Happy Halloween and suchlike, for those of you who celebrate pagan holidays. Happy "massive amounts of candy" day to those of you who indulge in that tradition. Happy Wednesday to the rest of you.
Today dawned gray and rainy in Denver, Colorado. This is a situation with its upside--if it's raining outside, the ubiquitous worker bees who have been crawling all over the building for the past month won't be able to come and do the threatened paintnig today. The idea of a day of peace and quiet, without the boom of power-washers or the whine of electric drills, is very attractive.
First up, on the job front, it's sad to say that the R.C.'s job interview yesterday didn't go as well as she'd hoped. Personalities can be tricky and you never know what you're going to get until you get there. Also, it seems to me that the job was actually advertised wrong. If what they wanted was a SQL programmer who knew Crystal Reports, they should have advertised for that.
Still. Interviews are all experience, right? Each one teaches you something.
That's what I try to tell myself, anyhow. I haven't really said that to the R.C. whose intensive prep for this interview will, I am very sure, come in useful in subsequent interviews.
My own next interview is next Tuesday. (So far. I sent out a handful of resumes yesterday and will no doubt send more today.)
In the meantime--I have dreams.
Last night, for instance, I dreamed about buying books. Must. Remain. Strong. I just bought three new books, of which I have 2-3/4 left to read. Many of the volumes I dreamed of pouncing on with glee aren't due to be released until next week, or even early next year.
Self-restraint really isn't one of my virtues.
I have tidiness.
I carried out 80% of the trash I mentioned yesterday, holding onto only three empty boxes with a vague sense that I might need them in the near future. It's amazingly nice to be able to walk through that room again, without picking my way through a minefield of stacked bags and boxes. I boxed up the "to be donated" stuff, so it's all ready to go.
I finished storage. Sort of. I did go through the seven boxes of books and reduce them to six. What's left, stays. At some point I need to go over there and catalogue the books that are there, but not today.
The only decision left to make is around the Doctor Who and Elvis stuff. I'm working myself up to the task--I'll have to donate the books and trash the rest of it.
Okay, and there's one more box of papers to deal with. All of my "retirement plan" stuff. I need to consolidate all of those bits and pieces of money into one account somewhere.
I have my responsible citizen badge for the month.
I read through the ballot initiatives and completed my mail-in ballot. Later today I'll take it to the post office and send it. (Minor nit: I don't see why they can't put the amount of postage you need somewhere on or in the envelope. It's annoying to have to go stand in line at the post office and find out.) (I have a vague and unsubstantiated belief that it's 85 cents. Maybe I'll just drop three or four of those 37-cent stamps I have laying around on the envelope and drop it in the mailbox?)
I have to clean house.
One drawback of cleaning out storage is that I seem to have transferred a lot of dust from the storage unit to the apartment. This place badly needs dusted and vacuumed.
Brooding....
This whole "housework" scam is really a pain. It never ends. I did five loads of laundry at the end of last week and now, yes, there is more laundry to be done. I scrubbed the kitchen a few days ago but it probably needs done again, in spite of the fact that 90% of our "cooking" is done in the microwave.
There's a Clean House marathon on today. Maybe I'll turn it on and see if I get inspired.
What's really turned out to be fun are the "behind the scenes" shows that Clean House has produced a few times. They tell you more about their struggles with various homeowners than they had time to do on the original episodes, including talking a lot more about how dirty the houses are. In one place, there were actually rats eating their way through the accumulated mountains of untouched-for-years but nevertheless too-precious-to-be-thrown-out crap in one family's basement. (That was the family that needed 8 industrial-sized dumpsters for all of the actual trash they and the crew threw out--the family that wound up with 250 bins full of things that, even after the garage sale and a week of intense work by the crew, they just couldn't bear to part with.)
Now I'm just talking to be talking, aren't I? Just avoiding the day's chores--the job hunt and housecleaning.
Have a great day!
(And, Jonathan? I haven't forgotten you're in the middle of your own job hunt. I'm sending the good vibes.)
Life continues.
The job search continues apace.
The FBO called me yesterday before I had a chance to call them. I had to stop the car, move away from sources of ambient noise, and tell them, regretfully, that I'd decided to continue my search. They seemed--shocked. It did sound like an interesting position but the days of me giving 60 hours a week for starvation wages so that someone else's entrepreneurial dream can become a reality are just over. (Also? If I find myself willing to work for $12/hour? There are a ton of positions out there, most of which won't require the extra 20 hours a week and will pay for health insurance.)
