I am employed again...

After the longest period of unemployment I have had since I was 16.......5 business days (I didn't count my vacations to Phoenix and West Palm Beach).....

I have a job.

I am going to be a commission sales person in the department at The Great Indoors that sells tile, vanities, sinks, pretty faucets, and pretty much anything else needed to remodel a bathroom.

To picture The Great Indoors, take all of the pretty and fun things out of Home Depot, multiply it by a lot, and then add in some art. And it's HUGE.
And conveniently it happens to be owned by Sears (who I just happened to work for for 6 years through high school and college). And they use the same registers and systems so I am a pretty much pre-trained employee.

Yes this is an actual picture from the second floor in a Great Indoors store, isn't it neat?

Some of you may be asking, "but Carmen, why not find a job that pays you the bookoo bucks you went to college and got a degree in construction management for?". Well the answer goes like this:
1) In the 8 months left in this year, I need 9 days to go and see my Lane who is coming home from his mission in Dallas in March, I need a week to go to Florida for Jeff and Alison's wedding in June, I need a week to go to a family reunion camping trip in July, I need a week for my baby brother's baptism in August/September, and there is also a second wedding anniversary and other miscellaneous things that I'm sure will come up.
I don't think that would go over real well in what I consider a "normal" job.

2) The construction industry is not exactly thriving in this state the politicians describe as having a "one state recession". Especially residential construction, and I don't really have an interest in commercial construction. This is all well and good for our goal of buying a house here (steller, amazing prices), but for my work...not so much.

3) I don't even need to work to have our family finances hum along smoothly...but to be honest, I've been going insane not having a job to go to this past week. Maybe things would be different if I had a house and kids...but it's not. We just barely got the internet in our apartment last night, it's been just awful without it! We don't have TV that's OK, we don't have a home phone that's OK, but not having the internet...what a tragedy.

4) To be honest, if I'm good at what I do (cross your fingers) I will be able to make close to my starting pay right out of college. Crazy, I know. (don't take this to mean that education isn't worth it, it totally is. If something happened to Curt and we had a bajillion kids, I know that I could support us no problem, I just wouldn't have the luxury of picking the jobs I would when just working for fun).

5) Most of my extra money will be going to house stuff as we will be outfitting a significantly bigger house plus my normal have-a-remodel-project-going-on-at-all-times theory will be in full effect, so the discount will be much appreciated (right sweetheart?). Unfortunately this discount doesn't transfer over to regular Sears stores for my tools.

and 6) how fun is it going to be to be able to help people put together rooms that look like this:

or this:

or this: