Random Outlaw

Bonus Time!

I work damn hard at my job. Damn. Hard. Usually I rue the day when I get out of bed. But not in February. You see, February is Bonus Time. The bonus is not massively ginormus, but it is a decent amount of cash. A large sum is going into savings, but I am setting aside $600 FOR ME. No guilt!

Now I am at a crossroads. It's easy to salivate over The Bonus and the resplendent cash, but I tell you... 2 or 3 big ticket items and The Bonus is gone!  It is so sad. So we must be careful with The Bonus.

Here's what I'm thinking I COULD get with The Bonus:

1) A facial and pedicure at a local spa. I always get a face wax because I am hairy.
Total cost (including tip): $200.

Enjoyment Level: High.
Necessity: Negligible (could get cheaper wax job elsewhere).
Longevity: Fleeting.
Satisfaction: Always leaves me wanting more!

2) A natural skin care system that will help my flaky, itchy skin and acne marks.

Total cost (including shipping): $180

Enjoyment level: Meh. I hate washing my face (sensory issues).
Necessity: High - my face needs some serious help.
Longevity: 6 months.
Satisfaction: Well if I actually use it and it works I will be very satisfied. But will I use it or will I have just dropped $180 on nice smelling products that will sit on my shelf? Conundrum.

3) 3 month long T-Tapp online course intended to develop consistency, goal setting, and accountability.

Total cost (discounted): $200

Enjoyment level: Medium.
Necessity: High - my stomach is starting to scare me.
Longevity: 3 month class, but if I actually DO develop consistency and accountablility, indefinite.
Satisfaction: If I do the class and gain from it, I will be satisfied. Let us not remark on the last time Lisa did an online class for T-Tapp and dropped out after two weeks. Also I have way less time now, so it would be more of a challenge.

4) Mad money.

Total cost: variable up to $600

Enjoyment: High. I love to spend!
Necessity: 0
Longevity: How long does mad money ever last?
Satisfaction: Medium to low. Those impulse purchases never turn out to be as good at home as they were in the store.

So what would you do? Help me out!

I Have Disrupted The Holy Sleep Schedule

Night shift works well for me - great actually - as long as I get at least 6 hours of sleep.  If I get 6 hours of sleep, my day is like any other and I don't need caffeine to stay awake at work, and I'm alert on my drive home.  However, inevitably, the sleep schedule does get interrupted from time to time.

This whole week has been a sleep schedule cock up.  On Monday I stayed up late to deal with day care shit. Tuesday was the same.  Wednesday I had to drive the Moosh up to my mom's house so she could watch him.  Today I had to do the same, but the noise was unbelievable while I was trying to "sleep" so it was a joke.  Tomorrow I have to go to my parents yet again.  Urgh.  Ugh.

Not that I don't love my family, or that I don't appreciate their help in watching the Moosh, but still.  I'm tired.  And just think, in 4 weeks, I get to do this for two weeks straight!

So sleepy.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Unexpected Day Off

Sorry about missing yesterday... but you'll get two posts today to make up for it.

Yesterday was a little crazy.  R is home on Sundays now, and it was fine when I worked Sundays, but now that I have Sundays off (a byproduct of working nights and relying on M-F day care for childcare, if R had to work on Sunday unexpectedly I'd be screwed) things have taken a turn towards the evil.  R is so unhappy in his own life that he cannot interact with other people positively any more.  Like, he'll invite my family over for a holiday lunch (Memorial Day, if I recall correctly) and then he'll bitch, moan, and snipe at everyone throughout the entire meal.  Well it's the same on Sundays... he can't interact with me without complaining.  Last week he complained that I didn't mow the lawn or care about the outside of the house.  So this week I got up, did my normal pick-up-and-vacuum, then went outside to cut and stack this tree that he had cut down weeks ago and just left there.  So I cut up the tree and stacked the wood, but didn't have any twine to finish the job and that pissed him off, so I threw up my hands and went to my parents house early.

