the work

do you have any idea how great it's been to not be looking for a job? to not search all the job boards & stalk all the company websites & more importantly not live on shoestring budget?
granted i'm not making much, but it is an income & it's great to have one again.

so the other day, out of the blue, one of my co-workers asks me if i'd like to come work at her husband's office.
run the place.
twice the pay.
seriously.
gah...
oh, one more thing, fridays off, yeah 4 day work week!

where was this job last year?

i thought about it, went back & forth, talked with B about it... but i think i'm happy where i'm at, for now at least. i need training wheels, after 2 years of not working i've really lost my touch. plus i don't have a commute & my boss doesn't think anything of it if when i'm 10 minutes late [mainly bc he's like 15 minutes late, although occasionally he's early].

probably though, the biggest thing is that my boss isn't an ass. it's funny, a few people have said a few things about him, but honestly after working for old boss, this guy is easy.

oh how i wish

i just caught up on a few months worth of MODG's blog. not only have i not been blogging, i haven't been reading & i miss my internet friends SO much! i really need to get back to working where i can sit at the computer all day & get paid for surfing, those were the days....

i check in with crissy & tia once in awhile, but the last time i read MODG she was still preggers. now she has a cute little boy & it reminds me so much of baby days with Z. tia's pregnant now & i guess she's choosing to not turn into a mommy blogger bc she hasn't talked about her pregnancy much.

i would have totally blogged about my pregnancy had i known the blogging world existed. i really would have liked to have had the outlet, although it would not be something anyone else would want to read; at least not at that time, hindsight soften things. now looking back at that time i think i went through a sort of depression, similar to postpartum i guess, but during not after.

the first 8 weeks or so were fine other than the weird change in my appetite. you hear about women who can't eat very much later in their pregnancy bc the baby is so big, but for me this all started way early. it was a learning experience, i remember one time when i had reached about the 1/2-way point driving home i had to pull over to pick up some fast food. only that wasn't fast enough, i was so emotionally unbalanced i was about to cry bc i was hungry.

i kept telling myself "it's ok, i'm going to get food. don't cry all these people will look at me like i'm crazy. i don't even look pregnant. who cries when they're hungry?" my eyes actually watered when i got the food (from hunger & true relief) & it felt so good to eat but i could only eat 1/2 of a cheeseburger. yes, of course that other 1/2 went home with me.

i couldn't eat a lot at one setting, but i ate often, like every 2 hours or so. i started packing all kinds of snacks, little baggies full of food (dry cereal, various crackers, etc). i often thought my lunch bag was comparable to something herman munster would carry. i also kept a bag of jerky in the car for emergencies...that is until i turned into a vegetarian.

me, carnivore extraordinaire. in high school i used to wake up in the middle of the night & eat lunch meat or have a couple of bites of some kind of leftover meat bc my metabolism worked so fast. i did not waste time with carbs or veggies at that hour & now my body did not like meat. for probably about a month i couldn't eat meat; it felt way too heavy in my stomach & made it ache.

i also learned that i had a very low tolerance for sweets. early on B made a fruit smoothie for me, but i couldn't keep in down. i don't remember what other sweets i tried, but no ice cream for me during that time. my treat - yogurt. no, not even frozen yogurt, just plain ole out the fridge yogurt was my dessert or sweet treat.

at one point i counted & i had eaten 14 times in 1 day. i know that seems like a lot but i haven't mentioned the nausea, etc. my constant eating was actually what clued my co-workers onto my secret. one day one of the guys said "if i didn't know better i would say..." yeah, i was close to the 3 month marker, so i fessed up but asked him to keep it quiet until i was ready to make the announcement.

not really working

in an attempt to get back into the work routine & soliciting myself to a few friends, i got a response. [i'm still not sure if i really wanted one, but whatev's....] i figured if nothing else, i could get used to doing something along the lines of my normal work instead of yard work, cooking & sewing [i got a few lessons for martha stewart these days].

so i'm helping an old friend from the dirt company. the co. shut it's doors about a year ago or so, everyone scattered & many made their own joint ventures trying to survive it all. this friend asked me to help him with reports & basically getting his office organized.

