Saturday mornings

Harry's at work this morning. Sadness. He got up at 5am on a Saturday to work. If that's not insanity, I don't know what is.

He started his new position at his company on Monday. Since his old division is soon moving to Joliet, Illinois, we were really starting to worry that he wouldn't have a job come March when they bid us a fond adieux. He had found out about this new position back in May and immediately submitted a resume. He went on an interview a couple of weeks later, and it went well. They said they'd let him know their decision in one month's time. We hit July, and still no word. He asks HR what the deal is, and they tell him no decision has been made yet. August rears its head and still no word. Then ANOTHER interview is scheduled. After all is said and done, Harry gets a call at the end of that week to be told he has the job; he starts in 2 weeks.

Cue this Monday. He's now working in a print shop. He loves it. He's always loved being a machinist. It's what he did before 9/11. His company (an aerospace part manufacturer) closed a month after that tragic day when a multi-million dollar deal collapsed with one of the airlines involved in the 9/11 attacks. Harry had been working there since the day he graduated high school. He loved that job.

He was out of work for 6 months after that. Companies were closing left and right around here. Jobs were scarce. I, myself, was laid off a few months after he was. There we were, in a brand new relationship, both of us jobless, both of us trying to keep not only clothes on our backs and food on the table but the very roofs over our heads. When his unemployment was about to run out, he decided to take a seasonal job as a landscaper at a local retirement community condo complex (say that five times fast) for $4 LESS an hour than what he had been making before.

Luckily, since he's such a hard worker, they realized what he could do for this landscaping company and offered him a full-time job as a foreman a few months after he started working there. It came with a $1 an hour raise and benefits. He worked the whole summer, fall, and beginning of winter until we got word that a position was opening up at my old company that he could do. He so much wanted to get back into manufacturing and such, and this position would be a way to do it.

He was offered the job (I believe on Christmas Eve), and he took it not a moment too soon. Christmas morning we got a call from the landscaping company telling him he had to work all Christmas day, plowing the roads of the complex. Seems the town doesn't plow their roads for them since they're technically not town roads. Bullshit. I can understand each person having to go in for a couple of hours to get it done, but an 8 hour day? Man, call in all your non-Christian workers to plow that day. Harry told them he couldn't work all day, and they told him he'd better come in, or else. Or else what? So Harry told them he'd been offered another job, and he was taking it. Then they asked if he was still coming in. Yeah, right.

So, Harry's been at my old company for almost 3 years now. He likes it, for the most part. And he's been very excited about this new job. He loves the fact that he can get all this overtime in without any fuss (the higher-ups in the other division were sticklers about overtime). He calculated last night that if he can do 54-56 hour workweeks every week, he'll be making a shload more than I do. That makes him happy. That makes me happy, too. That's one step closer to paying off the cars and buying a house of our own.

I miss him. Saturday mornings have always been my favorite time with him. I guess we'll have to have our SUNDAY morning ritual from now on.