Waiting

From seed, to seedling, to baby plant, to plant with flower bud, to a beautiful flower. It all takes patience. You wait for the seedling to emerge, you wait for the plant to grow. You watch for the flower bud to emerge, then to slowly expand and open into something truly lovely. It amazes me that a tight green ball opens into a beautiful yellow and orange flower. How was all of that inside? Here is a photo of a Gazania plant. This poor plant was a victim of Peter Rabbit. It was close to maturity when Peter decided to eat it. All that was left was the very bottom leaves. I put a cut out milk carton around the plant and hoped it might regrow.



To my amazement, it did grow. And yesterday as I looked out the window I saw this beautiful yellow flower. I got out my camera and went to take some photo's. I love looking at the patterns within a flower. I know in geometry class way back in high school they taught about flowers and their patterns. I can't remember much about that but I know that there are actual mathematical formulas that go with the patterns found in flowers.

Here is a question for you. Do you know what color the Mum flower is going to be? I think for this plant it will be an orange color. You can see in this photo that the flower petals have stared to form, you can also see the first tight green flower buds. Each day as I go out the flowers are closer to opening. It is fun to watch and see just what will appear.

I think that this plant will have a light purple

flower with a yellow center. Perhaps it may even be pink.

Here is a nice dark pink/maroon color, when totally open I think there will be a yellow middle.

In this photo you can see all the stages of the flower except the fully mature flower. They are going to be so beautiful.

I went to the Resume and Cover letter class at the One stop re-employment center today. I think there might have been 35 people there. You had both men and women, older people as well as young. Some people were dressed up and professional looking and others were in their jeans and T-Shirts. I'm amazed by people who have tattoo's and face piercings, or dreadlocks. In this economy I think you would want to look as clean cut as possible but perhaps I'm wrong. There were some good tips. Make a master resume where you put everything about you and your careers on. From this you then can make target resumes for the places you want to apply.

The big No: Do not mass mail your resume. If your resume is not targeted to a specific job at a company it will be thrown away.

You always need an objective. Here is an objective: Seeks job as receptionist at veterinary hospital!

Always have a cover letter to go with your resume. The cover letter should not contain information found in the resume. There are three parts to the cover letter. Introduction(who you are and what job you are applying for), Body(your skills and how you would be best candidate for job), concluding paragraph(thank for time,look forward to meeting with you to discuss employment). This should only be about 1/2 a page long.

When you make a resume use key words from the actual add you are applying for. Especially if you apply on line as most places have a computer scan the resumes and if you don't have their key words your resume will be rejected.

A resume gets you in the door. It will not get you the job. If you apply it is OK to call a week later to see if they received your resume. Also if applying on line look to the top left hand screen for https: If there is no s then you are not on a secure site and anyone can see your information. This is when you would call and say "hey I'd like to apply but your site is not secure."

Another tip have a signature CAR for every job you have had. CAR stand for Challenge, Action, Result.

Here is a CAR for my library job: The challenge was that every time a substitute or new volunteer put books away they did not fully understand that they needed to check the authors name and have the same authors together. As a result many books were placed in the wrong spot. My action to help keep this from happening was to relabel the books with the full author name. Once this was done the substitutes and volunteers were able to put the books away quicker and with less books being put in the wrong space.

Did you know that anyone can go to the re-employment classes? You don't have to be unemployed. Also if you learn that you will be losing your job you can go before you lose it and get help and start the grant process. These things would have been nice to know. Think of how much further along I would be. Now I just need to find some friends who are good with resumes to look mine over.

I have applied at Kohl's. It is my favorite clothing store. I often say I'm a Kohl's girl. All my families clothing comes from this store. I like their brands, I like their credit card. So perhaps I will get a job. They are hiring and they need cashiers. Which was the position I applied for. I know I would be very happy working at Kohl's and I could definitely sell their credit card. As the saying goes "The more you know the more you Kohl's! So wish me luck.

Garden photo's

This first photo is a close up of my Mum plants in the process of forming their flower buds. It is hard to believe that these little hard green buds will soon open to be big vibrant flowers. Mum's are a type of plant that teaches you about waiting. The Mum's start growing in early spring. The old plants will begin to have new stems and leaves grow from the bottom of the plant. (So it is very important that you let the dead part of the plant stay on the plant over the winter so that the new parts of the plant will grow in the spring.) Also in leaving the dead top, the seeds will fall into your garden and then you will also get new baby plants.

