Where was I...?

This is a post that I began after the bathroom blog. To update, each of us are taking turns cleaning the bathroom once a week. I think it is helping!


I am seriously thinking about hiring a maid to come in once a week. I will give the kids a chance to volunteer to clean the bathroom, after that, they will each pay for the maid to come in once a week to clean it.

(I will get over it, someday)

Anyway, that was my shower revelation today. That got me started thinking about the various jobs that I have had since I was 10 or so.

When I was 10, Renee and I got a job cleaning the condo of the bachelor next door. What was his name? He had a very clean house, but needed the glass tables and mirrors cleaned. Thank goodness we didn't have to clean his sheets. He was quite the busy bachelor and we could hear them in the summer when the windows were open.

After that I babysat for a little girl on weekend evenings. I don't remember too much about them except that they really liked me and trusted me and they had HBO. So, you have a preteen watching, "Here's Burlesque" and I still remember the "Jeepers, Creepers" bit. That was weird...

When we moved to Evansville, I got a babysitting job for two boys and two boxers. They were all challenging. I think I did a lot of journaling back then out of pure boredom. I was subject to torture of the worst kind - a television permanently tuned into "rasslin' ". I should explain that Evansville had a low form of southern dialect. Set across the Ohio river from Kentucky, they had all the backwoods dialect with none of the southern charm. Not only did the television stations have the national wrestling programs, but they also had local 'rasslin'. While I had Scott Baio and Rex Smith pin-ups taped to my bedroom walls, the locals fell in love with the local overweight foaming at the mouth 'rasslers. I didn't get it.

Two years later, when we moved to Yankton, an extremely cliquey town by all standards, I had difficulty finding babysitting or any kind of job. I resorted to Rent-a-Kid, the local job service program for youngins. My first and last job through Rent-A-Kid was a cleaning job for a middle aged lady in a housecoat. She lacked social skills and I suppose it was worth the meager wages I was paid for her to recline on the sofa while I toiled away at her pink bathroom and yellow kitchen. She led me to the bathroom that reeked of old and fresh piss. I looked and looked and couldn't find any cleaning solution. I invaded her time and asked meekly what she would like me to use for cleaning solution. Why, strawberry shampoo, of course! How stupid of me! Since experiencing this disgusting odor compound of strawberry shampoo and piss, I have been unable to tolerate the waxy smell of fake strawberry. Why, I wondered, after obviously all these years of filth had she picked this weekend to pay someone so scantily to clean her house? I had to scrape away at black circles of chewed gum stuck to the floor in the kitchen. All the lime and dirt layers in the bathroom were slowly penetrated by my sweat and the strawberry shampoo. So desperate was I for a job, that I didn't call my family to pick me up, but stuck with it. I think it was an eight hour job rewarded for some reason by meager wages and a disapproving look. That will do, I guess. Never did I contact rent-a-kid again.

My next job was babysitting for a nurse with 3 children. Their two girls were very well behaved and had a list of chores that were quite complex for for 7 and 9 year olds. The boy, on the other hand, treated with more of a "boys will be boys" attitude, was a monster not made to mind.

Somewhere in there I babysat for this toddler. Her parents were the type that gave her free reign. I should have realized at this point in my life, my tendency for OCD. They allowed her to play with a deck of cards. She bent them and threw them all over the place. I wanted to crawl out of my skin! What a mess!

Another babysitting job I had was for this couple that went out a lot. She was quite the lush! One night, she asked me to babysit. It was a school night and I preferred not to do that. She begged and begged and I eventually said yes. She promised she would be home by 10:00 at the latest. She wasn't home until after 2:00 am, then yelled at me because I said I needed to get right home. Back then we didn't really have concern for drunken adults. We knew the risks for ourselves, but I didn't think twice about this slurring, swearing woman driving me home. I don't think that she compensated for the late night with pay, either.

My next babysitting job was when I was 15. I was the kind of babysitter that cleaned the house and did the dishes and made it all nice for the parents. She was the manager of the movie theater in Yankton. She gave me a job there for $2.85 an hour. This was better than the $1.50 an hour I got for babysitting her kids!! I must have worked there only a couple of nights before I figured out that she wasn't scheduling me any hours at the theater because she needed me to babysit. Let me do the math... Nope!

So, I applied and got a job at Sunshine in Yankton on my 16th birthday! That was great! I was now making $3.35 an hour. I remember the boss there. Her name was Vi Larson. She was short, and like most short women I knew, was quite assertive. She had a beehive that attempted to make up for the short stature, and if that didn't do it, she ran a tight ship. Some famous Vi quotes - I remember them to this day - are:
"We all work when we're sick!"
"To whom it may concern..." on a note posted on the time clock, followed by something someone wasn't supposed to be doing and ending with: "You know who you are! And that means you!! And I mean it!!!"

This woman could strike fear in the hearts of monsters!