It’s bad enough that one of my professors is making our online exam due the first day of classes after spring break. But it’s 10:50 on the night she said she’d have it posted, and there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to be able to take it now, when I should be in bed getting a decent night’s sleep.

I don’t want to have to think about school next week. I’m trying to get all assignments completed before this Friday. Because I have things I want to do this weekend. Things that don’t involve homework.

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Hmmm… according to my computer, I’ve used this title before. It had to be last year, if that’s the case because we haven’t had any snow days this year… until today! And thanks to Mother Nature, I can post something.

Please forgive my lack of an update. It’s been a grueling week. It turns out that my dad wasn’t discharged from the hospital on Tuesday. In fact, he is still there. I had some very scary moments yesterday. I’d called him in the morning to let him know I was going to come up to the hospital later. He sounded like he was having a lot of difficulty breathing. It scared me. I’ve never heard him so bad. To make matters worse, he had about 30 seconds to tell me that he was being taken to a different facility across town for a PET scan. He needed to hang up with me so he could call my stepmom to let her know not to come up.

The PET scan made me nervous. No one had mentioned it before, so I wondered what had changed. I waited about 10 minutes and then I called my stepmom. No answer. I called my stepsister. No answer. I left messages with both and my stepsister called me back a short time later. She didn’t know anything either, but told me she’d see what she could find out and call me back.

At 4:30, hearing nothing from anyone, I finally called my dad again. I was relieved to hear that he sounded much more like himself. Kat and I went up to see him that evening and we were actually there when his doctor (who is also MY doctor) made his rounds. He told my dad that pending the results of the scan, he could go home on Wednesday. (Due to the weather forecast, they weren’t going to release him today.)

Dad called me a few hours ago and told me that the scan was negative. So, tomorrow he goes home! That’s even better than a snow day, in my book.

Spring break is next week. Today is the 26th of February. You know what that means? NaBloPoMo Monthly starts in just a few days. Get ready for all those lists that I compile in my head on a daily basis. It’ll be scintillating.*

Until then, today’s snow day means I have twice as much work to do tomorrow, so quite possibly I will spontaneously combust (that’s a test to see if a certain person is still reading - and she knows who she is) and be unable to post anything until March 1st. But we’ll see.

ETA: I have a working washer again and much to the relief of my colleagues, I have clean clothes to wear to work.

*Probably not so much, but scintillating is such an awesome word, don’t you think?

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Yes, I work at a state institution but because we get Christmas Eve and the day after Thanksgiving off of work, we don’t get Columbus Day or President’s Day off of work. So, I headed off to the second week of my new job early yesterday morning.

It actually didn’t occur to me that yesterday was a holiday until someone mentioned it. That would explain why traffic was so light on the way to work, even though I didn’t get out of the house until 7:30, when I prefer to leave no later than 7:15. It would also explain why I only had 17 requests to deal with yesterday morning, instead of the normal Monday morning amount. It ended up being the only smooth part of the day.

I finished all of the daily processing before noon and asked for permission to take half a personal day. I had my reasons. Sunday night, I’d thrown a load of laundry into the washer, intending on tossing it into the dryer when I came home from work yesterday evening. But at 2:30 Monday morning, my sinuses were congested thanks to me forgetting to take my allergy meds before bed, and when I went into the kitchen to get some water, I heard the washer running.

“Odd,” I thought, and wondered briefly if JM had stayed up and thrown a load in after mine. But he was out cold on the couch, so I couldn’t ask. I went downstairs to the basement and found everything as I’d left it; a load in the dryer that I’d washed earlier and the empty basket on top. If JM had washed another load, he’d done a good job of hiding the one I’d been drying. So, I opened the washer and discovered my 11:30 load still merrily agitating. The timer indicated it hadn’t even gone into the first spin cycle yet.
Not good.

I stopped the timer and went back to bed, trying to figure out in my still congested stupor how in the hell I was going to manage to deal with it, between a trip to the grocery store, my homework assignment due last night and the homework I want to knock out of the way before next weekend.

“Screw it,” I thought, “I’m too tired to think about it.”

So, the morning’s light workload wasn’t a disappointment at all. I was given permission for my half day of personal time, and I headed home just in time to say goodbye to The Boyfriend as he headed off to the gym and then work. And then I decided to call my dad, just to get his opinion on whether or not I should mess with trying to turn it back on after it ran for a good three hours the night before.