All summer you need to fertilize and water and pick your plant back. If you don't pick the plant back then you will not have a big bushy plant come fall. Then in the fall you wait and wait for the plants to finally bloom. I'm still waiting. I have one plant that has it's buds opening. A brilliant deep purple color is soon to emerge. Photo's will be coming soon.
This is a photo of a Cosmo. Another from the seeds given to me by the Librarian. I was surprised to find that Cosmo's come in different colors. I need to do some research on them. This photo is a little blurred. Sorry. I'll need to get out and get a sharper photo later.



This is another Cosmo. I love the yellow center with the deep purple and then light purple pink color. It is just beautiful to look at.










This is a Dianthus. These plants are small and are good for the front or boarder of a garden. If you pick the dead flowers off they will continue to bloom from spring to fall. My neighbor saw me clipping the plant down earlier this year and thought I was making a mistake, but was glad when the plant re bloomed. This plant is part of the Carnation family. This spring at first bloom my garden looked so pink from my window. It was just wonderful to look out and see all the pink.

So today I am handing more applications in to stores in the area. I'm hoping that soon I will have an interview and that I will have a job in a few weeks. My husband had a bad week last week. Some of it he caused for himself, and some of it is just from the learning curve. I was worried he was ready to give up, yet on Saturday he came home in better spirits and feeling that he was looking at this job as a training experience. He is learning the skills he needs to stay in the auto industry. He is ready for some bumps and disappointments but hopes that for the bulk of his time he is able to learn and grow. It will also be nice if he can make enough for us to survive. His pay check this week was not very good. It makes me so thankful that we have savings. I will also be a little more relieved when I have a job to help buffer the bad days. It is also nice that we have quality health insurance for our family that is not so expensive that we can't pay it.
A blessing of all these trials is that so far it has been drawing my husband and I closer to each other. We look for ways to build each other up, and to keep positive. We are growing and learning. Like a garden it takes time,and a lot of waiting before the beautiful blooms appear, and the delicious fruit is ready to eat. Each day is full of hard work so that the end result is worth the effort.
Saturday I spent time in my garden. What a blessing to have a place to go and just work and have quiet time to think and reflect.

Is there something called a normal life anymore?

As I get ready for one day to end and another day to begin I wonder " is there something called a normal life anymore?" is it just because I'm almost 40 and an adult that the world seems so much more complex, and filled with so many more trials than when I was young? Is it just that I come in contact with more people, and hear more stories of trials that the world seems less kind? I'm not sure, but I do feel that my life will never be the "normal" that it had been. I look back and realize just how blessed the past 13 years were. My husband and I had time together, I was able to be home with my children. There was no worry about having a job,

or even the worry that there would not be a new job to have. Now it seems to me that many people worry about this. If people have a job they worry about how long they will have it, if they don't have a job they wonder if they will find one. Some people have a job and worry that perhaps they are not doing well enough. So what do you do when the world around you seems so out of control? I guess what I have been trying to do is make my home feel very much like there is control. I try to make my home peaceful for my children. I try to make it seem normal to them even when for me it is very much the opposite. Some days it is very hard. But I think I'm doing well. My kids are happy. They are doing well in school. They are making friends. They do not see that my husband and I are stressed or worried. I feel in some ways making life as normal as possible for them helps to keep my life a little more calm. I have found this great sense of peace in the past few days. I have found that I have the ability to be calm. I daily seek direction and peace from Heavenly Father. This has given me the extra strength I need to keep going. I try each day to build my husband up, to help support him. He has more trials to face, and all I can do to help him keep strong is what I will try to do. If I am able to keep my house feeling peaceful and normal I know this helps him. He is working so hard and I continue to pray the Lord with help him. A song I have begun to really love is " How Firm A Foundation." One part of it is where I think my husband and I are: " When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply. The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine."

The top photo is of a blanket flower. I love that they bloom from spring to fall. The middle photo is of a zinnia in one of my front gardens. If you pick the flowers back then they bloom a long time too. This photo is of a Cosmo. I planted the seeds for this plant late. I didn't really think they would grow or bloom, but to my surprise they did. I love the beautiful purple color, and I liked the fact that they did not get too tall. This was from the seeds the Librarian at the school gave me. I was happy that the seeds grew. I'm planning on sending him a card made with the photo. A funny thing about flowers and plants is that for some reason in my garden things grow extra big. It baffles me and my neighbors. One strange thing that has been happening is that I cut some of my tomato plants and left just stalks. They were in pots and I set them in my back yard as I wanted to empty the pots and put the soil in my back garden. The plants have started to regrow. I have totally ignored them, didn't even water them and they are flourishing. My neighbors just look at them and shake their heads. What a green thumb you have they say. I'm glad for that. I love the beauty of nature. Well goodnight.