funny thing is he was one of the main reasons i stayed [& later left] that job. he was a good friend, but in the end i felt like he was taking advantage of me, his demands were more than i could handle at the time. i had wanted to leave that job so many times in the past but either he, or later it was B, would talk me out of it. in their defense i liked the work, the pay was good & i had flexible hours so i could go to school.

however i always remember from my interview day the vieja said "we're like a family here" which was true, it was extremely dysfunctional & everyone was ok with that.

when i finally did leave B was in Japan [& we didn't know when he was coming home], Z was 9 months old [i'd been a single parent for 8 months], i was exhausted from a hellacious commute [an hour+ each way, with a baby who tended to puke a lot] & i had been at a job for over 10 years which i'd hated for um, probably the entire time.

i didn't expect all that to unfold, but there it is...

so i've got more on my plate, but i'm not working, not really anyways. all the red tape & circumstances make it so it's best i don't get paid for my efforts. sigh....

the pregnancy story - pt II

i don't exactly remember the conversation after the we got the test results, but i know we decided we weren't going to have a wedding after all. although we wanted it, we figured even a moderate wedding was going to cost about $10k & now we had a baby on the way & we'd need that $10k just for diapers.

then we had to figure out how to let the cat out of the bag. a couple members of my family knew we'd eloped, so the announcement wouldn't be such a big deal there, but B's family was a different story. B had kept our elopement a secret because he didn't want to take away from our real wedding & that now wasn't going to happen. we also had a friend that had recently gotten pregnant, announced it to the world & miscarried in her first trimester. so for the most part, we decided to keep my pregnancy news on the downlow.

i did call my mom right away though: "hey mom, remember how we had that appt to go try on wedding gowns? yeah, i had to cancel that because we're not going to have a wedding after all. i'm pregnant." [i'm all about finesse] mom was THRILLED. [i found out much later she had already been secretly stockpiling baby stuff!]

i called my dr's office to get that ball rolling & the nerve of them, they didn't have an appt for me that very day. not even the next day. i thought for sure they needed to check my little baby out post haste - wtf? i was appalled! what kind of ob/gyn was this guy? cells were splitting & multiplying & dna code was being replicated, he was supposed to make sure all this was happening properly!!!

i felt fine though, happy that i hadn't experienced ANY morning sickness at all. the only thing was that enormous shrink in my stomach size. i normally would only eat 2 large meals, now i could only eat a little at a time but still had to eat enough to keep up with my outrageous metabolism & have some for baby.

a few days later i went to see the dr, he did an ultrasound & confirmed i was carrying a little bean. he gave me a prescription for some pregnancy vitamins & iron tablets & sent me on my way. that was it. i don't know why but i expected more, a fricken miracle was happening, i was carrying a baby & to him it was old hat.

oh yeah, & the most important part - my due date was june 16th & we knew B was scheduled to go to japan leaving sometime in june or july. awesome, i was going to have a baby & he was going to leave me alone to figure it all out by myself. i know the circumstances were completely out of his control & he wasn't leaving by choice, but try & explain that to a pregnant woman. it doesn't compute. even when she's only a few weeks pregnant.

i was mad. so, so mad & there was nothing i could do about it.

the pregnancy story - pt I

initially our plan was once i graduated college we would start our family, but B had changed squadrons at work & he was now on a regular schedule of 18 months here & 6 months in japan. so B would be here when i graduated, but would be gone the following summer & we decided it would be better to postpone the family until he returned. [hint, someone missed that memo]

so when i finished college, the new plan was i would find a real job & we were going to have a real wedding [all the previous stuff was practice]. B & I had picked a nice venue on Pendleton where you didn't even know you were on base [except for that whole guarded gate thing]; we were deciding on a date & selecting the menu.

then 9/11 happened, the world went a little crazy & so did i. i came home from work everyday & watched tv & cried my eyes out for days on end. i felt so sorry for all those people, the families that were destroyed; angry with the people who celebrated such an atrocity; and scared for B & our future. each base keeps a list of squadrons to deploy when chaos hits, B's squadron was at the top of the list when it happened.

