I always say this, but sorry it's been so long since I last updated... My life is consumed by work, so I thought I'd dedicate a post to the adventures one has while working for Orem City Parks! I don't know if there's a ton to say, but I'll start at the beginning.
When I started my job back at the end of April, the weather was less than stellar. Freezing cold mornings. My fingers and toes were numb. The rain made us soaked very frequently. If I've learned one thing from my job, it's that Jayme is useless when she has to go to the bathroom, I'm useless when I'm freezing, and Uriel (Urinal, as we've dubbed him) is useless 39 out the 40 hours in our week.
The very first day of work we named our truck Sir Carlington. We have a great bond with him. We have named most of the trucks in the parks section, except our boss'. He said he thought it should have a monster truck name, but we haven't thought of anything good. The stick shift truck is Commander. There's also USS Kelvin, Cooper, Moto Moto, and Voyager. We name everything. The Commander is hard to drive, not cause it's a stick shift, but because my foot can't reach the clutch. We've discovered that the first thing that has broken in all of the trucks is the ability for the seat to be moved forward. It's quite inconvenient for those of us that are only 3 inches above 5 feet tall.
Jayme and I are 2 of 5 girls on the entire staff and one thing I've learned by working with men is that they all have this automatic ability to know how things work and how to fix them. Nathan (our SUPER awesome boss, who's 29) pretty much just let us loose with the equipment, expecting us to just automatically know how to run it like he did and all other males. He showed us where the stuff was, and where we were supposed to mow. "Call if you have any problems." And call him we did. I think 4 times on the first day of mowing. I'd NEVER used a riding mower. The following is the process of turning on a Grasshopper (which we learned after we called Nathan to help us. 3 times. Pretty sure he regretted hiring 2 girls on his crew after that first day.) Choke up. Turn the key. move the throttle ALL the way forward. Turn on the blade. It must be done in that order or your endeavors will be unsuccessful, as we discovered.
One frustrating thing is that we, as girls, don't have the natural ability to fix everything. Urinal THINKS he can fix anything, but he just makes everything worse. Jayme and I will spend an eternity trying to get our equipment to cooperate. We try everything we can think of to get it to function properly. Finally, we give up and call Nathan. He comes and it just magically turns on for him, first try. It's so embarrassing because he probably just thinks we're ridiculous and incompetent. We've decided our boss has magical powers.
I'm learning all kinds of new skills by working in landscaping though. After a few weeks at work my mom told me I'd make someone a good husband one day. Haha, it'll be nice to not have to completely depend on whoever I marry to do this kind of stuff. Nathan taught us how to drive a front loader! Yes, one of those GIANT tractor things with the scoop on the front. One day he said, "We need to go mulch entryway. Follow me." We ended up at the water treatment plant, yes, the sewer place. Jayme and I were wondering quietly WHY we were getting our mulch from such a weird, smelly place. AFTER we'd touched all that stuff Nathan said to us, "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but..." Yep, we were touching 'poo flakes' as Jayme called it. Mulching is kind of a fun job when the wind isn't blowing. When it's blowing, which it almost ALWAYS is when we mulch, there's a nice layer of dirt in the shower when you go home. Fantastic. Anyway, back to the front loader. Jayme was terrified to drive that thing. She's scared of 'big machines'. I thought it was so much fun! I'm pretty sure Nathan was terrified I'd crash that thing. Haha I was sitting in the seat, and Nathan was sitting next to me in a very small space that I'm sure wasn't meant to be a seat. Pretty sure only one person is supposed to be in a front loader at a time.
Nathan is good at telling us things AFTER we deal with them so that we don't get grossed out or scared or something. (case in point: poo flakes.) Another fantastic example of this is when we weeded Nathan's very special project, the retaining wall's flower bed by our shed. "Now that you're all done, I can tell you there's spiders living deep under there whose bodies are the size of half-dollars." Aww thanks Nathan. I'm still terrified one of those disgusting creatures is gonna jump out and eat me.
