems to be working fine. The landlord took a look at it. I think he was hoping to fix it, but it's so old he can't find parts for it. He said something about replacing it, but that was a couple of weeks ago. So I bought the toaster oven so we can at least do a few things that require an oven. We did a frozen pizza in it for Cherokee today.
This is my third week at home depot. So far so good. My shift is from 4am to 8am. I'm part of the pack down crew which just means I help keep the shelves stocked. So far I like it there and I can see myself working for Home Depot for many years to come. But getting up in the middle of the night to go to work stinks. I don't think it's something anyone can really get used to. And of course I'm only part-time. They are not in the habit of hiring anyone directly into a full-time position. They start you off part-time to make sure you're going to work out. Typically, once you've been there six months, then you can start applying for full-time positions as they become available. They like to promote from within and I can even transfer to another store if I need or want to.
We'll see how it goes. You can only take it one day at a time. And I'm reluctant to let myself get too hopeful. Some of my new coworkers are perfectly happy to sit in part-time positions, but they have husbands who have full-time jobs with health insurance etc. But there's no husband here. It's just me, myself and I as usual. No prince charming is coming to save the day. No white horse and no shining armor. Hell, if he showed up in a beat-up pickup wearing faded blue jeans and a flannel shirt I'ld be delighted. The only place where I have an exciting love life is one of my daughter's video games.
Oh well. Can't have it all I guess. Or at least I don't seem to be allowed to have half of what I want and need. So I'm just going to focus on the new job for now. My current supervisor was able to get his position in only four months. Maybe I'll at least get lucky at work and move into a full-time position quickly. In the mean-time I'm trying to get cross trained for some other departments in the hopes I can pick up some extra hours that way.