Things are Starting to Come Together

We got a lot done on Saturday. We wandered around looking for a dresser for Little Djinn, both in charity shops and furniture stores, but didn't find anything we agreed on. I liked a squat one we saw in a charity shop but Chris thought it was meh and he liked an almost £400 one in a furniture store, but I'm not willing to spend that kind of money on something that will get treated the way children treat their furniture. So we're still looking. We then went to the curtain place that did the curtains in our bedroom and my FiL's place and made an appointment to get fitted for blackout blinds, both in our room and the nursery. He came around on Monday to take measurements but wasn't able to bring the book of blinds with him as they were being viewed by another customer, so we still need to pick those and curtains for the nursery.

We went to the post office in Tesco's Inshes to pick up the package we missed Friday, which turned out to be from Miss Laura and full of gifts for Little Djinn, including a blanket knit by her mother. Laura also sent us a little stuffed lamb which was on our baby registry which was particularly impressive given that the posting date was before we created the registry. I've always know that Miss Laura has impeccable taste.

We also swung by the new mega craft store in Inshes, though "mega" is a relative term. Certainly larger than anything comparable in the area, though it would be a bit small for a Michael's. I got some sock yarn for Christmas-gift socks (not for anyone who reads this, but one never knows) and some cotton yarn to try and crochet some snowflakes. The secret to happiness here is going to have to be low expectations as the only thing I am less confident in than my crochet abilities is my ability to follow a pattern using UK, and thus different from US, crochet terminology. If only it wasn't the same terms for different "stitches"....

On Sunday we cleaned the house a bit before going to my FiL's for tea (the beverage). He tried to call to tell us not to come as he had a cold, but we'd already left when he rang as I needed to be at work after the shop closed to help prep the shop for a corporate visit which should have happened this morning. My manager was freaking out about getting ready and the only real comfort I could offer was that, given the number of shops they planned to visit in one day, they couldn't possibly stay long. Their plan was to come up Wednesday, visit our shop from 8-10, and be in Aberdeen by lunchtime. Everyone who lives in, and probably most people who have visited, the highlands hears this and blinks. They clearly have no idea the actual distances and travel times involved. Hopefully they'll consider shipping product based on distance it has to travel weighed as a slightly higher factor against volume of the destination store. Promotional material that arrives the day before or day of an event is slightly less useful than one might imagine. Hopefully it went well and my manager can enjoy a highly-deserved virgin cocktail or five (like me, though for different reasons, the poor woman isn't allowed a drink) when she gets home.

On Monday, Chris and I had our first ante-natal class which was mildly irritating in a "why are we using all these silly euphemisms for a straightforward biological event?" kind of way. I'm going to take it on faith that the midwife leading the class (she's not a "community midwife", eg one who might actually be assisting in my labour) did pass courses on anatomy and physiology and is merely operating under the impression that we all failed basic biology. But we got a tour of the post-natal ward where we'll be after Little Djinn arrives, until we're ready to go home. The midwife assured as that being discharged 6 hours after delivery is not SOP here, and that three days is much more common at which I blanched. Three days stuck in a hospital, twiddling my thumbs? Fortunately the recovery ward's own material suggests one day before discharge which seems perfect for learning to nurse and a few supervised diaper changes before returning to the solace of one's own bed and partner.

One of the ladies in my Tuesday night knitting group is also pregnant, a few weeks further along than I am, and her ante-natal class started on Wednesday. The classes normally start around 32 weeks, but they're trying to squeeze us all in before Christmas, so I'm getting an early start.

Speaking of early, they called to cancel my ultra-sound appointment for next week, the one I was so excited about (and impressed to have gotten an appointment notification a month in advance). Apparently it was scheduled in error and they'll send me another letter to reschedule for the week before Christmas. Sadness. Chris suggested we could make private appointment to have an ultrasound anyway, but as much as I love getting to see Little Djinn, I'm not convinced it would be worth it. I'm a lot more used to being poor than he is.