My stepmom answered and sounded a little harried. Turns out my dad wasn’t there; he’d just been taken to the hospital via the rescue squad.

I started to freak out. She told me he was going to be ok; he was just having problems breathing. I asked if I should go up to the hospital and she said no, and that she’d call me later and let me know what was going on.

In an effort to calm my nerves, I attempted to call my mom’s cell phone. I’d been trying to call her for the past two days with no success, since her phone was shut off. I’d emailed her and she hadn’t responded. There’s no landline at my sister’s in SC, so I had no other way to get a hold of her. I called my sister in Ohio and asked if she happened to have my SC brother-in-law’s cell number and surprisingly, she did. I left a message on his voicemail and waited. Mom called me back shortly afterward and I learned that SHE was going to have to see a surgeon this morning for a baseball-sized cyst underneath her arm.

WTF?

If that wasn’t enough, my sis in Ohio called me back a little while later to ask if I’d gotten a hold of our mom. She’d just tried and gotten voicemail again, but she needed to get in touch with our SC sister, because their stepmom (I’m a product of my mom’s second marriage) had also been admitted to the hospital Monday!

So, to the best of my knowledge, everyone is ok. Mom didn’t have to have surgery, Dad called last night and said he’d be going home today (I haven’t talked to him today, but I also haven’t heard differently) and it didn’t sound like the situation with my sisters’ stepmom was very serious.

And the washer? Total goner. Fortunately, I have a backup in the garage and the boys will help The Boyfriend haul it out on Thursday. I can relax, right?

Riiiiight. That’s why when I got to work this morning, my computer died.

Something tells me it’s going to be a long week.

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I’m a few days behind, obviously, since I received the email about this on…. *flips back over to email to see when* Thursday. Thursday? Holy hell, what’s wrong with me lately?

Anyway, it’s going monthly. Not like the whole Blog 365 thing, which I could never commit to doing because things just get in the way, ya know?

The thing that intrigues me is that they’re choosing a theme for every month. And for March, that theme is Lists. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s lists. I make them (and ignore them) all the time. I’ve said before they really don’t work well for me. That doesn’t mean I don’t try. Paper planners don’t work for me either and yet I still seem to buy a refill most years.

*sigh*

So, I’m thinking about participating for March. Anyone have any objections?

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I love the new job. I know, I’ve only been officially in the position for 3.5 days, but seriously… the days fly by. In my old position, I didn’t really feel like I was truly responsible for anything. As one of four circ desk supervisors, I was the only one who didn’t really have a specific area that I was in charge of, other than OhioLink. I was a backup for Princess where reserve was concerned, and I enjoyed doing that work, but it still wasn’t the same as actually “owning” the job, for lack of a better word.

I’ve screwed up a few times so far and I know it. Nothing that couldn’t be easily fixed, though, and I took care of it. Every day has presented a new challenge or three. Some of them are things that we covered in training; others couldn’t have been predicted and so I had to figure them out on my own. But I did. And it feels great!

So, that’s work.

On the home front, I’ve been dividing my time between homework and genealogy research. The homework is pretty simple. The genealogy stuff is leaving me frustrated for two reasons. First, off the top of my head, I can think of four places I need to visit locally in order to document some stuff (and I’m getting ready to create a new blog just for the genealogy stuff), but the weather has been so crappy that there’s no way I can go. Two of the places are local cemeteries and I kind of need decent weather for those. But the thing that really has me banging my head against the wall is my maternal grandfather’s side of the family. My uncle is very interested in learning more about that side. I can only get as far back as my great great grandparents, though, before the trail goes cold on both sides. ARGH!

When the weather breaks, I’m going to be taking a few day trips to central Ohio, and possibly a weekend adventure or two to southeastern Ohio and West Virginia. Eventually, I’m going to need to go to Pennsylvania as well, but as that’s the branch that’s hiding the most right now, I’m not going anywhere until I visit a couple of libraries first. The LDS have a local satellite branch of their mammoth library in Salt Lake City, and I’m definitely going there before I put any miles on my vehicle.

It’s time for me to get to bed. Still trying to get used to a new sleeping schedule. That’s the rough part.

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Yesterday, the woman I’m replacing at work came in for a half day to wrap up a few loose ends and have one final lunch with a couple of co-workers. Then she hugged us all goodbye and set off for her new life, which involves moving into a gorgeous brand new house down in Tennessee.