White Marigold

This is a photo of a white Marigold. Most Marigolds are dark orange in the center and light orange on the edges. I'm thinking someone who is into flowers and creating new forms made this White Marigolds. I had quite a few of them in my garden, but they fell over and began to look bad. I took them all out last week. My neighbor who lives in near my garden stopped me a few days later and asked where they went. She really loved them. I told her that I had pulled them out. She was a little sad because she wanted some seeds so she could try to grow her own next year. I told her I would buy some for her next year. I did leave the zinnia's in the garden for her as she usually likes to take the seeds, but she was really looking forward to the marigolds.

I have realized that I am making too much of a project in finding a new job. I have a meeting on Friday, which I will go to, but have pretty much decided not to go the route of getting more of an education. I liked one of my friends comments to check out a local plant shop. We have an Agway next to my house and I'm going to go there and see if they need a cashier. I'm also going to hand in some applications Friday afternoon to some of the retail stores in the area that I have been filling out. Next Wednesday I'm going to the Resume and Cover Letter training session at the one stop unemployment center. I've spent way too much time worrying and I need to get out there and apply. I then will try to take some more online course that would help me get a job in a veterinary hospital. Once my resume looks good, I'm just going to go down and apply for a receptionist position. I think a lot of my problem has been that my life has been so unsteady the past few month. I need to just get out and go.

My husband was called in at work yesterday. He is now going to be going on to a true flat rate work life. I pray that he will be able to do well. They will be reviewing him every two weeks. He feels he has about 6 weeks to prove himself, or he may be out a job again. I have to say in some ways this scares me, and in others I'm OK with it. I'm not sure what direction he would take if he does not stay employed. I really like the car dealership that he works for, they have been very nice and fair to him. I only hope that things will work out.

Off to continue to fill out applications.

Praying Mantis

Here are two very interesting photo's of the Praying Mantis. This is the second one that I have seen in my garden this year. Perhaps he is there to remind me to pray about the direction in my life. I have to say they are very interesting bugs. I'm not sure what direction my life is going to go in. I do have to say that I have been meeting a lot of interesting people in the process. Yesterday I had re-employment orientation at the One stop unemployment center, where they start you on a journey of finding a new job. See I could go out and apply to many retail stores, but is that where I want to be in a few years. And at
what point would I become very bored. I really want to work in an office type setting. Yesterday I signed up for a career counselor interview. Which I had today. I have to say that it was very interesting, and the person was very nice to me. They did say I was just too sweet and I needed to learn how to be a "New Jersey B...." You can guess what that word is. I said I don't think that will ever happen. I did learn that one thing on my resume is a big employment killer. All my community service because it screams that I have children,and that suggests that I'll want tons of time off. I was given a good book to find my skills, and new ways to write my resume. I was also started in the process of getting money to go back to school to become a Vet tech. And If I can't work with books, then that would be the next best place for me. It is where I have my education, and where a lot of my passion is. So my next appointment is at 9:30 am on Friday. I now have to put together a job search list. I have been looking and talking to people about employment. Most of the place's I'd like to be really aren't hiring. So It's off to once again work on that resume, and put together my job search sheet.





You see a lot about the recession being over. I'm not sure, I think that perhaps it wasn't even a recession, I think it was a depression. Each day as I wait for my appointments at the unemployment office, I hear so many sad tales. People on their last possible extension. They have been applying for jobs and nothing, no one is even calling to give them an interview. People who thought they had a job that would never be affected and are now unemployed. You even hear people who have job's talking about how they don't want ask for raises because they don't want to lose their job. Today as I talked to the career counselor I said that I had been thinking of applying at retail stores, and she said that's the next dying thing. Pretty soon it will be see our online shop, and there will be less and less actual stores. I'm not sure how far down the road that is, I'd hate to see it though. I like to go out and walk around the stores, I'd hate to think that soon you will just be stuck buying everything online. But you know the next generation I don't think it would phase them at all. No books, just computers, no stores, just computers. Are there going to be any job soon?

