Pity Party

This whole thing with my eye is really getting to me. I know with my head that I am prone to an overactive imagination and can image way more than I should. I have only looked up on two sites information on ocular herpes and that was enough to keep me from reading more.

This morning it was just lightly sprinkling when I left the house (fantastic news for my yard which is tired of being baked daily in 100+ temps). On the way down the interstate it began to get worse. Between the pouring rain and my now always blurred vision, I had a lot of troubles seeing. And it was then I felt alone for the first time. I realized that if I do end up with truly impaired vision that I have no one to help me through things. My mother, Lord love her, would come to the rescue but with it comes so much guilt and sorrow that I can’t bear the thought. My parents are aging and not the people to lean on. They are getting to the point of needing more than I should need them. My oldest son is almost there for someone but not quite and right now in the clutches of his father, being brainwashed (another rant, not against men but against people who lie on a regular basis).

I am truly scared of losing more of my sight. I’m an accountant. Not being able to tell numbers apart is a problem for me. This is the only thing I know to do and I don’t know how to get through life without being able to do this work.

A New Year

I’m not going to make resolutions because those are fake and never work. But I was thinking about something a friend said about how seldom we get chances to start afresh. I’m in nowhere the situation like what she was talking about as I don’t have the chance to just pick up and move and start life completely over.

But the freshness of the new year is exciting. And it made me think about what do I want to see out of this year ahead of me.

1. I want to see projects around the house done so I can enjoy my home more. I am coming to realize what I want isn’t in my skillset (after the weekend fiasco of trying to turn off the water to the house) but I can hire people for little projects here and there. Part of enjoying my home more will come with some better housekeeping. I have started the kids on more structured chores. There is no reason for them not to be helping more.

2. I do want to become more physically fit. I’m not sure that I can and will say that equals weight loss. But for example, I have a goal of during the next two months to get in better water drinking habits again. When my offices move to the new building this spring, we will have a workout room with equipment and I want to use those on a regular basis.

3. I am settling into a rhythm of being on my own. I like it for the most part. I like me and while I’m certainly not perfect, I’m happy with who I am and where I am in life. I have a good job that has great career potential ahead of me. The kids and I are doing ok financially (could be better if I ever saw child support but that is in process). I want to set some financial goals now that I’m getting out survival mode.

4. I want to travel some this year. I watch some of the discount airfares and want to take some weekend trips to see some of my friends. The question is, do they want me to see them? I could scare poor CMajor when I tell him it is a lifelong goal of mine to get up to the northwest…

So in a nutshell, I’m content with the path I’m on. I have some finetuning to do but I feel good about my direction in life. Last year I felt that I was just drifting and doing what I could to survive. Now I’m past that stage and can look ahead with a sense of direction and purpose. I know too many people who stay in that surviving mode and are unhappy with life. I truly believe that you have to have a sense of direction. It doesn’t mean changing your life drastically in all cases – it just means you have a plan for the long term. With that comes happiness because it gives a person a sense of control. There are a lot of things I can’t control but I feel like with my plan, I have a sense of how to get through the uncontrollable because I have that ability to see past that situation to the road ahead. Not to say next year I might be changing paths but I hope if I am, it is with a destination in mind.

Hard ass

Today my boss handed me a memo he wanted me to read over.  His comment was “You are such a hard ass, I know you will tell me what you think”.

Hmmmm

Now remember I have only worked there since July.  It isn’t like I have been there years to establish a reputation.  Apparently I come across quickly. 

Hmmmm

It always amazes me when people tell me I need to build my self-esteem.  I guess I am most comfortable in my work persona.  When I’m in the office and people ask me what needs to be done, I don’t have to think about what needs to be done.  It is instinctive for me.  I’m comfortable in how to encourage people and how to organize them. 

And then I come home.  I don’t feel in control of the person I am at home and the situations I find myself in.  The answers aren’t there.  The ability to lay out an organized plan falls apart before it is developed fully.  

It makes me wonder, how many people really believe they rock both work and home.  Do most people find the skin in one of those scenarios fits better than the other?  It isn’t that one is more right than the other, I just think that most people do feel more comfortable in one aspect of their life over the other.

This is counts towards one of the worse cover letters of all time

I’m hunting for a new AP clerk again (don’t start with me about why I can’t find good people).  Amid countless errors of an amazing variety is this jewel of a paragraph.  I will recreate it in its orginal state of being.

I am looking to find a company that can start me out at $13.00 or more an hour I have been told I am 5 employees in one cause all I can do and handle on a daily bases.

Yeah, let me read that amazing resume.

Oh dear merciful Elvis on Velvet (thank you Hip Shaker for that), then another resume mentioned that the person who believes she should be my next AP clerk had severed snacks at a day care.  Thankfully the snacks were severed and she hadn’t furthered the typo into severed snakes or some such.

The fact I have not killed

my AP clerk is a testament to the amount of patience I have learned as a mother.  This woman is a moron.  I can’t keep her much longer, it is jeopardizing her and my health.

Apparently my directions to her can just be ignored.  Information people give her are just words on a page, they have no meaning in her world.  It is ok not to count the cash when you are filling out a deposit slip.  It is ok to pay an invoice that has it written on it that they are applying the invoice to an outstanding credit (one that she verified that we had double paid a previous invoice).  And when I tell her to see a tab in her worksheet on how to do an allocation, she just writes under my instructions that there is no such tab (clear as day there is!) and just ignore my comment to redo the allocation.

