This is actually a picture of my husband, who enjoyed Tree/House very much and supports all of my writing efforts besides. Thanks, dear!
My husband is the hardest working person I know who does a job he's not especially interested in. When he lost his lucrative position at the big-bad-we-break-your-kneecaps-if-you-don't-pay-your-student-loan place, he didn't hesitate to take a job at a place my dad calls WallyWorld so we could still eat while paying the mortgage with savings. WallyWorld is not an easy place to work for. It is physically demanding: he lost a lot of weight he'd put on because I love to feed him and went through pain relievers like candy because of the aching muscles. It's mentally draining: most of the workers treat the job according to pay level, meaning that they don't care at all. My husband has an inherent impulse to do a good job, so when he was working in grocery the place had never been so spotless, and there had never been so many customers satisfied with the way they'd been treated. There was never a more efficient checker, and when he became a supervisor over the checkers, the place had never run more smoothly.
The situation was not sustainable, because, as I hinted above, the pay is laughably miniscule. We were going to be on the snowy street if we stayed there, and that's one reason we came to Arizona. I know I'm not making up what a good worker my husband is because when he had to leave the Arizona WallyWorld he'd transferred to, they did everything they could to keep him, including offering to hire me in the bakery department. Even with the two small incomes, I'm sorry to say, that situation would have been just as untenable as the previous one in Pennsylvania.
He left that job, which he's called his favorite job ever (!), for something that still doesn't pay what we were used to before economic armageddon, but is just about livable. It involves working at an office park in the middle of nowhere with scorpions and coyotes in the parking lot, at weird hours, and with an ever-shifting landscape of unpredictable people. And he's doing the best job he can do there, too, and he's so good at it.
He's the thing: when he comes home to me, he really comes home to me. He's with me, present and fully involved, no matter how much his job exhausts him, interested in my day, willing to clean the house, and ever so much in love. I'm so blessed to have such a husband!
Yes, Jessica, you really are blessed!
ReplyDeleteMy dh was more like that when I was working full time and he was in school. Sometimes I'd get home and he'd have supper cooking, the laundry washing, and the vacuum running!
Now that he's working a billion hours a week...ok maybe just 60 or 70...and I'm home all day, I take care of all the household stuff...all of it... But I'm not complaining!
I am able to come and go as I please, write when ever I feel like it, and don't have to deal with a rigid schedule at all.
I feel blessed too...
Sharon :)