The Random Dilettante

I’m a little annoyed.

At myself.

I bought beautiful Christmas Cards….but they won’t be making it anywhere in time for Christmas.  I failed to set aside the time after I get off work to fill them out and then take them to the post office.  Now it’s too late, and I’m so mad at myself.  I even bought a few family members things…but yet they are still at my house.

My only idea to salvage a little face is to send out the gifts and cards with wishes for a happy new year….which is a little lame.  But better late than never right?

Oh, and if that wasn’t bad enough, we’ve lost our mailbox key again (I blame Taylor!) and we can’t even get our mail.  I don’t expect too many cards, but even if there were some out there…yeah…we wouldn’t know.  Blah.

In other news, the past week I’ve had trainees at work so I haven’t been able to really get online and do much…when I did they were always breathing down my neck.  So glad that’s over!

Anyway, thats about all for now.  If you were expecting a card from me, I apologize….but look for a little something come New Years!  If I miss that deadline then I’m seriously going to get some help.

Tonight Andrew and I are going to my companies Christmas party.  I hope it’s a good time..especially considering I’m not their most favorite person right now!  I’m sure it will though, and it will be nice for just the two of us to get out for a change.  I just got back from shopping for a nice outfit to wear..I didn’t intend on waiting until the very last minute, but this week has been hell.  Anyway, I found something that looks really nice so I’m pretty happy
I also went and got the new Harry Potter movie on DVD!  I can’t wait to sit down and watch it again this weekend.

Hmmm.  I guess that’s about it for now.  I had a lot more interesting stuff going on in my head, but it’s not translating to the keyboard at the moment!  Go figure.

Yuck. It’s been one of those days….

First, my morning staff called in, so I ended up getting stuck at work until 11am. Then after I got home I pulled a muscle in my knee & groin while letting the dogs outside. I was going to go out on the patio with them and as soon as my right foot stepped out the door it slid forward, leaving my left foot that was still inside where it was and then ultimitly contorting it in some god awful direction it shouldn’t have been. I was nearly doing the splits, but frozen in pain at the same time. I ended up pulling myself back into the house dragging my now gimp knee/leg. It was horrible. Whatever muscle is on the side of my knee had burning/searing pain, and then the muscle on the inside of my thigh also burned. After about 15 minutes it felt better and I was able to put weight on my leg, but after I woke up tonight I could barely move it. I should have called in, but I didn’t…so now I’m walking around with a gimp leg, limping horribly.

But wait, that wasn’t all. As I was getting ready for work I pulled my khakis out of the dryer to put them on and wouldn’t you know it? I had washed a pen with them this morning and now they have blue spots all over them. Lovely eh? Plus my cold is even worse now and I can barely talk…

BLAHHHH. Life sucks today.

I better stop, cause it’s not making me feel any better to complain/whine….it’s just bringing up stuff that I should probably let go of and try to move on. It’s sort of hard to forget about my knee/crotch though..it fucking hurts.

This cold is progressing ***BLAH*** I hate feeling sick. It’s nothing too bad, it’s just annoying, and I’m usually healthy so I’m spoiled that way. Yes, some cheese would be nice, thanks.
Beware when I say “more on that tomorrow” or make any other statement that commits to me doing something and following through. It’s usually a precursor to you being let down and me feeling guilty that I didn’t do what I said I would. I haven’t gotten around to taking pics of the girls OR the tree. I felt like crap this weekend so I tried to sleep when I could, and Andrew also got the most out of his weekend by doing absolutely nothing, so our house/laundry paid the price. Usually we get the whole house on Saturdays, including laundry but since that didn’t happen I tried to make up for it today when I got off work. So now I’m wasted and really really tired. My fault.

Later tonight Audrey has a little concert on Post that should be cute. I WILL take pictures. I don’t offer any promises that they’ll get posted on here anytime soon though. But ya never know.

Anyway, it’s one of those days where being coherent is harder than it should be so I should probably wrap it up.