That's the life of a pregnant woman. I'll be 31 weeks tomorrow, with 9 weeks left to go. I didn't take a picture this week, so you'll just have to take my word for it that I continue to look rotund. I'm starting to be exhausted all the time: yesterday I was ready to crawl back in bed half an hour after I got up and I'd actually slept through the night for once. I finished the center panel for the baby blanket I'm knitting for Little Djinn, picked up one of the side panels, and am working my way through the first lace chart (though it's so tiny, I'm using the written directions instead. My kingdom for a photocopier). I also took a picture of the purple blanket I knit way back whenever, blocked and displayed on the bassinet (Moses basket) in the nursery.

Gainful Employment

I got a job! I had interviewed, probably back in September for a part time position at an international cosmetics* company but, alas, didn't get the job. I avoided the shop for a while but on Friday, when I was in the mall to have my eyes checked, I stopped in to pick something up. The manager remembered me, asked if I was still looking for work, and if I wanted a seasonal position starting Monday (yesterday). Um, yeah! I spent the rest of the day buzzing around, planning celebratory things to buy with my first pay cheque (none of which I've bought yet - see, I have self-restraint).

Yesterday was my first day, a 4hr shift. I'm guaranteed 4hrs a week which is a minimum and the opposite of the US system which seems more geared towards maximums. This week, for example, I have another 4-hr shift scheduled for Friday. The schedule is called the "rota". That was a bit of confusion as my request for the "skedu-ol"** was met with blank looks and I tried to talk my way around what a schedule is ("uh, hours and days when one will be working?") while miming a sort of calendar. Rota. Right. The day was a bit higgledy-piggledy, or as my manager put it, "we're all at sixes and sevens right now."

I spent most of my day restocking shelves, which is generally a good way to learn the product. I have the advantage of having been a fairly loyal customer for years, but things move around and there's a different level of attention given to browsing and knowing the stock. I didn't get any training on register but I did sell a woman two bottles of perfume (for her mother) and ring her up on my manager's till (while my manager stood next to me and told me which buttons to press). I was also taught how to enter and exit the store without tripping the people-counter which corporate uses to track customers vs sales.

As far as dress code goes, we only explicitly covered the need to keep one's hair back off of one's face and wear "five points" of make-up. Five points wasn't clearly defined, but I took it to mean five items of make-up with things like multiple shades of eye shadow being counted as one. So mascara (ma-SCAR-ah not ma-SCARE-a), eye shadow, foundation, blush, lipstick (lippy). This explains the dichotomy between fully made up faces and less than perfectly coiffed hair and a t-shirt. Normally I'd take a dim view of dress codes requiring make-up but, as part of the job is specifically selling make-up, it seems reasonable. Happily I'll be given "five points" of make-up, hopefully at my discretion. Wearing make-up once or twice a week is "fun dress-up" territory, right?

The other dress code we covered (minus a couple of allusions to not wearing flip flops or sandals) was a seasonal red t-shirt exhorting the happiness to be found in giving CosmeticsCompany gifts. My manager said they originally sent out one size of ridiculously small t-shirts that she wasn't confident would fit an 8 year-old and managed to get some larger ones in. The larger ones are "medium" and don't fit over my considerable bosom so it has been suggested that I just wear a red t-shirt of my own and she'll try and get a larger (x-large) shirt for me. I find it somewhat unlikely that I'm the only medium+ employee on the sales floor.

I also got to watch a Health and Safety video which could have been greatly improved had it delivered on the implied promise of potentially dangerous situations ending badly. The video demonstrated the proper technique for cleaning shelves - almost elbow-length rubber gloves and a clear plastic welder-style face mask (the bit about taking everything off a given shelf, wiping it down, and putting it back was merely implied). The not-properly-instructed-in-H&S employee (who was just wiping around the objects on the shelf) cut his un-gloved hand on a shard of glass and then decided to spray the cleanser directly into the open wound - between sucking on the cut and bandaging it roughly with the dirty cleaning cloth. As you do.

I have a few more seasonal or part time things floating around out there, so hopefully this is the start of a busier, less financially dependant, period in my life.

* in the broader soaps, perfumes, lotions sense of cosmetics in addition to the "make-up" sense

** as opposed to the British "shhed-ule