Author: jesser

A few weeks ago, my company’s Marketing Manager announced she was going to retire. I had been asked to think about the possibility of moving into this position a few months back when we thought retirement would be in 2014, but due to some good luck in the stock market, her retirement got moved up an entire year to the end of April. Our MM is a dear lady and we all could not be more excited for her to be able to exit the rat race a little earlier than anticipated.

But of course, it meant some decisions had to be made. I had to think about things carefully. The job is more hours than I do now, no question. It is also different work than I do currently. I have a wonderful working relationship with the people around me and the idea of giving that up was a hard one to swallow. But the Marketing Manager job takes a lot of things I’m good at and enjoy and rolls them into one crazy wild ride.

So Matt and I talked a lot about the job and what it entails.  We talked about what it would mean for our family – the good and the bad. And we were good with it. So I submitted an application for the position and I was officially hired and promoted a last week, though notification only went out today. It is a great move career-wise but more importantly, I think I can really bring some good new ideas to the position and do some wonderful things to serve my organization. It’s really exciting and a bit overwhelming.

I’m currently learning my new job and training some other people on my job and trying to keep a lot of balls in the air but it’s very exciting and I’m really looking forward to the new challenge.

In many ways it was your typically busy weekend. We had soccer, a birthday party, loads of laundry, grocery shopping, etc. But in the middle of all this normal stuff, we worked on getting my grandma’s house ready to sell as well. It’s something I haven’t discussed here, but recently my darling grandma moved into an assisted living facility. It is not an easy transition no matter when or how it happens, of course, and somehow working on the house brought it really close to home. I spent most of the day trying not to think about the bigger picture and overall, I fancy I did a pretty good job of just getting it done.

I worked on many parts of the house: the laundry room, the toy closet, my grandpa’s study, my grandparents’ bedroom. Obvious trash was thrown away but everything else was saved. An estate sale is going to happen after the house sells and mainly we had to get the personal stuff out of there. 90 years of personal stuff. I’m sure you can imagine the breadth of a long life full of “personal stuff.”

It was a bittersweet kind of day. I tried to focus on the sweet. We did find some great old photo that I hadn’t seen before. One is my grandpa, looking totally Mad Men, hanging out at his desk with a set of plans. I’m keen to use it on our company’s new website. There were also some cool fedoras, custom from the era, with my grandpa’s initials stamped inside them. Perhaps he was wearing one of them in the Mad Men photo.

I found a couple of souvenirs too. My grandma’s sewing area had about a million old spools of thread, wooden ones. I had to have just a couple. There was also this hilariously cute “Happy Home” needle book.

There were also about 10 copies of this church cookbook. Judging by the clues that I can interpret, I’m guessing it was published in the early to mid 1960s. It’s filled with typical church cookbook type recipes, but my favorite part of it is the bit on the front, where it has the following quote:

Wives who cook and
Wash the dishes
Should be granted
These Three Wishes
A grateful mate,
a well-kissed cheek
And a restaurant dinner
once a week!

Ahh the charming sexual politics of the 1960s.

Knowing what I know now, it would have been cool to bring the big camera and really document some of this stuff. But I have some snapshots and of course my memories.