Rescue me

What? So you’ve noticed I haven’t been to your blog in awhile. Ahem, yes, well I’m sorry about that. Maybe I’ll get to it…, um, I’ll have to get back to you.

My first week at work was freaking insane. I’m not used to getting up at 5:30 in the morning and getting home over 12 hours later. A lot of that is the commute and so is the role reversal for dropping off and picking up GadgetGirl from daycare. No wonder SpyDad complained so much about the morning routine. You would too if you had to wake a wildebeast from her slumber, feed it, clothe it, brush its teeth, and then wrestle it into a carseat.

Man, did I have it easy.

I have a minute, so I’ll tell you a little bit about my first week.

I got them to paint my new office the first day, but it took four days to get a new computer that conveniently didn’t have any software on it except Office.

I didn’t read a single blog all week because I don’t want to screw it up with this company.

I gave someone a final warning on attendance, which is the last step before termination.

There was a problem with one of the lines where a worker noticed two critical defects. Good job, worker, right? No, the other workers harassed her and “joked” that they were going to slash her tires.

Did I forget to mention the two girls on swing shift that went out to lunch and were arrested?

Welcome to my world, people. I, however, may make this the first and last post about work. The dirt is just too tempting.

Stay Puff

Thank you, thank you for all the well wishes.  Things are going um, er, well.  Okay, it’s effin crazy.  So, I’ll leave you with a laugh because I was due in the house fifteen minutes ago to give GadgetGirl her bath.

Last week, while I was still recovering from my painting endeavor, I collapsed onto GadgetGirl’s toddler bed, secretly hoping that nobody would find me for at least an hour.  Ten minutes later, SpyDad and GadgetGirl sauntered in and proceeded to scream and carry on, mostly about politics, but with a little Dora thrown in for flavor.  SpyDad sensed my tenseness and proceeded to rub on of my feet dangling over the footboard of GadgetGirl’s bed.

That man knows the key to turning me into putty.

After about a minute, he called GadgetGirl over.  “Hey, can you rub momma’s other foot?”  She walked over put her chubby little hands on my feet and proceeded to rub.  I smiled with glee because SpyDad’s callused hands have nothing on her soft as a baby’s bottom hands.

I told him, “She makes your foot rub feel like I’m getting buffed to death by sandpaper.  Her foot rub is like getting a massage from a bag of marshmallows.”

Number of foot rubs from SpyDad since that comment: 0.

Broken

I really need to start taking better care of myself. For the past few weeks, I’ve had this feeling that I either have a urinary tract infection (UTI) or a really bad case of mommy bladder. Every fifteen minutes I was running to pee. Okay, maybe not running, a slight jog perhaps.

Earlier this week I finally went to the doctor to get it checked. The urine test is not like most pee-in-a-cup type tests. There are certain things you have to do in order to make sure you don’t contaminate it with other bacteria in your nether regions. In my case, it also involved peeing on my hand.

Laugh it up, people. Unfortunately, this was the second time for the hand peeing to happen in less than a week. The other occurred while I was taking my employment drug test this past Friday.

Maybe I should ask for a pee bucket next time?

The results of the UTI test were negative, and once the nurse told me that, I gathered up my purse and headed for the door. You know how you think you have something, and then you get all embarrassed because you don’t and you wasted their time? Okay, maybe that’s just me then. Anyhow, she said I could stay and talk to the doc. When he came in, he asked me some routine questions like “Do I pee after s*e*x?” I told him, “I suppose you have to have s*e*x first, right? I have a toddler that doesn’t allow much time or energy for recreational activities.”

That made him laugh.

Then he had me lay down and then pressed down on my lower abdomen which shot lightning bolts of pain up my stomach. No, I’m not talking about the Big-O either. This was pain, and apparently a signal that I had a UTI, too.

Yay for infection! I’m glad I got it cleared up before my 82 mile round trip commute that commences on Monday. I don’t think there are enough pit stops every 15 minutes, and I’m not peeing on any damn bush on the side of the road.

When the whole unemployment chaos began, Undercover Grandmutha was a great source of information and support. One thing she said while I was waiting for one of my prospects to call with an offer was to take on a big project. I asked, “Like paint the house?”

