A Man of Leisure

As Amy mentioned in her post last month, I lost my job recently. (On June 17th, to be exact. Happy Birthday to me!!!) It wasn't how we were planning on spending the summer, but it has turned out to be pretty great. It has been like a summer vacation! Sure there is that stress caused by watching your bank account get smaller and smaller. But we can handle that, as long as I get a job before the numbers reach $0. (It is like having your life be a game of Mountain Climber on The Price is Right.) We have tried to spend the summer having fun and doing as many free and nearly free things we can (more on that later.)

Being unemployed is a funny thing. I sort of felt like that I would spend the time being more awesome - like I would work out EVERY DAY and I would finally get that novel written that I wrote 4 pages of 3 years ago and then got stuck. But somehow, having nothing to do makes it really easy to do nothing. I did have a few good weeks of really regular work outs. But the novel is still on page 4. And clearly I haven't spent any time working on this blog. Here are some of my observations about being unemployed:

1. When I do manage to go to the gym, it is usually at about 8:30am - 9:00am. Hey, no point in getting up early if you have a whole empty day in front of you! This is the geriatric hour at the Hawthorne Farm Athletic Club. Everyone there is 104 years old. And the funny thing about 104 year olds is that they like to have extended naked conversations in the locker room. I am all for catching up with a friend you run into at the gym, but put some pants on. They also like to watch Fox News on the locker room TV IN THE NAKED! That combines two of my least favorite things on earth: Bill O'Reilly and old naked men. It would only be worse if Bill was naked.

2. When you are unemployed, every email that chirps in your in-box and every phone call that rings causes your heart to race. You assume that the email is of course from a super awesome company who saw your resume and wants to pay you twice what you made at your last position. Every phone call you suspect will be the unemployment department calling to tell you that they are sorry that they have made it so confusing and impossible to apply for unemployment and to make it up to you they will be covering all of your living expenses for a year.  But 9 times out of 10 that email is the Walgreens weekly add (why did we sign up for that?) And the phone call is the library telling you you have an overdue book.

3. You try and find every free event you can. Luckily, we have a lot. You can check out passes from the library to most of the local museums. The school district offers free lunch every day (EVERY DAY!) in the park. Part of me thinks, "We shouldn't eat the free lunch - it is to help out the poor people." Then I remember, we ARE the poor people. And sometimes it is free to just stay home and let the kids play wii all day.

Here is how we have filled up our summer:

Sitting in giant rocking chairs at some (free!) children's museum in Salem, Oregon.

Climbing around the "giant erector set" at the same children's museum. Really, children's museum? Giant Erector Set? I know that is what we called them in 1943, but those were simpler times. Climbing erector sets = free!

Trying to get trapped inside bubbles at the museum. (Bubbles = free!!)

Forcing the kids to pick raspberries at Smith Berry Barn. While this is not technically free (you do have to pay for the berries you take home) you can eat your weight in berries as you pick. Unweighed berries = FREE and DELICIOUS!!

Feeding clover to the goats at the berry barn. Did you know goats look like strange animals from another planet. Their pupils are horizontal rectangles. Since when is that something we allow on Earth. Also, free!

That's a lot of berries my hot wife is holding! And no, they were not free. But they were worth it!

Apparently, we do a lot of bowling. There is a place by us where you can go online and get coupons for free bowling once per day. You just have to pay for the shoes. The kids love it. There is air conditioning. And it is a great way to kill an afternoon.

Also, they sell french fries there. Sold.

Every year, we like to ride the train to celebrate the annual, celebratory, "Celebrate Hillsboro" celebration. It's a big street fair/ farmer's market with face painting, bouncy houses, etc. It's fun and, say it with me, free.

The boys have never wanted to get their faces panted, but Lila is game for anything. She showed them how it was done with a butterfly and they followed up with some manly face-painting like dinosaurs and rockets. 

We had a fun afternoon and came home with a lot of free swag. Nice.

Also, here is a kinda cool picture of Jonah playing flag football. It wasn't free, but we paid for it while I still had a job, so there's that.

So the summer is wrapping up...and we are hoping that soon the fun and fancy free times will end and I will have a job. It has certainly been fun while it lasted. We just hope it doesn't last much longer.