Job Front Looking Up! And More Drama Next-Door

I’ve been a busy little bee this week, and I have results to show for it …. I now have a firm offer in hand, plus two companies who are a little further behind in the hiring process but who wish to be notified before I take another offer because they think they might want me. Plus another interview on Monday.

Here’s my dilemma. Firm Offer is a bit less than the salary I was hoping for, but good benefits and (seems like) a nice office personality, and the possibility of a $1500 raise in 90 days. Good Possibility 1 is a prestigious firm with good bennies, but I don’t have an idea of what their salary scale is going to be. Good Possibility 2 is a well-known non-profit foundation with no benefits, but they are looking at a salary range of about 10K more than Firm Offer. I can hear you saying, “Editormum, you have a firm offer at a place you think you’ll like, and good bennies. You only have the possibility of an offer at the other two places. You’re living off your IRA, which means you are gonna pay taxes out the wazoo in April, and these people want you to start Monday week. Have you ever heard that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?”

But here’s what worries me. In the past, when I’ve gotten all enthusiastic about a place and taken a job that was offered, I’ve often found great big surprises a few weeks into the relationship. So I am really praying hard on this one. If this is not the right place, if I wouldn’t be in this place for a good long time, or if God knows that it’s not exactly the best place for me, I don’t want it! And I want Him to make it so totally and abundantly clear that even dense, obtuse little ol’ me can figure it out. But I have to make a decision soon whether to grab or let this go. I have to give them at least a tentative answer by Monday afternoon.

On the home front, I got a good bit of landscaping done this morning. The woman next door has now officially proven herself utterly and completely insane. I was finishing my work and washing down the driveway to get the black mulch dust off of it, when she came storming out of her house again and demanded to know why I had “washed her windows.” Apparently, unbeknownst to me, while I was shifting the hose I had lost my grip enough to allow some water to spatter the two windows facing my house. So here she was standing at the hedge, shrieking at me. Then she said, “One day I’ll call the police and you’ll be in trouble.” I didn’t say anything to her. At all. But I’m thinking “Right, you’ll call the police and say, ‘My neighbor sprayed water on my windows just to annoy me. Come arrest her!’ And the cops are going to have a lovely little laugh down at the station and ignore you completely. I’m so frightened.” Anyway, as I said, I didn’t even acknowledge her presence, and she finally stopped yelling at me and took a great pink towel and dried off her windows, muttering loudly to herself the whole time. She watched me like the proverbial hawk until I finished spraying down the driveway and went inside.

But that wasn’t the end. I was watering lawns and flowerbeds, and I have a flowerbed between the driveway and my house. I carefully set an oscillating sprinkler to water the bed, fixing it so that it spread water only on the flowerbed and a portion of my driveway. When I came out to turn off the water, she was standing at the hedge with her hands on her hips (and had apparently been there for a while) watching the fan of water. I don’t doubt that if one single drop had hit her window, she’d have called 9-1-1. Again, I completely disregarded her presence, turned off the spigot, and coiled the hose. When I went back inside, she was standing on her porch yelling at someone on her cell phone.

What bothers me is not how she’s acting, annoying as it is. It’s the urge for wickedness that her behaviour spurs in me. When I saw her and her husband leave a little while ago, I had the most overpowering urge to go outside, turn on the hose, and spray down her entire house, just to be spiteful. (I didn’t, of course. Waste of water.) And her ongiong patrolling and snarling over the hedge makes me want to take my pruning shears and chop the whole thing to the ground … or take the sprayer and flood Roundup over it all. I can’t understand it. I simply have never felt so very vindictive and spiteful in my life. It’s rather disconcerting.

Anyway, tomorrow is “church day,” and I am looking forward to finishing the planting in the flowerbed and getting my ducks in a row since it looks like I’ll be starting work within the next week or so.

Tags: anger, gardening, job search, neighbours, unemployment