Eaaarrrrthhhquaaaakkkeeee!!!!!!
So, I’ve been in California almost two years now. When I tell people back home that I live in California they automatically picture Los Angeles or some other such big city. They ask isn’t it hard to live there because of the fast pace? The truth is, it’s been paradise. Perfect temps, Maine-like scenery, laid back atmosphere. Very much what the doctor ordered after the high stress life in Phoenix. Where I live in California is nothing like what they perceive it to be. It’s very small town and I like it that way.
Having said that, this afternoon as we were finishing up our lunch break, I stood up to put something in the garbage and felt something very odd. Almost like a rolling sensation underneath my shoes. I turned to Paula and Jenn and they both looked at each other and casually said: “Oh hey, an earthquake.”
I’m pretty sure at that point I resembled a deer in the headlights. I was frozen in mid rise from the table where I was when the the rumbling started. They looked at me and started to look panicked yet reassuring. Like they wanted to talk me down.
“Kel, it’s okay.”
“Yeah it’s just going to last a second.”
“If it gets any worse we’ll go under the table.”
WHAT????
It lasted less than 30 seconds but that was all it took for me to start to panic and freak out. Jenn saw the panic and tears in my eyes right away started to talk to me like her daughter: “It’s okay Kel, it’s going to be over in just a second, it’s not that bad. You’re okay.”
It wasn’t the earthquake that bothered me really. It was the IDEA of the earthquake. The fact that I lived somewhere that had these things so often that my co-workers treated it like it was old hat. The fact that I lived somewhere that had earthquakes PERIOD!
Once it ended we all went outside for some air and then went back to our desks. I composed myself the best I could since I had to cover the front desk and then called Rob. I asked him if he felt it and he said: “felt what?” Damn.
Looking back, it wasn’t a lot it was just a very weird feeling of the ground moving under my feet, especially when I’m not so steady on my feet in the first place due to my anxiety.
I guess it was a 4.8 on the scale. They said it was pretty big to what they have had recently, but not that big.
I guess why I’m really freaked out is that in my sheltered little life, the only time I’ve heard about earthquakes is when there was some huge disaster or a movie that portrays the worst case scenario. So in my head, earthquake = huge deal. I guess that is not always the case.
It won’t stop me from being a paranoid fool though. It’s what I do.
Reno Trip Report
16 Days
It’s not like me to just pick up and go, but in 16 days, I’ll be moving to California.
The reasons behind the move are simple. Rob hates his job. He had already given his notice before we even decided to move to Cali. Last month when we visited Rob’s parents to attend his 20 year high school reunion he voiced this to his parents. They asked if he would think about relocating, he said sure. They said would you want to rent out G’pa’s cabin and that was all she wrote. We are packing up the PT and hitting the road on August 1st.
We listed our house on Friday and on Monday night we accepted a bid that was 10,000 dollars higher than what we listed at. We will close on the 28th. The movers are coming on the 26th to get all our crap and move it. My last day is the 29th so we are going to camp out in a dog friendly hotel for two days before we head out. Works for me since there is a swimming pool.
Rob’s last day is this Friday. The girls that he works with are being total bitches about it too. Really mature stuff like just ignoring him. You would think that after working together for 12 years his boss would be able to rise above it and be happy for him but no. I can’t wait til he’s done with that place!!
We managed to pack up our whole house over the three day weekend. We gave away our couch and most of our furniture. Our living room has one recliner that we will leave behind, my laptop stand and the big screen TV. That’s it.
The hallway and front room are filled with boxes. It’s very weird being at my house right now.
Here we go again…
So into the meeting we go and the head honchos are in there, very grim faced. I told Rose that it reeked of the situation I was in with my old company, right before they laid everyone off.
To make a long story short, they told us that they were “restructuring” our department. In other words they need to cut our group from 79 billers to 30 or so and we will either post out to be an O/C, a meter associate, stay in billing or if all the positions fill up before we can post out, get laid off.
