Once time has pulled away the husks of hometown repression, there is nothing quite like arriving back for a visit.
It was wonderful to wander the familiar roadways from Cody, over “our” mountains past favorite hunting, backpacking, and four-wheeling trails, and down the unfolding ribbon of I-90 to ultimately pull into 6700 Robin Drive. When Pat and I first started dating, his parents’ house became my second home. Pat’s family welcomes me with open arms, and even though my parents have moved out-of-state, I feel at home and like one of the family when we return to Gillette.
Moving chores — obviously, when you move, there are the things you think of. Packing boxes. Changing your address. Unpacking boxes. When the move involves changing lifestyles, there are other things one might not immediately think of: paying the end of utility bills, getting vehicle registrations changed, setting up finances to be managed from the front seat of a 1986 Honda Accord, getting more pages in the passport, etc. And have I mentioned that I’m trying to catch up on my blog?
Looking for odd jobs — Pat’s month of July was already usurped by the CPA exam. He’s on his final two sections and for best results needed to study non-stop. This left me with the painful job of trying not to interrupt my best friend, with whom I like to discuss every little thing that flits across my mind. Lucky (?) for me, I had completely blown my summer budget. My vision of visiting all my Northwest friends and living economically didn’t exactly pan out. It’s hard, when you haven’t seen a friend for ages, to deny them the joy of celebrating the reunion by doing something exciting and outside their normal daily routine. This usually involves establishments that deliver food and/or beverage items into your hands while you sit and chat. Fees vary.
In short, my funds allotted for summer expenditures had dwindled to nothing. Budget stickler that I am, there was only one thing to do — get a job! My first stop was “Manpower” — a classic Wyoming temp agency — where I filled out paperwork and watched safety videos for over an hour just to get on their list. Gillette also hosts the National High School Finals Rodeo, due into town during our stay. I called the concessionaire scheduler who connected me with folks looking for a few extra hands. Then, while thumbing through a local ad-magazine, I stumbled across a hokey ad* for another temp agency. After sharing my disbelief over their media choice, I eventually decided I would check into the time required to get on their list. Home from the gym** the next morning, I dialed up the agency so I’d have details to mentally plan my day in the shower. “Hi, I’m Jema and I have a variety of skills. Tell me about Adecco and my chances of actually getting work with you folks if I go through your sign-up process.”
“Well,” says Robin, “actually, could you be on a downtown jobsite in thirty minutes?” Um, okay. Uh, yes! Pat helped pack my lunch, Sally helped me track town work gloves, and I was showered and out the door in fifteen minutes. I spent all day with Marcus, Rick, and John pulling up berber carpet that had been glued to the cement floor in an old commercial building. What a day job! Marcus told me about a hot-shot service that was looking for drivers. He was going to work for them until he started his accounting job the following week, but was still waiting on his out-of-state (red flag! ) driving record to show up. I put a follow-up on my Monday list of to-do’s before heading off to enjoy Toy Story 3 and a delicious dinner out at the Prime Rib with the family!
Before we went to Casper, I spent a day arranging more temp work opportunities while Pat babysat his nephews! I joined him for the last few hours of the day with the 8, 6, 4, and almost 2 year old boys — they are a handful, and it was fun to watch Pat manage the wild bunch (and adorable to watch him fall asleep in the recliner with the napping youngest tucked on his shoulder). At some point, I also got to hang out with my friend, Chase, (see Stanford & Steinbeck entry). He’d come into town for a wedding, and was spending a few days relaxing. I drove over, and true to our history, we sat around drinking water (we are former running buddies) and talking. Then his mother told us about some videos we made in our high-school days that she and another of the boys had come across months ago. After some technological challenges, we spent the rest of the night in stitches over our ridiculous antics involving dead fish and making fun of anyone and everything.
Adecco ended up having two more jobs for me in the days before our visit to my sister/grandparents/Pat’s test in Casper — one moving furniture at the local hospital all day, and the other building their cafeteria tables for seven hours. I worked with Rick, who I knew from the carpet pulling job. He was quite a character — wiry, on the small side, a cynical smoker, shameless soup-kitchen-user, leathery skin, and a growly manner. He’s a fighter, and I’m sure it was interesting for him to have a young woman bluntly but calmly explain that he was going to need to work on his patience. We got along well, however. To listen to him talk, you would assume a horrendous work ethic (always saying we should sneak off and hide, comments about getting paid by the hour, posturing about not wanting to lift a finger more than he had to). Maybe it’s just because he did want to be shown up by a woman, but he was actually a good teammate and pulled his weight. On the second day, we built our last table by 4:00 p.m. and I headed home to pack for our Casper trip!
Footnotes of sorts:
* This ad was both hilarious and horrifying. It had two sultry women dressed in full camo hunting gear behind a waterline in front of a marshy hill. They kneeled in a lunge, angled toward each other wheel-of-fortune-style, with shotguns pointed skyward, the butts resting on their thighs. Their smoldering gazes reached right through the camera lens. The headline read, “Job Hunting? Call Adecco.” Subtext: “We have benefits!”
** Campbell County, much like the rest of Wyoming, has been well known for its budget surpluses. I don’t want to steal any thunder from the masterminds managing the money, but I do want to point out the remarkably small number of “mouths to feed.” [Wyoming is the least populated state out of 50, and the 9th largest. The 500,000 inhabitants have lots of resources to share around, and not as many outstretched hands to deal with.] One of the fantastic side-effects, for me, is a wildly affordable, multi-million dollar county-run recreation center. Lots of upheaval and disapproval has surrounded the construction and decisions around this facility. However, it’s there now, and I used it! It has multiple indoor tennis courts, racquetball courts, basketball cum volleyball courts, a standard pool, an indoor “river”, weight lifting, cardio galore, group exercise, and indoor track, and indoor walking loop, AND a climbing wall. To top it all off, because it’s subsidized, a one month couples membership (no initiation of course) was”¦ oh, guess! ”¦.. yes, $69!
~ not a footnote, but a good place to stick this tidbit I want to have for future reflection:
One of the things I adore about Wyoming is the frequency of less-than-professional workplaces. Most the folks there just can’t see why you should bother, and they find “professional” behavior quite pretentious. It’s actually great. At the DMV, at the Country Treasurer’s, at the Post Office”¦ no one enforces silly rules just because they can. Bureaucracy is almost nil in Wyoming, especially for someone used to California..
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