My days as a lady of leisure are numbered...

Since arriving in India, Mr. ATK has been dutifully employed and working hard. I, on the other hand, not so much. I thought being a lady of leisure would be fun and give me time to explore, but in reality, it's pretty boring. The suffocating heat from 11 AM to 5 PM doesn't help either.

My life as a stay at home housewife has consisted mainly of cleaning (generally out of boredom--yes, that's how bored I have been) and dish washing (because we only have four of each utensil at the moment.) Then we got a dog. Life AD (After Dog) has consisted of cleaning, dish washing, and cleaning up after a puppy that chews everything and "eliminates" wherever. (I've learned from all the doggy sites I read that "eliminate" is the word we dog owners use for pooping and peeing.) On the up side, having a dog gives you something to work for--you know, training it and all. I got very excited when Mr. ATK and I finally got the dog to do her business while on a walk. She generally doesn't eliminate in the house anymore (even though the jumbo packs of puppy pads we ordered just arrived.) Plus, she can sit, fetch, and shake. She can also howl like a banshee when you leave her alone, but I digress... (I don't want to be one of those people who pend all their time boring you with stories about their dog, so if I start getting that way, gentle reader, let me know! Those comments sections are for you to use.)

Coinciding with the dog adopting was our hiring of a maid. She is a lifesaver. She comes three times a week, cleans the apartment, does laundry, goes to market, cooks, washes the dishes(!!)--stuff like that. So now I no longer clean, and I only wash the dishes intermittently. This means I can spend all my free time keeping the dog away from the clean floors, reading articles about how much of a tool Scott Walker is., and speculating on who the Packers will pick in the first round of the NFL draft. Yet this is not as fulfilling as it might sound.

So I applied for some jobs at the embassy and after much waiting, I got one! And now my days as a lady of leisure are numbered... as soon as I finish filling out this crazy security clearance form. It sure has been a stroll down memory lane, as I try to recall every single address I've had in the past ten years--especially the ones in countries that don't have addresses. Accounting for all foreign travel in the past seven years has likewise been challenging (Was I in Belize in '06 or '07 (or '08)? Curse those Carnival Cruises!) And the best of all has been going through every job I've had since 2002 and listing contact information for supervisors. One school I worked at in college apparently closed in 2007 and was converted to condos. Kinda hard to put down a phone number for that place.

Anyways, we'll see how this goes. Hopefully, I'll get cleared to start work within a month or so. But till then, I shall continue reading and cringing at the comments people make on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's website.

(Truly, there's some horrifying stuff out there.)