Take me out to the ballgame - Part I

Saturday isn't coming fast enough for me. It's been a long time coming but we are FINALLY making our return to a major league ballgame. And I'm so excited!

Saturday morning we're hoping on the Amtrak and riding up to Chicago where we'll catch the Red Line and be at The Friendly Confines...yes siree folks...Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs!

The weather is supposed to be scorching H O T so hopefully the beer will be C O L D ! We're meeting my cousin Jenn and her husband Tony and we might hit Harry Carey's or some other local bars too. The game is at 12:05 so by the time the Amtrak gets in and we hop the L we'll be getting down there just about in time for the game to start.

The totally cool thing is that we've got a friend who has a friend who is a big wig at The Stadium Club and he's getting our names on the list to get in there for a bit. I guess it's the place where the players' wives and any other celebrity attendees hang. So, with a little luck I'll be writing in next week about how we saw and/or talked to somebody awesome.

I've got my camera all ready to go so maybe I'll post some pics too.

In any event, this is what we're hoping to hear at the end of the day on Saturday...

GO CUBS GO!

GO CUBS GO!

HEY CHICAGO WHAT DO YOU SAY? THE CUBS ARE GOING TO WIN TODAY!

The drama of my life

The past couple weeks have been so packed with drama that I need a vacation to get away from it all.

My husband had another one of his MANstrual periods last week and didn't talk to me for 4 1/2 days. Whatever. He got pissed off because I was late getting home one night from work. I called him and told him I was going to be late and the reason why. I ended up getting home about 40 minutes later than I normally do. What a cry baby. We had nothing going on, he had no where to be. All seems to be back to normal now and I've been home "on time" every night this week.

My daughter has been with my mom all week instead of going to day camp. It's good because we didn't have to shell out $90 for the week but it's bad because she's with Grandma and Grandpa ..... and we all know what happens to children when they stay with Grandma and Grandpa. The word BRAT doesn't even begin to cover it.

I have become a human lab rat thanks to my gyn. For years I've had female trouble, the "H" word has even been mentioned on numerous occasions, but because I'm still young she doesn't want to take that route just yet. So instead she put me on this pill that was just approved by the FDA and has a list of side effects as long as a hardened criminal's rap sheet. I'm ending the second week on it and have already had the pleasure of dealing with several from the list. No, not the fun ones! I got the ones I was hoping I'd be in the 1% of women who didn't suffer from. The painful yucky ones, that's what I've had. But, I'm a trooper and I'm going to work around them and see if this really works. If it does, it will be a God send. I'll keep you posted.

My daughter won a Wii!!! I think my husband and I are more excited about it than she is. She sold the most scratch off cards during the fundraiser the youth softball/baseball seasons - to the tune of almost $450 worth! We would have never bought one, we prefer to spend time outside doing stuff as opposed to sitting in the house in front of the TV playing video games. But, when it's free it's different! I've already put the Wii Fit bundle on my Christmas list. Yes, I know it's only July.

That's about it in a nut shell. I'm SOOOOOO glad it's Friday. This has been one long week at work and having it be over sounds fantastic!

Stress Relief

OK, I took a few deep breaths and imagined I was on a tropical island. I'm feeling much better now. Actually, I think the turning point was the shopping I did on my lunch break the other day. It was very successful, I walked out with around $150 worth of clothes for $8.54. I had a $100 gift certificate and a $30 off coupon that I applied and the $8.54 was what was left after applying those. So, 5 shirts and 3 pairs of pants later I was feeling a little better! Nothing quite like retail therapy!

I also started reading again. I've always loved to read, I just kind of stopped when my daughter was born. Too much other stuff going on, I was too tired, etc. She wanted some books for herself so I figured I'd get myself a book too since we were at the library. So last Saturday I picked up Stephen King's "Cell". I love Stephen King books and at one point had read them all, including the Bachman Books. I finished it last night. It was an awesome book, highly recommended if SK is your cup of tea.

Today at work is going to be a quite day, our phones aren't working. It's almost as if some greater authority knew I needed a break in order to get caught up with the madness. Thank you, whoever you are. I did need it and it's appreciated more than you can imagine.

This close to falling apart

I'm beginning to believe that I'm inches away from a total meltdown. I'm so stressed out with work, home, life in general really and there doesn't appear to be any hope in sight.

Perhaps I'm overexagerating. But not likely.

