I know people don't necessarily want to read about what a crappy week it has been. I think it would be very therapeutic for me to vent though so, I am going to write about it anyway. With the disclaimer that this entry is purely a rant of frustration you can read, or not read, as you feel fit.
Things have been stressful in general because of all of the holiday stuff that has been going on. We have even tried to tone it down some this year. Still there are presents to be wrapped, etc, etc.
I think the frustration started last week when the left headlight went out in my car. Lyle, Keegan, and I ran to Target to get a replacement and promptly replaced it. The next day it was out again. For the last week and a half I have been trying to remember to replace it..again. Last week I was also trying to finish up a cute yearly calender with pictures of Keegan in it. It was supposed to be a surprise Christmas present but since they were sitting out when Lyle got home on Monday I ended up just giving them to my parents and Lyle.
Of course Keegan was sick this whole weekend which resulted in near to zero sleep for Lyle and me. Keegan is doing better now but is very persistent about eating at 3am in the morning. This is especially irritating because it is only 1.5 hours before we normally get up. He goes right back to sleep after eating a bottle but Lyle and I can't get back to sleep before it's time to get up again. As if the normal mad dash of trying to get Keegan dropped off, get to work, get home, get errands run, and get Keegan to bed wasn't bad enough it had to snow.
I normally love the snow. I still try to tell myself that I love the snow. On Tuesday when it snowed I had gotten into work late because of dropping Keegan off. I left an hour early to avoid a two hour commute home. Instead of having my normal 35 minute drive home (I left at 2:30pm) I had a 1.5 hour drive home. It sucked. But not as bad as it sucked for Lyle. He left at 3pm and didn't get home until almost 6pm. There went the whole night. By the time Lyle got home I was getting ready to give Keegan his bottle and put him to bed.
Then the next morning (Wed. morning) was no better. It took me an hour to get into work (I left at 6am) and it took Lyle over 2 hours to get into work. When I backed out of the driveway this morning and saw it was, once again, snowing. I had a few things to say about that; I am grateful that Keegan isn't picking up any of the words I say...yet.
To make matters worse last Friday I woke up with a horrible pain in my neck. You know how that happens sometimes. Well it hasn't gone away. It has just gotten worse to the point where it hurts up the back of my head and down my arm. It hurts to pick up Keegan and it hurts to drive. Since I am on a rant about bodily pain; let's next address my knees. I have always had bad knees. During marching band my left knee swelled up to 5x its normal size. I was on crutches for 6 weeks and on painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs. So we have started playing DDR a lot. Last night while I was crawling around after Keegan my left knee made a crunch sound and then started swelling. I spend a good portion of last night with ice tied to my knee. Not sure what made my knee give, it could have been the DDR or it could have been all the crawling around on wood floors. I am not sure. It really makes me wonder what my knees will be like when I am 50.
So since the weather, the sick baby, and my body are not enough to throw me in complete chaos; the powers that be have decided that work should uber suck this week too. The only good thing that has happened at work is that I do not have to go out to the plant this month. The bad thing is that they have split our coating run at the plant into 3 parts. 12 hours of our stuff, 12 hours of salable product, 12 hour of our stuff, 12 hour of salable product, 24 hours of our stuff. Now changing the coater back and forth from an experimental set up to the set up for product we actually sell is always a huge endeavor. With this schedule we are not going to get any coating done and the experimentation is going to be so fractured that it's useless.
There are tons of arguments about what should be run and how useful it is to run it. We are already over budget, yet upper management is determined to spend another half million on this fractured experimentation. Now you ask should I be blogging about this; well, trust me they already know what I think about it.
To make matters worse I am the only woman engineer on the team and I have asked to not travel this month since it is hard for Lyle to drop off and pick up Keegan from daycare with his long drive to work. I have traveled a lot lately, I have a 10 month child, and I am the female of the household. I have been getting a lot of accusatory glances and comments of "well, I guess you're lucky you have an excuse to not go." or "well, you won't be there to observe it will you? So why do you care?" I feel guilty about not going out there; but on the other hand I think I am entitled to a little break given all the extra hours and extra travel I have done recently and in previous years.
One of the other female engineers and me were discussing how unfair this is especially during Christmas. I make sure that we get all of the presents, I make sure they are wrapped, and I make sure all the Christmas cards get sent out. I make sure we make cookies and I make sure the Christmas decorations get set up. This is not to say that Lyle doesn't help a ton with all of this stuff, but he does not drive it. I think if I weren't there, none of it would be done. After talking to my male counterparts it seems that this is the case with most of them also. They talk about their wives getting this and that done for Christmas. So, they aren't that concerned about being out at the plant the week before Christmas. Well, unfortunately, not only do I have a small child, I *am* responsible for making sure all the Christmas stuff gets done.
The topper on everything last evening was yet another attempt to help Keegan celebrate something fun for Christmas. I saw a police car coming down the road and asked Lyle if he knew what that was about. He mentioned that it was probably Santa coming around on the firetruck like he does every year. I, was like, well we have to get Keegan out there to see it. I whipped on a coat and slid my shoes halfway on. We threw on Keegan's snowsuit. It really only took a couple minutes. I picked up Keegan and went limping down the driveway with him; my knee an shoulder killing me. We got to the bottom of the drivway just as Santa was getting there. I got Keegan to wave at Santa and...Santa didn't even look at us. We were the only people out there and somehow he didn't see us :-( Keegan liked the lights though, so we stayed and waved at the police car that was trailing Santa. No response there either. Feeling somewhat defeated, yet proud that Keegan had made an effort to wave, I limped back to the house. I heard somebody call "Hey, miss". I turned around to find one that one of the firemen had seen us and run all the way from the firetruck to give me and Keegan a candy cane and wish us Merry Christmas. It made me feel much better :-) That is until I got to the front door and it wouldn't open. Lyle pounded from the inside, while I tried to wrench it open from the front...still no luck. I had to go in through the garage. The door is still broken; we need a new handle.
Oh yeah, one last thing...our computer died last night too...we think the motherboard gave out. I can here money draining out of the bank account from here...
I guess I am running out of steam and I do need to get some other work done. I am just at the end of my rope with work right now and have negative desire to be here. I have to sit through a 3 hour design review this afternoon and I am hoping, with Keegan's new penchant for 3am feedings, that I can stay awake through it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment