My Hectic, Chaotic Week

I am a bit behind on posting and updating my training, but the tornados and rain have just completely wrecked havoc on my little neck of the woods. Between no electricity, an anxious little 7 year old that is deathly afraid of storms, a 12 year old that wants to chase them, and still trying to work in between all of the school chaos, I am slowly going insane.

Well maybe not completely insane, just feeling a little rushed and a little lost. So lost that I went to pick my kids up yesterday at their after school program, forgetting it was Wednesday and their Dad picked them up - thinking it was Tuesday and I was suppose to have them, that I was frantic because I couldn’t find them.

After searching all over for them and having the staff help me, I realized  - it’s WEDNESDAY - idiot Mom and told the staff that most likely Dad came and picked them up on my day. I wasn’t about to tell them I lost track of what day it was. I already felt stupid, sure wasn’t going to proclaim it publicly.

Anyway, between having to spend my home-office days in the main office, working with my team long hours and just ready for a break from it all, I hope to be back on a regular schedule next week. I will post my training for this week tonight, since I am taking an evening training session.

Hope you are all having a great week!

 

Some Relief

As most of you all know my sister is getting married in September and has asked that my daughter be her flower girl. Great! Awesome! No problem! But, I have to purchase all of her “things”; shoes, tights, dress, etc. Well, I have been to all of the gown stores within my area and there are several issues: one) flower girl dresses only come in white or ivory; two) they do not have even a close enough match to the color my sister wants; and three) the dresses are a bit too… um… not appropriate for a 7 year old.

There is one dress that is an option that will come in the color my sister wants, but it is a junior bridesmaid dress which means my daughter will have to have it to custom fit. OK, fine, I don’t mind, but the dress is over $150.00, plus with the shoes, died to match, another $50.00, then the tights which cost nothing.

I was freaking to spend over $200.00 on an outfit my daughter will wear once! My mom offered this weekend to pay for everything Miss K would need for the wedding. Heck yea! Normally, I wouldn’t accept money like this from my mom, but knowing the amount of money I have to fork out to fly home for the wedding, I am ready to take any help possible.

Airfare: $1,408.00; Hotel: $451.82; Car: $208.00; Total: $2,067.82 - OMG! This is just to get us there; no food, no nothing while we are there. I am going nuts. I mean it would have been one thing if I had some sort of idea, but going through all of my own family issues lately, our move, dental stuff for my son, I was drained of money before she had even asked. I could have said no, but considering I haven’t been home in forever, I figured going would kill two birds with one stone.

What irritated me most of all, was NO one in my family - and I have three sisters there within the same vicinity, plus my mom - offered to let us stay with them for the measly four days we will be in town. WTF? We are the only people coming in from out-of-state, but no one offered and I’m not going to ask. That might seem stupid to not ask, but one time I did and I was given the list of reasons why I couldn’t stay, so no need to bother with that.

I am thinking of starting a fund for people to donate to so that I can get home. How terrible is that. Oh *sigh* just another one of life’s little joys!

 

Predators Among Us

Recently, I found out that my next door neighbor is a sexual offender. I only know this due to an informational brochure that the police delivered directly to me. The officer delivered one to every home on our street to let us know about our dear neighborly pervert. Now, I am not going to play devil’s advocate too much on this one, simply because my daughter is the same age as his victim.

Now, in my state (no clue nationally), sexual offenders are rated on levels - the degree to which they are accessed and could possibly re-offend. There are four levels in my state and my neighbor is a level 2. Well, here is the breakdown on what I learned.

Level 1: Can live anywhere and you would never know. The police are not by law required to notify anyone that this level offender lives near them. Although this level offender is a registered sex offender, level 1’s do not appear on any public registry for you to look up. There is a 25% likelihood this offender will re-offend.

Level 2: (My neighbor). Can live anywhere, but those on the same street will receive a notification from their local police - only after an assessment has been completed. Although this level offender is a registered sex offender, level 2’s do not appear on any public registry for you to look up. There is a 50% likelihood this offender will re-offend.