We go to my parents at least half of every Sunday, can you guess why?

For the last month I have given the Moosh a range of supplements to boost his immune system in a vain attempt to keep him healthy enough to go to school. Nothing nefarious, just probiotics, antihistimines, and Emergen-C.  And it worked!  At least until Saturday when the Runny Nose of Doom descended upon us.

All of the Moosh's major illnesses start with the Runny Nose of Doom.  There was the ear infection that lasted a month when he was 16-17 months old, then last year he had the Runny Nose of Doom and a fever that started - you guessed it - the evening before Thanksgiving, then in September of this year he got the Runny Nose of Doom and a chest infection that he passed on to me and R (I coughed for 6 weeks with that one), and now we have yet another Runny Nose of Doom and he's coughing so much he throws up and he can't sleep at night. 

So Saturday night he didn't sleep, and that's the night we had the DST switch.  I woke up Sunday morning feeling OK, but by 4 PM I was falling asleep in my chair.  I was worried about how R would handle the Moosh all night, and I was equally worried about me having to stay up 24 hours straight, plus an "extra" hour, then drive home.  So I ended up using a Short Notice Day at work and stayed home last night.

If there is one thing I absolutely love about my job it is Short Notice Days.  They are awesome.  They can be used for any reason whatsoever... they don't even question you as to why.  So if you need a mental health day - use it.  Didn't sleep all Saturday night? Use it.  Want to spend time with family that came into town unannounced?  Use it. 

So we slept better last night thanks to Children's Benadryl, but we'll have to go to the doctor today because his allergy prescription has run out and we need a refill.  Maybe they can give him a stronger cough medicine to get him through the night.

Meanwhile now we have the whole day to ourselves.  No school for him, no sleep for me!  We do have to go back to my mom and dad's house because I forgot his shoes yesterday, but otherwise we are free as birds.

What do you do on an unexpected day off?

And Lo, She Returned Unto Nights, And It Was Good

Over the summer, when I wasn't posting, there was a meeting of the minds (me, R, and my sister AN) regarding the Moosh's future.  AN and I felt that the Moosh would be better served in pre-K this fall than he would be stuck at home with nothing to do.  I covered some of the issues I was having with my evening shift schedule in my last post.

In truth, AN had one foot out the door for the last year she was working for us, but she didn't want to abandon us with no backup plan.  My initial idea was to let her find a job and then we would switch everything around and she wouldn't have to spend too much time without work.  For whatever reason, she just couldn't commit to job hunting unless she knew that we had all her ducks in a row.  This required prior planning and forethought, and also getting R in on the agreement, which is always a challenge.

In Iran kids don't go to school until they are 7. In R's mind, this is how things should be.  I spent several days trying to impress upon him that 1) this isn't Iran (shocker!!!!) and 2) most kids start school around here at the age of 3, and almost all kids are in at least part-time school by age 4.  Because school for the Moosh would also have to double as child care, he would be there for a full day at least 4 days a week.  It was the length of time out of the house that bothered R, but after working on alternatives for a few days, he agreed with me that putting him in a day care that had an academic pre-K program was the right thing to do.

However, in order to achieve this adjustment, I had to find a position on another shift.  In the spring I was dead set on moving to days,  thinking that it was time to get off the alternative scheduling.  It didn't work out , though,  because even though I have been with GTC for over 5 years now, I STILL can't get weekends off on day shift.  So the only alternative was to move back to night shift.

So I did.  And believe it or not, I am loving it!  I had always identified more with night shift than with evening shift, although I was on evening shift slightly longer.   My first day back, 3 of my friends were like, "Lisa, you have to sit here with us!" and my boss made a special point to tell me how glad he was to have me back on the shift.  The best part is that because I am working nights, the Moosh only has to spend 6 hours in day care, and I pick him up at lunch time on Fridays.

Maybe I am just a night walker!

