The Trailing Edge

                          Important announcement to my faithful readers (all four of them): I'm employed again. My last gig was, shall we say, seasonal employment with a company that lots of people get packages from. That was January and since then I've been living on Social Security. There used to be two Social Security recipients in the house, but now there's just me, so extra income was needed. I had a pretty good idea of the type of work I wanted to do, and as of tomorrow, I'll be working for, well, let's call it a big-box store. This is pretty exciting. So, right after I finished the nuts & bolts part of the interview, where they get my consent to run a background check, etc., the man behind the desk said "Okay, so, if you want, we start orientation tomorrow at, oh, let's say 4:00 p.m. That work for you?" Um...yeah... I mean, you tell me, okay dude? Or should I test this and see if Orientation Dude feels like waiting for me to stroll in at 7:0

                                     Recently, an in-law from Arizona, a relative newcomer to the family, commented on the behavior of another in-law, who I've known for some time: "Between you and me, I find it very odd that one of her family members is always living with them." The person to whom she was referring had just had her brother move out after several years, and now her mother was there, sharing space with the married couple and their two young children. I know that the rental income was convenient in the first case, and baby-sitting services in the second case have been invaluable for two full-time working parents, especially in these times of uncertain school safety. I have lived in the South longer than I ever lived in the North. I married a Southerner. So it's probably no huge surprise that I "get" this aspect of Southern life: Family is Forever . Families often share their homes, and surprisingly often, they create "compounds," in