The Week From Hell

This past week was one of the worst I have had this year. I survived, but I'm exhausted. I am hoping that it was just a small blip in my life, forgotten in a few weeks. Here's a lovely bullet list recapping the highlights of my week.

* Monday: 2000 word paper is due. I have the day off of work after the manager meeting. I see I have 10 hours to complete the paper and get it turned in. Most of my research is done and I even have about 500 words complete; I've been working on it since Thursday. Baby G has other ideas; ideas like "let's not take a nap today," "let's run around a scream at the top of our lungs; just for fun," "let's get into to everything that Mommy didn't notice I could get into." 10 hours later Baby G is in bed and I'm am wiped out. The paper is only at about 600 words is due now and I see no way of getting it done, even late, because I will have no more free time until Thursday for homework. I'm frustrated and tired and I cry.

* Tuesday: I try to get some more of my paper done. Another sleepless night and no progress on my paper.

* Wednesday: I'm tired, have only had 6 hours of sleep since Sunday. My day at work is going okay until during the last hour I get the customer from hell. She brought in food from another restaurant (just so you know - don't bring food from a restaurant to eat in a bookstore's cafe Health codes apply there just like anywhere else.) She was told she couldn't have it in our store. She leaves her sodas from the other restaurant next to the trash can opening on the condiment bar. She leaves the store. She comes back to the store and now wants a discount on our products because someone threw away her sodas. Geez I wonder why they did that?! I try to tell her as nicely as possible that "no" she can't have a discount for bringing in food from another place and leaving by the trash and leaving. "My employee was doing their job and keeping the cafe clean." She's pissed I said no and calls the company's customer service hotline on me and the employee who threw away her sodas. I am so angry at people like her who act entitled and I am tired. I can't let it go and ruminate over it for two days.

* Thursday: Thursday is my one good day. I still haven't finished my paper, but at this point I'm thinking "screw it." I take the day for myself. Have fun with Baby G and get some cleaning done. I also manage to make a necklace.

* Friday: Everything seems to be going okay until late that night when I get a call from Aaron. Aaron is working on a major project that has a good possibility of generating income in the future. He's on the last page; almost finished, when the computer dies. Dead. The computer is dead. Luckily we have two hard drives, the one the computer boots from does not have his project on it. Currently he's trying to extract his project from the other hard drive. After I got home that night, I did a little homework (on my laptop which is not dead, thank you) and decided it was time to go to bed. This is around 12:30 in the morning. Baby G decided that he didn't want to be asleep any longer. SO, no bed for me just yet, or even until 4 in the morning; I have to be at work at 9 am. I have to get up by 6 am in order to get everyone out the door on time. I got a whole two hours of sleep.

Because I was sleep deprived I spent the entire week stressing over my paper and that stupid customer. I couldn't let it go. Which just made the small things seem that much more horrible. Looking at it from this perspective, it doesn't seem so bad. Sleep will be had at some point, and hopefully Aaron will be able to extract his project off of the hard drive. Also hopefully, I won't have to deal with another uber-entitled customer until next December when they seem to ooze out from under their rocks.

Irritation

Things that are irritating me right now:

1. The headers for my blogs won't stay up. I have to keep going into my layout and resaving them to get them to show up. I do not have time to do this every day Blogger people!..how can I get my headers to show up and stay up?!

2. I took a day off of work yesterday specifically because Baby G would be at the babysitters; so I could get some things done, like cleaning and baby proofing. I got absolutely nothing done yesterday, other than dishes and getting some foam on sharp corners. Why? Because we have too much crap in this house and there is absolutely no place to put any of it. I kept trying to go through things and would be like "okay I have no where to put this, um...no where to put this. Ya, no where to put this either." I can only go through and throw out stuff so many times. I've exhausted my stash of stuff...everything I now own, I need.

That's it, just needed to vent somewhere....Thank you very much!

OH MY GOD!

I am such a dumbass! I thought I was making changes to another blog, but didn't realize I was in the HTML editor for this blog. I just lost EVERYTHING! I've got this template until I can fix this and get my old blog back...ugh.

Update 8:33am: Found the old template. Now I just have to put everything back the way it was. Hopefully I can find, or remember, some of the code.

Update 9:10am: Slowly, but surely it's coming back together. I think I may have lost a few things for good though. I can find my back up of some things, so I will be trying to remember where I got stuff from and then seeing if I can find it again. Something doesn't seem right though. My blog doesn't feel as clean as it was. I don't know...maybe I'm just going crazy now or something...ugh.