What a dumb idea.

Actually, I just limited it to GadgetGirl’s room. There was the unfortunate incident last year in which she decided to tear half the room’s border off. And there it sat for a whole year in shambles while I tried to figure out what to do. Last week I decided to paint it.

Unfortunately, I am the queen of procrastination and laziness, so the project kept getting put off and put off until I realized that I was going to have to start work soon and it would never get done after that. I am also the queen of run-ons if you hadn’t noticed. Wednesday was fairly easy as I took my sweet time removing the border with a sponge and some liquid fabric softener (which works beautifully by the way). Yesterday I decided that I would do all the priming and painting. Make that primer coat 1, primer coat 2, and paint. Luckily, I just had to paint over the orangey-red below the wallpaper border and just blend in to the tan above it.

It looks great actually. I’ll post some pictures once I can figure out how to log into Flickr. However, my body, she screams. My knees are shot, my arms are throbbing, and the joints in my hands are creaking.

Thank goodness I’m getting back to work soon, my body can’t take being unemployed anymore.

Stand back people

I have a new love. Poor SpyDad has put up with all my new loves: Matt Damon, Wentworth Miller, and now Josh Turner. Mmmm, baritone.

Powerful

It’s amazing when you think about the community that surrounds bloggers. Complete strangers celebrate your joys, your sorrows, the good times and bad. Instead of calling up your good friend to talk for hours, you can send emails back and forth for days, weeks, and months.

About a year ago, I found a blogger who had linked to my blog using my good old friend, Technorati. Her blog was a little of this and that, creative pictures she had drawn as well as desperation for getting out of a marriage that seemed doomed from the beginning. Of course her readers told her to get out, but she had tried before and failed. Without money to pay legal fees and without an education to get a job, a lawyer and judge told her to go back to her husband.

Something in me told me not to give up on her just yet. In a wave of inspiration, I shot her off an email aptly titled “All up in yo bidness.” I asked her if she ever considered working outside the home, even having a career. What I got was a lot of excuses, some justifiable (like money and childcare) and some that weren’t so justifiable and definitely workable. There was one huge obstacle in the way, something that even kept her from getting a job at K-Mart. It was the GED.

She did the research and found out that it cost little to nothing outside of some gasoline and computer time completing some online courses and tests to prep for the real thing. I was completely giddy that it seemed to be coming together so easily and inexpensively. I kept thinking, “It’s gonna happen! It’s gonna happen!” And it did.

Yesterday, she sent me an email, “Hey Mutha, didn’t do too bad on the first half, Science & Reading 99% each (highest you can get) and Social Studies 86%.”

99 FREAKING PERCENT!?

So girl, I know you’re reading this, and I want you to know that I am still very proud of you. You have EMPOWERED yourself to do something about your situation and in doing so, you have created hope for the future. It’s the future that you choose, not one governed by family, friends, and especially not one governed by your husband. You’ve proved to be that you’re capable of great things, and I hope that you can use this momentum to spur you forward to even bigger and better things.

Best of luck to you on today’s test. I’m still rooting for you.

Ho hum

So, I’m sitting here waiting for my email to poop out a 24 Mb slideshow of baby pics to my friend and I might as well tell you kind folks what I’ve been up to today.

1) I watched Stephen King’s “Sleepwalkers” for about 30 minutes. Totally forgot about the mom and son kissing. Ew. Changed channel.

2) Scoped out a retention pond, aka neighborhood “ditch,” for my neighbor friend’s Christmas pictures. She’s always busy, and the location has quickly changed from a city park to a local park to the neighborhood ditch and at last check, her fireplace.

3) Sent GadgetGirl to bed at 7:00pm because it felt like 11:00pm.

4) Called headhunter to find out about the second job I was a candidate for and was told that they weren’t in a position to offer me a job because of the whole “we’ve only interviewed two people.” I didn’t feel like he was being completely truthful.

5) Accepted only job offer! YAYYYYY! I start November 13. Here’s the funny part: I’m going to be a supervisor to 80 people! Dear lawd. Anyone have some supervising tips for a person who’s NEVER supervised before?