The UNPO sent me an email telling me I didn't get that job. I'm so grateful. Like I said before, what they really needed was someone a lot more detail-oriented than I am.
Yesterday's phone interview with an internet-based, expanding California organization (IBEC) seemed to go well. Only 20 minutes, but they want me to come in for a face-to-face interview next week. In addition to the position I sent my resume in for, there are three or four other positions she wants to "explore" with me--some of which definitely sound more interesting.
Today's haul--five resumes sent. (Ring, little telephone, ring!)
Cleaning continues, yes, apace.
I've gotten through all of the boxes in storage that aren't books. Today's chores involve carrying out the bags full of trash littering my bedroom, breaking down the fifteen empty boxes I held onto (in case I wanted to repack anything), and carrying the two or three boxes of "things to be kept" back over to the storage unit.
I really haven't decided about the books that are still in storage yet. Part of me says, "repack them in smaller, lighter boxes" but the boxes they're already in are labeled as to author, so that would entail a lot of relabeling. (I have no idea why the idea of crossing something out in magic marker and then writing a name on a different box sounds like a lot of work to me today, but it does.) I guess I could, though. I could haul the smaller boxes back over to storage and repack the books which are currently loaded into large cartons. A few empty boxes, a magic marker, a flashlight, and a couple of hours work....
I can tell you one thing for sure. I'm not getting rid of any of them. After the last Great Clear-Out in my bedroom? It wasn't 48 hours before I was rooting around on the shelves, cursing myself for having gotten rid of this or that volume.
Bah.
Frugality suffers a setback.
So, what else is new? I ran mad in Borders a couple of days ago and bought three new books. I'm trying to read them slowly, savor them, since it may be a while before I get any more.
Had lunch with Meg yesterday. All of the aforementioned cleaning up in my bedroom was originally scheduled for yesterday, but when she called, I tossed the idea of being productive out the window. After lunching with her and discussing various girly things, I naturally developed a need to visit a drugstore with a large cosmetics section.
Then the R.C. and I visited a grocery store for a few essentials (nothing is more essential than potato chips), only to find ourselves surrounded by hordes of deranged seniors. Not, you know, literally. Just in the "blocking the aisles, moving far too slowly, stopping in the middle of traffic and preventing everyone else from getting to the food" sense. There was one guy who was wandering very, very slowly and aimlessly around the store, pushing a large cart that held nothing but a single carton of yogurt.
I don't mean to diss the elderly (after all, soon I will be one of them) and certainly I've had my own recent experience with being the rock in the stream of shoppers as I gimped slowly and painfully around the store, favoring my left foot, right knee, and ribcage, but at least I was apologetic about my failings. And I made an effort to move when I realized I was blocking someone's way.
I'm not really sure why I'm talking about it at all. Maybe just because any small item that breaks the routine of my days is noteworthy?
Maybe because I feel badly about a group of people whose days are so uneventful that a trip to the grocery store is a thing to be prolonged for as long as possible.
Politics briefly rears its head
I did the candidates quiz at http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460.
As always with these quizzes, at least 30% of the questions did not provide an answer that I really felt reflected my position. For instance, I disagreed with every, single candidate about Iraq. Is that because my position is unrealistic or because of the wording of the answer set?
I disagreed with 10 out of 12 on energy, another fact that doesn't surprise me. I'm not one of the faithful believers when it comes to ethanol. I don't dislike the stuff, but I don't see it as the panacea for all our energy woes.
Kucinich turns out to be the candidate that best fits my position--a fact that doesn't surprise me at all.
I was surprised to find Chris Dodd, a candidate who barely crosses my radar most of the time, in second place.
Edwards, my own pick for second-place, turned up in third. We disagree on the line-item veto. (I go back and forth on the line-item veto. Properly used, it could be a very worthy tool, but I don't anticipate it would be properly used. In the end, I usually wind up favoring the idea of reforming how Congress constructs legislation.)
Otherwise--
Mobs of energetic laborers continue to work on our apartment building and others around the complex. Replacing "damaged" wood pieces, installing concrete parking bumpers, power-washing, and, we're threatened, repainting. Mostly, when they get to our corner of our building, we get up and leave. It's difficult to sit here and live your life with two or three strange guys standing on your balcony operating some mysterious but very noisy machine.