Update 9:21am: I think I am done for now. I've got tons of other things to do today and my blog is back for the most part. I'll continue to work on it randomly until it's back the way I want it. Right now I want to get back to working on the other blog that I started to work on this morning. Thankfully I've had all this time in peace in quiet because Baby G has been napping.

Nancy Kay Creations

I wasn't sure when to post this. I'm hoping that I don't jinx myself by posting this now. You all know how often I come in here apologizing for not posting for soooooo long. How will I ever keep up? I just decided, "what the heck!" I've created a new blog that showcases my creative endeavors. I make jewelry, knit, take pictures, paint, and many other things, but I'm not an expert in anything and sometimes feel that what I create just isn't good enough. I need to get over that big time!. But regardless of my expertise, or non expertise, I love to create. So here it is Nancy Kay Creations. I hope that this will be a way for me to put myself out there, to take a leap outside my comfort zone a little and share a part of myself that I get really self-conscience about. Maybe it will lead to my sharing more here. Who knows? I hope that you will enjoy it.

What Little Free Time I Have is About to Get Smaller

One month ago I was supposed to start back to school. I tried getting a hold of my academic counselor a few times, but never heard back. I gave up and decided to just enjoy what little free time I had. Well, I finally talked to her yesterday. Starting next Tuesday, I will be back in school. How I'll find the time to get in here I don't yet know. I may have to give up on my Friday Project, or just make it a once a month thing. What I may have to do is schedule in time on my calendar. It was hard enough working full-time and going to school full-time, now throw a baby into the mix and I'm just a little scared.

Back to the Coal Mines

So, tomorrow is the Big Day; I go back to work. I've been off work and on Maternity Leave for four months. I know how gosh darn lucky I am to have had that time, but I don't want it to be over. It's a lot more fun to stay home, blog, and be with my baby than to have to deal with customers for 8 hours a day. I'm trying to think of the good stuff. It will be nice to be in the book world again, and I love working on projects, I just HATE customers and customer service. I really wish I had never taken the promotion because I loved working in Receiving. I got to work with the books and not have to deal with customers and I had a regular schedule, but I needed the money the promotion offered me. Oh well. I just have to deal. So, if I have time tomorrow night I'll let you know how it went.

My Head is About to Explode!

I wish I had audio to go along with this picture. The screaming....Oh, Lord, the screaming! Screaming when he's happy, screaming when he's frustrated, screaming when he's bored, screaming because he doesn't want to take a nap, screaming because he exists. Just 4 more hours and relief will be here. Hopefully my head will still be intact.

The Anger Emitting From Me Right Now Could Blow Up the Whole West Coast

We had our son at the hospital back on December 17th 2006. One nice thing the hospital does for you is apply for a social security card for your child. This way you don't have to go through gathering identifying documents and have to take them down to the SS office to apply for a card. In 8 to 10 weeks your card should arrive in the mail. What I thought might happen has happened, because our mail service (Thanks USPS for hiring slackers and thieves (I'm sure they are not all bad, just the ones who deliver to my apartment complex) sucks. Our important papers that we have mailed to us (that require your home address and won't mail to a P.O. Box) almost never show up and we have to go through months of getting replacements, sometimes more than once. It's been 11 weeks and no SS card for my son has shown up. So I called the number provided by the hospital in case this should happen; The Social Security office. What do I have to do? I have no frickin clue! Do I apply for a new card because we don't even have a number yet, or do we apply for a replacement? Either way we have to go through what we would have had to go through without the hospitals help, only waaaaaay later. Taxes are due soon. We had to send Aaron's in already when we wanted to claim Baby G on his, because of my financial issues we won't see any of the money I can get claiming him on mine. I might have to forgo claiming him at all at this rate. Thanks USPS, Hospital and Social Security Administration for adding that extra stress that I REALLY needed right now!!!!
Thank you internet for letting me vent!

They've Taken Over

Help! Click on this picture and view it in it's original size to see the little creature in the right corner of the sliding glass door.


They've taken over my balcony, and I can't get outside. Nor can I find where they are coming from. Anyone have any good tips on deterring paper wasps?

Headers

So I've been toying with the idea of putting up a new header each month.
I decided to start this month with a header that is dedicated to my daughter, who turns 18 in just a week. OMG, 18! Am I really old enough to have an 18 year old child?!
Next time I'll be sure to size the header correctly, *slaps forehead*.

