Mossy Cottage Knits

WOOHOO, the first to comment!
I must say, that "likeness" of you on Elaine's page was mean, although not entirely unexpected. You're lucky you two don't have a bunch of knitters stalking Washington just to see what you look like. I'm curious enough that I would do it if I weren't so lazy. Lazy wins over curious every time.
I never had any weird jobs, but when my dad was a kid, the wealthy (but gross) neighbor paid Dad to clean under the neighbor's bushes, where he'd spit cigar butts and tobacco juice. I don't know if that qualifies for weird, or if it stays firmly in the Gross camp.

I can't say I had any weird jobs.. or even very gross jobs. I wish I could. I could say I've held multiple jobs and trying to get there was like acrobatics... (say the summer I held 3 jobs. one 9-1, one 2-8 and one 11pm to 6am.. oh and I was taking a summer class as well.) I once worked 3 jobs like this: mwf secretary, t,th cook and I would deliver the morning chicago times m-sun. Ah college.. good times.

Excellent work you've done on the guest blogging spot, TMK!
Most bizzare job, lessee... Gotta be working as a datageek at an oil refinery in southern Louisiana (that refinery is still standing after Katrina, I beleive). I was one of very few women in the midst of lots of engineers and maybe just a few scary people. 32 mile trip each way, and located, as one might suppose, in a veeeeery remote area. There were lots of frightening signs illustrating what to do in case the place blew up. Ugh.

Ohhh, I can so relate! I worked in a cherry packing plant in The Dalles, and I sorted cherries, picking out sticks and SNAKES!!! green apricots someone put in there for a joke, and picking out the ugly cherries. But when you work in a food packing plant, you learn alot about how food gets prepared, commercially, and let me tell you, if you knew, you would never eat another maraschino cherry, EVER!!!

Ahhh, those sweet, crappy jobs of youth.

No odd jobs here. Just wanted to say thank you for your hard work towards making applets and cotlets. They are one of the things I miss from Washington state. People here in Virginia just look at me funny and wonder if I'm talking about candy still or if I switched to something aboult computers when I mention them.

I'm really enjoying your guest blogging! You should get a blog of your own! ;)

Your weird jobs remind me of the summers I spent strawberry picking when I was a teenager. We would get up at 5am the ride our bikes a few miles to the strawberry fields. (Gotta love all the bugs in your teeth.) Then we'd spend hours on hour knees picking strawberries for the growers to take to the local markets. We would ride our bikes back home, stomachs full of berries and red splotches all over our clothes from the inevitable strawberry throwing wars. Ahhh, the memories!

TMK: While reading your blog entry today, I totally flashed on that old "I Love Lucy" episode when she's in a candy factory working on a conveyer belt. I think she ends up stuffing her face full of chocolates or something--quite funny. I've had absolutely nothing to compare with your "odd" jobs! Thanks for the entry. However, we really must get you knitting....Mary B

Growing up further east hahn you did (ND, in fact) my summer job in high school was hoeing beets. Half-mile rows, walkign with your head down and to the side to see the weeds and "extra" beet plants. I was bookkeeper at the local co-op oil station after my first year in college; note bookkeepers also pump gas and wash windshields, too.

*coming out of hiding for this one*

I spent 3 months working for a dermatopathology clinic. (That long word I don't want to type again means "skin tumor examining".)

I accepted deliveries from dermatologists of tumors, moles and other suspicious growths they removed from people's bodies (ew), tagged them together with the pictures of where tumors in their natural habitats (ew again), and took them to the lab to be made into slides.

Ew.

There you go. *crawling back under rock*

I worked retail. People poop in the dressing rooms. 'Nuff said. *shudder*

Yay now I can Stalk TMK!!! Woot! hehe

When I was 13 or 14 or so I was paid $10/day to answer the phone at a funeral home. I sat in the office and watched tv, ran laps through all the rooms, played the organ in the chapel. I did this at least once a week for 2 summers, and the phone only rang once, and it was for someone "pre-planning." I shared the building with a body only once - and it was my aunt's mother, so I was almost related to it anyway.

Not so weird I suppose, but after a horrendous experience with a desk job, I drove a taxi for two years. I never drove after dark and I remember one elderly man who lectured me about the "bad" parts of town; he seemed very concerned that I might get myself into a bad situation.

Oh, and I managed a head shop when I was in college. Not for long though :)

I have served a few stints as a professional goat farter. You see, goats have multiple compartments in their tummys - if they get a little backed up you have to straddle the goat, grab a little goat fleece on either side, and shake-rock-vibrate that sucker until, well until you don't need to anymore. This is why I no longer house sit in rural communities.

Yes, I still want my own goat (Hank). It's different if it's yours.

Nothing gross or weird, but during my senior year in HS I worked as a waitress at a cheesy catering hall in NJ. I saw big hair, chest hair, Elvii, fights among the guests, fights among the bridal party and the best part - - a drunken bride tumbling down the grand staircase to make her first public appearance as Mrs. Guido.

I used to work at an egg farm - the eggs would pass through one section that held a 'candle' so the worker could see through the egg and make sure that nothing that the consumer would want to see was in it. Then through the washer and I would pick up the eggs according to size and put them in the egg cartons. We used to cover ourselves from head to toe for work, then after work, strip down in the small dressing room, put the bathrobes on and head for the showers before putting on our street clothes.

