Heartburn and the White Knuckle Roller Coaster
Mood:
rushed
Topic: Tired
I am so utterly tired I don't even know where to start.
My arthritus is acting up with its typical fall weather flare. My right index finger and right knee have been hurting on and off most of the day.
I had pizza for dinner and I think it has given me heartburn, because I haven't felt right since I've eaten it.
My back definately needs to be aligned and Matt's probably going to have a doozie of a time cracking it tonight. Ahhhhh - just had Matt crack my back and I feel worlds better.
I am really looking forward to having some time off. Matt is picking up the kids on Thursday night after the parent teacher conference and I will have a four day weekend home with them. Then I go back to work for two days, and have six days off in a row for Shurree's visit and my birthday.
It has been utterly hectic at work between the A-133 Single Audit and the preparation of the Statistical Section of the Adopted Budget Book - not to mention the rest of my duties. I don't know how I am going to finish everything and suspect that I am going to do a lot of work at home and not tell anyone. I'll put together some of the items I need to get out to my budget managers and send those off via email as well as work on other things. It's a shame I can't work from home on the financial system or I might just get more done in the peace and quite of my home rather than the constant interruptions of the office.
I got paid two Fridays ago, so this Friday is payday. On my last paycheck I had 30 days of vacation time and 38 days of sick time accrued. Can you believe that? I have 68 days off - in the bank, so to speak. Well, I am cashing in six days this month - big whoopie right? Even if I take six days off this month and the proposed time off at Christmas (all of two maybe three days) I'll still be earning vacation time as well!
I had originally started saving up time for possible maternity leave. I don't know when or if I will ever need that. With my days off, I would have 13 weeks off with full pay. Yes - THIRTEEN WEEKS OFF. Now, I also work for a school district which means that all the typical school holidays I have off as well. If I were to have the child anywhere in the fall or winter, just image the extra days off like Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Break, Christmas and New Years, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That about nine more days off. That's nearly a full 15 weeks off with pay - over three months. Would I go crazy at home with a baby all that time - who knows? Perhaps I would ease back into it and start back two, then three, then four days a week until I am back at full time so the baby could adjust. But why am I even speculating about this? I haven't a clue. I'm not pregnant and couldn't imagine being pregnant right now with all the stress at work. Besides which I'd like to be less than half the weight I am right now, and until we get the roof fixed and I know how much that is going to cost I can't spend the savings I have set aside yet. Oh I have a tredmill all picked out and I can't wait to start walking on it. When I did that kind of thing the last six months I was at the Tribal office, I started loosing a fair amount of weight. I moved to Kansas and put all that back on and more.
So - tredmill is first, then loosing weight, and THEN we'll see about a baby.
Geez, I turn thirty-five (35) in less than two weeks. Matt's starting to feel old and here I am rambling about a baby! Are we too old to be thinking about this? Are we nuts? Is it financially sound?
Most people I know say that you are never financially ready to have a child. Cheryl at work says just do it - I'll regret it if I don't - have a baby that is. Matt's made mention of hiring someone to carry the baby so I don't have to slow down at work or worry about the stress on my body to have a child. My response to that is - if I can't bother being pregnant what right do I have to be a mother? Sorry - too busy to carry the baby inside me for nine months - just can't do it - I'll outsource it to some young college chick who needs the tuition money. No. I don't think so. So much of the baby's health stems from what was given to it in the womb, and what is a mother child bonding without the womb experience? I don't know, so I can't judge that, but my mother is closer to me than my adopted brother by far.
Oh geez - why am I thinking about this - it always depresses me. After the miscarriage just talking about kids makes me feel like I want to throw up. I feel so utterly responsible for it - and I can't help but blame my work environment - the stress and workload a the time was unreal.
I told a group of people today when someone asked how I was doing, that I felt like I was on a roller coaster, experiencing the highs and lows, the excitement and the fear, and that at this moment - I am white knuckling it for all it's worth. They laughed thinking I was witty and humorous. I was dead serious. I can't keep this up much longer.
Vacation, vacation, where fore art thou vacation?
I feel utterly over-worked as do other co-workers in my department. I can't continue to toss and turn over this and not sleep. Once the Adopted Budget Book and Audit are done...I get to start salary spreads - wee - a wonderful monthly joy about as fun as your period and the cramps that go with it from what I have heard from my co-worker who has done them previously. Yes, I have inherited them from someone else who couldn't handle working full time anymore and dumped them and went back to part-time. The part-time person that was hired to take on her left over duties - HASN'T - and I was given her salary spreads. I am not pleased, but I have to do them no matter if I like them or not. It's a job - it's called that because you work. It's not called 'fun time for Ali'. They pay me - I am a tool and nothing more. Get the work accomplished and here is your paycheck - yeah - that's it. That's why I go there every day. Complaining about it won't make it better.
