Not according to plan

You are never a loser until you quit trying. ~ Mike Ditka

I am almost finished my first week of vacation.  I must say that nothing has gone according to plan so far, but in the same breath it has been nice to not have to go to work :)

We were supposed to go camping this weekend with good friends of ours, but they baled on us a few days before.  Then we were going to go to my in-laws for the weekend and take a day to go to my family reunion for the day.  That fell through yesterday.  My in-laws have some guests for the weekend so there is no room for us to stay.  We could still go to my family reunion but it is an awful lot of driving to go for a day.  The other thing is that we have to go to my inlaws on Monday to drop off our dog.  We are planning a trip to a Zoo/Waterpark in Quebec for a few days and my brother-in law agreed to watch our dear Daisy while we are gone.  So to make a trip today and then again in a couple days is too much.  With Gas prices as high as they are and our budget as tight as it is.....it just doesn't make sense to make 2 trips.

I am hoping that our Quebec trip goes well  :)

Yesterday we went downtown to check out a annual festival.  It was so hot, but the music was good, food great, but not a whole lot for the kids.  Sadly at the end of the time my son took a HUGE temper tantrum!  Which is so very much unlike him.  He continued on so much that he ended up getting himself grounded for 2 days.  He hasn't done that since he was little, he was screaming and stomping his feet and crying.  It all started because he played a game and lost, so he started to cry.  We told him that if he was going to cry over losing a game that we would be going home, no smoothie.  Well that is when he lost it.  We did go straight home and he spent the rest of the day with no XBox and will spend today without one too.  If he behaves today then he just might get it back tomorrow.

Next weekend we have a wedding to go to.  It should be a great time.  Then it will be back to work for 4 night shifts for me.  I am not looking forward to going back at all, not just because of the 4 night shifts, but because work has been so stressful.  Our line is not running well and everyone is worn out from the added stress, the extra now mandatory overtime and just pure frustration. 

Oh well I will take it as it comes and do the best I can.

For now I will enjoy today and the rest of my vacation regardless whether it goes according to plan or not. 

I hope you are enjoying your summer as well!

Back to Work

Alarm goes off at 6:15am......I REALLY didn't want to get out of bed.  I dragged myself out of bed, got ready and left for work.  While the day itself was no more stressful that it had been of late...my poor feet and legs screamed at me after the first few hours and then continued the rest of the shift.  To make things worse once I got home and got into bed my legs burned so badly I could hardly stand it!!  That will teach me for taking a vacation LOL.

Outside of my body's rebellion, my mind was glad to be back at work, well at least a little.  I hit the floor to do my shift exchange (that is to talk to the people who ran the line the shift before to find out how things went, things to watch for etc) Anywho....Jason saw me and a great big smile burst out and he gave me a big hug and said "Thank God you're back!!".  and to top it off Joel (my supervisor) must have told me half a dozen times how glad he was I was back.   It is so nice to be missed :)   Things with "Guy" hadn't changed at all while I was gone and so patience is a little thin.  It has gotten to the point where my Line Supervisor no longer enjoys coming to work....which is a huge deal as he loves what we do.  (I do most days myself, especially since I had/have  a great crew to work with)  So we had 2 rough shifts, but made it through.  Last night for the last 2 hours of our shift was our team celebration so we all went out for dinner (company paid yippie) and had a great time.  After dinner a few of us decided to go for drinks.  It was nice and we mostly avoided talking about work.   I stayed out a little longer than I should have since I had to get up with the kids today, but it was worth it.  I'll take a nap a bit later today.


Today, I went to Curves and ran some errands.  I plan on doing some housework, but for the most part I think I will just relax today and worry about the cleaning tomorrow.  I will admit that I was in quite the foul mood this morning and my instinct was to go crazy cleaning the house and put myself in an even worse mood.  But I didn't.....I went to the gym instead and now I feel much better.  While the state of the house still makes me angry, I am choosing to ignore it for now...it will still be there later for me.

Life and the Reality of it

It has been difficult lately to stay happy and positive.  Work has been stressful and my brother (well his life/choices) are also a great stress. 

Let me start with work.  A member of the team has come back after being off for 8 months for surgery.  He is 2 years from retirement and has been in the department many years.  My line crew (which is me, my supervisor and a contract worker) has had a difficult time with this.  This "guy" is just not doing the amount of work that is expected of him.  He has been back over a month now and the medical department at work keeps telling us that he has no restrictions and should be able to preform 100%.  So this leaves us feel as though he doesn't want to do the work (he has voiced this several times, but we still hoped there was a medical reason to it)

My supervisor's boss decided to have this "guy" shadow our contract worker as he should be able to do everything he does and more.  "Guy" is not able to keep up even 50% of the time.  Then it was decided that he would shadow me.  While he did better with me (I am not a fast person) he still was only doing 60-70% of the work.  I was/am very frustrated with training someone who doesn't want to learn or work.  I am hoping that something will be resolved while I am on vacation over March Break.   I doubt that will happen, but one can hope.

My brother is an entire other issue.  He is making some really bad choices in his life right now (he is almost 30)  He has lost 2 great girlfriends in the last year and is also getting him in trouble with the law.  I have always been depended on by my parents (and my brother) to keep him going in the right direction.  He had 'issues' back home in school so my parents moved him 8hrs away to live with me.  He almost dropped out of high school, but my fiance at the time helped me get him through school.  It wasn't long after I was married (and pregnant) that we had to get him to move into his own place because of his 'issues'.  Here we are almost 10 years later and I am still in the middle, trying to keep the peace in the family and my brother alive.  This time there is nothing I can do but listen to each side b!tch about the other.   He is almost 30 and not a baby.  I have given him my opinion on a few occasions that were quite blunt but also truthful.  I am very worried and feel helpless.  All I can do is watch and pray that he survives.

On the positive side, work on the whole is going well other than being stressful, my performance is holding steady and climbing.  I am learning a lot and becoming a resource on the team.  This bodes well for me achieving my level 2 sometime in the next year (I hope!)  Money/financial part of life is getting better also.  After my nervous breakdown we accumulated a paralyzing amount of debt.  We are now on the uphill crawl and can actually see the top of the mountain.  It will still be sometime before we are where we actually want to be, but that is only another part of the journey of life.