The job became officially mine.

For the past week, working the 8 to 5 schedule has been a bit grueling because my body isn’t used to going to bed at a reasonable hour. In the past, when I was in the circulation department and we were on intersession break, I’ve had to work that schedule. Just about the time I started settling into it, break would be over and I’d be back to my regular hours. So, I figure I’ve got a couple of weeks before everything feels right.

No problem. I can deal with that. I came home from work last night figuring I’d fall asleep around midnight and get a good night’s sleep, maybe even sleeping late this morning.

Not a chance.

I tossed and turned all. night. long. My brain wouldn’t shut off. It tormented me for hours.

And what was on my mind? Monday morning. Not the thrill of taking on new responsibility, mind you, but the stress associated with forgetting everything I’ve learned and having no one to ask.

It’s morning now and I fully realize I was completely irrational. It just pisses me off that I wasted a perfectly good night’s sleep on worrying about things that are silly. Tonight damn well better be different!

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I know, I know… I haven’t been around.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks and I’m still trying to get adjusted to being back on days. I haven’t had enough sleep at all this week. I thought I was starting to catch a cold last night, but either the zinc lozenges I’ve been taking are doing the trick, or my allergies were just having a little fun at my expense.

In the midst of training for my new job, we took a “field trip” down to BG today to get a demonstration of a new computer application that we’ll be switching to later this year. Even with all I have yet to learn, it seems pretty intriguing.

The morning didn’t start smoothly. My alarm was set for 6:10, but I was awakened at 5:30 by the telltale bed shaking of The Boyfriend having an insulin reaction. I grabbed the glucose tablets on my nightstand and started feeding them to him, but we didn’t have any juice, which seems to be the fastest way to bring his sugar up. Thought about getting a glass of milk, but before I could get to that point, I lost him to the seizure that was lying in wait.

He’s fine, albeit sore as hell and unable to really eat anything because of chewing up the inside of his mouth. He went to work tonight, because god forbid anyone take any of their accrued sick time for a legitimate reason. If anything good came out of this, it’s that I’m more convinced than ever that he does NOT have epilepsy, but that ALL of his seizures are caused by his blood sugar plummeting. And even though we’ve been discussing the insulin pump for a few months, it’s time to take the next step toward him actually getting it.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is much less eventful.

I haven’t even looked at my homework for this week. Nothing is due until Monday night anyway, but I hate having to do it all over the weekend. Then again, I think The Boyfriend is working all weekend anyway, so it’s probably good timing.

I’d like to say more, but suddenly I really need to close my eyes and get some actual rest.

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The past week hasn’t been a lot of fun for me, so I’ve refrained from posting. I can only handle so much, “Woe is me” drivel in a month.

I’m in the process of trying to learn my new job while still performing certain functions of my old job. It’s been a frustrating process, particularly because when I originally moved to second shift 15 months ago, no one was ever hired to replace the position I vacated. For that reason, some people in my department really don’t want me to stop doing what I’ve been doing all along. It was already getting tough for me to juggle the two positions once OhioLink took us back up to high lending. I can’t juggle three positions and learn what I need to know.

The biggest part of what I find is unfair is one co-worker’s annoyance that I’m not working my normal 3:15 to midnight shift. (Of course, she won’t say so to my face; that’s not her style, and while I’d love to say more on THAT subject, in the end it will make no difference.) I’m not quite sure what she expects me to do. The person I’m replacing is moving out of state. At present time, she is the only person who knows what her job entails. It’s doubtful that my supervisor could even show me what I need to do, because the way things are being done has changed considerably in just the last three years.

So, for me, it’s imperative that I get as much sit down time with my predecessor as possible. That means matching my shift to hers. I’m very sorry that working 3 to midnight doesn’t fit into that schedule, but had I left the organization completely, I wouldn’t be there from 3 to midnight either.

At any rate, I have probably four days left to train. A field trip to another organization, my predecessor’s farewell party and the fact that she’ll probably leave early on her final day will all cut into the time she and I have to work together. She’s been really good about having me perform the daily functions, though. She’s definitely enabling me to “learn by doing” which is far more effective with me than anything else.

If I can just avoid getting the bug that appears to be taking people down all over the place (we had three students call in sick yesterday and one of them just came back after being out for the past week), I’ll be in good shape.

Cross your fingers for me!

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