i lost track of my cycle. i wasn't on the pill because of migraines, but we were using otc forms of b/c. i remember trying on wedding gowns & surprised at how well they fit me, nothing ever fits me. then i had an itchy face; not sure what that was about, just the skin on my lower cheeks & along the jawline itched like crazy. one night i was hungry after dinner so i ate an apple, after eating 1/2 of it i was unbelievably full & couldn't understand such a thing so i ate the other 1/2 & was completely miserable for hours.

something just wasn't right & i knew it!
but i didn't know wtf was wrong...so i went to the dr

guess what the dr said?
allergies [yes, to pregnancy] so he gave me some claritin [at least that's what i think it was, little red pills]. oh & the more important result from the appt, i weighed 110lbs, which was completely abnormal for this body [at that time]. i explained to the lady their scale had to be off, 110 was something this body was capable of. i had strived for YEARS to gain weight & NEVER was able to get above 104lbs, so there was ABSOLUTELY no fricken way that scale could be right!!!! she told me their scales were calibrated [B likes to say by NASA] & there wasn't a mistake, that it was probably water weight due to my cycle.

so i took the little red pills, i don't remember if they helped with itchy face or not. i think it was the 1st weekend in october when we went to vegas for a friend's wedding. B & I were at the hotel & i told him about the weird side effect i got from the pills, i would gag when i brushed my teeth [stupid, stupid girl]. we went out for a legendary vegas buffet of all you can eat shrimp & prime rib where i almost cried because i could barely eat more than 1 plate of food. & it was shrimp. & prime rib. & my body just wouldn't let me eat like i wanted to. & like i said before i knew something wasn't kosher but i still didn't know what!!!!

another week or 2 past & i realized i hadn't received my monthly bill, but i'm not one to keep scrupulous records & figured it'll show up sooner or later. then i started dreaming about it & decided i might need to question it. so i called OCD, told her the deal & asked what to do [duh!]. her sage advice "go get at home test; don't get the cheapest one, don't get the most expensive one & get a 2 pack in case you need to test again in a couple of days." [seriously those words are etched into my brain]

so that's what i did on my way home that day & came home & tested immediately. i put the test stick on the floor in front of me & it was probably a millisecond before the plus line appeared. so i sat there & stared at it, hoping it would go away. it didn't. then i heard B come in the house, i didn't move, just sat there with a guilty look on my face. he walked in, looked at me, at the stick, took the paper that explained the results & went to the other bathroom.

when he came back to the bathroom i was still sitting there & he smiled at me & i told him "but i'm not ready" & started crying.

09/11/09

8 years....unbelievable...
B & I were newlyweds [is that the right term if you elope?]. we'd only lived in the house 6 months. i was working at the soils place & had just finished college. B was working nights & for the most part, we only saw each other on the weekends. we were just learning about house improvement stuff & B was scheduled to go to japan in the summer.
[notice how Z wasn't even a blip on the map, sorry pumpkin!]

maybe i'm out of the loop, but today didn't seem to have the gusto i expected; that makes me a little sad. i expected more hoopla, it wasn't until just now the news showed some 9/11 memorial services, but i hadn't heard about anything beforehand.

i don't want to be morbid, i just don't want to forget or have it forgotten.

about being mexican

alright, so after last post, SIL brought to my attn how mexican i really am...although you would never know it by looking at me. [which i kind of like that people look at me & wonder "what is she?" - i'm human!]

my nana (mom's mom) has told me when i was a kid, before i started going to school, i spoke more spanish than english. although i find that strange, i know when i'm tired, real, real tired my enunciation changes.

as in 'chair' becomes 'share' & 'chicken' becomes 'shicken'.
[i just say my mexican is coming out]

another thing i've noticed is when it comes to eating, especially leftovers, B (the white guy) always makes a sandwich while i put everything in a tortilla. flour or corn (preferably yellow, white doesn't cut it), fried or heated on the flame.

yes, on a flame.
just like nana's does it.
or on the comal if you want to get REAL mexican.
but please don't f-it up & put it in the microwave.

oh, & how about this, i didn't even know there was a white version potato soup until i was in my early 20s! funny, it ties to last post as the vieja had potato soup one day & i remember saying something to her about it because it was white & she asked me:

"well, what color is it supposed to be?"

i only knew of the red tomato sauce based potato soup.

