Dogs
Childless, not loveless.
Rob and I have been together for almost 11 years now.
We decided a long time ago that we do not want children. A lot of people really don’t understand this and I’m not sure why. I mean, I respect your decision to want to have a family. So why can’t you respect mine to go child free?
When we first got together I was on the fence. I love kids, I always have. My first job was working at a preschool three days a week and I LOVED it. I enjoyed playing games with the kids and running around on the playground with them. I couldn’t wait to have a kid of my own, eventually. I certainly wasn’t looking to conceive at a young age, but I always just assumed I would be a mom some day.
The older I got, the more the thought of becoming a mommy became less and less of a priority. I had lots of friends who already had babies and while I loved helping out with them, I noticed the lack of freedom and didn’t really want that for myself at that age.
“At that age” turned out to not be an age at all. It wasn’t about being a wild kid, or wanting to experience my 20’s at their fullest. I was just not cut out to be a mom.
After first getting together with Rob and getting married, the assumption that I would have kids came back. It was programed into me from birth that you get married and you have babies. We didn’t discuss it other than the fact that we didn’t want to have kids “yet”, so we always used protection.
As the years went by, we had one pregnancy scare that told me I was definitely NOT ready to have kids. That feeling never went away and at 35 years old, it still stands. We have always said that if it happens, it happens. However, we have always taken every precaution to make sure it DOESN’T happen because it isn’t really what we want.
Understand that I have had moments when I have held a friends baby, or watched a sappy movie and I have come away saying to myself that I wanted a baby. That usually lasts all of about three hours and then I come to the realization that I am far to selfish to have a child.
It sounds horrible to say it, I realize that. Here is the bottom line: I love my life. I love being able to call up Rob on a Wednesday saying that I want to go away for the weekend and boom, we do. I love to sleep and can’t function unless I get at least eight hours a night, nor would I want to. I really don’t want to be the person to care for a helpless human life for more than a few hours. I enjoy my life and I don’t want anything messing with it.
That being said, at least I realize how selfish I am. I think it is pretty great that I know that, while I know I could be a good mother, it would end up being a burden in my mind. I’m not afraid to say that while I know I would love my child, I also know I would end up resenting them, and no matter how I tried to hide that from them, kids pick up on that shit. I don’t want to be the reason my child is in therapy 20 years from now.
As an alternative, Rob and I have always had dogs. They are our furry children. They provide us with the unconditional love of a child with less responsibility. I foresee us always having dogs as they bring us great joy without the burden of finding childcare and such and I am okay with that.
I guess what I am trying to say is that even though I am a happily married woman, I don’t want to have kids and there is no shame in that.
Visited an old friend today…
It’s hard to believe that Romie has been gone a whole year. It seems like just yesterday we made the hardest decision of our lives to have him put down. But it wasn’t. It was a year ago that we put him out of his pain and into the afterlife.
When we buried Romie in my in-laws back yard, we used a photo frame as a marker on his grave. It was a frame that my friend LaShundia’s children had made for us when Romie was alive. They made one for Pappy too. They were white bones and in the middle they had put a picture of each dog respectively and written their name with pink puffy paint on the top and bottom. My father in law mounted the frame on a metal rod and it has served as the perfect marker(with the help of a large see through plastic bag on the top of it.
The day we buried him, we decided that every Thanksgiving we would come out and visit him and change out his picture for the frame.
That is what we did today.
The ground has grown over nicely. If not for the marker you wouldn’t even know where to look.
Rob changed the photo and tried to keep things light, but my tears flowed anyway. Time has healed. I didn’t think it would at first. Last year I thought I would never stop crying. I thought that the dull ache in my chest would never subside, but it has. I still think of him often. The difference is that it no longer brings a stab of pain at the loss, but rather a smile at the memory of what a good, silly, stupid and funny dog he was.
We miss you, sweet Romie…and we always will.
Dog+Advil=Bad
A little background before I tell today’s tale:
I get really bad cramps at that time of the month. I have since I first started. I have also always kept an Advil tablet or two next to my bed since I realized that when I wake up at three in the morning it is easier just to roll over, pop the pill and get back to sleep. If I have to get up and get them from the bottle in the cupboard I am less likely to take one when the cramps start. That leads the the cramps getting so bad that I end up hoarking into the toilet for the rest of the day from the pain.