I guess that's about it for now. I'm going to.... Well, I'm either going to sit down and read, or take myself over to storage and do some work. I'm not really sure. I guess my fate hangs in the balance at the moment.
First, I should mention that the Halloween day job interview was rescheduled to this afternoon, giving me not one, but two interviews downtown today.
I spent much of the 2-1/2 interval between the two interviews roaming around Tattered Cover, eating a sandwich, browsing the magazines, sneering at the cover of the new Coulter offering, mourning my inability to pick up the new Krugman book, and wondering if I still care enough about Thomas Covenant to want to buy the new Stephen R. Donaldson volume.
First up, the "smallish national business" which is, in fact, a Food-Based Organization (hereinafter known as FBO). I like entrepreneurs. I've worked for a number of them and I like start-up companies. I like the excitement and enthusiasm and, to my surprise, I found that same energy in this franchising husband-and-wife duo. I liked them. They liked me. I was taken a bit aback by the promise of long, long hours in the upcoming holiday season. (Surely her joke about getting "an hour of sleep a night" was just that--a joke. Right?) The FBO wouldn't be the first "gift" company I've worked for and I know that around the major holidays, well, that's when they make their money. And that requires a lot of hours. I've worked long hours in other jobs and the prospect of hard work doesn't scare me.
What does scare me is to discover, at the end of an hour-long interview, that a position is being offered for $10/hour and no benefits outside of a bus pass. They went to $12 based on my qualifications (they did like me), but could make no promises of when, or even if, minor things like healthcare coverage might be possible.
I promised to "run the numbers" and get back in touch with them on Monday.
I did "run the numbers" during the aforementioned 2-1/2 hour gap between interviews and discovered that, if I never get sick, my car doesn't need any repairs, I never move and my rent never goes up, and I eat very lightly, I can actually live on $12/hour. (Well, maybe not live. "Survive" might be a better word in this context.)
However, life being what it is, I really can't plan my future on the assumption that I will never need new tires, I will never again fall off a curb (this last experience was my third at that particular piece of stupidity), and I will never again feel the urge to visit an Italian restaurant or walk across the street to Whole Foods and buy a truffle.
Also? I'm not, quite, 30 any more. In theory, these are supposed to be my "peak" earning years. Now that retirement age is no longer some theoretical future possibility but is, in fact, on the middle horizon? Well, let's just say that contributing nothing to my retirement fund during the last fifteen years of my professional life was not a part of my retirement planning. (Nor did I plan for the Feds to raise the "retirement" age to 67 or 67-1/2 or whatever it is now, but I'm ignoring that.) (Except that now I need more money.)
Moving on, we come to the UnNamed Political Organization (UNPO) (the folks who originally scheduled for next week). They work in a cool building and certainly seemed to be an earnest, well-meaning bunch of folks, sadly in need of someone with my organizational and tidying-up skills. They have funding and after establishing this core office, will immediately be moving out to a handful or two of other states. They're just starting out, so the processes and procedures are all to be created, something I'd love to be involved in.
They promise long hours and hard work, but, again, that's to be expected in a start-up and doesn't bother me. It would be a challenge, although I don't have any doubts about my ability to eventually get a grip on it all, but I also suspect that what they really need is someone rather more detail-oriented and more anal-retentive about follow-up than I actually am.
They're offering somewhere around $30-$35k, which is low but a range I could actually live on*. They offer benefits, too. Health insurance, my number one concern, would be provided. The office is across the street from a light rail station, so commuting would be a no-brainer.
They're not going to offer me the job, though, (I don't know why--sometimes you can just get a sense when you're in an interview, you know?) so there's not a lot of point in speculating about it.
Ah, well. Back to the job sites. I am sure there are resumes I need to send....
_____________________
* As the R.C. just reminded me, working for someone for less money than it takes me to live on (and to secure my future on), is tantamount to subsiziding my employer.
In essence, what I'm doing is mortaging, if not sacrificing, my own future to ensure the security of their future.
I'm just not as willing to do that as I was twenty years ago.
P.S. Seven minutes later....
I already have another interview scheduled for Monday. This one, again, is coming in at the bottom of the scale for they kind of money I think I can live on, but great benefits and while not a start-up company, their office in Denver is going to be new, so plenty of organizational excitement!
Wish me luck!
