No picture yet because they mail you the actual license in 7 -10 business days now rather than printing it there and let’s face it, holding up a piece of 8.5×11 paper just doesn’t have the same impact.

He’s had some practice before in the high school parking [...]]]> He passed his learner’s permit test yesterday.

No picture yet because they mail you the actual license in 7 -10 business days now rather than printing it there and let’s face it, holding up a piece of 8.5×11 paper just doesn’t have the same impact.

He’s had some practice before in the high school parking lot and he’s been driving the tractor since he was about 10 or so, (as soon as he could reach the pedals while keeping his butt in the seat) so I let him drive part of the way home.  I waited until we were off of the 4 lane 65MPH highway and on to the first of the 2 lane roads.  No sense terrifying the kid right off with merging into traffic doing 70MPH+.

He did really well for a first time dealing with other cars on an unmarked road.  He had the normal issues,  like maintaining speed and he took bends in the road a bit sharply and was constantly adjusting the wheel, but these are things that come with practice.  It’s been 34 years since I learned to drive and you forget things that are now ingrained habits, like taking your foot off the gas when you see a bend coming up instead of hitting the brakes, starting an easy slow turn of the wheels as you approach rather than waiting until you’re at it.

DH took him out later on a long loop through our area & noticed the same things.  

Thursday he has an after school activity and I’m going to let him drive home, which means the highway, but we get on it from a stop light and hit a series of them so he’ll have to deal with cars all around him but not at high speeds. And we can turn off of it at a light as well & take the long way home so he won’t have to deal with trying to cross a divided highway at a low visibility turn just yet. 

That’ll be next week.

Mayhem is Mayhem.  Mostly he plays Fortnight and various offline “world conquest” strategy games. We’ve gotten him a work permit to work at my company this summer, like Havoc does.  They’ll work a day or so a week, cleaning & organizing equipment, assembling equipment, inventorying equipment in the tech trucks, washing the tech trucks, etc.  Mayhem wants to take sales & customer service calls.  He’s VERY eager to do so but it’s not really likely.  Mostly we just aren’t busy enough but with summer vacations he might get a chance.  And his still has some issues with his diction.  He can be hard to understand sometimes & really has to remember to speak slowly & enunciate each word. I think it would be good for him to try though so I am hoping we can make it happen a few times for him here & there.

Since I didn’t have a picture of Havoc with his license to share, here is one of him with his prom date.  I took it with my phone.  The quality is not that great.

Havoc overslept.  Mayhem went off to meet the bus and Havoc dashed about getting ready so we could get in the car and chase the bus down before it left the neighborhood & get him on it without my having to drive 20 minutes in the wrong direction [...]]]> I seem to be missing mine lately.

Havoc overslept.  Mayhem went off to meet the bus and Havoc dashed about getting ready so we could get in the car and chase the bus down before it left the neighborhood & get him on it without my having to drive 20 minutes in the wrong direction to take him to school.  (school is south, work is north).  Suddenly Mayhem turns up at the door and all I can think is any hope of catching the bus in the neighborhood is shot.  The bus must have been early.

No.  Mayhem starts shouting “Come on Havoc!  The bus is waiting!  She told me to run and get you!”

I have no adjectives for that. “Weird” is all that came to mind.  It was just so outside my expectations in this situation. I’ve never had just one kid miss the bus in 9 years of putting 2 kids on the bus.  Buses have schedules.  Waiting around for one kid to run back up his long driveway to fetch the other kid, who had literally just rolled out of bed as his brother was leaving, was so totally beyond any possibility to me. I was speechless when it happened.  “This county is so weird” is all I could eventually manage.

Of course, this is also the bus I chased down outside the neighborhood.  When she pulled over a bit to let me pass her, which they do as a courtesy at some intersections, I was able to roll down my window and ask if my kids could get on now. She totally let them!! So I was only 10 minutes in the wrong direction instead of 20.

The various after school clubs the boys belong too never seem to have time frames for how long events will take on weekends.  Will they need picked up at 3pm? 5pm? 8pm?  It makes it difficult to make plans for the rest of family because at literally ANY minute we could get a call from the child in question that he’s 20 minutes from the school (they bus them from the school to events on weekends).  If we’re an hour away because last week we didn’t get a call until 6pm and it’s only 2:30, that is a problem.  All I can say is “well, that’s….” and words come to me like irritating & awkward but those don’t really convey what I think about it.