One day we realized Moto Moto doesn't need a key to start!! CRAZY! That was the same day I found $18 in my old pair of jeans I was gonna throw away. And it was also the same day we decorated Nathan's car. That might've been the most fun Jayme and I had had up to that point. I'm pretty sure the smile on his face when he saw it was priceless.
I should probably start a list of reasons why Nathan is the world's coolest boss. One day we were at the shop and he opened his truck door to reveal his stereo loudly playing Beyonce's "Single Ladies." Jayme and I couldn't stop laughing.
Learning to drive a truck with a trailer is a big enough adventure, but when you pull a trailer with Commander, it's even more so. Pretty scary. After Nathan realized our inability to successfully pull a trailer, he gave us each lessons. I don't think Nathan is capable of getting mad, but he was kind of intimidating to drive with. I had nothing to be worried about, but I was so worried I'd back the trailer into something. We went to Lakeside Park and basically just practiced going backwards. FAIL! I can't do it to save my life.
Nielson's Grove gets thousands and thousands of flowers each year and Jayme and I got to help plant them. (Notice how Urinal isn't mentioned much? We aren't terribly fond of him, if you couldn't tell from the nickname.) It was pretty fun! After that, we planted flowers at our pretty little fountain that says, "Welcome to Orem." In the back we planted pink petunias in a heart shape. It actually looked pretty good! It wasn't really noticeable unless you were looking for it though
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For memorial day we trimmed up every single headstone in the Orem Cemetary. It looked fantastic, if I do say so myself. It made for a long day though. When one rides a grasshopper on the 8th South hills, one should expect the feeling to be similar to riding a slow motion rollercoaster without a lap bar. The first time I tried it I failed miserably and thought I was going to fall off and die.
One day Jayme found a snake at Verona. It was perfectly content laying by the fence. Alright, that's not true, it looked terrified. She's glad she saw it cause she almost hit it. Bad news. The next week we were mowing at the same place and I hit the same snake with a weed wacker because I didn't see it. I felt so bad I almost cried. It was still alive when we left it, but I may have mortally wounded it. ;(
I think pretty much all of the sheds have stuff in them people have found in the parks. Ours has tons of sports equipment and a scooter. Others have bikes, rocking chairs, etc. It's pretty fun to play with sometimes! :)
Storytime. (As if this entire post hasn't been one giant story...) One day Jayme was driving Sir Carlington and pulling the trailer on the entryway trail. We went to pull out of the trail when we heard this awful sound. I thought we just took the curb too hard. We started driving when a lady that was stopped next to us at a stoplight motioned for us to roll down the window. "Your tire is SMOKING!!!" Oh shoooot! Guess what Jayme did. Nope, she didn't take the curb hard, she HIT A TELEPHONE POLE! Oh no oh no! We pulled into the mall parking lot to discover the fender of the trailer was bent into the trailer and the tread was completely gone. We were scared this would be the first time we would see Nathan mad at us. Nah, he was just as calm as he always is. That was the beginning of a not-so-great day. WHILE this was happening with Jayme, Urinal fetchin' ran over a GIANT piece of wood with the Grasshopper. How did he not see it?! Oh wait, I'm sure he did, he was probably just too lazy to move it. So the blade went straight through the wood and it got stuck. I do admit it was a little funny, but it took quite a while to fix. But the next day when I went to mow, there was an oil leak in it. Pretty sure he did it when he ran over the wood. P.S. the grasshopper is still out of commission and that happened at the beginning of June
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I found a Black Widow in one of Cyle's (he's another supervisor) sheds at Community Park! It was a little scary! Jayme found another snake on the 8th South hills. She was crouched down cutting suckers and she let out a scream and lost her balance and slid down the hill. It was pretty entertaining!