Having told you that…
This morning at five of eight I was checking my email as I tend to do right before leaving for work. I was just about to scoot into the bathroom to brush my hair when I heard crunch crunch.I whipped around and saw Pappy on the bed by my nightstand swallowing something. I did a quick search of my memory banks and thought there had been a leftover advil tablet on the stand from my last period. I got up and inspected the nightstand…no tablet. It also looked like he had pushed around the towel that I keep on the stand protect the wood.
Now, Rob has a tendency to eat in bed and leave a few crumbs behind so it could have been a cocoa crispy for all I know. However, after a quick search on the Internet for the toxicity of ibuprofen in dogs Rob declared: “We have to get him to the vet!”
Given our dogs penchant for eating anything and everything, I have been known to google certain foods and toxicity in dogs before. There was an incident in Hollywood with some chocolate chip cookies recently and I remembered the websites usually give a ratio between the weight of the dog and how much they can ingest before it is toxic to them. The website that Rob found just said it was bad news all around and had to be dealt with within a half an hour to prevent any long lasting side effects including death.
We rushed down to the vets office(which is thankfully only a mile away…gotta love small towns!) and they immediately took him in the back to induce vomiting. I ran back home because we had forgotten to bring in an example of the pill and by the time I got back they had examined the vomit and said they didn’t find any evidence of a pill. But when I showed the vet tech the pill shape and color he took it and said he would go look again. I’m not sure if he was being extra thorough or it didn’t look like what he thought he should be looking for.
Rob and I sat in the waiting room holding hands. Rob cracking jokes to keep me from having a meltdown. The last time we were in that office together was when we made the hardest decision of our collective lives in choosing to do the humane thing and put Romie to sleep.
Finally the vet came out and she told us that Pappy had thrown up three times and the last time was just mucus so she knew he was completely cleaned out. She said in a few minutes they were going to give him some sort of charcoal treatment that would prevent any remaining chemicals in his system from absorbing or something like that. She said that they didn’t find a pill but if it had been bitten(crunch crunch) that it would have lost it’s shape of course and since it was the same color as the dog food that had come up it would be kind of hard to tell. She said that things looked very positive and that we should come back in an hour.
We got back home and Rob hugged me while I finally had a mini meltdown and then he headed to work. I sat around and waited…finishing a book that I was almost done anyway and then went back to get Pappy.
They said that he would be fine but to just watch him over the next two days since things like kidney problems took a couple of days to show up. Just to monitor his eating and watch for a couple of different signs.
We are home safe now and I am choosing to stay home with him today. Partly to watch over him and partly because of the horrible guilt I feel, having caused him such hardship today. What a horrible mother I am!
Lesson learned? Oh yes. No more shortcuts leaving medicine out for him to munch on.
Poor guy. I think I’m going to go curl up with him right now!
No Longer On This Earth, But Forever In Our Hearts
This morning Romie was the same. He had relieved himself on the blanket so Rob washed and dried it.
Romie was now refusing water so Rob called and left the vet a message. Around 7:30 this morning they called us back. They told us to bring him in around 9:45.
Needless to say the minutes passed like hours until it was time. We rolled Romie back on to the now clean blanket and fireman carried him out to the back of the PT. He was a little shaken by the experience and gagged a few times…I thought he might throw up but there wasn’t really anything *to* throw up…after a few seconds he just laid back down and was fine.
As Rob went back to lock up the house I sat on the tailgate of the PT and petted Romie as the tears flowed quite freely.
A few minutes later and we were off to the vet.
When we got there we were both very emotional and the receptionist was very nice. He had seen us out the window prior to coming in the office and told us that the vet was just finishing up and he would be more than happy to come out and get us if we wanted to go back and spend more time with Romie.
Of course, that is what we did. As we were both sitting on the tailgate of the PT petting our beloved dog, a man in a black car drove up blasting the James Blunt song “You’re beautiful” and parked. Not shutting the music off he got out of his car(huge hairy man with no shirt, by the way…) and started shaking out his floor mats.