Toxic Bottles

I was reading this article at Strollerderby this morning about the recent study that found that some of the popular brands of baby bottles contain, and leak out, a substance called Bisphenol A. From the article:

Bisphenol A has been linked by scientists to cancers, impaired immune function, early onset of puberty, obesity (WTF? Does everything cause that?), diabetes and hyperactivity. (Karen)

There is more information on this at Environment California (there is a PDF at the top of the page that includes information about the chemical and recommendations for parents and policymakers.)

Some agencies claim that Bisphenol A is safe at low levels. BfR Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, located in Germany, says that under normal domestic use the levels of Bisphenol A are safe.

I don't know who to believe, but I went ahead and searched for glass baby bottles this morning. The only place I could find them was at Amazon; Evenflo Glass Bottles. Don't be fooled by the low price though, the shipping was more than the bottles.

What I've learned from all the reading I've done this morning is that if you are using any of the bottles that contain Bisphenol A (Avent, Dr. Brown, Evenflo, Gerber, and Playtex) don't use hot water or harsh detergents to wash them as it increases leakage of the chemical. Of course,that is exactly what I've been doing. I always soak the bottles and parts (we use Dr. Brown's) in hot, soapy water before washing them. Ugh!

A Little Help With That Money Issue

Last year when I found out I was pregnant I was in a state of extreme burn-out. I had been working full-time and enrolled in school full-time for 3 years straight. I was enrolled in a private University online. The school structure is set up differently than a regular University; each class is 5 weeks long and they are back to back - no breaks. Anyway, when I saw my doctor she recommended taking a break from school for awhile. My intent was to take a month off, but due to some miscommunication with my financial adviser I got dropped from my class and then dropped from school. I didn't want to deal with the stress of trying to fix it and figured I would be better off with a longer break. Later on I got an email asking when I would like to return. I sent a response stating that 3/6/2007 would be good. Then I forgot about it. Well, I just received my reminder that now would be a good time to apply for financial aid for the school year. Ah, yes! It's going to be hellishly hard to juggle working full-time with the baby and school, but I've been through worse, and if I am enrolled I don't have to be making those horrendous monthly loan payments. I'm going to be paying on my student loans till I'm 60 anyway, I may as well get a degree out of it and a chance at a higher income.

Surving on $12,000 a year

I've been seeing references to this article all over the internet for the past week. I've read the article, and there are some pretty good tips on how to get by being really poor. Getting by on $12,000 though? In some parts of the states it may not be too difficult. Where I live? Our rent for the year costs about $13,300. And that? Is less than some of the other apartment complexes nearby. Our lease is up in a couple months though, so that figure will be rising. We don't live in a nice area, or even a really safe area, and we pay that much for a dinky one bedroom. A mortgage wouldn't cost any less considering the median price for a house around here is $600,000. I've had a lot of money issues on my mind lately what with trying to figure out where to come up with the money for daycare (does Aaron stop paying his credit card bills? or do I stop paying on my student loan?). None of the options are good options. Would it be really cheesy of me to start a blog just to raise funds to help pay the bills? Would I be able to sell any of my crafts online for a few extra dollars a month? Selling my crafts is an option. I love making things But would they sell? Would it be worth my time? My head is spinning with what ifs.

hmmmm....

While I love my new layout and background, the functionality of my blog is kinda sucky. I may need to trash it and start over with one of the Blogger layouts. I hate, hate, hate the Blogger templates! I really should just get a new domain just for my blog, but I don't know if I can afford the added expense right now.

In other news...I haven't been feeling real great the past few days. We've been going through hell with Baby G. He's on the Zantac now, and starting to sleep better; hopefully his new sleeping patterns are a trend towards him sleeping LONGER than one hour at a time. Thanks to the medication (I think) we have been able to start him on a schedule.
On Tuesday I was up for 24 HOURS! I had been up for about 18 to 20 hours the day before and then I had about 3 or 4 hours of sleep just before the 24 hour thing and had only gotten about a 30 minute nap 3 hours into the 24 hour thing. (Does any of that makes sense?) By the end of the day Tuesday I was a wreck. I had had almost no sleep for 24 hours and for at least 12 of those hours I had to deal with a screaming baby. By the time Aaron got home from work I was a mess, my eyes were red from crying and I could barely speak. After that I got 5 hours of sleep and had to go back to baby care so Aaron could get some sleep before work. When I got up yesterday morning I started crying again, I was just so darn tired! I can totally understand why sleep deprivation is used as a means of controlling someone's mind. UGH! Luckily Baby G was an angel yesterday. He stuck to his new schedule and when he was awake he giggled and smiled and had fun. *Sigh*. Hopefully today goes just as well, because I am totally stressing over financial issues and the disorganized mess my home has become; I thought it was bad before I had a baby.
Smoking? Exercise? Hahahaha. Um, yea. I may need to see the doctor about getting back on Welbutrin.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