End of year updates for the family.

Havoc is doing well in [...]]]> Sooner or later I am going to fix that image at the top. I tried to update Word Press. It did not take but messed up my existing blog appearance so now I’m all generic until I find the time to sort it.

End of year updates for the family.

Havoc is doing well in 9th grade for the most part. He is in the forensics club. For years I drove by the high school where it often had a sign outside congratulating the forensics club for being state champs & I always thought it was incredibly progressive of our tiny high school to teach that kind of science.

Yeah, it’s not crime forensics. It’s a sort of speech/drama thing.

Mayhem is struggling in 8th grade. This is down almost entirely to turning in homework. I can stand over him and make him do it. I can cut off the internet, take his phone, etc & not let him do anything but breathe until it is complete. But I can’t make him turn it in. I can’t turn it in for him. And I’ve told him, many many times, the only person he’s hurting with this little power play is himself. He’s about to lose both computer & phone for 6 weeks if his report come back with any Ds or Fs on it.

DH is liking his new job. He’s not liking the commute, which went from a 17 minute drive with no stoplights to an hour long one with 22 stoplights. Now he has to drive into “the City”. About half his time is spent out and about, fixing things, setting up things, monitoring things, etc. And half in the office. This is more out of office time but no tower climbing & little actual outdoor time. He’s finding time for his hobbies. Playing with electronics, welding, building things.

Me, my new old job is going well. The thing I really love about this job is it’s adaptability. It’s sort of a choose your own adventure type of a job. Yes, I have to deal with forced customer interaction on the phones, but it’s not constant & in the gaps I can do this or that, pick up responsibility for that thing but not for the that thing. There are a lot of “Special projects” I have my fingers into for bits & pieces of them. I’m “Admin”, which means whatever you want it to mean. I too am finding my way back to hobbies that have been long neglected.

For instance the last time I edited my photos, really edited them, not just adjusted them for Instagram, was sometime toward the end of 2015. I got a new computer a few months back and this past week I reinstalled my Lightroom which is so far out of date they don’t support it anymore (Yeah, like I’m going to pay monthly for it, dream on Lightroom) and imported all my photos since Dec 2015. It’s about 700 pics all told & no doubt 20% of them are crap but every weekend I am doing a month of pics, sometimes 2 months if there aren’t many and I am going to get caught up.

While I would love to say I am going to do a photo a day, that’s a bit more ambitious that I can commit to. I’m going to try but we’ll see how it goes. I’m also getting caught up playing my large stock of match 3 and hidden object games.

I’m back to better meal planning as well.  This is loosely what we are having the next 2 weeks, plus takeout & leftovers.

Actually, it’s my old job doing database management. The one I’d left in 2014 to go work at my last job, in the warehouse. Which I took because it offered good healthcare at a good price, unlike the database job, which offers none. But DH, after 15 years with the same company, switched jobs. [...]]]> WooHoo!

Actually, it’s my old job doing database management.
The one I’d left in 2014 to go work at my last job, in the warehouse.
Which I took because it offered good healthcare at a good price, unlike the database job, which offers none.
But DH, after 15 years with the same company, switched jobs.
His old job had no healthcare but his new one has good care at a good price.
Which meant I could leave a job I was not happy with & return to one I enjoyed.

Why wasn’t I happy? Well, mostly because it was very regimented and had no scope for individual initiative & advancement. The heat in summer was also an issue. And lets just not get into the demands they make on your time during December. Last year they expected everyone to work 7 days a week from the day after Thanksgiving until Dec 22. 9-10 hour shifts during the week and 6-8 hours weekends.
I didn’t do it. They had loopholes for people who needed Sunday off to do church stuff or other planned activities on Sunday. So I said I had stuff. No one called me on it. I expected to be written up or told off in my annual review come February but not a word was said.

I get the day after Thanksgiving off for the first time in 3 years! I have Saturdays off in December!

The warehouse was, for good & sufficient reasons I admit, rather inflexible about time off or coming in late or early. Keeping appointments was a real problem. Fortunately DH’s job let him take over as Primary Parent (getting the kids on the bus, taking them to appointments & practices, getting them from school if they get sick, etc) because they were very flexible about time management. His new job is 45 miles away & while it can be flexible, not “take 4 hours out of your day every 4 weeks for the kids’ orthodontist appointments” or “give yo a special start time so you can get the kids on the bus” flexible . So I needed to return to the Primary Parent role & that meant a new job, or in this case, an old job.

Then there was the people problem. Nothing wrong with the people individually. I loved my co-workers, they were fun, smart people to work with. They were the saving grace of the job.

There were just so MANY of them. I’m not a social person. My personal interaction bucket isn’t very big and gets filled easily in just a few encounters. I had 15 people in my immediate department, plus another 10-12 I interacted with almost daily and another 10-12 I dealt with at least once a week, plus there were another 40-50 people who worked in the building that I occasionally saw.
I know it doesn’t sound like a bunch of people. But this is too many people for me, even though I liked them and no one was mean or demanding. It left me pretty much hibernating in my room when I got home. I never wanted to go anywhere because it’s just more people and I was already well over my comfort level of people.

I didn’t realize how much of this was wearing me down until I quit. Then it felt like a smothering blanket I hadn’t know I was under had been lifted. Friends tell me I seem less burdened. I’m cooking more. I’m going places. Sometimes. Not often, but more than before. I only have 12 coworkers total and many days I only see 4 of them. This is a good level of people. I can go Havoc’s booster club meetings and not feel overwhelmed. I even helped out a fundraising fair & that wouldn’t have happened this time last year. Because people.

I’m hoping, as I shake off the blanket, to get back into things I was doing 3 years ago. Like daily photos and regular blogging.

We’ll see how it goes

Julie Kirk of Notes on Paper created a graphic with the list.

There is a public Facebook group and we use #rindas2016photohunt on Instagram if you want to join us or check out the photos.

I [...]]]> Once again Rinda is hosting her 2016 Summertime Photo Scavenger Hunt! Check out her post here for details.

Julie Kirk of Notes on Paper created a graphic with the list.

There is a public Facebook group and we use #rindas2016photohunt on Instagram if you want to join us or check out the photos.

I think I will be able to find most of it.  “Someone laughing” may prove a problem because it’s an issue of timing. Twins is tricky too but I figure I can get a pic of two people dressed alike as a back up for it.  Beast of the East will make that simple, along with a sports logo, a camper and a buffet of food.

I am going to try to make these pics an excuse for a blog post.  I want to get back into posting but 8-9 hour days doing physical labor in an uncooled warehouse, starting at 6am is a really energy sapper. As I learned last summer.

This summer the boys are picking up some chores.  Dinner is on them 2 nights a week. I’ll supervise & be available for questions but they are cooking.  DH has another night. Mondays are spaghetti (I always work overtime on Mondays), Saturdays are often cookouts shared around between us and two other families.

So that just leaves me needing to cook on Fridays regularly.

At least that’s the plan.

I suspect I will expend just as much energy nagging people about what they want tot make (so I can buy the ingredients), hounding them from their computers to start cooking, and standing over them while they cook.  But hopefully by September everyone will get used to it because September is when the 50-56 hour weeks start for the “holiday season” (aka September-Februrary)

The 56 hour/6 day a week nonsense of my job ended in January.  Then it became 50 hour/5 day weeks.

Which made me bitter.  Very bitter. And angry. Like saying “fuck” a half dozen or more [...]]]> I’ve got a moment so I thought I’d post something so I can keep a claim to the domain.

The 56 hour/6 day a week nonsense of my job ended in January.  Then it became 50 hour/5 day weeks.

Which made me bitter.  Very bitter. And angry. Like saying “fuck” a half dozen or more times an hour bitter & angry.

As if it was the only adjective I knew.

Really, my language at work would’ve make a sailor blush. 

But I blame management for saying things like “This is very unusual. It’s never happened before like this in the past.” and following that up immediately with “This is just the nature of the business.”

PICK ONE! It can’t be BOTH!

Add that to them telling us to just assume 10 hour days always when they are supposed to give us 24 hours notice or we don’t have to stay.

Last week though I had an actual, honest to god 40 hour week.

And I said ‘fuck’ maybe 6 times the whole week.

So there’s that.

Right now me & the family are in Florida on spring break & I am working a 0 hour week. 