Rob looked down as his expression broke and said: “He couldn’t be playing Earth, Wind and Fire?” before he burst into tears.
It is a joke of ours that no one can be sad while listening to Earth, Wind and Fire or Dance Hall Crashers.
The guy let the song play in it’s entirety before he finally shut the car off and put a shirt on, disappearing into a building. I don’t think I will ever be able to hear that song again without tearing up…
Finally the receptionist called us in and we waited in the examining room until the vet showed up. He came in and we explained the situation. He told us that in his experience with larger dogs when they lose mobility and the ability to walk away from their refuse, they are no longer happy. When he heard that he was also not eating or drinking anymore he was even more sure that euthanasia was the answer.
He came out to the car and did a brief exam on the dog. He said the heart and lungs still sounded healthy but that obviously with the loss of the back end and the not eating or drinking…at sixteen the most humane thing to do would be to put him down.
They were all very nice and accommodating there. They let us take care of the financial part first at our request. We knew we would be in no shape to want to do it after. They even brought what they needed out to the car so that Romie didn’t have to be moved or otherwise inconvenienced any more than he already had been.
I thought I was ready for it but when he came out with the syringe I lost it. Rob wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to where I couldn’t see what they were doing. With my face buried in his chest I sobbed long and hard, beginning to shake.
Rob just kept whispering into my hair, reminding me to breathe. Telling me that Romie has had a long and happy life.
And just like that it was over. I heard Rob thanking the vet and I looked up long enough to mumble some sort of thanks. He patted me on the back, gave his condolences and they were gone.
I sobbed some more into Rob’s chest. I felt one arm leave me and I heard the back door of the PT swing shut.
I had originally told Rob that I didn’t want to go with him to the burial. That was what I said on Wednesday night when I was in full on denial that my dog could be dying. When Rob said he was going to drop me off at home and head straight for Salinas I realized I needed to be there for that. I wasn’t sure if it was because I didn’t want to be alone or that I wanted the closure, but I knew I had to go.
We stopped at the house very briefly and I stayed in the car.
Not that long ago my friend LaShundia and her children had made Rob and I a gift. They were white dog bone picture frames and the kids had written in pink puffy paint the names of each of the dogs on the frames and put pictures of each inside them. Rob had said at the time that if we ever got the dogs cremated when they passed it would make a cute frame to put with their ashes. Well, it turned out they make a good headstone as well. That is why we stopped at home. Rob also brought Pappy out to me.
Pappy got to ride in the front seat with me for once as we made our way to Rob’s parents house.
Rob had called before we left the vet so Pa Mackadoo had already started digging when we got there. Rob helped him finish and then while Pa went to find a suitable post for our new makeshift headstone, Rob covered Romie with a sheet and we fireman carried him over to his final resting spot.
Once he was covered and the headstone in place, we stood for a few minutes, saying our silent goodbyes and then left.
Now we are here at home and I keep shifting from crying to numb. I think that the decision making was the worst part. I can easily say that to decide to put Romie down was the hardest decision of my life. I mean, I knew what had to be done. I knew that it was for the best…but how can you say that you want to put your dog to sleep when that dog is staring up at your with his sweet brown eyes…not understanding what is going on himself?
But I know it was painless…he just went to sleep. He is in a much better place now and he is not in any pain.
So, to those of you that have known Romie as part of the Mackadoo household, say a prayer, raise a glass…do whatever it is that you do, but do it in honor of Romie. For he truly was one of the best dogs I have ever met, and I am honored just to have had him in my life for the last nine years.
I love you Romie and I will never forget you.
Romie…
I’m not sure if Romie will make it through the night.
What happened was that I came home from work last night and he didn’t greet me to shove past me out the door to go pee like usual. He sort of walked stiffly out of the bedroom and looked at me. I had to coax him out and even then he only went a few steps, peed and pooped and again just stood there looking off into space. I had to take him by the collar and bring him back in.
