work vs a job

Three days in a row of working full time hours has left me little time (or energy) for anything else. In fact no time. I have done nothing else.

It's not like working at the store is a strenuous activity. I open the store, turn on all the lights and do all my blog reading that I didn't do in the morning because I was getting ready for work (which means having breakfast early, getting dressed in real clothes and making my lunch) in between greeting and chatting with whatever customers come in that want to chat and writing up the occasional sale.

Around 1 PM I would get out the little bits of glass and start gluing them onto the larger black pieces for the next kiln load of crosses. The afternoon hours mostly didn't have anyone coming in. Then pack up all my stuff, turn out all the lights and lock up stopping by my sister's house to check on the cats and water the plants on my way home, where I do my own watering, change into comfy clothes, fix a drink and then become immobile on the couch with a book. Didn't even have the energy to write up a post or an email to friends.

So actually, I guess I did get some stuff done. 45 more of the crosses set up and ready for the kiln.

I think I've mentioned how long it's been since I had a job that kept 'hours', some 37 years or so. I'm not used to having a job that commands my day and schedule. Oh, I've had plenty of days where I worked long hours in the shop and back when we were a larger going concern and had employees and were raising kids, we kept regular hours but for the most part I'm used to setting my own schedules. Long leisurely mornings are the norm around here, starting to get to whatever work or goal I've set for the day around 11AM, often working til around 7PM with however many breaks or distractions that occur throughout the day.

I'm fortunate that the store doesn't open til 10AM so I didn't have to set an alarm clock, something I turned off when my youngest graduated high school and never turned back on again. Takes me 10, 12 minutes at the most to go from my driveway to the store. If I had to change my routine, I suppose it's not a bad one to change to. I'd eventually make the adjustment and find time to do other things.

But I won't need to change my routine since this is just an occasional gig. Unless I'm filling in for my sister when she travels, it will just be a few days a month really.

So the whole reason I did it this week is because my sister is out of town dealing with the consequences of our aunt's death and our grown autistically challenged cousin (but that's a different post) which means that I also have the little dogs and the cat that lives here is a bit annoyed.

Here they are in their bed under the covers.

They're under the covers because a cold front blew in Wednesday night and it dropped down in the 30s last night. Since we're on an austerity campaign around here we weren't turning on the heater and the house was not that cold when we went to bed. Then I had to get up in the wee early morning about 5AM before light to deal with the cat.

“If there was any doubt about whether the house was going to be cold this morning, it is,” I said as I climbed back in bed. Some time later Marc got up to fix the coffee. When he climbed back in bed he said,

“It's 63˚.”

Shit. That's only 2˚ colder than we keep it with the heater on.