On a final note though, let me share with you a little insight of parenting a 11yr old wannabe pre-teen drama queen who thinks she has the world all wrapped up and figured out:

(your gonna love this) (trust me)

A few days ago Taylor is sitting on the couch chilling, when she looks up and starts talking out of nowhere about all the things she wants for Christmas. She wants an electric scooter, an iphone, a laptop, her hair dyed crimson red with black tips…I mean you name some off the wall, not going to happen in a million years shit, and that girl asked for it……..

including:

“Oh yeah!!” “I know what I want” “A blueberry!!” (speaking to me) “You don’t even know what a Blueberry IS do YOU?” (with a know-it-all smirk on her face)

To which I said:

“You mean a BLACKBERRY?” “SHHhhh…just…just….stop talking now ok?” - lol

She has gotten to the point where she has so much stuff that her only choice is too think of some over-the-top item that she wants just to say she has it. I can’t help to think that I’ve failed in some small way. She has so much more than I ever thought of having at her age..or ever, but yet she’s always had it so it’s hard for her to realize how much she really has. Does that make sense? Andrew and I’ve lectured and tried our best to make her understand how fortunate she is to not really want for anything…but I don’t feel that any of it sinks in, because just a few days later she’s still asking for shit she doesn’t need and WON’T need for a long time.

I don’t know..I’m at a loss.

The “BlueBerry” thing was pretty funny though..I have to admit.

I would have posted about this sooner but Friday morning when I went to find out my fate, there was still no answer. The Assistant Director told me that Thursday the Director had been out for the day, so that was holding things up, but that they were going to have a meeting at 11 and were going to discuss it. So I went home and ended up going over to my friends house for most of the day waiting nervously by the phone and talking about what my other options might have been if they let me go. We talked about going into business together actually….she just got her license from the state to open a daycare, and right now it’s at her house, but before too long she would like to get an actual location..and in which case..I’m there. I could help her manage the hell out of the daycare. There’s nothing like a micro-managing mom with high expectations and high attention to detail to totally rock the socks off a childcare facility. Oh yeah.

Anyway, what I’m getting at though is that I still have a job - She finally called about 5pm that night and kind of chewed me out about it, and told me that it was a rare situation because 99% of the time if an employee would have told them what I did, it really wouldn’t have mattered. They would have sent them where they needed them, and if that meant they quit, then so be it. That said, they told me I could continue working in the cottage and they would look for someone else for NSD, but if that didn’t work out I might be asked again. Then she went on a little bit how it was really a tough decision and a lot of management was torn about it, and I could tell that if there was a vote..she didn’t do it in my favor. She said I was a phenomenal employee, but even phenomenal employees need to be flexible and be willing to move as the agency needs them. I understand her point too, but I also believe that if I have the choice of being happy or miserable, why not take the risk and just be satisfied and happy? I know I lost a lot of brownie points and I’ve fell from their graces with my ultimatum, and on one hand I care, but mostly I don’t. What did it get me before? They were ready to screw me over and didn’t give a damn what I thought. So I can only feel so bad, because I had to look out for ME…cause they damn sure weren’t.

Operation “Stand My Ground”  was sucessful!  Yay me!

In other news, Andrew was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer 2 on Friday.  It was an automatic promotion, he was just waiting for his 2 yr anniversary, but he’s still pretty damn happy about it.  In the Army a W-1 is called a “Wobbly One” because everyone knows they are still fresh out of school and not settled in..so you get some flack about it.  Some soldiers at his job would call him “Chief” because in their eyes he’s earned it because he knows his shit, but every once in a while he’d have a smart-ass that would chime in and say that technically he wasn’t a “Chief”yet.  He is now though, and he’s definitely earned it and I’m very proud of him!

That’s about it for now.  My throat is killing me and I feel all achy…probably from staying up all day Friday and not getting any sleep.  As the day wore on I felt worse and worse.  I’m back at the grind though, and will be crashing for most of the day tomorrow trying to kick it.

Oh!  We finally got our tree up too….but more on that tomorrow, I’m going post a few pics of it and the girls.

Well, I did it. I went in her office this morning and told her that I was completely satisfied where I was at and did not want to go up to NSD. I knew they had already made their decision though and that they really didn’t care what I wanted. In true form she said that they would “take note” of what I wanted but she couldn’t guarantee that it would make a difference in the matter. So that’s when I followed up with ” if I do have to move up there, I’ll be putting in my 2 weeks notice” - she looked a little surprised, I don’t think they thought I was that serious. I am/was though - my job has a whole lot of people in positions they were bullied into, it’s how my management works and I’ll be damned if I end up in the same situation. They like to insinuate that they’ll try to move you where you want to go as soon as another position opens up, but it rarely happens.