Ha! Not one, but two job interviews!
One tomorrow morning, for a smallish national business.
One next Wednesday for some start-up Progressive group who plan to go national by January or so. (Not sure where they're getting their funding.) The money's not fabulous, but it would be so good to work at a job where I really could get behind what the organization believed in.
(Bad news? They want a "writing sample." Now I have to check the politiblog and try to figure out what's "good", a thing I've never been capable of determining about my own writing.)
The R.C. has made it two Round Two of interviews for the job she applied for most recently as well, so we're both excited about the potential for gainful employment.
Good wishes cheerfully accepted!
Posted by AnneZook at 03:44 PM | Comments (2)So, I've been mostly spending time in the meat world, not the electronic world, for the last week. (I don't update that often, so I forgive anyone who really didn't notice.)
I'm happy to say that my mashed foot is mostly all healed. I barely limp at all these days and think nothing of putting on a pair of shoes and going out and driving myself somewhere. Quite the independent grown-up I am!
Remember last time I posted, when I said my October Resolution was to clean out my half of the storage unit? I am proud to announce that, unlike most of my resolutions, I've been hard at work keeping this one!
Thanks to the R.C.'s months of patient hard work cleaning a path in the mountain of boxes, I was able to start in the back of my stack, at the bottom. I figured the most interesting stuff would be there, since it would be the oldest. (These days, all I put into storage is a box of "legal papers" once a year.)
And boy did I find "stuff". First off, I found armloads of unorganized photos and additional armloads of half-filled albums. My first task was to spend two full days organizing, sorting, and labeling (where I could) all of those. We had a cold, snowy Sunday this week, so it was a good week to have an indoor project to work on, but I promise you I really was sick of the sight of my own face by the end of the weekend.
Other than that, I cannot believe some of the things I've put into storage over the years. (Any more than I can quite believe the things I'm learning about myself.)
I mean, I clearly remember selling off my Elvis albums at a friend's yard sale sometime in the 80s. I'm not sure, though, why I still have a box full o'memorabilia? Why didn't I sell it at the same time? Can I bring myself to throw it out now? (I found two stacks of photos from a trip two friends and I made to Memphis in the 70s. I've already organized millions of photos--can I just throw those away?)
Ditto for Doctor Who (but sans albums). Who knew I had an entire box full of old Doctor Who magazines and books, all from the 80s or before? What am I supposed to do with them? I can't quite bring myself to throw out actual books but I'm not sure there's anyone anywhere I can "give" them and the magazines to for resale or whatever.
And I am learning many things about me.
Did I ever tell you I worked on my school newspaper when I was in Junior High? Probably not, since I have zero memory of it, but I found a couple of certificates lauding my contribution to said publication, so I have to believe I did.
What do you do with old school yearbooks? I don't care about them, don't feel any urge to look at them, but am not entirely comfortable with the idea of tossing them into the trash. Dtto diplomas. I can almost see why you'd keep a High School or university diploma, but do I really need to keep one advertising the fact that I completed Junior High?
Yikes, what bad grades I got in school! Looking at my old Junior and Senior High School grade reports, I see a near-endless parade of Ds. Mostly for math, science, and PE classes, none of which I've ever cared about excelling in, but still. Those give your GPA a real hit when you only have six or seven classes a semester. (Okay, not all Ds, but it still looks bad.)
I found my ACT results. Reviewing those numbers, I can't believe the school counselor didn't sit me down and advise me to consider a career in the fast food industry. (Maybe because there wasn't a fast-food industry when I graduated high school?)
I have to admit that I didn't take standardized tests very seriously when I was young. No one ever explained why we had to take them, so I spent, as was my habit during tests, 80% of the time daydreaming and the other 20% of the time filling in whichever categories seemed most interesting.
I have a tendency to glaze over the bad spots in my past. My brain is not built to retain sad or depressing information. For that reason, I was quite surprised to find performance reviews and "official" memos from one of my favorite employers, pointing out a stream of ways in which I was entirely inadeqate to my position. (I'm sure I received other reviews that were less negative but after a certain point, I quit reading those papers.
And today I found yet another photo album full of miscellaneous pictures, all of which would fit neatly into one of the other seven albums I've already organized. At the moment, I'm trying to decide whether I have the strength to go back in and fight the album battle again, or if I'm just going to not care.