Tuesday's staff meeting made me want to cry. We are being overwhelmed with stuff that needs to be collected for the budget book. We haven't even finished the 2007-08 book and we are already starting on 2008-09. Two months ago I was finally feeling like I had my work in hand, like I had everything under control. Work was nice and I liked my job. Now - I am hating it and I loathe going every day. Wellllll - it's not that bad - that's hyperbole. I do not appreciate being asked to do what I feel is other people's work AND I feel that the new girl who was hired to take over some of my responsibilities isn't - just plain isn't. She was instructed to get with me on the Stat section. I have brought it up twice, but she hasn't come to collect it. So F*#^ it, I am still working on it, because, I will probably get it done before she comes to collect it. Whatever! I didn't ask to have it assigned to her. I was told that she was going to have it assigned to her. It still hasn't happened, and that doesn't extend its due date, does it? It's still due. Anyway - I get dragged into more worthless meetings where I have to repeat myself over and over - ARG!
I swear to god, today's meeting on the GL interface from PeopleSoft touched on the same topics we have been talking about for three years now. You know what the result of this lovely blackhole of meeting was? Nothing. The consultants said that we really couldn't change our processes because of the customizations done to PeopleSoft. Yep. Two and a half hours they bugged me last Wednesday, and then, for another two hours this morning. For what? NOTHING. NOTHING - abso-fucking-lutely nothing got accomplished. AND when I did bring up the things that really need to be addressed - they said that the topic I was touching upon was really something that should be discussed with a different group of people than was present - get this - AT ANOTHER MEETING! Why dear God Almighty why? Please Lord, give me the strength and the patience to carry on in the face of these indignities of which I am forced to suffer. Then I had to endure another meeting this afternoon for an hour and a half at which the meeting from the morning was brought up. OY!
I am tried. I am stressed out. I want to cry to the heavens for release from the pressures that are about me, but I don't think it will help.
I don't want someone to suggest that I need Prozac or some other messed up 'happy pill'. I shouldn't have to medicate myself and retreat into false horomones to get through my GD workday. I am expected to do more and more work in less amount of time (since I now have meetings I must attend weekly) and I feel as if I ask for my workload to be reduced I am somehow 1) letting my boss down, 2) complaining when everyone else is overworked as well, and 3) stirring a boiling pot on the verge of exploding because my upper boss doesn't think we in the budgeting department work hard at all.
LOOK at my time off. I have WEEKS - SIX WEEKS of vacation coming to me. What does that tell you? It means I haven't been able to take time away from my job. Why? Because nobody is willing to really take the time and learn what I do so that my job can be done in my absense. Why do I think this is important? Because - someone needs to learn how to do my job so I can take an extended vacation and really REALLY rest. I don't want to go away a few days and come back to a desk piled up, an email box full, and all my work that wasn't done while I was gone waiting for me. I don't want that. I loose all of the relaxation I gained by being off coming back to a cluster fuck like that. It happens every time I go away. I come back to some mess that they just shove into some account and write me a note that I'll just have to journal entry it to the right place when I get back. What the fuck is up with that? That's so not right. All my work didn't get done and now I have more on top of it.
Every fall when the audit and budget book are due, I start thinking about leaving and getting another job. I seriously look and then I resolve myself to stick it out for the sake of the benefits. I couldn't get benefits like I have at the school district anywhere else. I'd also have to start at the bottome of the ladder and do I really want to do that. Not that I am ever going to get anywhere in the school district with the present climate and administration. Not unless I became a size 7, cut my hair, began wearing make-up, and being a self-obsessed uber-snob only concerned about what people think of my outside shell. Okay - that was venting. I am tired of being judged by the clothing I wear - OR SHOES - or my lack of make-up or my long hair. I don't want to be a conformist. I like who I am, but apparently that doesn't matter. I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does. It's so petty that these women sit in meetings and actually talk about my shoes. Well, thank you wealthy women who make more than twice what I do - I can't afford forty different pairs of leather shoes in every damn color and heel height. My feet are large, with stubby toes and I have a swelling issue with my ankles. I can't wear the shoes that they wear and I don't want to. I've been there and done that. Why should a person who sits behind a desk all day be concerned about their footwear? Oh, yes world. The upper management has made comments about my clothing and my footwear. I spend about $1000 a year on clothing. That's what my budget can bear. I get the biggest bang for my buck. I don't buy $125 dollar suits that require dry cleaning. I am cotton, machine wash and dry woman.
Okay - now I am just out and out bitching about the inequities I find at work every day.
I feel that because Ronda was friendly to me, that she has to come down twice as hard on me to make it look like she isn't playing favorites. Two other co-workers were nearing debit on their vacation and sick time, and instead of bitching them out or pointing it out directly to them or whatever - I was dragged into it. YES! "Alison you need to watch your sick and vacation time." Excuse me? Didn't I say earlier in this blog that I have 13 WEEKS - 68 days of time off unused?!
I am just so tired of all the load that is being placed upon me. I really feel like it is over and above everyone else's loads that they carry. I am weary. I feel used unfairly, and I feel there is no place to go to register a complaint about it since it is my bosses who are asking this of me.