Oh the times, they are a-changing

It has been brought to my attention that I haven't updated my blog in a while. Since June. Like I didn't know that . . .

Here's what happened. While I was waiting for strawberry jam to seal on the counter, I composed several new blog posts. If I remember correctly, I was having some trouble getting Blogger to load my pictures in the correct order. Blogger was not the only source of trouble that day. Only two of my 13 or so half pint jars of jam sealed. The jam was a mess - the recipe I'd been using said to stir the jam till it "sheeted" off the back of a wooden spoon. I cooked the heck out of those berries and sugar, and it never sheeted. Eventually I just poured it into hot jars, figuring enough was enough.

So much for giving out strawberry jam to friends and family members as Christmas gifts. The jam, I have learned, is excellent for making Giant's Thumbprint cookies - I think I have used up about 3 jars of jam on 5 or 6 batches of cookies since making the jam. But that is all it is good for. It is almost impossible to spread at all, even on something as hard as one of Krista's Kitchen's sturdy "Best Crackers Ever." I pawned a few jars off on my immediate family, and the rest is waiting to be made into cookies, possibly for Christmas.

This summer my dad and I grew a decent garden, although I did not freeze much food at all - just a few batches of chicken stock made with garden ingredients and stuff from the farmers' markets and lots and lots of zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, and zucchini cookies. I didn't make it to as many farmers' markets as I would have liked, either. We did have a steady source of produce from our CSA (we just ate a salad out of the last box) but this was not a great summer for eating real food.

I spent most of the summer applying and interviewing for jobs, and doing some traveling. Michael and I took Amtrak out to Reno, Nevada for a Scrabble Tournament. We had quite the adventure getting there and back again. Not as much of an adventure as old Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, but almost. I had a job interview the second day of the train ride out West. By the time we go to Reno, the train was something like 18 hours delayed, which got us to Nevada mere hours before the tournament started, instead of a full day. On the way home we were another 10 or so hours late, so we had to spend the night in Chicago before catching a bus back to Madison. That was going to be a blog post, but it never materialized. In general it was fine with us that the train was delayed - we got to see some beautiful sights in daylight instead of missing them in the dark.

Here are some pictures in reverse order:

The Rocky mountains, from pretty far away.

I don't really remember where this was but it was before we got to the Rockies.
Foothills of the Rockies?
That is a CAFO. This was in Nebraska. It was the first thing we took pictures of on the trip. Once I saw the cows, I had to dig the camera out. Apparently (I later learned) it is illegal to take pictures of these places. We'll see what happens.
More CAFO. Some women sitting in front of us wondered what kind of ranch this was. I told them that if they've ever eaten a McDonald's hamburger, or bought ground beef at the grocery store, the animals probably spent some of their lives in a place like this. This picture cannot capture how vast this place was, or how many cows were there.

Michael came in second in his division at the tournament. I did not.

We arrived home to Madison in time for me to go to the Art Fair on the Square with my mom, which has been a tradition for several years now. Then it was back to the grind - searching for jobs to apply for, writing applications, hoping for interviews, going to interviews, and then waiting to hear about jobs.

We also went to three weddings this summer, which were fun. Congratulations Krista and Nate, Mark and Pondie, and Charlie and Tricia!

By mid-August I had been offered two jobs, and ended up taking a full time job teaching both English and History in Pardeeville, where I taught half-time last semester. So far I am enjoying teaching, but it has significantly impaired my ability to garden, cook, and can. (It has interfered with my ability to clean, too, but I'm not complaining about that.)

In spite of getting a job shortly before school started, my dad and I made two batches of Barbara Kingsolver's spaghetti sauce in late August, and my mom and I made three canner loads (plus some!) of applesauce in October.

On the first day of school, Michael and I met at the bank at 4:00 to get preapproval for a home loan. Working with a realtor who we have known for many years through Scrabble Club, we started looking at houses. We weren't sure how house-hunting was going to go, as Michael wanted a new house and I wanted an old house. I was partial to two-story houses, and we really wanted to stay in our current neighborhood, even though it is not in the best school district in Portage. Two weeks ago, we accepted a counter-offer on an 11 year old house about a mile from where we currently live. It is also two blocks away from the best elementary school in town.

We will miss the river, the sandhill cranes who got into our engagement pictures and seem to return to the sandbar every spring (we saw them taking a goodbye-for-winter stroll along the edge of the sandbar tonight), and our wonderful neighbors. We will miss being a block and a half from the levy path that runs along the river. We will miss panoramic views of the changing seasons. We will not miss mowing the huge yard or only having one bathroom. I will not miss being a renter, although I am somewhat scared about the new responsibilities that will come with home ownership.