Normally I feed them right then and there and if I don’t, Romie bugs me until I give in. It so happened that we were out of dog food that night and I was waiting for Rob to bring some home from the store. But Romie just simply stood looking like a zombie until he finally laid down and didn’t budge…not even when Rob came home with the food.
Rob was able to feed him a small handful of food but he still didn’t move.
Later in the night Rob tried to get him up to at least go outside and as soon as he stood his breath became very labored. That happened the two times Romie managed to stand and walk a few steps.
At that point we were pretty sure that it was the beginning of the end. We put him on a blanket before we went to bed…pretty sure he’d be gone by morning. He didn’t appear to be in pain, and the guy is sixteen years old so we figured there was no point in rushing to the vet.
This morning he was still alive but pretty much immobile. He drank from the water bowl we brought him but refused food.
Timing being as crappy as it was, we had to go to my inlaws for thanksgiving dinner. That was a hard decision. In the end we went, bringing Pappy with us so he wouldn’t bother the big guy.
Right before we left, Romie didn’t move anywhere but just let his bladder loose and peed all over the carpet. I was pretty sure he would be gone when we got home.
When we finally did, he was in the same position as we left him.
I got him to drink some more water and lick a little bit of peanut butter off my finger but he wanted nothing to do with his dog food.
He still doesn’t appear to be in pain and seems quite content just to lay on his side and sleep. We did roll him over just a few minutes ago so that he doesn’t have any complications for laying on one side for too long.
Tomorrow if he is still alive we will take him to the vet. Even if he is dying from old age it appears to be very slow and there is no reason to let him starve to death.
We want him home with us when it happens but at this point it is just cruel to let him starve and be dehydrated. It’s a long shot but if they do have to put him down we want to know if there is a way we can do it at home. We want him here with us and after it is over we want to bury him in our inlaws yard where Sarah is.
I’m much more level headed about this today than I was last night or this morning.
Rob and I had always discussed in passing: “When Romie goes…” but I never really allowed my head to think it was really going to happen. Last night I had no other choice but to accept that reality. Sure, there will be a lot more tears and sadness…but I’ve had a chance to wrap my head around the fact that it is inevitable.
I called my mom tonight and she said: “Well we’ve been through this before…” but I had to remind her that when we finally had to put my childhood dog Mitzi down, we hadn’t lived with her for over a year. We were forced to move into a place that didn’t allow pets so she had to stay with my grandparents for that last year of her life. It allowed me to separate myself more from the situation.
Pappy is depressed too. He doesn’t understand why his brother won’t play with him anymore.
My girls, Paula and Jenn have shown we the meaning of true friendship in the last day and a half. They have been here for me through this…knowing this is as close as losing a family member for me and I am so grateful to them I can’t put it into words. Love you bitches.
So that’s about it from here.
Please keep Romie in your thoughts…that he either makes a full recovery or makes a safe and painless transition to a better place.
Currently Reading:
Annual Year in Review 2007
January:
The month started with us adopting a new dog, Pappy, and adjusting to all that it meant. Jim got shipped back to Iraq and my mom broke her arm.
February:
My MIL had major back surgery and Renee’, James and I met in Reno for another gambling visit!
March:
We enrolled and started Pappy in some training classes.
April:
I hate to say but I didn’t blog in April so I have no idea what I was up to.
May:
Both Rob and mines birthdays were in May, but more important we flew to Phoenix for Brian and Stephs wedding and then got to catch up with DD and Alan.
June:
Didn’t blog in June and am not sure.
July:
My finger infection acted up again…We went to Monterey Pride for the first time and we saw Die Hard 4 in the theatre, and I had issues about my computer at work. Also I get tendenitis of my ankle.
August:
I wished on the lottery and lost, We go to the Watsonville races and Pappy gets a nasty spider bite near his peepee.
We had a week in Vegas with my Mommy where we didn’t win but Rob and I both got new hair.
September:
We headed up to Sac-town to go to Renee’s going away party, and we also go see a local band Rob is friends with in San Jose.
October:
Pappy dresses up like a Pimp Daddy and gets in the local paper. Also I launch my youtube cooking show.
November:
We head up to San Jose and spend the night at Rudy and Jades. We spend Thanksgiving with my inlaws and Pappy loves it!