Ginger who is currently dreaming of moving to Oregon and finding a new job.

You guys are cracking me up! Pear pulling looks pretty normal next to "goat farting" and "accepting deliveries of moles, tumors, etc." ;-) And, I see I'm not the only one that spent time picking fruit.

TMK

Oh my god, goat farts!

TMK, you may have me beat but I once worked in a funeral home. And yes, I've touched dead bodies. Not as creepy as one thinks and totally makes for great party conversation!

I've done other interesting jobs, like working in Yellowstone and the cocktail waitress stint but nothing compares to the Funeral Home, up on Capitol Hill.

Hmmm... I've lived pretty wierd. I've trained parrots for a cult, gone to a rich guys house to exercise his rottweiler and cougar, been a playmate for another rich guy (no sex, just being on call to go to lunch and listen to him ramble) bartended at a nudist colony and spent six months as a nude dancer.

Frankly the one job that hits me as wierder than all of them was working for one of Ross Perot's companies. Very, very strict dress code. They wanted a receptionist for an office that had moved. I was to sit for 8 hours a day and answer a phone that I swear did not ever ring and I could not read, do cross words, write letters or anything else. I quit after two days.

I think being a goat farter would be fun

AnnaMarie

Bwaha, I expected something of the sort over at the illustration!
And no all my jobs have been ordinary and clerical. I've worked with many odd PEOPLE but the JOBS were not odd...

I cleaned "comfort stations" at a campground for about four years. Built picnic tables and cleaned campsites too. But the "comfort station" thing really got to me. Because, well...you just nevah know what's going to comfort a person and what they're going to leave behind as a result...

As bad as it sounds. Thank goodness I became a writer. The only "comfort station" I am now responsible for, despite it involving a seven-year-old girl and a man, is far, far easier than any other I've ever had to deal with.

I think I'd rather pull a pear, though ;-)

I seem to have the misfortune of not ever meeting you! I can never seem to make it to the Knit-In... Ah someday!

I know what you mean by weird jobs. My mother was a hydroponic farmer, growing mung bean and soy bean sprouts (also at one point tomatoes and lettuce). I had to work for her afterschool and over the weekends. I always wore rubber boots three sizes too big and huge rubber gloves. I had to wash the sprouts, clean the growing containers, pack the sprouts, water the sprouts. What a wet mess!

To this day, I am a shower girl. I hate taking baths because of how your skin gets wrinkled.

I hope to meet you someday and in the meantime, I am glad to get to know you through Ryan's blog! You both crack me up!

I've never really had any strange jobs. My grandfather owned a restaurant as I was coming up and so my extra time, until I was 16, was pretty much devoted there. Dish Washing, Prep work, finally waitressing. They never did ask me to cook on the line. Can't imagine why (Do you smell something burning?)

Then I did a summer binding cookbooks and manuals. That was pretty heinous. Very boring and repetitive. And it's a bad idea to get sleepy while trying to "stitch" manuals together. "Stitching" pretty much consists of running a loose booklet through a foot operated machine that resembles a very large stapler. Makes a really satisfying KA-CHUNK as it goes through the paper. Not so satisfying if it finds a piece of your thumb on the way I suppose.

Anyway. Thanks for the guest commentary! Always great to hear from you TMK!

My weirdest job was in a fancy restaurant removing the seeds from a 55-gallon can of green grapes. Took forever. The coolest thing about the job was using a blow torch on the Baked Alaska. Keep bloggin TMK!

I can't compete... I was going to comment how I had worked as an inspector on a road job - signing tickets at the cement factory. The tickets had the weight and the time listed so there was proof the concrete was going to the road job, not just billed there. State jobs. Sigh. I had an opposite number at the construction site who recorded the time the truck showed up at the site. I sat in a concrete plant for days, mostly playing rummy with the truck drivers. Or reading. Some days I signed one ticket. Others, 10 or 12. Mostly, one or two, though.

But, not as good as goat farter.

I'm so glad everybody liked my little drawing - I just had to record the moment for posterity. Have to wonder if TMK spotting will take off like bird watching. You know you are the Ivory-Billed-Woodpecker of the knit-blogging community!

My first job was as a no-tell motel maid in Provo, Utah. I don't know if it can top poop in the dressing rooms, that's just nasty, but it has to meet some kind of gross out requirement. You wouldn't believe what people will leave behind and expect someone else to clean up.

Oh, and no, they never ever wash those comforters...EVER. Ew, just ew. I lasted 3 weeks and they fired me because they said I took 15 minutes too long to clean each room. Heh, I tried to clean it like I might sleep there some day.

Goat farting, seriously, who were you farting them for anyway? I wanted a goat until I read that....

Oddest job: stirring a copper kettle of apple butter over an open fire while wearing a long hoopskirt. I did this most weekends during the summer while I was growing up. My mom worked for a company that canned apple butter and various jams, and we would travel to craft shows all over the Midwest demonstrating and selling apple butter.

Now that I think about it, I'm a little surprised that we never got into trouble for having a kid standing that close to a fire in a long skirt.