I apparently need to embrace yoga and mediatation soon in my life.

MIA

No I didn’t disappear off of the face of the Earth.  With the new job, I just don’t have the time at work to cruise the internet like I did at my old job.  But I do like having the new challenges.  I’m enjoying it and think I can make this job a good one.  I’m being trained by the outgoing Director of Accounting.  She is bitter about many things but I’m also wondering how much of her troubles were of her making.  She comes across as someone who was overly strict to the point of almost abusive. 

I have good employees, with the exception of one.  On the Thursday of her full first week of work, she had been late to work 3 days of the 4 (by late I mean at least 15 minutes, I’m not talking a couple of minutes late).    I keep walking in and finding her on the cell phone or on personal emails.  Now I’m the first to say that sometimes I’m on my phone or check personal email, but not to the excessive amounts I’m seeing in her and I’m hearing about from others.  Then she has gotten confrontational with some of the supervisors in the company.  This is just too many problems from someone in two weeks of being on her job.  I would have let her go on Thursday but I need to make sure the people who back up her work are going to be present while I hire a new person.

My mother’s house is coming along very quickly.  In the two weeks since they started, it is weathered in, has drywall up on the walls and is ready for the siding to go on the outside this next week, taped, mudded and painted and for the floors to go in.  She will be able to move in the house in about 3 weeks.  Her builder has been absolutely amazing. 

I got a lovely hutch for my living room, although we broke off a door in the moving it.  I think I can fix it easily.  It has a nice little distressed look and beadboard back and sides.  I am a sucker for beadboard.  When I finish out my island, it will be done with a beadboard look to it as well.  For a little old house like mine, beadboard is a natural. 

Otherwise life is going along real normal like.

Wow, great words where I least expected it

Sportziemom did a bad thing to me and got me hooked on watching Top Chef.  I did really enjoy it, even though she knows I’m not the type to eat fancy foods. 

Being a true fan, I like reading the site’s blogs with insights into the show, especially Tom’s blog, since he seems to be such a genuine and like-able guy.  So imagine my shock to read these words

Tom’s Blog

Women are reluctant to enter the culinary world because they believe (and this is not unjustified) that a cooking career is incompatible with raising children, which leaves those of us who want to hire, promote, and mentor women with a slimmer field to choose from than we’d like. And to an extent, they’re right: The bottom line is our society does not yet provide women in the workplace with the type of social supports, like high-quality subsidized child care or extended parental leave, that allows them to fully go for it, and the impact this has on the scope and depth of a career is profound. Right or wrong, men plunge into their careers without much thought about how they’ll navigate the work/family balance. They assume someone — spouse, parent, paid caregiver — will materialize to take care of it (and usually someone does.)

I bolded the part that really spoke to me.  Those two sentences summed up so much of where my marriage failed.  He never has or will think about where someone to pick up the kids will come from.  Either I did/do it or I arrange for it to happen.  When he isn’t paying child support, it doesn’t really bother him, I will make it work so the kids are fed, have clothes, etc.  And this happens in households all around the world every single day, not just by single moms but just from moms.  Yes some men get this and break the stereotypical mold but until it happens regularly, this is where the chasm of sexual inequality will lie.

Tom Colicchio is much more than a food genius. The title of this post is not to imply that Chef Colicchio is not a wise man, I just didn’t expect to find some a worldly gem of information in a reality tv blog.

Transition

Well one bad thing about the transition from old job to new job is the insurance.  The new company has by its nature a high turnover rate in the processing centers and shops so their insurance has a 180 day wait period before I can join the company’s plan.  Wow, that is a long time but understandable.  So now I have to look at either Cobra insurance here at work or getting a short period plan.  Either way will cost me! 

But the long term picture makes this a bump in the road not a mountain.  Just things I have to think about and plan accordingly.

Celebration

Yahoo! This is your celebration
Yahoo! This is your celebration

Celebrate good times, come on! (Let’s celebrate)
Celebrate good times, come on! (Let’s celebrate)

There’s a party goin’ on right here
A celebration to last throughout the years
So bring your good times, and your laughter too
We gonna celebrate your party with you

We’re gonna have a good time tonight
Let’s celebrate, it’s all right
We’re gonna have a good time tonight
Let’s celebrate, it’s all right

You know you are old when this is the song that comes to mind when you get a new job!!!!

I’m back to my old salary, which is what I have to do to support my kids.  And the hours are a little better and right now the offices are much closer to home.  Later this year the office will move and while it isn’t quite as far as I am now, it won’t be as close to home as I will be for a few months.  But there is the nerdy joy of a brand new office.

 

Pssst second interview for early tomorrow

Fingers crossed.  This would be for about $8K more a year than I’m making right now, which gets me back to where I was before I took this job in desperation.  I thought I could make it taking care of the kids on less, but then stupid me thought the X would be better at paying his measly amount of child support (and for any guys who think I’m just the standard xwife complaining about child support, you don’t really think $300 a month for three kids is really supportive, do you?).  Stupid me on all accounts.