Under The Radar

Sorry for the long absence, but things have been nutty, as in N-U-T-T-Y at work for the last few weeks.  I am at home now (day off) and I feel free to write this post, because it is about work and I didn't want to write it at work.  Although it's not like you know where I work or anything, but it makes me feel better.  Also I wanted to give the impression that when I am at work I am WORKING instead of blogging. Silly me.

I do not take criticism well.  Like, at all.  R learned this early on, when he once walked in the kitchen while I was hand washing dishes and pointed out some lingering soap suds on one of the rinsed dishes and hinted that I should, you know, wash it off.  A greek tragedy ensued, with the wailing and the rending of the garments.  I officially changed my name to Hysteria and my chorus followed me out of the kitchen marking my lament to the ages.  How dare he point out my flaws.  How dare he!

I have a deep and abiding need to be perceived as perfect (or at least doing and acceptable job) without actually putting in all the work to acheive perfection.  I am the mistress of cut corners and top skimming. It's not that I don't do my job, I do, and I do it pretty well.  However, I don't see the need to follow the directions exactly as they are put to me.  I have to subvert, while still being perceived to be perfect.  I don't know where this comes from but I do wish that I could stop, because I'm not doing myself any favors.

The fact remains, though that I am doing a fairly good job.  My superiors have been more than happy with me for many years now.  However, things, they are changing, and I'm not the kind of girl that takes change well.  The managment is looking for more ways to hold us accountable for our work.  They have started calculating statistics on our job performance and are using this to determine if things are going well or not.  The managers are pushing the supervisory technicians on our teams to be more accountable for our jobs, so we have 2-3 people looking over our work and correcting it on a daily basis.   For a department that handles as much work as we do, this amounts to a lot of niggling things being pointed out, and a lot of people getting huffy over the new regulations and the micromanaging.

Our workload varies with the weather, and the spring and summer tend to be far busier than the fall and winter months.  Two weeks ago, when we were having storms go through part of the country, I got in a tiff with one of the supervisory techs because she said I wasn't working fast enough.  This brought out my soul sister Hysteria and I pissed and moaned about it (how dare she imply that I was anything less that perfect? How dare she?) for several days, until my mid-year review with the manager.  Turns out those statistics they've been calculating are pretty darn important to him (and his boss, and his boss's boss...) and mine are, well, less than stellar.  When I pointed out that I'd been working there for years and they'd been fat and happy with my performance until the dawn of these statistics, he shrugged and indicated that I should suck it up and modify my performance to their new standards.  Hysteria seethed and has been seething since.   But since Hysteria needs to keep her job, she modified her standards and started working harder to meet the timeframes. 

And what did this get me? Complaints from the people that our department serves, saying that I wasn't keeping up with all their needs.  Since those complaints are taken very seriously within the department and directly impact our performance reviews, I am really upset by them.  Before the statistics snafu, I had two of those complaints.  Two in four years.  I've had three in the last three weeks.

I am at a loss.  I honestly don't know what more I can do to meet all these demands especially during storm and heat season.  We are all really fucking busy.  It's not like I've been slacking off, in fact I've been working harder than ever! But people can only do so much, and it looks like my hull is being breached. 

Why?  Why?  Whyeeeeeeeee? This is the last fucking thing I need, people.  I can't take all  the drama right now.  I need a refuge.  Dammit.

Oh, By The Way

Happy 4th of July, suckers.  I, of course, am working, as I always am on holidays while the rest of the world sits on it's collective buttocks whilst eating barbeque and drinking beer.  The phones don't stop, people.  Or, if they did, you'd be pissed.  Imagine yourself sitting your buttocks whilst sipping beer and eating barbeque and wanting to invite some other bums over to do the same.  But you can't, because the phones have stopped.  You'd be pissed.  I make phone calls happen.  I am customer service.  Appreciate!

Love,

Me.