& finally, the teasing song. you know the song kids tease each other with right? i never thought much of it until i heard B say:

"nanny nanny boo boo"

& i was like 'wth was that?'
you're supposed to say:

'le-doh le-doh leeee-doooohhhhh'

the vieja (old lady)

i read an article the other day about bad bosses & although old boss was a ringer, no one will come close to 'the vieja'. [see how that ties into cinco de mayo? i've been saving this story. that's a lie, i'm not that good.]

alright, so we have to go way, way back, i was a mere 20 years old when i started working at the dirt place. it was my first real job; i had worked at a record shop, a dept store & for a 1 person tax prep office, but this was real grown up stuff.

i still remember in the interview her telling me "it was a family environment".
[i was too naive to realize she meant f-ing dysfunctional beyond belief.]

she was the OFFICIAL WORD PROCESSOR for the office. i was hired as an admin. assist & she showed me the ropes. officially she wasn't my boss, but she made my life hell for many years. the office manager was kinda spineless; he was the "just let things work themselves out" type of guy & did his best to ignore our fights altercations. i can't even guess at how many times she made me cry at work. we would get in the worst arguments & shouting matches. to this day i still remember the dream i had where i had her on the ground & i was choking her. serious dislike.

- when she would talk to other people, she would refer to me as "her little helper", like i was an elf in her workshop.

- i did the filing for the office & whenever she found something mis-filed instead of just putting it back in the "to be filed" spot she would write on the document "this was found in file 400235". you can go to that report to this day & see her note.

- one time i stayed 1/2 hour OT to work on something that was going to be a rush in the morning. the next day she told me i had to leave early so i wouldn't get paid the OT. however she would stay late to organize paper in the recycle box & her pay was 3x mine.

- whenever she was out of the office i had to do her OFFICIAL TYPING & when she would return, she would print out everything i touched & mark down all the mistakes i made in red pen. [how about a f-ing thank you?]

- i wasn't allowed to go out to lunch with our co-workers. she would specifically take lunch the same time they did so i would have to stay & answer the phones while she ate.

- she started a rumor that i was having an affair with a married co-worker. our corporate HQ conducted an investigation because of it. [for the record, we were just friends, he was happily married & i was not attracted to him in the slightest bit.]

not approachable...

the other day B tells me i'm not approachable.
i responded with "bite me" - how's that for approachable?

B just doesn't understand a lot of things. his entire adult life he's been in the military, he doesn't know what the real world is like. B also doesn't know what it's like to be a woman, a competent woman at that. i spent so much of my life proving to no one but myself how much i could accomplish. then someone came into my workplace & let's just go with she wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed but i learned from her how much she got away with because people had such low expectations from her.

i realize i don't come off as friendly; i don't want to, people take advantage of friendly. that's not to say i don't want to be friends with people, i just don't want to do their work for them. i don't mind helping people out, or teaching someone how to do something, but i'm not going out of my way to someone else's work so they can slack off. i've learned this the hard way, this was a huge point of contention at the soils co.

i've always worked in positions where i was the enforcer, that also makes for difficult situations. for some reason people don't get "just follow the rules & we can be friends" so i have to be a hardass & then they think i'm all bitchy. i'm not denying, i can & will be when needed, but really it's a rare occasion that i'm bitchy for no just cause. oh, i guess i should clarify, bitchy directed at someone not just in a bitchy mood, there IS a difference.

i do not mind not being approachable, it's part of who i am.

reaction?

i finally started feeling better about 6pm yesterday. i think i may have had a slight reaction to the numbing stuff from the dental work or a major reaction to talking with old boss.

can one really be allergic to assholes?
possibly...& if that's the case, working near him would probably not be a good idea.

i didn't receive a phone call from the next higher up to discuss things & i was much pleased about that. i was not in a state to take on such things, no self control, more than likely would have revealed many things about old boss to his boss that would have not been a good idea.

i'm pretty sure the talk with old boss did not go the way he planned. i think he was expecting me to jump at any opportunity he presented. he absolutely has no concept of how unhappy i was there....& the poor pay was just a fraction of it.

when i left the soils place i remember OC-D saying i just had a low tolerance for assholes. it's such a shame that i can't put that on my resume....