Anyhow. So far I've shredded seven boxes full of old papers, gone through seven other boxes of miscellaneous "stuff", carried out 15 bags of trash, accumulated one box full of "perfectly good but I don't want it any more" stuff for Goodwill, and identified three (small) boxes of things that can go back in storage.
I have approximately 15 boxes to go, 10 of which I'm reasonably sure contain all of the books I don't have room for in my bedroom.
One thing I can say for this most recent stint of unemployment--I certainly won't have to think I "wasted" most of my idle time. I've done enough cleaning out and clearing up to hold me for the next year.
Aside from that, I went to Meg's birthday party Saturday evening (she turned 32, I believe) where I got to chat with her and Ruth, another friend I don't get to see as much as I would like.
I had lunch with Meg today as well, which was fun since today is her actual birthday. She treated! I mean, today is her birthday. I should have treated! She said that she makes it a point every year on her birthday to do one act of charity. Taking her unemployed friend to lunch :) was this year's gesture. In any case it was much appreciated. We had coffee at her favorite coffee house, then lunch at a nice, little French café sort of place.
And, finally, yes, I'm still job-hunting. (Or, I should say, hunting again, since I had to hold off for two or three weeks.) I'd like a job. One with a generous, regular paycheck. I find it hard to deal with the idea that books have been published that I have not been able to purchase.
Whenever Buehler decides to pay me for that freelance work I did (which, by the way, I finished in much less time than I anticipated), the $600 is going to come in handy.
I am missing Doctor Who. I must check and see when the new season starts airing.
Torchwood and the new Kelsey Grammer show were the only two new shows I tried this year.
The Kelsey Grammer show was inexcusably bad.
I've also given up on Torchwood. I wanted to like it. Really, I did. I've heard a lot of good buzz about it and I was excited and entirely ready to love it. But I just didn't.
And that's about it.
_______________________
P.S. Maybe I should make a new resolution--to stop abusing italics?
Posted by AnneZook at 03:41 PM | Comments (3)Shoes! I have graduated to wearing two shoes! And driving myself places! I feel like such a grown-up.
I had my hair done. It's a good thing I earned some free-lance $$ this week. Hair is expensive.
After weeks of balmy temperatures and glowing sunshine gilding the changing trees into summer gardens, autumn has arrived. We woke up today to gray, clouded skies and that flat, cool light that turns even the cheeriest leaf display into a limp, dispirited mess.
I blame that bird. Last night I dreamed first that a man came in off the balcony to try and sell me something and then, after I'd run him off and gone back to bed, a cat got in through the ceiling and jumped on my bed. Clearly some part of my brain no longer trusts that the place is secure, even when I think the doors are all closed. (Also? The ceiling? Really is solid.) Stupid bird.
People always aske me, "what are your plans for the weekend, Anne?" I have no "weekend" plans, people. (A) I'm unemployed and all "weekend" means to me is that there are more people out and about, getting in my way in stores I might want to visit; and (B) I'm unemployed and can't be roaming around spending random money anyhow.
My plans for next week? I plan to visit the storage unit each day. The R.C. has been hard at work on her half of it for most of the summer, cleaning out things no longer needed, loved, or useful. I've been focusing on doing things in my room (or, you know, playing games or reading books) but I know my half of the unit also needs cleaned, so now (quick, quick, quick, before winter comes!) I'm going to see how much of it I can get through in the next couple of weeks. Surely there are boxes full of useless junk I can rid my life of. (A month spent watching Clean House reruns creates a whole, new attitude about holding onto things you just don't care about.)
Things I would like to do next week? Spend part of my free-lance money on new books. Except that none of the series I'm reading have any new volumes due before November. And this is no time to get hooked on anything new. (I already had a $50 blow-out of new books the week I started the free-lance work.)
Some days you don't even have to leave the house to have major excitement. Some days, all you have to do is take a shower. Like today, when I returned to the living room after my morning shower, to find everythin--serene and still. I puttered around for a few minutes, then headed back to the bathroom.
As I passed my room, there was a rustle of unfamiliar noise. Almost like there was something (cue suspense music) alive in there. (I don't have any pets. I have a couple of plants in my room but they've shown no previous inclination to move about unassisted and if they're going to take to doing so, they're going to have to go.)
Bravely, I peeked into the room (the first person to investigate the strange noise from the ostensibly empty room always bites the dust ten seconds later in any decent horror flick), only to spy a bird sitting on my desk chair.