I'm planning a small garden at our new house (yay, even less yard to mow), and Michael has grand plans for the large unfinished basement, which will be his "man cave." (He has promised to let me set up a little corner of the basement for my 'reading nook' though.)

We'll be moving into the house during the month of December. It will be a happy, exciting, sad, fun time of change.

In the meantime, I'm keeping a day or two ahead of my US Studies students, trying to motivate my 6 Media Analysis students to participate, and feeling grateful that I have 18 students who, after about three weeks of school, finally learned to participate in American Literature.

It is the tail end of a 4.5-day weekend, three days of which I spent in Chicago spending too much money with my sisters. It was nice to kick back with my sisters, get pampered (mani-pedis on Friday), read (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan), eat, and shop. We stayed at the Inn of Chicago - the same place Michael and I spent the night after getting in to Chicago at 2 a.m., long after our bus had left.

Now it is time to get back to work, re-learning US Studies, creating an assignment sheet for Media Analysis, and reviewing The Crucible for American Literature. I like being a teacher. It is a lot of work, but it is work that I generally enjoy.

I don't promise to blog more frequently in the next few months, but here's hoping I have a garden next year, and that after my freezer is depleted this winter, I stock it back up next summer.

Changes

Just when I had finally gotten settled into a routine working as a substitute teacher some days and as a law clerk the rest of the week, things had to go and change. On Friday morning, nine minutes before I had to be at work at the law firm, I got a call from the school district where I had interviewed several weeks earlier. The interview was so long ago that I had recently said to my husband, "obviously I didn't get that job." The assistant principal who called me started the conversation by thanking me profusely for the thank-you card I sent to her after the interview. (For the record, I also sent a thank-you card after my previous interview with this school district, and it didn't seem to help, since I wasn't offered that job.) I listened politely, planning my response to her inevitable rejection speech. She thanked me for a while, then told me the teacher who needs the long-term sub had had her baby, and then eventually got around to telling me that she was offering me the job. She wanted me to come in that day. I was sort of stunned.

Her desire to have me get in the classroom on Friday was slightly awkward, since the law firm was expecting me in five minutes. Eventually she indicated that it would be okay if I came in on Monday (tomorrow) instead. So I told her I'd be happy to take the job, and made arrangements to talk to the personnel department later. I went to the law firm, and awkwardly told my boss that this was apparently going to be my last day. (How convenient that I had arranged to bring in the leftover spice cake from Thursday's book club - what had been just a "Friday treat" could now be called a "going-away treat.") He was very gracious, and congratulated me on getting the job. (Basically my boss at the law firm was an all-around good guy who displays the complete opposite traits from all of the other lawyers I have ever worked for. Your standard, run-of-the-mill lawyer would probably say this guy gives lawyers a bad name 'cause he's not a complete and total jerk.)

On a typical day at the law firm, I would arrive to find my desk full of files covered in post-it notes reading, "See me on filing Complaint in X case" or "Legal Research on Economic Loss Doctrine." I would have a brief meeting in which he would explain what he needed, and I would get to work. On Friday, he started out in this fashion, but began setting files to the side in cases he knew I wouldn't get to in my last 8 hours with the firm. As he was starting to tell me about a task I could complete, my phone rang.

It was the personnel department calling to tell me to bring official transcripts, my social security card, and my drivers' license on Monday after I go to the Occupational Health Services for my drug screen, my TB test, and my physical.

For the record, I don't typically answer my cell phone while working, but I figured I should pick up on Friday in case it was the school district calling back about Monday. So when another unknown number called me a few hours later, I figured it was the school district calling again. I was partly right. It was a school district - a different district with a long-term sub position calling to schedule an interview. They want to interview me on Monday the 13th. I told the lady who called that I am planning to take a different position but said I'd be happy to interview for this position as well. She was not deterred so I went ahead and took the first interview slot she had.

The job I have been offered is an hour and a half from my house, during good weather and not at rush hour. I will be waking up at 4:45 in order to leave my house by 5:45 so I can get to school by 7:15-7:30. Just this week I though to myself how thankful I was that my job was within walking distance from my house, and that I did not have to wake up before 6 a.m. to be at work on time. Ha. The interview that I will have on the 13th (if I don't cancel it) is for a half-time position that is 20 minutes from my house, and I believe this position will last the rest of the school year, whereas the position I've been offered is only for 3 months.

Furthermore, there is an English teacher in town who is expecting to go on maternity leave sometime between now and April, and she has recommended me to the principal as her long-term sub. I've been trying to get a one-day subbing job for her for the last month (she's posted three but someone else was always quicker to schedule the job), and finally got one - for a couple of weeks from now, which I will likely have to cancel. In a perfect world, taking this current job will not mean giving up the opportunity to sub for her. In a less-than ideal world, I may have some hard decisions to make in the next few weeks. And that is something I have never been particularly good at.