She told me that employees that go above and beyond where they want to work also need to be flexible for the agency and be willing to go above and beyond when asked to help out somewhere else….yada yada yada. It’s BS because it’s a double standard, there are other females that could work up in NSD, but I’m the only one they asked, mainly because the other ones will most definitely say no, and they know it. The other ladies I work with are into their 50’s and don’t take any shit and have made it known they are staying where they are. So they left them alone and went after me. I don’t hold it against them either..they’ve been there longer and I think they should have that right. We have a new training class that just started though that has 9 people…there’s other options besides making me move…I don’t know if they’ll take that option, but I’m hoping they will. I don’t want to be out of a job, but I refuse to back down. There’s other jobs out there where the management aren’t Nazi’s…there has to be!

They were supposed to call me sometime today and let me know their decision, but they just left me hanging. She’s probably going to call me back into her office in the morning and start round 3 of trying to intimidate me into doing what they want…I’m telling you…these people are evil!

I’m over it though, and I will stand by what I said and turn in my 2 weeks if they choose to move me…

Anyway, I’ll update in the morning with the news….cross your fingers for me!

There’s nothing like a little drama/work politics to shake up your inner apathy. I’m starting to see that when your really not feeling much about anything either way, that perhaps we should embrace the lack of excitement going on instead of thinking something must be wrong because you have nothing to exclaim or complain about. I’m not sure that made any sense, but it made sense to me, so whateva.

I got pulled into the assistant directors office this morning and told what a great job I was doing and that I was “revolutionizing” the program and have really made an impact on the residential program…blah blah blah…it was all fucking smoke up my ass. Pardon my french, but it’s what it was. I know this because all those compliments were followed by, “and frankly Glenda we NEED you somewhere else” - namely our Non-Secure Detention Building. It’s where juveniles go while they wait to go to court because they are considered a risk of missing the scheduled court date. I’ve worked there from time to time before I got my full time position and I’ve never liked it. They have twice the amount of kids, and half of them are loco and will soon be sent to a secure facility because of it. It’s 100 times more stressful than were I’m at, and about 10 times the work. Bottom line, I DO NOT want to move over there. So the assistant director asks me my feelings on the matter, and I was upfront with the fact that I really don’t want too, but she just kept blowing the smoke up my ass…and wanted to know why, and then really didn’t let me answer cause she wouldn’t shut her goddamn mouth. Then she threw out the bottom-line ever so quickly that no position is guaranteed and they can move me to meet the “needs of the program” if needed. Basically making me feel like I have a choice and then sneaking it in there that when push comes to shove I don’t.

This is where being a quiet/reserved person doesn’t help anything. People assume your a push-over because your not always complaining, or maybe they think you aren’t quick enough to see the fucking pony show going on in front of you…I really have no idea…but I know they tend to underestimate whats going on under the surface. You can find out a lot by shutting your mouth and observing situations and people..you might think you can pull a fast one on me, but trust me, I know what the fuck is going down.

I like my job right now, and there’s not much to complain about…I like the kids I work with for the most part, I like the staff, I like how stress free it usually is…there isn’t much to NOT like. I don’t want to go anywhere but while listening to her ramble I just felt trapped like I really had no choice. In the end I told her that “I’d do it” but wouldn’t like it. She encouraged me by telling me it was probably just a matter of getting used to the program, and I would grow to like it. She did tell me to think on it today and come talk to her tomorrow morning about it. I left her office with tears in my goddmamn pathetic eyes because I was so frustrated. Not because I was sad or anything but for some stupid ass reason when I get really really torn about things, or just don’t know exactly how to handle a situation all I want to do is cry. Let me re-phrase that…I don’t WANT to cry, it’s like I have no choice. It just takes over me.

So tomorrow I want to go in her office and tell her that if I need to be moved, I will go, but I will also start looking for another job. The fact is, I don’t HAVE to have this job, I can get another one..I might take a pay cut but if it saves my sanity, then so be it. I want to be able to tell her all this and a little more without becoming a complete mess…but I don’t know how in the hell I’m going to. Another draw back of always being the quiet one is once you really let out your feelings……people sit back in awe..they didn’t know you had it in you. It’s embarrassing really.

Anyway..that’s all I have for now. I’m upset, and mad at myself for being who I am. I wish I was that person that everyone knew wouldn’t take any shit, so they don’t dare even ask. I’m not though, I’m too damn nice and accommodating..and all that does for me is open the door to get run the fuck over.

FUCK ME.