This morning we met with Mary Beth and she took us on a tour of all the places we’ll be cleaning. When we first talked with her in our phone interview, she said we’d be cleaning the bath houses, and I thought she said we’d be cleaning the activity center. Today I realized she said the activity centers! Remember all those shops I mentioned before? The lapidary shop, the stained glass shop, the art center, etc, etc? No wonder it’s going to be a forty hour a week job!
The first week or two I guess we’ll be working the day shift so we can go around with one of the people that has been doing the job for a long time. Once we learn what we’re supposed to do, we’ll be on the night shift (11:30 am to 8:00 pm). Mary Beth took us to the housekeeping building and introduced us to a couple of the “team members” there. They like us to think of ourselves as part of the team. She also gave us three short sleeved T-shirts each and said that she’ll be giving us some long-sleeved shirts for when the weather gets colder in February. Considering how much I was sweating today, it’s hard to believe it ever gets cold here!
It was a two-hour tour, and when we finished, Mark and I got some lunch and then went to look for some ant poison. Yesterday, we discovered that the cat food dish was black with ants. We had to put down a pan of water and put the cat food dish in there to keep the ants out of their food, but we still had columns of ants running along our walls. (The water trick was something I remembered my daughter-in-law, Sarah, doing with her cats’ food. It works!) We put some ant traps inside, and we’re going to spray outside. Hopefully, we can keep the ant population down.
We spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through stuff and trying to find places for it all. We’re getting our home back in order.
After dinner tonight, we went over to Woodland Hall for a free dance. Mary Beth was the “disc jockey”, although it was all on her laptop so there were no discs involved. She played everything from country to rock and roll to really modern stuff. There are three levels of classes of line dancing here, and about half the time the line dance groups got up and strutted their stuff. Mark and I sat those out, for the most part, but at one point in the evening, they said they’d teach a circle line dance, the Cotton-Eye Joe, so Mark and I got up and tried it. I’m kind of all left feet when I’m trying to learn a new dance step, but we weren’t the only newbies, so I didn’t feel bad. Watching the line dancers, though, they made it look so fun. I’d like to take the Ultra Beginners Line Dance class. Unfortunately, there are all kinds of things I’d like to take on Tuesdays, when the class is offered, that overlap with each other. What to do? What to do? With all the classes and groups offered here, I almost regret having to work, but that helps pay for us being here, so I can’t complain.
Anyway, the dance was a blast! We haven’t gone dancing since our wedding reception in 2008. There are going to be several other dances in the next few months, too, so we can dance after work on Saturday nights!