To top this all off, it snowed on Friday night, for really the first time this season - just in time to remind me how hazardous it may be to drive those 85 miles to and from a limited term job every day. I've been a little bit stressed out, trying to figure out how I'm going to feed my family real, local, non-processed food while I'm doing all of this driving. I've really enjoyed being able to take nice homemade meals to work. But when am I going to have time to make these meals now that I'll be spending three hours a day in the car? I'm trying to remember what/when I cooked while I was student teaching, but I'm kind of drawing a blank.

I went out to check the freezer a few minutes ago. I have four six-cup containers of vegetable beef soup, two four-cup containers of Kale soup, two four-cup containers of early vegetable soup (turnips, zucchini, and I'm not sure what else), several cups of chicken stock, and two f0ur-cup containers of beef stock in the freezer.
Plus, I finally got around to making turkey stock from my Thanksgiving turkey today. (The carcass had been hanging out in my freezer since my dad carved it. I don't have pictures, but I did require my husband's help to get the whole carcass into my stock pot.) It is still simmering on the stove, but I think it will make a couple quarts worth of stock. I also have many quarts of tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce both in the freezer and in my cupboards, along with half a dozen bags of sliced zucchini, at least a dozen bags of corn, and an assortment of other frozen vegetables.
We are not going to run out of food, but we might get a little bit sick of spaghetti with zucchini and tomato sauce.

The main problem with doing any more (real, local) food shopping in the next three months is that the farmers' market that is open in the winter is an hour away. It is still possible to go, since it is on Saturday mornings, but I know that the absolute last thing I'm going to want to do on a Saturday morning is get up early and drive an hour so I can go shopping.

Clearly, I have mapped out all of the negative elements of this job opportunity. What I need to focus on, instead, is how lucky I am to have been given this opportunity! In the past few months I have received several great employment opportunities. I am grateful for all of them. While there are a few drawbacks to this job, and while I might be inclined to stick with my still-new routine, which has become comfortable over the past few weeks, I recognize that this is an incredible opportunity for me. I was so disappointed not to have gotten a teaching job this summer, when most of the people I went to school with did find jobs. I was told by a veteran English teacher here in town that I needed to add some long-term subbing assignments to my resume so that school districts would know I had experience writing units and doing long-range planning. Now I have the opportunity to do just that.

So tomorrow I go in for the health screenings, and by Friday I should be set up in the classroom.
If it doesn't work out, the attorney said I'm welcome to come back to the law firm any time.

Update

Our CSA ended last week, so I had no fresh veggies to pick up yesterday. Honestly, I didn't really miss it at all. I had a little more time in my day. (The nearest CSA to us was still about 35 minutes away, which is actually pathetic considering that I live in a rural, agricultural part of the state. It's kind of like being unable to find a seller of raw milk in in Wisconsin. But I'm not bitter.) The extra time was nice this week because I've actually had subbing jobs most of the week . . . I turned down a job on Monday because I had lunch plans, but if you keep reading you'll see why this ended up being a particularly wise decision.

Today I headed over to the local Farmers' Market to check on my Thanksgiving turkey and to pick up the two bunches of carrots I ordered last week from the great farmer who supplied me with fifty pounds of canning tomatoes this summer. It turns out the woman who I ordered a 15 lb turkey from never wrote down my order . . . which explains why I didn't get a call last week to say the turkeys had been "processed" and would be available for pick-up at the market last week. (By the time I got to the market last week this particular vendor was gone, or I would have found this out then.) The guy who was there today seemed annoyed with that woman, but told me someone else had not responded to repeated calls about the status of her turkey, so he said I could have hers. It's 20 lbs, a LOT more turkey than I need for my 11 guests, two of whom are very little girls. It's also selling for $3.50 a pound. I could have taken it home today but I didn't have that much cash on me, and I wasn't sure I actually wanted to go through with the purchase. I *think* I saw a sign for pastured turkeys at Jordandal Farms at last Saturday's little market in Madison . . . but at the time I thought I already *had* a turkey so I didn't stop to chat. Also, there was a big line of customers.

I'm not worried about the turkey situation. I'll either get one on Saturday at Jordandal or I'll keep my fingers crossed that the 20 lb turkey is still available next week, clear a space in my freezer, and stock up on soup ingredients.

