Running around like chickens with our heads cut off

For the past couple days we’ve been doing a lot of running around with not much to show for it.

Wednesday Mark had his intake appointment at the VA in Mount Vernon.  That’s about an hour south of where we live.  The appointment went well and it was very thorough.  Afterward we tried to call a man in Kent, another hour and a half south, about possibly coming down so Mark could interview with him for a job in the Lynden-Bellingham area.  Mark had gotten an e-mail from his assistant the night before saying they were going to be conducting interviews for the next two days, but when he spoke with the man on the phone he sounded like he wasn’t too sure what was going on.  He told Mark to call the next morning.  We nixed that.  It didn’t sound like the kind of situation that would be good for Mark.

We drove back up to Bellingham and tried again to register our vehicles.  Last time we tried they said we needed some papers from the Oregon DMV, so when we were down there we asked the DMV about it.  They didn’t know what Washington needed, so they printed out some papers, which we took with us on this visit.  That wasn’t what Washington needed.  We finally discovered they need copies of our vehicle titles and the bills of sale from the dealers.  We have now tracked down about three-fourths of that information.

Mark also tried to see about taking Washington’s HAZ-MAT test for his CDL, but whereas we thought he could do it immediately, we were told that there is a lengthy process before you can take the test.  So much for the trucking job he’d heard about that required HAZ-MAT certification.

I was beginning to be discouraged because everyone has been salivating over Mark’s CDL and no one seems interested in my MLS.  We drove back to Lynden and picked up applications for work at a company Aunt Marg had told us about.

Yesterday (Thursday) I had a doctor’s appointment.  I have to say again that I really like this doctor.  She listens to me and doesn’t treat me like a hypochondriac the way my doctor in Oregon City did.  I told her I’ve been experiencing some aches and pains that I assume come with aging, and she sent me for x-rays.  She’s very thorough!

We did some more job hunting yesterday.  Then in the afternoon we called a man from Mark’s church who was going to go over our resumes with us.  He talked to Mark for a long time and would have hung up if I hadn’t asked to speak to him as well.  I asked him if he’d had any luck finding work for me.  At first he said he was looking into a library job for me, but I mentioned that I’d already tried applying for one and they didn’t seem interested in me after I told them about our contract in Alaska.  That gave this man, Fenton, pause too.  He said he hadn’t been aware that we were only here for a few months and that changed the things he was working on for Mark too.

Last evening we went over to Aunt Marg’s and reported what had been happening for the last couple days.  She agreed that it’s going to be difficult to find a job that will only last through April.  I’m remembering why Workamping is such a great way to find jobs.  I still have people contacting me trying to hire us for jobs this summer, and I’ve had to turn them down.  There are jobs we could go to right now if we didn’t want to stay in this area till time to head to Alaska.  Mark and I are kicking around some ideas of how to manage if we can’t find temp work here.  We have options, which most people wouldn’t, so we aren’t particularly worried.  It’s just that things have been working so well with finding Workamping jobs that I hadn’t realized how hard it still is for people with “normal” lives to find work.  I feel for you folks!

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