One Day When I Don't Have To Clean Up Crap For Money

This post is brought to you with much inspiration from my husband.

There is more to report on the job hunting front and it is all good news so far.  Yay!

The company we have been working with in Texas is flying my husband in for an in person interview on the 9th of August.  They have let us know that they had planned to interview for this position in September, but they have decided that they would really like to talk with my husband sooner, hence the interview coming up.  Of course we are excited, yet trying to remain tempered.  My husband & I are practicing patience, while allowing ourselves to hope a bit. 

In and amongst our daydreams of hope, we have both come up with some pretty idealistic scenarios.  While we actually know that life will be no more perfect than it is in any particular geographical location, sometimes I do find myself imagining things like a house that is truly low maintenance.  I have heard my husband dare to speak aloud about how strange and wonderful it might be to afford a little indulgence here and there without so much buyers remorse later.  While we have worked hard to get to a point in which we are fortunate to be able to pay for life's expenses without a horrendous amount of effort, sometimes it feels as if the rewards for hard work are always just a little out of reach.  So as much as neither my husband or I want to think that changing our location is all about money, we would be fooling ourselves if we did not admit that a much lower cost of living is definitely an important aspect of any future move.

And so, having admitted to being excited about the idea that saving some cash is one heck of a motivator to do anything, I offer you my story of how my husband made me laugh about being paid to clean up dog crap:

My regular work will be slow for the next 6 weeks, so I agreed to take care of a dog for a person who has employed me for many different projects over the years.  I figured that I could use the money since my income would be down and I had taken care of this dog before so what was the big deal???  The big deal is that this dog has picked up some really annoying habits sometime between the last time I watched her and now.  I'm not sure what happened, but she really seems to have lost more than a few IQ points and her behavior is quite poor.  One of the worst things this dog is doing that is wreaking havoc on my household at this moment in time is that she is now stepping in her own crap when she goes outside.  Tonight she managed to drag it in on her foot and prance right across the carpet, before anyone noticed that she had done it.  That's right, I got to steam clean my carpet at midnight!  And you can sure bet that I loved that.  After the excitement had died down and I was putting away the cleaning stuff, my husband came to me and promised me that one day soon I would not have to clean up any more crap for money.  I could hear the unusual amount of frustration in his voice.  He went on to say that he felt bad that he had not reached the level of success that would insure that I would never have had to do this kind of thing for money at all. 

All of the pent up disappointment that my husband has been feeling over not finding work in the place where we really want to be has come down to this.  The man was actually apologizing to me for having to clean up dog crap.  And worse, he felt that this dogs lack of at least a half brain's worth of sense had anything at all to do with him or his ability to provide properly for me. 

While my decision to take on a rather crappy dog sitting job is really all my own, I couldn't love my husband more for seeing that I do deserve better. 

So naturally, I answered back without skipping a beat- 'hey, at least I don't have to do it for free.'