How, you might ask, did a bird get into my bedroom? I have no idea. The window was closed and in any case there's a sturdy screen on it. The sliding glass door in the living room was open, but the screen door was closed. I'd been in the shower and the R.C. was off in her room. Short of the idea that the bird opened the door for itself, it's a mystery.
And yet, there it was. Unmistakeably, a bird. A pigeon, in fact. A fairly young one, too. Sitting on the desk chair in my room, probably the farthest spot from the living room door in the entire apartment.
I recruited the R.C.'s assistance and began shooing the bird toward the (now open) screen door in the living room.
This took some doing. The animal wasn't as skittish as one might expect a wild bird, finding itself trapped inside a small apartment with two hostile inhabitants, to be. I shooed. It left the chair to batter itself against the closed window. I shooed. It fluttered to the floor near the corner. I shooed. It ran away on little pigeon feet. I shooed. It finally found the hallway. I shooed. It ran to the corner. I shooed. It flapped heavily to the top of a decorative screen. I shooed. It found the living room and the door and sailed out to rest on the balcony railing.
And then it stayed there. Sitting on the balcony railing. Watching me. It looked at me out of one beady, little eye. It turned its head and ogled me out of the other beady, little eye. It hunkered down and peered fixedly. It sidled up and down the railing, watching me from different angles.
Persecution, that's what I call it.
I made abusive remarks. I objected strenously to the attention. I went onto the balcony, lit a cigarette, and explained to it the difference between my living space and the great outdoors. It listened with a certain amount of attention but seemed unconvinced. It showed no concern, even when I stood a foot away and took a picture of it.
For the next 40 minutes, it divided its attention between me and the sporadic activity in the parking lot. It just kept looking at me, as if wondering why I didn't open the door up and let it back in. Yes, eventually it took itself elsewhere, but I still maintain it was persecuting me, by sitting there, staring at me that way.
Also, it occurred to me that if this was a horror flick, when I went outside to reason with it, those little pigeon eyes would have started to glow red, that sharp beak would have burst into a four-foot spear, and it would have eaten me up.
Aside from that, not much new today.
Not doing much, yet.
Working on Buehler's free-lance job. I had to email him and tell him it was going to cost almost double what he had budgeted and he, that lovely man, wrote back to say okay. So, it's mind-numbingly boring work, but should net me $1k when it's all done. Nothing wrong with having a little money coming in!
On the other hand, it does mean sitting here at the computer for several hours a day, doing very repetitive work. Which leaves me little inclination to sit here at other times and do anything else. By the time I finish my daily stint, I'm usually sick to death of the computer.
The foot is still being cranky. I've tried a shoe on it a few times, when I was going out for a short trip. Invariably this has turned out to be a mistake and at least once it set the whole recovery process back a few days.
I did actually drive myself to the bank ATM to get some cash yesterday. I was getting a bit worried about leaving my car sitting there for so long. I was worried about the battery. Turns out it was fine, the car started right up. (Naturally my foot, even in comfy leather sandals, reacted badly to driving the six-block round-trip, and why I didn't replace this standard with a car with automatic transmission years ago is a mystery to me.)
Had an invitation to have lunch with Meg Friday but had to decline on account of, you know, not being able to get there. I hope to be back in shoes by next week.
I'm puttering around the house, cleaning out drawers and cabinets. Sitting in a chair with my foot elevated for several hours a day.
And, speaking of foot care, I've become a convert to the daily footbath! I've taken the little buckets I bought to do handwashing (back when I still deluded myself into believing that I'd actually handwash anything marked "delicate") and converted them to spa equipment.
A couple of trips to a couple of different stores and voila! I have a selection of different "foot soak" gels and liquids and powders to try out. I'm experimenting with a different one daily. (Have you noticed that in my life, even being confined to a chair is an excuse for shopping?) I fill my little buckets and tote them into the shower, then put my little stool at the edge of the shower stall and stick my feet in.
Then I yank them out and swear for a while, dip them back in, yank them out, and gradually I'm able to leave them in the water that I always make at least 10 degrees too hot for comfort.
Not only am I doing some much-needed "grooming" but I swear the daily soaking is doing wonders for the sore muscles in that foot. My mobility has improved 75% in the last four or five days.
Yep. That's my life these days. Foot baths. For my daily thrill.
I feel so geezery.