Speaking of soup ingredients, I picked up six medium sized candy onions, three or four tomatoes, and two bunches of carrots from my favorite farm, and a bunch of larger carrots, a small bag of apples, and a 2 lb bag of popcorn from some other vendors today. I spent $14, which is less than our CSA share would have been, and I got to pick what I brought home with me. I'm still kind of on the fence about the CSA for next year. I'll keep you posted.

But the real reason I wanted to write tonight is that I have a house full of leftovers and goodies, and I've been enjoying the heck out of having homemade, real, fast food available every night. Last week I think I blogged about making pasta with eggplant, those tiny zucchinis, the grocery store mushrooms, etc. We are still eating that up - I made a BIG batch. Plus, I made a batch of chicken noodle soup over the weekend, and there's still a little bit in the fridge, in addition to what's in the freezer. The FACE (Family and Consumer Education, for those of you who took Home Ec back in the day) teacher brought lasagna to the teachers' lounge for lunch yesterday, and my husband was instructed to bring a salad. That did away with the remainder of the lettuce, carrots, and radishes I had from our CSA, but it made a very big salad, which I just finished off for dinner tonight, topped with an apple from today's shopping.

We had dinner with friends on Sunday to celebrate three significant birthdays in October, and I made a batch of dinner rolls and cupcakes, along with another yummy salad. We left the salad (and plenty of cupcakes) with our friends, but enjoyed some carb overload at home - and there are still two cupcakes left. My plans to freeze the remaining rolls didn't work out because the second batch, which I refrigerated on Sunday night and cooked on Monday, were cooling on the counter while I made applesauce, and they got splattered with sticky apple puree. (I had an interesting night on Monday.) So instead of freezing them with a really long label that read "Rolls baked 10-19, glazed with applesauce" we ate them. They made good breakfasts.

I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies today - not at all good for us, made with white sugar and white flour - for my former museum boss/neighbor/friend, who had a hard week. They didn't turn out particularly well because the butter was too soft, but they taste okay. So now I have about 3 dozen chocolate chip cookies, two cupcakes, two more servings of pasta, one very generous dish of chicken noodle soup, and a bunch of fresh vegetables in my fridge. I still need to make a cranberry apple pie before my cranberries go bad . . . but I'm kind of enjoying not needing to do any cooking at all.

This is an especially good feeling, as I have been presented with a possible opportunity for more work in the near future, if I can reach some kind of arrangement that allows me to work flexible hours around my completely unpredictable substitute teaching assignments. The new job opportunity is actually at a law firm in town . . . to which I sent a resume three and a half years ago, only to hear back that the firm was not hiring attorneys, but it sincerely wished me good luck finding a job in this little town, where my then-boyfriend, now-husband lived. My boss from the museum (where I had been working, till it closed for the season last Friday) put me in touch with one of the junior partners in the firm, who is the daughter of the senior partner who wrote the nice rejection letter (which I saved, along with all the other rejection letters I got from law firms) because my boss thought we should meet - we're young, professional (okay, I could be a professional if I could get a real job) women in town who are interested in civic life and leadership, but are significantly younger than most of the other active women in town. Also, my boss thought I needed a friend (I was originally introduced to my boss by a neighbor who thought my boss and I should become friends) and my boss is too busy to hang out with me. (Earlier this summer my boss broached the topic of introducing me to a young lawyer, and told me her name. I asked if she worked at the law firm that shared that name. My boss said yes, and seemed surprised that I'd heard of the firm. I explained that I had tried to get a job there back in the day. I was, and still am, amused by this. I know it really isn't that funny.) We had lunch a few weeks ago, and, just for kicks, I brought the rejection letter -as I said, I think this situation is amusing. (To be clear, I sent resumes to most, if not all, of the law firms in this town, and none of them wanted to hire me. Some of them wrote back to say so. But I felt strongly about *this* firm because the senior partner went to the same college as my husband, and one of the junior partners did too. I thought I'd have an "in" with them, if I could score an interview. But it wasn't meant to be. And then I ended up going back to school - that very same college, in fact - to become a teacher - so now my connection to the school is less tenuous than "my boyfriend went there" but my professional outlook has changed a bit.) The three of us (boss, junior partner, and myself) had lunch again on Monday. Imagine my surprise when the lawyer said she had talked to her dad and he said he'd hire me this time around, even though I hadn't applied for anything. They're always busy and could use another person to do stuff around the office. Since I have multiple degrees and I was working part-time for just-above-minimum-wage this summer, everybody (correctly) assumes I'm in the job market. I'm meeting with the attorney next week to sort out the details of how I can work part-time doing paralegal type activities (my law license is currently inactive) at the firm while still staying active on the sub list.

If anyone else wants to introduce me to a potential friend who is going to end up getting me a job, I'm game. Just sayin'.