It seems like when one thing goes wrong in a day, many other things do too. One day the Toro (I like the Grasshopper better, but it's still broken) got a flat and my weed wacker pull cord wouldn't re-coil itself. It just stayed out. But my day was balanced out when I got a raise. (I found $1 on the side of the road.)
Jayme and I decided that a man MUST have invented the weed wacker, mower, blower and anything else that requires pulling an obnoxious cord to start. If a woman designed it, all it would need is an on/off button. None of this cord junk.
Lately it's been getting really, really exhaustingly hot. Reason #76 why Nathan is the best boss: He called us one day while he was fixing sprinklers so we could go run through them. :) He's been teaching us everything we need to know about sprinklers. I think it's a pretty useful skill.
You know how sometimes you have those days when everything is funny and you can't stop laughing? I had one of those days recently. A new guy started on Gerry's crew and we couldn't remember his name for the life of us. She thought it might've been Carlos, but I thought it was just Carl. The next day at lunch she said to him, "Hey Carl, want a fruit snack? You're name is Carl right?" .... "No it's not, Betty." Turns out his name is Craig. We were close. Both names start with 'C'. I don't know why it was so funny, but I couldn't stop laughing. I literally had tears running down my cheeks. Everyone else was laughing cause I was laughing so hard. Even Bryce's wife, who was on the phone with him, was laughing cause she heard so much laughing in the background. Man, I hadn't laughed that hard in ages!
Near death experiences: 2 in one day. Okay, they weren't even close to being near death experiences. I just thought it sounded cool to say that. I was backing the Toro off the trailer and the blade just fell off! Good thing it happened when the blade wasn't spinning, or someone could've gotten pretty hurt. You know those green irrigation boxes in the grass? I fell in one of those the other day. I was turning on some water and just... fell. Ouch. It was so funny though. Not ten seconds later Nathan pulled up. Good thing he didn't see that. It left a pretty cool bruise.
Last week one morning Jayme and I pulled up to our shed about a quarter after 6 and we see this little mentally handicapped boy walking down the street. We knew no mother would let a little boy like that out by himself out so early in the morning, so we called the police. They were glad we called cause I guess someone had called in the middle of the night cause they saw him but the police couldn't find him. He'd been walking around the city for who knows how long. Kinda scary. Good thing Orem is a pretty safe place.
Nathan got his special project approved by the shed. He was so excited. Don't think I'd ever seen him so happy. He had a half day off, so he laid out the plants and told us to measure them EXACTLY evenly and plant them for him. He said, "I'm gonna measure them when I come back and if they aren't exactly perfect, I'll make you dig them up and re-do it." hahaha, I bet he really would have too. Good thing we did a good job.
One day not too long ago we found out a new guy was going to be starting and he was going to be on our crew for the first week or two until he got into his regular job. So naturally Jayme and I asked Jim (Nathan's boss) is he was good-looking and single. He said, "yeah right, like I'd put a good-lookin' single guy with you two!" It was funny!
Nathan had us fixing sprinklers last week by the freeway and we had to manually turn on the water from the irrigation box. Before we left, Nathan warned us mice lived in them. Sure enough, we opened the lid and the most adorable mouse looked up at us. We named her Molly. She was terrified of us. I wanted to keep her. Nathan, knowing ahead of time we would probably want to have a crew pet, said, "These mice aren't for pets." :) He knows us well.
Last Saturday while we doing reservations, (resers as we now call them) there was a little league game going on. Jayme and I watched it for a few minutes. I cheered for the blue team and Jayme cheered for white. It was fun. Later that day we pulled up to the shed and saw some fishermen in our park. ??? Since when are their fish in a city park? Turns out the fishing store next to the park sometimes has fly fishing lessons there. It was funny!
Yesterday was an adventure. The last half of the day we were supposed to empty and clean out fountain. Unfortunately the water pump broke. So we emptied that algae and muck filled fountain with shovels. That's right, we showed it who's boss. :)
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