A New Breed

Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile will no doubt recall a bit of nomenclature I coined back in the fall: the K6 Bitch. In short, this was my alternative and spicy term for the "roaming teacher" assignments I often took during my time as a sub in the local township.

Well, it appears my days as a bitch are not over. Present circumstances, however, have led me to become a new breed: the house bitch.

In "A Subdued Existential Funk" I spoke of how I had been spending the weeks since the school year ended struggling to find a viable and rewarding source of income for the summer. Finding work in Indiana isn't particularly easy. Finding rewarding work is even harder and trying to find rewarding seasonal work is borderline impossible.

Thoughout my search for work, I was conflicted about how badly I even wanted a summer job (again, see my "Funk" post). A chief reason for my apprehension was the reality that this summer will be my last in Indiana for several years, if not the rest of my life. And my move to Denver is going to put my friends in the Midwest and the South out of convenient traveling range for a substantial chunk of time. In light of all this, what I've most wanted is to use this summer to savor my time with those friends and family I'll not see more than three times a year after my doctoral studies begin. Encouraging this mindset has been the fact that I earned enough dough during my last month as a sub to cover my bills until September, so I don't need to earn money this summer in the way I needed to during the fall, winter, and spring.

Nevertheless, there have been at least two compelling reasons to work this summer irrespective of pure necessity. First, there's the fact that I have a considerable move awaiting me at the end of this season. Moving isn't cheap and it would be nice to not have to raid my savings to fund that endeavor. Second, and maybe even more importantly, Susan and I had a serious discussion several weeks back about her and Perry not wanting me to be a free-loader this summer- eating their food, soaking up their AC, and doing nothing constructive for three months.

And yet that problem of finding rewarding summer work still hung over me. That work which can be readily secured for a season is low in pay even when one puts in high hours. That would mean seeing significantly less of those aforementioned loved ones during these "final days" while only earning (at best) around eight bucks an hour. Thankfully, when re-presenting these concerns over a recent family dinner, Susan (who, I should add, rarely ever utters a curse world) came up with a viable compromise/solution:

"You can be my bitch this summer, Dave. You wouldn't get paid for it but then we wouldn't mind you hanging around the house without a job either."

And her bitch, I have become. In short, I have taken over much of the domestic responsibilities of the household. I had chores before, of course, but now I have additional housekeeping duties. There are also special projects that will come my way from time to time. For example, I've already done some mulching for the first time and my life, and I've heard rumbling of a garage cleaning adventure just over the horizons. For those of you who have been following my status updates on Facebook, this is the type of activity I was referring to when I mentioned being a "house elf." I most often say house elf over bitch given its lesser likelihood to offend, as well as its greater appeal to the many Pot-heads I know.

"But what about the money to cover moving expenses?" you may be asking. "How will go about acquiring those funds now, Mr. Bitch?" Well, here's what I've been thinking:

Every summer since 2002, I've considered the possibility of selling my late father's baseball card collection. It's fairly large and composed of several complete sets, especially for the year 1991. One concerned friend recently asked me, "Do you think you're ready to part with your dad's baseball cards?" To which I was able to quickly respond, "Oh yeah! I don't think I could sell his comic book collection at this point, but I can sell his baseball cards no problem." You see, collecting comics was something my father and I did very much together, whereas trading cards were much more something my dad did on his own.

Selling these cards will not be a breeze, but it hopefully won't be terribly difficult either. There'll be a lot of sorting and organizing involved, and I'm sure I'll have to enlist the aid of eBay once that's all done. If I'm able to sell for a price near market value, I anticipate having enough to cover my moving expenses while freeing up a substantial amount of closet space in the process.

And that sums up what I've done about my summer employment situation.