Just Keep Swimming

I know many people know how I feel right now.  Newly graduated, stuck in Rexburg for the next little while, and out of work (kind of).  I do have a part time job, but they don't have enough hours for everyone so I'm only getting about 20 hours a week.  Also, my boss thought I was going to quit (even though both David and I told him I was staying) so he hired someone else to work during the day (which is the shift I wanted) and so I have to work almost every night.  It's a lot of fun when David's at school all day, I'm at work all night, and we only get to see each other for about 2 hours in between.  It sucks.  It's enough to pay the bills, but not by much.  I've been looking for any job I can get that would offer me full time, but in this city it's nearly impossible.  Especially if you want any type of benefits or want to earn even $9 or $10 an hour.  There are so many college kids here that will take any minimum wage job, that hardly anyone is willing to pay much more.  It's frustrating to call all these people and fill out all these applications to have nothing work out.  But I'm hopeful.  When my sister was trying to get a job in nursing, I remember her saying once "They can't keep me out forever!"  I think I'm going to try to keep that attitude.  Just keep working at it until something finally works out.

In the meantime, David and I have tried to do all we can to cut back on expenses.  David decided that each of us can only eat out once a week.  This isn't too hard for me because we would normally eat out at night and I work almost every night so that pretty much takes away that temptation.  I do go out to eat with my sisters and mom every week, so that's my one time out.  If I find a day job, I don't think I'll be able to go to that any more, which bums me out a little bit.  Instead of eating out, David has to endure my cooking.  While we were at David's house his dad kept telling me all the easy recipes and telling me I need to learn sometime (which I wasn't quite sure how to feel about him telling me that).  I was never that much into cooking.  I love to bake.  I'm a sweets person.  I love sugar.  Cooking is much more salty.  But I'm doing my best. 

Also, we try to keep the heat off or on low as much as we can.  This isn't too hard because sometimes having the heat on doesn't make our apartment any warmer than when it's off.  Gotta love apartments. 

We also try to shop at Sam's Club as much as we can and buy in bulk.  It saves us a lot of money in the long run because usually we only go grocery shopping every other week and we just hold off on things we need until we can make time to go down there.

We also spent some money on a couple of chickens.  Like whole chickens.  Frozen.  They were a lot cheaper than getting chicken cuts so that saved us money, but I had no idea what we were supposed to do with 2 frozen chickens.  That night, David had his friend Paul over and they divided the chickens up into breasts, legs, and other stuff that they made a broth from.  The broth was really good and we used it in some homemade chicken noodle soup.  And last night, I had to de-bone and de-skin the breasts so we could have some crockpot chicken.  It was pretty gross.  I'm just glad we had good knives so that the process went pretty fast.  I take after my mom in that I hate touching raw meat.  David had the chicken while I was at work and he said it was pretty good so I guess I didn't mess that up!  David said it's pretty hard to mess chicken up, but I know I'll find a way.

Well, that's pretty much my life right now.  While I'm at home all day I look for jobs, clean, do laundry, and try to figure out what David can have for dinner.  It's not very exciting.  I'm already getting bored and it hasn't even been a week since David started school.  I need a job.