As I mentioned in another post, I go to a Job Seeker's group on Monday mornings at Christ Fellowship church in McKinney from 10-noon. It's headed by Stephanie Lyon, a certified Job Coach and a member of the church. She is a brilliant woman with a big heart and the strong ability to help job seekers from all walks of life and all sorts of backgrounds add focus and direction to their job search.
Not only is it good for me to get out of the house and have a fixed destination on Mondays, but attending always lifts my spirits. Even though we often touch upon the same subjects from week to week, each meeting is somewhat different from the last, and I always learn something new. Some people show up for one meeting and you never see them again. Some who have attended for a long time finally land jobs and no longer attend. (I am so happy when that happens, but it's bittersweet, since in all likelihood you won't see that particular person again.) Others (like me) show up week after week after week after week. (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. Eventually the train I'm on will chug chug chug its way to the top of the steep hill before me and glide into Jobtown. When that happens, I will have to thank Stephanie for the push that got me going.)
After going home, applying for a couple of jobs and having lunch with my daughter, we both decided to go the Heard Nature Center and walk the Cedar Trail. Even though I have been going to the Heard for years, this was the first time I've had a chance to explore that particular trail. Most of the time I'm there to work and don't have time to enjoy the paths through the woods and the scenery. The dinosaur exhibit is still there, but should be gone in a week or so. Here's a picture of my daughter wrestling with one of the more active members of the dinosaur community:
The Heard is closed to the public on Mondays, but since we work there we were allowed access. It was so nice to have the trails all to ourselves and be able to just walk along through the woods, enjoying the beautiful day and the soul-filling quiet of nature. A quiet broken only by the sound of birds chirping, geese squawking, nail guns banging into shingles in a neighborhood next to the Heard, and the steady "beep beep beep" of nearby heavy machinery backing up somewhere just over the hill at the city dump.
Yet despite the nearby sounds of civilization, it was gorgeous. The cedars on the Cedar Trail are so densely packed, it's easy not to see the trail through them. It's like walking through a tunnel in the woods. Luckily, I had my daughter as my guide. She's a pro and has done it many times before. She is working on her Associate Degree in Science, and plans to be a Naturalist when she graduates college. She works really hard at school, and gives it all she's got. I am very proud of her.
The Heard also has a raised boardwalk-like trail through a large wetlands. We were afraid that with the severe drought in Texas that it would be all dried up. It wasn't. It was full of water and life. As we walked along the trail, we disturbed large and small groups of ducks that exploded from their hiding places as we got near and sailed off quacking into the sky, flying over our heads and landing neatly in the water on the far end of the wetlands away from us. There were a lot of geese, too, but they couldn't care less that we were there. They honked a bit as we got near, with four or five of them perched on top of a large log in the water bathing themselves and flapping their wings as we and a turtle looked on. They had no shame.
The turtle seemed to be enjoying the view, though.
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