I could put in 12 hour days for a solid week, never answer a phone, never attend to a client that comes in the office, basically never leave my desk the entire time and still not be caught up. Part of it is the mess that was left behind by the former secretary, part of it is how extremely overloaded our caseload is and part of it is learning curve. It's just beyond anything I can keep under control and it seems that anytime I feel as though I've made one step forward I end up 10 steps back.

For example - filing. It's out of control. I have a stack of papers that are no less than 2 feet high sitting on the floor in my office. Every day I flip through it looking for anything that may be needed the next day. I've tried taking time to get caught up, but it never fails that I end up on the phone all day or on another project.

I can handle this job. I'm not worried about that. But I'm starting to believe that my boss is rethinking how great it was that she got me. I'm better than the previous secretary, no doubt about that, and I have experience with things that none of her staff has had for a great number of years. But its the little stuff that has consumed my life. I haven't left the office on time in over a week. My husband is a little (ok, a LOT) less than happy with the fact that I'm not getting home until well after 6pm. I'm not happy about it either, but what can I do?

We had a guy in here that was answering phones and I was able to tell him that I was unavailable for large chunks of the day while I worked on catching up. He hasn't been in for three weeks. And apparently the other secretary here only answers the phone if she has to. That's a big change from my prior office where we switched off days - one of us did even numbered days and the other did odd numbered days. It worked. I think I'm going to make that suggestion because I know she's just as busy as I am and it may help ease things for both of us.

I have to get this mess cleaned up and formulate some sort of routine. It can't go on like this and I can't allow it to become any worse. I'm exhausted.

If things aren't going wrong my life isn't right

I really don't know what I did or who I pissed off, but the Karma God's have not been helping me out any lately. It seems that for the past 6 days anything that could possibly go wrong - has.

Thursday
I went to get gas in my car before I was set to leave on a trip Friday morning and my car was making a strange noise. Turns out it was my brakes. They're shot. As in my car can't be driven on my trip I'm leaving for Friday morning. So at 8pm, when I'm supposed to leave town no later than 7am Friday morning, I'm begging my parents to let me borrow a car for a couple days to get me to St. Louis and back. Needless to say, I didn't get to bed until nearly midnight.

Friday
Up at 5am to be leaving town no later than 7am. The drive to St. Louis takes 4 hours and I have to be there for an award ceremony that starts at noon. The drive was mostly uneventful and I made it in record time (3 hours 20 minutes). Arrived at the hotel to find their parking garage was at capacity and had to park in a parking garage 6 blocks away. Got checked into my room and the place was boiling hot. I flagged down a hotel employee to see about turning the air on and was told that the room I was in was under construction and wasn't to be used. He sent me back down to the lobby to get a different room, which was a lot better, but I had literally 5 minutes to get changed and get to the ceremony. It was a long day that didn't end until I got back to my hotel room around 1am. Yep, 5 hours sleep.

Saturday
Up at 7:00am into the shower and out of the hotel before 8am and back on the road home. Home right around Noon. I took a short nap before getting ready to head to Peoria for the Peoria Chiefs game. Husband lost his cell phone somewhere between home and home, most likely somewhere in Peoria. I had to drive home because he was an idiot and drank too much. Not home until 11:30pm. Yep, 6 hours sleep.

Sunday, finally a day I can relax. With no car I did mostly nothing.

Monday
At work at 8:30am, stressful day as it was and I didn't get out of the office until after 6pm (my hours are 8:30-5:00) from spending 3 hours on the phone with tech support for one of our computer programs and then, when I was 6 miles from my exit, I came to a complete stand still on the interstate. Apparently there was an accident earlier in the day and they were still cleaning up. I was able to juke around and use an emergency vehicle turn around to head back the other direction and take a different route home but didn't make it home until after 7:00pm.

Today
The brakes on my car are fixed, I guess. They were replaced by my husband and one of his buddies whose family owned a Chevy garage. Problem is, my car is a Nissan. So now there is a strange noise and when I apply the brakes they're "grabby". I'm getting 4 new tires on my car on Wednesday and the mechanic is supposed to look at things then and see if the rotors are bad.

I'm hoping the rest of the day will be uneventful. But I've got so much work to do that it's insane. I'm trying my hardest to get everything done so I can take off tomorrow to go to a water park with my family but I'm catching up from Friday when I was gone, three hours of work that didn't get done yesterday when I was on the phone and everything for today and tomorrow. How many people successfully do 5 days worth of work in 8 hours?