The Layoff was two months ago and in a quirky coincidence, my take on the risks of going on the record - and how little appreciated this sacrifice turned out to be - made into a web site: Big Questions Online. Please check out my story here.
While I jobhunt, I've gotten a new housemate for the next few months; my older brother Rob. Turns out that his desire to leave Seattle - after several life reversals - coincided with his ability to find a job here a mere eight miles north of me. Today was his first official day of work and they've given him a schedule of all the people he's to meet, things he needs to learn, etc. Seems like a super nice and very professional place and we're hoping he can take all that window sales knowhow he learned in Seattle and apply it back East in what I believe is the largest Weathershield distributor in the country.
And so he needed a place to land while testing out this job and whose home should be nearby but mine? And so Veeka is sleeping in my room and Uncle Rob is esconced in a room full of stuffed toys, piggy banks and kiddie Bibles. There are even stars painted on the ceiling which I'm sure he's finding to be quite inspirational.
One of my requests is that, while here, he'd help me with a lot of things that need doing around the house and so he's spent the last 10 days working on my mud porch. We thought that we needed to just repair one windowsill; well now he's had to paint multiple surfaces, tear out all sorts of stuff and repaint shelves and walls and so on. So the first day he showed up in....as you'll see - not wearing a whole lot. In the blue underwear photo, he's holding some trim he got at Home Depot, a place he's gotten to know really well this past week. The brief attire is because it was 105 degrees out. In the porch photo, he's painting a shelf while Veeka poses with God-knows-what in her mouth. She of course is fascinated with this large being who has suddenly shown up in her home and with whom at one point she conked out in front of the TV.
Right as the porch was getting done, some nasty bug struck down my painter, who spent much of the weekend in bed. But, I'm sure he'll be recovered by next weekend, at which point he'll start on the painting of my dining room. Yes, the room and board come at a price. And so I've gotten more face time with Rob since he arrived July 25 than we've had ever since he left for college in 1971.
Rob's pronounced himself quite taken with our muggy climate which is a nice switch from the drizzle he's endured after 39 years in Seattle and thinks he'd like to hang around these parts for good. Yes, it's true the winters here are sunny which they sure aren't in the Pacific NW. Last weekend we took a drive to our old haunts off Bradmoor Drive in Bethesda where he first attended elementary school and I was age 2-5. The lovely willow tree is gone but the house at 8932 Bradmoor Drive didn't look all that different after 48 years. And the "big woods" at the end of the street is still there with its trails and stream. As I was snapping Veeka standing in our old front yard, it felt so eerie to realize that 49 years ago, I stood in the same spot when I was 5.
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