Stultified

I've been in training at an off site location this week, hence the lack of posts.  I have yet to discover why Gigantic Telephone Company feels the need to send me to a different place to learn things I already know.  Whatever.  It's boring.  The guy who's teaching the class just got back from vacation, so he's less than enthusiastic about teaching. 

The kicker is that the class is in the morning from 7:30 to 1:30 PM.  I haven't gotten up this early in years.  I had to take a nap in the afternoon for the last two days.  What am I, 4 years old?

I'll be back at work on Sunday, so I should be able to update more frequently. 

I Feel Like An Idiot

I just interviewed for a lateral position in my department at work... and fell flat on my face.  So embarrassing.

I don't know what I was thinking.  For the last six months (since I stopped working nights) I've been a work robot.  I haven't studied up on my technology, I haven't done much of anything except my actual job, but of course in an interview you don't want to say that.  Of course, that's exactly what I did say.

Ack. So embarrassed.  Part of the problem is that the new job is a mix of an old job that I had three years ago, and another position in the department, for which I have not been trained.  However, you'd think in the three years I've been here, I might have taken the initiative to, um, I dunno, look some of it up?  Become familiar with information related to but not actually part of my job? That went over real well.  When the interviewer asked about the XY protocol, I said that I knew the XY protocol existed, but I didn't know what it was for or what it did.  Classy.  Smart.

Three years ago when I interviewed for my current position, it went so well that the hiring manager said it was one of the best interviews they'd ever had.  I nailed that sucker.  This is the first interview I'd had since I started working here.  I didn't study, or brush up on my terminology or anything.  Because I am stupid.

I didn't use to be stupid, but then I had a kid and things just went downhill from there.  It's just as Catherine Newman described in her book, Waiting for Birdy, about how everyone tells you how your sex life will go out the window, or to say goodbye to sleep, but nobody says anything about how dumb you'll become (I'm paraphrasing here, but that was the general point).  The act of parenting is so taxing that it just takes over your whole life. 

Actually, this isn't the worst interview I have ever had... that honor would go to the interview where I thought that I was applying for a job as a mapping analyst with some programming, but turned out to be a programming job with some map analysis skills.  I am not a programmer.  I have some programming skills, but certainly not enough to qualify me as a full time programmer.  The interview went great up until they asked me to write them a program off the cuff in a language I'd never heard of.  I don't think I've ever had an interview end so awkwardly.  I came out with this blank piece of paper and told them I couldn't write the program.  Then we said goodbye.  Horrible.   What can I say... they said they wanted a map analyst, not a programmer.  Whatever.

This interview was still bad.  I think I did OK on the data applications part, but totally sucked on the integrated systems.  Of course, I've never been trained on the integrated systems, but that doesn't prevent me from finding the information on my own, does it? 

At the end of the interview, he pretty much told me that I wouldn't be considered for the first cut, because of my lack of experience with the integrated systems, but he was willing to consider me in the future if any positions opened up.   He even offered to show me the resources for the integrated systems so that I could study up.  He was very nice, but I still wished that the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

In a way, this experience was good for me.  If it's been three years since you've been to a job interview, it's easy to forget the things to do at a job interview.  Like find out what the interviewer is going to ask and find out the answers in advance so you don't look like an idiot.  God.

The worst part?  My current manager was in the room with us, and overheard my idiocy.  I'm sure she'll remember it when it comes time for our next raise. 

I am an idiot.

Guys

My department at work is mostly made up of guys.  The guy/girl ratio is about 7:1.  This has been the situation for me since I started my very techie career in 1999.   For the most part, I have either been the only woman in the department, or one of a few women, all of whom work with guys.  You get my drift?  I am awash in testosterone for forty hours a week.

Over the years, I have learned to tune out sexist comments, unless they are particurlarly egregious, in which case I have to issue a smackdown.  I have learned to ignore the burping/farting/disgusting behavior as much as I can.  I have learned to speak perfect Tech, so as to appropriately communicate with the guys. Sometimes, though, it just gets to be too much. 