December:
Xmas at our house is nothing special but we have a pot luck at work and go to my inlaws at Xmas where Pappy loves it again! 🙂
Last Thursday as we were driving to work we heard an advertisement for the car races in Watsonville. Every now and again I had heard Rob mention them and say it’s something we should do some night but I never put much thought into it. After the commercial was over I asked Rob if that was something he was interested in and he said: “Yeah, only for the last two years.” So it was decided we would head out after work on Friday, which we did.
It wasn’t bad. My only prior experience to attending a racing event was a NASCAR race that a friend of Rob’s had gotten us tickets to for a wedding present. Picture it: I’m over 300 pounds, it’s over 100 degrees out and we have to walk about two miles to get to the speedway. Our seats are pretty high up and I’m afraid of heights. And oh yeah, I’m on my period.
Yeah, not the best day of my life. So when I say it wasn’t bad I mean that it was pretty freaking good in comparison.
It’s all done on a very small scale at the Santa Cruz fairgrounds. Very low key, you show up you get your grub and you climb the metal bleachers to a seat where you won’t get mud flung on you(unless of course that is your thing. In that case–have a ball!) and sit. They kept everything moving along quite well with no delays so that was favorable. Rob was truly loving it and I was loving the corn dog and the out of this world French fries.
My only complaint was that is was a bit long and I didn’t bring a sweatshirt along with my jacket because it got quite cold after eight or so. I got really tired and so we left when there were two races left to run. Overall, a fun night out with the husband doing something he actually wanted to do for a change.
Saturday we were up early to go get the Mustang from the shop. Oh yeah, did I mention we finally took the car in after running it for a year on a Mickey moused hose? Yup–to the tune of $2000.00! Yay for stupidity!
Anyway, I dropped Rob off and once he rescued the car I headed out to Petsmart and got some stuff for Pappy’s sore(it’s doing so much better!) along with some dog food.
Don’t you hate when you go into a store knowing pretty much what you want and then get accosted by the store employees? I mean, I’m all for having people available if you have questions but I was standing there in the dog food aisle trying to determine which bag had the small kibble and the big kibble when this lady who was roughly 108 years old comes up in a petsmart apron and asks if I need help. I smile kindly and tell her I’m just looking for dog food for our two dogs. She immediately says: “You know you have to feed them separately right??”
I nod and smile as dismissively as I can before going back to looking at the food. She asks what kinds of dogs so I tell her and she then launches into this five minute monolog on how I have to get two different kinds of dog foods and blah blah blah. Finally to appease her I hefted the 40 lb bag of food for medium sized dogs(the kind I was going to get anyway) into the cart and put a small bag of food for larger dogs on top. Thanked her and walked away.
I made into the flea and tick aisle where I was about to ditch the smaller bag when she comes up behind me and says: “And on to your next endeavor, what are you looking for now?”
‘Tell her you’re just looking!’ my brain pleaded with me but my mouth didn’t listen. “I need some sort of salve to put on a sore area that my dog won’t stop licking.”
Her eyes lit up. “Where is the sore?”
“On his inner leg.” I didn’t want to say right beside his wiener.
“You need to get a collar.” She runs in front of me and actually grabs the front of my cart to make me follow her.
“Actually, I’m just looking for some cream or something…”
“He’ll just lick it off.” She gleefully replies as she guides my cart with amazing strength for a senior citizen to an endcap full of those horrible cone collars.
That is where I had to draw the line. I may joke about how funny it would be to put my dogs in one of those but I am not putting Pappy in one of those just because he likes to lick his wiener!
“I just need some cream.” I stand firm.
She pauses and then frowns before leading me over to the next aisle where she randomly grabs some cream for itching which is not Pappy’s problem and hands it to me.
“You really should consider getting a collar.” She starts wringing her hands worriedly and I begin to think there is some sort of special commission on selling cone collars.
“Thank you so much for your help, I’m just going to keep looking around now.” I raise my eyebrows and stare her down.
Obviously disappointed she nods her head and turns to walk slowly down the aisle and disappears around the corner.