I'm almost afraid to say anything, or even believe what I just saw. Maybe the Gods (Goddesses, and whoever else is up there) will take it all back and say, "Oops! Sorry, we were just kidding!" I just took a look at my EOB's at my insurance carriers website, and all I can says is Thank you!!! and cry with relief!
We were not financially in a good place when I found out I was pregnant. We have to have both our incomes just to make it paycheck to paycheck. Baby G was unexpected. I didn't even think I could get pregnant after 17 years, a miscarriage, and medical problems. So, Baby G was a wonderful, precious gift, but financially our lives suck and bringing a baby into it, not a good idea. I have been so stressed out about finances for the past few weeks. We still aren't any better off, even after this good news, but it makes it a hell of a lot better.
Now, if we can just figure out how to afford daycare, when I just recently had to also start paying off my school loans (ouch!). Daycare really should be more affordable, not everyone has the option of having one parent staying home. For us it isn't about extra luxuries. We need one of our paychecks to just pay the rent, the other pays the rest of the bills. Where do you bleed out extra money for daycare that can cost around $1500 to $2000 a month; that's conservative in our area, and especially when you have no blood left to bleed?
Anyway, this news just made my day...I'm gonna go cry some more; darn hormones!

About that not driving thing...

So, things at work are not great. I don't want to join the group of people who have been fired for blogging about work so I can't say much; I'll leave it at work sucks right now, and I don't see it getting any better anytime soon. What is keeping me from moving on to bigger and better things? I don't drive. This weekend I got a big push in the direction of I have to start driving or my life will suck forever! So, I have an appointment today to get my permit (yet again). Hopefully this time I can get through my fear and just do it.

I Need To Post!!!

For weeks now, everytime I sit down at the computer I think to myself "I need to post to my blog", and every single time I also think to myself "there is nothing worth posting about". I have been in a terrible funk and just can't seem to climb out of it. I've had some really great things happen this year, I should be happy, but I'm not; I'm miserable right now. More than anything I just want to take some time away from everything to just be by myself. I could just be feeling the stress of school. I only have one more year and then I am done, but I've done it for two years straight now, no breaks, and I am burned out.

What's a mental breakdown like?

Well, let me tell you...

The past couple weeks have been rough. I got that promotion, which is great, but I took a major step outside my comfort zone, being that I suffer from horrible panic attacks and social anxiety. Now I am out of my cave and working with...gasp...the general public. It has been a trying time learning new skills and testing my strength. My daughter is still here. I love her to pieces, but she is definitely a teenager and has tested me to the point of exasperation. Now, as we have finally found our peace with eachother, she will be leaving in two weeks. Add to this SCHOOL, and the daily grind and seeing family you miss with every fiber in your being and you have a recipe for total meltdown, or two days where you start crying for no reason and can't stop, while having to work and yadayada. After 9 months smoke free I started smoking again, and I am totally back to where I left off...half a pack a day. The last couple days have been pretty good, since I started smoking! UGH! Well, I have to get ready for work now. I don't know when I will get a free moment to post again, so I'll be back when I can.

I'm still alive

I have had absolutely no personal time this month, hence no blog posts, until right now. I've been spending lots of time with my daughter, going through my new job hell at work, and I am exhausted! School starts up again for me the week after next. I'm feeling really tired and rather depressed right now, I just want to sleep all the time.

AAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Where did my vacation go?! I actually need one now. Actually we had a lot of fun showing my daughter the Bay Area. It has been crazy busy though. We have been out doing something almost everyday and the day we didn't go out I was sick, and still am. I have not had sleep in three nights due to coughing, and nothing is helping it. Now it's back to the regular schedule of work. My class ended on Monday and I am taking a month off so I don't have to be busy the whole time my daughter is here. It will be nice to have the free time before and after work. I have to get ready to go to work now. I'll try to post some pics soon; I know I keep saying that, I just haven't had time to go through them yet.