Here we go again. The good news is that our team won’t transition out until next August. The bad news about being the last team to transition is that those of us that want to stay in billing won’t have much of a chance to post out to anything when they make the cut in billing because they will probably already be filled up.
So, it’s Arch all over again.
I told Rob and he said to dust off the old resume and update it tonight. He had already asked me if I wanted him to check with his contact at ASU to see if there are any office jobs available because he knows I am extremely unhappy here due to the stress factor. I told him to go ahead so he did that today but he hasn’t heard back from her yet.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll roll with whatever comes my way, I always do. Just, once again may I state for the record that I reeeeallly need to be indepentantly wealthy? Okay, thanks.
It’s laughable that they expect us to work today after the announcement. What’s even worse is our boss told us that they were going to announce it to us in a meeting right before our team outing next week to Golfland. He said he convinced them not to. Can you imagine? “Hey guys, we’re facing lay offs. Now go play and have fun!!”
Hubs Update
Rob is still in the hospital as I type this. I am hoping by the time I get home tonight to paste this into the actual entry, that he will be home with me but I don’t know. They started him on food on Tuesday. Yesterday was his first full day of solid food that wasn’t pureed.
He is doing better but no one will give him a definite answer on when he can come home. I understand this and I am fine with it. As long as there is the slightest chance something isn’t normal in his levels than I would rather he be at a place that knows how to take care of it. My husband is a very stubborn man and doesn’t like to let on when he is in pain. I don’t trust that if he came home and it started to flair up again that he would tell me until it was really bad again. As long as he is in the hospital they are testing his levels every few hours so they know for sure how it is going. So I’m cool with him being there as long as he needs to be. He however, is not. He is a very frustrated little camper right now because he says he only sees the doctor once a day and it’s only for like five seconds. And of course the doctor is the only one that can release him.
I can’t blame him. Today marks a week since the poor boy has had a shower. He’s been stuck in a bed for five days now and all he wants to do is go home. The day before yesterday he said the pain was still there it was just a whole lot less. Yesterday he said the pain was “pretty much gone”. I’m glad for that. His poor body however is just exhausted. I haven’t been spending a whole lot of time with him at night because all he does is sleep basically.
Last night I got there at feeding time so I got to share his oh so tasty dinner with him. It was nice to see him up and alert for a little bit, but as soon as he was done he was back to sleeping. He hardly ate any of his dinner. He said that he had only eaten lunch four hours previously and he was still full. His tummy must have really shrunk while he was without food. I swear he only had a couple bites of his chicken and mashed potatoes and he was stuffed.
So I’ve obviously been frazzled this week. Monday he was still in pretty bad shape and the last place I wanted to be was at work. I messed up a lot on the training exercises and we were learning something I learned two months ago and already know how to do. This week has been really kind of rough for me. I’m not strong. I used to think I was but I’m not. I’ve never had to go through anything quite like this. The fear that ***
***NEWSFLASH***
I just got off the phone with Rob and he has been told he is getting discharged today!!!!!!!! WOOHOO!!!!! Of course they haven’t told him what time (it’s only 10:46AM as I type this) but I am very happy!
***okay yeah back to me being a weak person. Just the fear that he could have died…I don’t think I could handle that. Seriously. I would completely shut down. I still don’t even want to think of those first days when he was in the hospital. When I do I get freaky emotional.
Ug. He is my whole life. I couldn’t live without him.
6:00 PM
He’s home he’s home he’s home!!!!!! I am so happy!!!!
So he is home. He just got out of the shower and is eating his chef boyarde in bed right now. Oh my god, brushing his hair out was a nightmare!! For those of you that don’t know, Rob has very long very curly hair. It hadn’t been brushed in a week and all he was doing was tossing and turning on his pillow. It was like dreadlocks! I’m sure he feels so much better now that he has showered. A week is a loooonnnggg time.
Not anything else to report really, just wanted to update and let everyone know Rob is finally home and I am very happy and thankful for that.
Husband Health Woes…I’m scared
11:00 AM
Rob and I got a hotel room this weekend just for fun.
Last night he went home with a stomach ailment and told me to stay here.