I quickly locate the cream I need for Pappy and put it in the cart as a gentleman steps up next to me and starts perusing the supplements.
Out of nowhere granny-stalker runs up and starts interrogating him as I hightail it out of the aisle and quietly go ditch the other bag of food before practically running to the checkout for fear of being harassed any more.
She was scary!
After that I headed over to Circuit City and picked up a new set of headphones(thanks Pappy!) and my new Sims Life game before hitting Mickie D’s for some chicken nuggets because I was starving. Yeah, diet’s not going so good.
Romie’s ear doesn’t appear to be any better. The infection itself is but that ear filled with blood thing is just as full as ever. Rob took him back to the vet because we can’t stop him from shaking his head. The doc said just keep doing what we are doing. The only other option would be for him to lance it and for it to bleed out over time all over the place, put Romie in a cone and that means that he can’t get in or out of the doggie door. So we wait.
I got a disturbing message from K on my answering machine the weekend before last. It was after I had gone to bed and I didn’t even realize the message was there until Wednesday that week. It starts out with her crying and saying “Please [her son’s name] please!” and you can hear him yelling in the background. His voice gets closer and then he finally takes the phone (I assume) and he yells something that I can’t understand and the phone is banged into something several times (I’m guessing the table) and then the line goes dead.
What. The. Fuck?????
Is that not scary? I have no idea what it means. She called me the other night while I was online and said she would get online so I set up my yahoo messenger and waited for a couple hours but she never came on.
I called her this weekend but didn’t get an answer. I’m not sure what the hell is going on there. I’m afraid to find out.
I thought I would get out of bill close this month being in training and all…yeah, should have known better. We have been released from training today, tomorrow and Wednesday. Everyone else is calling on meters but I am working on billing. Which I don’t mind in the least. I have no problem helping out U and R…there is however one person on my team, we’ll call him D, that I will be very upset if I end up staying late on Tues and Wed to clean up his work. I have checked his reports every day and he has done next to nothing. He’s had all month to clean it up like R does and I did when I had my own type, but he HASN’T! R said he has seen him over at his desk drawing tattoos and reading magazines. As if that isn’t bad enough, he is a smart ass and gets on my case like I don’t know anything. Hello? I’m still very new and I’m finally getting training but at least I know how to have a successful bill close with my reports!!!!! It’s called actually working all month long instead of sitting there with your thumb up your ass.
Right before I went into training I pulled D’s reports and was going to work them because I knew that we’d be stuck at end of month doing his work after hours if I didn’t. R told me not to. He told me that they are keeping a record of every ones daily reports and looking at what goes up and what goes down and supposedly he’s going to shoot himself in the foot by not doing anything. I don’t know about all that but if it doesn’t get recognized I’m gonna have a fit. R said he already talked to our manager about it so she is supposed to be keeping an eye on it.
Who knows? But you can bet you’ll be hearing a rip-roaring rant this week if I have to stay very late to work on his shit!
Whew. Now that that is out of the way…
The traffic after work has gotten so much worse. I can only imagine it is coming from the fact that we have hired so many more people but damn! It takes me about fifteen minutes to get from my building to the end of the street (this would probably equal to be an eighth of a mile). There are days when we are in training that our trainer lets us out five or ten minutes early and it is pure heaven! Zip-zip and I’m on my way! I’m hoping that once school lets out it will make a bit of a difference. I know it will on the way to work but I’m not sure about home.
My Poor Puppy!
My poor baby Romie. For those who don’t know, my dog Romie has been fighting ear infections since we have had him…which is about five or six years (he was here a year before me). We clean his ears often but it doesn’t seem to help. Lately it’s seemed really bad and no matter how often we clean his ears it doesn’t go away. He has been shaking his head like crazy and rubbing his ear into the carpet to try and get the itch to go away. We kept saying that we need to take him to the vet but we haven’t because there never seems to be a good time.