Level 3 (high risk) Level 4 (dangerous): Can live anywhere and neighbors will receive notification from their local police. Level 3’s and 4’s do appear on local and national registries for the public to view.  There is a 75% likelihood that level 3’s will re-offend and a possible 100% likelihood that level 4’s will re-offend.

No one can give me a clear answer as to why my neighbor is still in his home and has not served any time. I spoke to a friend that is a former police officer and her response was basically age. Now, I can’t say if this is correct; this is all speculation, but because he is 72 years old it is possible they felt he was too old to prosecute and waste the money on.

He was convicted less than one year ago for Sexual Assault 2nd Degree, his victim - a girl, age five at the time and all he got (looks like it to me anyway) was a slap on the wrist by possibly serving probation. If they didn’t want tax payers to pay the penalty for this sick bastard, then place him on house arrest. That way he would have had to pay the incarceration fee and he couldn’t leave his home. I know I would feel a hell of a lot better knowing he couldn’t go outside of a certain range.

It sickens me to know this man is over there. That if for a split second I had left Miss K alone outside, he could have walked up to her and befriended her. I don’t want to even want to think about what this old pervert could have done. I did discuss with Miss K and Mr C about what this man had done (not in detail); enough for them to understand that he is an extremely bad man that hurts children.

I just think often now about his little victim. My heart aches for this little girl and her family.

 

New Class Underway

Well, I started a new class yesterday and with less than a year to go for the marketing degree, I am really second-guessing it all now. I am slowly (more like I AM ALREADY THERE) getting burned out on my current career path that I have been in for over ten years. I am fortunate to have both the background and experience in my career that I do, but I find absolutely no joy in anything associated with this career choice.

Yes, I have a lot of benefits with my company - working from home, extremely lax working hours, and so on, for normally a position that requires a lot of strict guidelines because of what I do. I love my company, I just want out of the job. It is because of the feelings towards what I do, that have me questioning the degree path I am on.

I usually work through the feelings and frustrations because I have a ton of time, energy, and money  invested in the degree, and lots of lost time with my kids. It is too late really for me to change my degree a whole lot and what ever I would decide, would still be in business, so it’s not like I can make a huge change and still be within a good time frame to successfully complete my degree. I’m not starting all over again.

So, really this is more of a vent to release some frustration because I know what I’ll do; I’ll keep going with this degree since I have such a little amount of time left. Then I will have a marketing degree and want out of business so bad that the bitter taste in my mouth won’t go away.

I ventured out at 18 to find the path no one else in my family took. I started off pretty good, then young and stupid, I got blinded by what I thought was love and my path skewed a bit. Well, love found and lost and two kids later - both reminding me they are the center of my world - I find myself age 34 and trying to get back on that path is frustrating to say the least.

OK, vent OFF!

 

Just Some Normal Coffee

Drinking coffee is a must for me in the AM - well, at least for now. I can go months without one sip, but get me hooked back on it, it’s like a drug. I know, I know, coffee is probably not the best thing for me to be drinking, but hey, it’s better than some stupid things I could be doing. Anyway…

My bitch today is that I work in an office with several other women and we all drink coffee, I am the ‘plain’ drinker of the office - meaning coffee and cream work fine for me. Some of the other ladies in my office like it spruced up a bit; flavored this way today, flavored that way tomorrow, and sometimes I wonder how one can even taste the flavor on top of the full cup of creamer and dash of coffee she drinks. Anyway…

When you work in an office of several coffee-drinking people, polite office etiquette leads you to make the coffee in the AM if you are the first one in. We all do that, so that’s all good, BUT make it PLAIN coffee. Please, for all that is sacred in this world, do not make flavored coffee. Just because you want raspberry fruit tart today, doesn’t mean everyone else does, and especially not the plain coffee girl. Its easier to add flavor to your coffee then take it out!

So, how will this be settled? Well, I settled it. I was the first here today, I made plain coffee and dumped the flavor crap down the toilet. Hmm… “I don’t know what happened to the coffee. I didn’t see it this morning.” Tomorrow, I will be the nice colleague and will run to the mom-n-pop coffee shop and buy like every flipping flavor there is to add to coffee and bring it in. They can still have the flavor, just not directly from the pot!