We had the usual 18 hour drive, complete with I95 traffic hell, side roads & Waffle Houses.

And we were 3 for 4 geocaching.

The boys woke up Sunday morning & immediately jumped in the pool, their favorite activity.

Since it was Easter Sunday DH & I had to wait until today for our favorite Florida activity – going out to lunch!

People ask us what we are going to be doing in Florida and the answer is always the same – EATING!

My god, the number of restaurants in a 5 mile radius of my folks’ house is just overwhelming to 2 people from a small town.  Especially since we have to drive 20 miles just to get to 1 restaurant.

In one plaza alone there is a Greek place, a Cuban place, a sushi place and a pizza place.  Plus a Subway.

In family news Havoc has a girlfriend!  We’ve never met her but we have dropped him off at her house once. He comes home from school & talks to her on the phone until dinner & then again after dinner.  While also texting her at the same time. 

Mayhem is having issues with his math teacher.  Personality conflict I think mostly.  They both seem to be trying but I think at this point they each find the other so frustrating they really aren’t succeeding. I’m trying to see both sides of it.  Months ago I could see the teacher’s point but these days I’m mostly seeing Mayhem’s. I told him that one of the lessons you are supposed to learn at school is how to deal with people.  Your boss isn’t always going to like you, you will have co-workers you don’t really get along with.  Now is the time to start sorting out how to deal with it.

DH’s job is what it is.  The long tale of wizards & dystopia has kinda sorta come to an end. (but really until some of those people die it will never end.  I thought I was an advanced grudge carrier but these guys are way way ahead of me). 

I had to give up the photo a day thing by mid October.  No photos allowed at work & not really a whole lot to take photos of otherwise.  I chose not try again this year.  I figure a photo a week is probably a better goal.  I haven’t scrapped a page since last May and that was just a two page Project life weekly spread.  I haven’t done an honest to god scrapping page in about 18 months.  Too tired mentally & physically most days to do more than flop on the couch, with small side forays into making dinner or doing laundry.

People think ‘warehouse work? oh that means you are moving boxes all day’. Yes, that is about a third of my job.  The rest of it is paperwork & data entry. (Sometimes duplicate data entry due to the two different systems not importing things from one another because reasons).

Also furniture assembly when it is a new product to make sure it goes together properly.  You’d be surprised how often that it doesn’t.

(is it a warehouse or a furniture store?)

This is sort of rambling & I don’t have a good wrap up so here is a photo of the cat Skittles in the dryer. She got tired of waiting for the clean clothes to be put in the laundry basket & decided to just sleep in them in the dryer.

It’s also colder than hell, so you get a variety.

This is week 15 or so of 56 hour, 6 day weeks.  Sometime in the near future… February or so probably, what with returns… it will go back to 40 hour, 5 day weeks.

I’m trying to remember what that feels like.

But the [...]]]>

It’s also colder than hell, so you get a variety.

This is week 15 or so of 56 hour, 6 day weeks.  Sometime in the near future… February or so probably, what with returns… it will go back to 40 hour, 5 day weeks.

I’m trying to remember what that feels like.

But the up side is all the overtime is paying for Havoc’s braces.

And that will continue through Christmas, with the possibility for 10 hour days to become 12 hour ones.

Not looking forward to it.

This is the over crowded warehouse

Every paperclip is a purchase order we have to do quality assurance on.

There is so much paperwork/data [...]]]> I’ve been working 56 hour weeks.

And that will continue through Christmas, with the possibility for 10 hour days to become 12 hour ones.

Not looking forward to it.

This is the over crowded warehouse

Every paperclip is a purchase order we have to do quality assurance on.

There is so much paperwork/data entry in this job.

Which is sort of my thing. I admit, I kind of love paperwork & data entry.

And I get lots of physical exercise

So it’s a good job for me from that perspective.  But I am really hating the hours right now

In other news DH & I went on a date night and about 90 minutes into it Havoc sent us this photo:

Last thing we said to them before we left was load the dishwasher & run it.

But there wasn’t enough dish detergent so they topped it up was Dawn dish soap.

We weren’t even mad.

After all they had run the dishwasher.

And the floor needed mopped anyway.

What were we off doing?

I was getting this:

My newest tattoo. 3 years in the making.  I was supposed to get this for my 45th birthday.

In 2012.