Well on Saturday morning Rob got a good scare when he went to pet our pretty little puppy. He called the vet immediately and they were able to fit him in that day. Rob being a good husband let me sleep in, whispering in my ear that the dogs ear had gotten worse and he was taking him to the vet. I slept late and when I woke I came out into the living room. Rob told me when I got a second I needed to look at the dog’s left ear and “don’t freak out.” He said the vet told him it was normal and he sees it all the time. It doesn’t hurt the dog but it won’t heal for about two months or so.
I called the dog in and Oh My God. The poor baby. You know how the floppy part of a dog’s ear is flat? Well on the left ear of Romie, the flat part is filled up and puffy…with blood.
It is called an oral hematoma and I guess it is common. He basically shook his head so much that a blood vessel burst in his ear and filled the pocket that is that floppy part of the ear. It looks soooo bad and I just want to cry for him. They gave us ear drops for the infection but more importantly they gave us pills that will dull the sensation in his ear so he won’t shake his head anymore. I’ve never seen anything like it. I have been giving him treats all weekend just because I feel so guilty that we didn’t bring him to a vet sooner to avoid this whole mess.
Work Gripes
No updates for a while…sorry bout that. I’ve been writing them in my head at work, but by the time I get home, all I want to do is crash out. It’s a good thing though. It means that my job is challenging me and making me want to do my best. Last week was bill close, so the week went by very fast.
We stayed until eight on Friday even though my department had our reports clean by noon. We had to stay to help out the lazy–oh I mean not so fortunate billers. I have no problem with staying to help; I am a total team player. However when I watch people stand around talking every time our supervisors go into a meeting instead of doing their work ESPECIALLY when it’s bill close week, it makes me kinda angry.
Oh well, so this week is the slow week, but it is also a week of changes. Oh yes. They change shit here more often than they ever did at my old job.
We were told mid month that our supervisors would be going away. Some will take management positions; some will take senior specialist jobs. Either way it won’t take place for a couple of months. In the mean time, they decided to shake us all up and give us new marketplaces and new supervisors. This was set to happen today, but of course it hasn’t really.
I’ve barely met my new sup and our reports haven’t changed so we basically had very little to do. And I’m sure my new sup is a nice person but I am going to miss the hell out of M. She was the coolest. Loud obnoxious and fun, just like I like it. She is also incredible at what she does which, I’m sure is part of the reason for the moves. I don’t want to toot my own horn but our team under M has kicked ass! A lot of the other teams, yeah not so much with the asskicking. So I know the change has to happen for the good of the whole billing team blah blah blah, but I don’t have to like it!
I got recognized today in an email. Three of us from my team did. R, P and I and two other folks for our great report cleaning on our bill close. It made me feel especially good because I still haven’t had any formal training. Work has pretty much been my world lately so I don’t have much else to report.
Oh! The dog has a new talent! 🙂 He has proper etiquette for eating edamame. For those of you that don’t know what that is (because I didn’t until we took an Asian cooking class), it’s these tasty little soy beans in a pod. You basically squeeze them out of the pod with or without salt and you don’t eat the pod. Well Rob and I had some on Sunday and there were some left over on the stove. Rob said something smartass (big shock) so I grabbed one and threw it at him. It bounced off his arm and hit the floor. We laughed and each assumed the dog would eat it up whole.
About a half an hour later I heard Rob in the kitchen laughing. I walked out and saw him staring at the empty pod halves on the floor. He asked me why I would do that, and I said I didn’t. We both looked over at the dog who stared back at us with his usual “Duh.” expression.
Keep in mind that this is a dog that will eat ANYTHING. He’s ingested a plastic string cheese wrapper before because there was a tiny piece of cheese left in it. Rob grabbed another bean and tossed at the dog. The dog gobbled it up and Rob and I shrugged assuming that we were delusional. The next thing we know three bright green soy beans shoot out of Romie’s mouth followed by the empty pod halves. He then greedily ate the beans, nosed away the pod and looked at us for more.
I’m sure it really is a “you had to be there moment” but Rob and I thought it was the funniest thing in the world!! We gleefully fed him the rest of the edemame while tears of laughter leaked down our cheeks. Yeah, I know. We need hobbies.
I am a 40 something married woman living in California.
I enjoy knitting and crocheting, watching crap movies, snuggling with my two adorable dogs and trying to be a good person.