Applying for Job's

Here is a photo of one of the fall flowers in my garden. It has already gone by, but how beautiful it was. I love the orange color, makes it seem like fall. I'm still patiently waiting for my mum's to bloom. I can't remember what color's they are, I know I have more than one color out there.

Today I went to the One-Stop-Unemployment center in our town. I did the orientation. Which took about an hour and a half. There were about 15 people there, most of them were older. One women had been a nurse. She was saying how she never thought she would be out of a job. I'm also surprised as everyone keeps saying the job to train for is nursing. There were also many people there who were just looking at the job postings or working on the computers. To get any type of help you first have to go to this orientation. So now I can go to other career help stuff. Tomorrow I get to visit with a career counselor. I'm hoping they don't tell me to go get a job at a bank. I would like to work as a receptionist or office clerk. My biggest problem I think right now is that I'm not sure if my resume is good enough. I don't know if it is showing future employers that I'm a good worker. Or if it shows enough to get me at least in for an interview.

I look forward to getting a little extra help. I have started to fill out applications, and will try to hand at least two in by the end of this week. I also have one receptionist job that looks interesting and want to call and see if I can drop my resume off.

The past two weeks with the kids back in school has actually been nice for me. I have enjoyed this moment of quiet in my life. I've had time to look at my life and think about what the next step should be. I would really like a job where I will have the same day off as my husband. It has been nice for us to sit and have lunch together and talk. I have spent time praying and asking God for direction in my life. Two years ago I didn't do that. I just decided I wanted the library job, applied for it and then it was mine. I now feel the need to seek divine direction in my life. What is my purpose in life? Is what I do for a job important? Where should I be focusing my attention. Most days I've felt very calm about the speed of this progression. Today though I've been a bit stressed. I've felt a bit weak, and I've felt like the whole job search is a bit overwhelming. I'm only into this two weeks, I can't imagine how other people must feel, and many of them are looking for full time job's with benefits. Me I'm really looking for something part time, and I don't need the benefits at this point.

I've read two interesting books in the past two weeks. They were both mystery books and very fast paced. Sometimes I like to read books that make you think and other times I like these books that are fast to read. The books were : "Dancing in the Dark" By Mary Jane Clark and "Vanished" By Danielle Steel.

Dancing in the Dark takes place in New Jersey. It is a kidnapping, murder mystery, with lots of plot twists. If you have ever dealt with a person with eating disorders, it also covers that subject too. I felt it was a good book to read and liked to read a book about places near where I live.

"Vanished" By Danielle Steel. Is also about a child being kidnapped and how the police look for the child. This book left me feeling very thankful for the life I have and that I never had the trials that the main character in the book went through. It was a very intense book, and I couldn't put it down. I'm lucky that my neighbor next door had a whole box of books out for a yard sale and let me have them. I now have a lot of reading to do. If you read either of these books let me know what you think.

A quiet house

My husband and children are off to work and school. I am in a very quiet house. But I have found a bit of peace this day that I had been missing last week. Last week I did the bad thing, I looked back. In fact I think a lot of this summer I've been looking back. Last week was the worst though. I looked back and thought, I should be going to work today if I still had my job. I should be in the library doing the set up things, if I had my job. That was wrong. I can't look back, I can't go back, and I can't sit and cry over what is no longer. I need to focus on today, and tomorrow. One thing I've been doing if focusing on where I need to be going now. Where does God want me to be, what is the plan for the rest of my life. I've been slowly figuring that out, and I have felt great peace in finding out about what I'm supposed to be doing, rather than what I am no longer doing. I have a much better idea of the direction I want to go with in my life and now I need to work on getting there. One thing I want to do is to go into the city once a month and go to our churches temple. My husband will now have one day a week off, and I think we should go once a month. He thinks once a season, so I'm really going to have to work on him. I've been told what I need to do, and now I need to get him to see it. The best thing is I feel great peace in all that is happening.

Yesterday my husband had the day off, and it was so wonderful to spend the afternoon together with out the children. This is one blessing of his new job. My husband also went to get the new exhaust system for my car, and while talking to the sales person he found they had a lot in common and the man gave him 20% off the price of the system. So instead of having to pay almost $900.00 we only had to pay $700.00. Another blessing. With so many blessings being seen, I know more will come. Oh we also have health insurance again. What a relief. I'll never make that mistake again.

Remember focus on the day and the future, don't look to the past and try to get back what is already gone, find the blessings of the moment you are in.