Disappointed.

Hey all.
So today didn't go quite like I wanted it to. I called the dude with the landscaping business to make sure we were still on for today, and he said that if I wanted to, I could go work with him on a jobsite after our meeting.

The meeting went ok. No health insurance. Lower pay rate with bonuses as incentive. Performance reviews every 2 months. After 6 months to a year take over a crew, which as I figured out by the end of the day, means I'd be driving a bobcat while other people lift things. The possibility of sales was there. If I sold jobs, I'd get kickbacks, but I'd have to do the sales calls on my free time.

It was promising enough to go work with him for the day, so I went. It was insane. We drove 3,000 feet up the mountain closest to Pikes Peak to the house that we were working on. It was just the two of us, and we were tearing down a deck. The deck had five platforms. Three were about 6 feet off the ground, and 2 were about 25 feet off the ground. Overlooking a 25+ degree slope which ended in a cliff. If you looked up, the remaining 1,000 ft. or so to the top of our mountain, you could see houses still farther up. Colorado Springs looked tiny from where we were. The Garden of the Gods park was about an inch in diameter wide from my perspective. One of the really neat things was that the deer are tame there. At one point, I turned around, and a ten point buck was standing 5 feet away from me!!! I asked the owner if they ate out of their hands, and he said "Just about. We can stand by them and drop the food on the ground and they'll eat it." Incredible. I've never been that close to male deer and have them be so comfortable. The road up the mountain was private, and guarded by a gate house, so I couldn't just take Sarah up there. The work was grueling, and the snow didn't make for good footing at all, but I did ok. I didn't know exactly what we'd be doing, so I didn't bring a lunch, but the guy I was working for gave me a sandwich because he'd brought two. It wasn't all that bad until I had to go up on the upper deck (ha ha) and remove the guardrail. That is intimidating. I have never had real issues about heights. But I did today. I pushed through, and finished the job, but man... the whole time I was like, "I cannot fall. Sarah and the baby need me, and I don't want to fall, and this is the stupidest thing I've ever done, and I still have over half of the work to do..." and then one of the rails I was unscrewing would be too loose and fall, and I would watch it, and freak out a little inside and keep going. It was nerve-wracking. Needless to say, when I got home, I took a shower, talked it over with Sarah, and decided to not take advantage of this opportunity. If I'm going to jump into something I know nothing about, I need it to have health insurance and a stable pay rate. And I don't know about the physical toll that a job like that would take... it just seems too much.

I asked a bunch of questions to get a feel for what the job would be like on a "regular" basis, and despite the answers I was given, they didn't seem to frame the job in any better way than I was envisioning it. It was just not panning out.

So there you go. I'm bushed. Sarah and I are going to go and get things with Medicaid set up tomorrow hopefully. We need the help with the baby. Even if it doesn't cover me. At least I won't be hanging over cliffs dismantling the one thing that keeps me from falling.

Peace