For example, when I was a switch tech for Weblink Wireless, all of the guys on the day shift ate sunflower seeds.  Guys in general love sunflower seeds (who knows why), but of course when consuming sunflower seeds, one must dispose of the shells.  This usually includes lots of spitting and grunting, usually into disposable cups or empty soda cans.   But this other switch tech guy had a plastic cup into which he spit his seeds on a daily basis.  HE NEVER WASHED IT.  It was green and crusted with petrified spittle and shell remnants. EWWWWWWW.  This is guy behavior that grosses me out.

At my current job, my pet guy peeve is sports.  I know that many women are just as into sports as men, but I swear, every guy at work is really into basketball and football.   To the point where they refer to themselves and the team with the collective pronouns "we" and "us" and "our."  As in, "Because the Whatevers have traded Joe Shmoe for Jake Shake, we will probably win this year."  I'm sorry, who will win?  Are you on the team?  Do you even know how to play basketball? No.  No you don't. So please, stop referring to yourself as part of the team.  This is guy behavior that drives me crazy.

I have taken to amusing myself by pretending that I know nothing about sports.  This is mostly true, but I do know basic facts like rules of the game.  If I'm being forced to watch basketball, I will pester the nearest or loudest guy with questions like, "How many players are allowed on the court?" or "Is overtime in basketball sudden death?"  This annoys them, but they know that I am just fucking with them, and they laugh it off.   It does not have the effect I truly desire, which is for them to turn the game off.   I watch a lot of basketball, people.  The damn finals are like four months long.   I hate basketball.

Gotta love working with the guys.

The Schedule of Insanity

Usually when I realize that time is escaping me faster than I can account for it, I get upset and nostalgic. You know, the whole, my baby's growing up so fast thing, or I can't believe it's been six years since I graduated from college thing. But right, now I don't mind if the days fly by, because each day brings us ever closer to a beautiful thing: the undoing of the Schedule of Insanity.

The Schedule of Insanity was born at the same time the Moosh was. Or, to be more precise, it was born six weeks after the Moosh was, when I returned to work. The initial incarnation of the SoI involved me working nights five days a week, and R working from noon to 10 PM on Saturday and Sunday, and working nights from 8 PM to 6 AM on Wednesday and Thursday nights. So if I took off Wednesday and Thursday, we only needed a babysitter for about 3 hours a week on the weekends, when I had to leave for work before he got home. As you can see, this is an insane schedule. In addition, R and I only saw each other for about 9 hours a week, on Fridays. Lovely. Also, nobody got any sleep, except for the baby, and that was only because he didn't have anything to do, the lazy bastard. So yeah. The initial incarnation lasted for 18 months. 18 months of no sleep, marital strife, hunger, and crying (both for the parents and the baby).

Enter the business. And the quitting of R's regular job to become his own boss. And the switching of Lisa from the night shift to the evening shift. And the hiring of Lisa's sister to watch the Moosh from 2:30 to 9:30 five days a week. Joy. Joy, happiness, and sleep for everyone!

Unfortunately my sister has another job, which spawned the second iteration of the Schedule of Insanity. She works part-time doing after school supervision for a private school. She got permission to bring my son with her to after school for about 20 minutes, until my mom can come to pick him up. No problem, except that I have to drive the Moosh from my house to my parents' house three times a week, and then go on to work from there. Then my sister has to finish her work with the after school program, go and pick up the Moosh from my parents' house, and then drive him back to my house. This, as you can clearly see, is insane. It's complicated and crappy and cuts a whole lot of time out of everyone's day (particularly mine).

Fortunately for everyone, the after school job goes away in six weeks. In six weeks I won't have to drive anywhere. My (totally super awesome) babysitter will come to my house, and I will go to work from my house. Hallelujah!

So let the time fly by! Fly by I say. Even if it means that the Moosh turns two that much sooner (ACK!). Let the Schedule of Insanity go the way of the dinosaur. Extinction is a beautiful thing.