called JC

i wasn't sure what kind of reception i would get, but i called him.
i could hear his smile, that was good.

we played catch up on spouse's & kids; his wife is a teacher now, she used to sub back in the day, his kids - 1 in college & 1 in hs, i was expecting 1 in hs & 1 in jr high (time really does fly). then he told me about his new job & how bad things were at the soils co. i only know about 5 people in that office now, everyone else has either left or been laid off.

he also told me he had been contacted by another office-mate (DD) who had left a few years prior to me, hopefully we can get an e-mail string together & be in contact again.

i'm glad i made the call.

chapters-soils co

i remember when i was a kid my mom asking me if i recognized chapters in my life & even at a young age, i could. i was contacted by an old friend (RB) from my first real job, as in career-like job. i worked at the soils company for over 10 years. i started a couple of months before i turned 21 & left about 6 months after having Z (31). i grew up there, i went through a lot of changes, i helped my mom buy a condo, i met B, B & I moved in together, B & I got married & bought a house, i finished college, i got pregnant & had a baby, i survived being a single mom while B was in Japan for 13 months, i made a lot of friends.

i liked my job & hated it all at the same time. i enjoyed the work & the people (except for the hag, but more about her later), but at the end felt like i couldn't grow anymore, that i would always be seen as the 21 year old they first met. i felt like my efforts weren't realized & therefore could never be rewarded. i remember asking for a raise at one point & being told it wouldn't be right for an admin assist to be paid equal to an entry level geologist or engineer. although i had a BS degree, i had years more of experience than the entry level geo/eng who were fresh out of school, i ran the office, i took care of the H/R, reconciled the AP, took care of the billing & harrassed clients that didn't pay their bills.

i was also the lead engineer's (JC) right arm, which used to be a good thing, but when B was gone & i was learning how to be a mom, taking care of Z & being someone's right arm combined with everything else was more than i could handle. i knew after all that time i had to leave. i didn't leave on the best of terms. i broke down & JC & I had an argument (a shouting match really) about something i no longer remember but i do recall crying in the bathroom at work afterwards.

so RB called to ask me if he could pass my # on to another office friend who will be in the area for the next couple of weeks working. he also told me JC was leaving the company, RB already had. the tanking housing market has really taken a toll on the company, i left at it's peak with almost 130 employees, they are now down to less than 40 & praying to survive the winter.

not feeling so good

i wasn't feeling so good last night, my back was hurting & i had a bit of a headache. then i made the ultimate mistake of getting on the floor, laying on my back, put my hands above my shoulders flat on the ground & arching my body up off the floor.....for a millisecond.

it was supposed be longer but my back said 'hell no' because i realized i hadn't put my body in that position in years & it certainly wasn't going to cooperate out of the blue like that. although i dropped back to the ground as quickly as i could & put my head between my knees begging my back for forgiveness, it was too late, damage was done.
after that i just laid on the sofa an aching mess; if my headache was still there, the back spasms distracted from it.

then last night i dreamt about the vieja, the hag i used to work with at the soils company. i haven't posted about her yet, but she's a nightmare (although oh so real) from my past. i haven't seen her since, wow, shortly after i announced i was pregnant & she went berserk (i shit you not) & Z's 6 now. i promise to write about her later though, some very entertaining stories. i don't remember anything about the dream other than her presence. i'm thinking she kicked my ass though, that's how i feel at least....
oh how i hurt & my head is foggy.

although i'm not a huge Paul Newman fan, i feel it's worthy to note about his passing. he was a gifted man. i've added to my blog title "if i had a plan i would be screwed", it is said this is a sign that hung in one of his offices. i like it, so i'm stealing it.

napster bad

if you never saw this, it's fantastic!

i hadn't watched it in many years, but thought of it when i found some old disks of downloaded music from back in the glorious days of napster. unfortunately the music was unretrievable, i'm sure metallica has something to do with that....f-ing lars!

OC-D

didn't realize it until i typed it...ocd, heehee, that's actually for Orange County D. spoke to her the other day, didn't realize how long it had been since we had spoken last until i heard her voice. i miss her. miss talking to her every single day; so it started out as work, but always ending in laughter, lots of laughter, sometimes tears from so much laughter.
i love that girl like a sister.