He will be here in a few minutes to pick me up so we can drive to the hospital. He is in agony with stomach pains and I am scared.
I will update when I know more.
7:00 PM
We still don’t know anything. Rob is in the ER as I type this. I came home to give the dog his pill. We know that he’ll be there at least until nine because they gave him some stuff to drink for his catscan and they told him it takes two hours to get through his system…that is if he can keep it down. He threw up a tiny bit before I left and they gave him something in his IV to “relax” him. When I left he had just finished the drink they gave him and was going to lay down for a nap(the nurse let him shut out the lights in his little curtained-off area). He is still in tons of pain. He said he has never felt pain like this in his life.
It was everything I could do not to fall apart tonight and I’m not saying that I won’t. I am trying to be strong because the last thing Rob needs right now is a weepy wife but it is killing me to watch him go through this. And knowing there is NOTHING I can do.
Right now he is SOOOO frustrated that the ER is taking so long to get to the root of the problem. He keeps complaining about how they really already know what is wrong with him they are just milking it for the insurance money. All he wants to do is come home.
I just hope he keeps that drink down. They told him there was only one other way to get it into his system and it’s not thru an IV!! Yikes!
I feel so bad. I wish there was something I could do to make him feel better. He is in so much pain. I just want him to get better.
11:00 PM
Okay, I’m back at the hotel…
When I left, the status was still up in the air but they are suspecting pancreatitis…however you spell it. Basically, it’s not good.
When I left his CT info wasn’t back yet but he was definitely staying the night. He kind of kicked me out. He said that me staying wasn’t going to do either of us any good. My time would be better spent packing up and sleeping at the hotel and then coming back in the morning. I think I was annoying him asking if there was anything I could do every five minutes.
I’m kind of numb right now.
I don’t really have anything else to say…except my friends are amazing and I love them…and I love my husband more than life itself and I don’t know what I would do without him.
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.
Overtime
My first paycheck from my new job will have overtime on it! This may not seem like a big deal to you but when you come from working where I worked before, it is. At my old job, even if you worked OT you couldn’t claim it. Big nono.
Yesterday was end of month at the new job so we had to get everything squared away and make sure all the invoices would go out. It was kind of hard for me since I still have no official training and have only picked up on a couple of things here and there. But they gave me enough work to keep me busy until seven at night. My very first ten hour work day. Heh. My sup actually told me I could go home around six or so and I said that if there was more stuff that I could help with than I would so she loaded me up. 🙂
I certainly didn’t mind since finishing last night meant I didn’t have to go into work today.
I have one complaint about my new office building. The bathrooms are numerous but they all only have three stalls. That’s it. In a facility that houses 500 employees, the bathrooms have three stalls. It’s like Grand Central Fucking Station in there!
I am the type of person that when I have to go, I have to GO. I am all about the courteously flush and all that but these toilets have zero water pressure. You have to flush two or three times just to get the toilet paper to flush down sometimes. So every time I go in to do my business there are people in there or they walk in right after I get in there. I hate it. But I guess if that’s my only complaint so far it’s not too shabby.
I know I’ve gushed about the break room before but I discovered that one of the vending machines is for frozen foods. Frozen dinners, ice cream bars…YUMMY! And they have this neat little hot cocoa machine that you just press a button and you have a piping hot cup. Yeah, so I’ve led a sheltered life but this to me is very cool.
So overall so far the job is good. The people I am finding are a bit indifferent. I smile. It’s what I do. If I pass you in the hallway, even if I don’t know you, I will smile at you and maybe say hello. It’s in my nature. A lot of the people in my new office don’t smile. They just stare blankly at me when I walk by them and smile at them. It kind of creeps me out. I mean, how much of an effort does it take to smile? *sigh*
I’ve been managing to get to work on time every morning despite the horrific traffic that I now face. It’s been kicking my ass at night though. I get home and just want to crawl into bed at six thirty. I am the kind of person that will sleep an entire weekend away if you let me so this getting up at six thirty in the morning shit is for the birds. I do it though. Rob said last night that he was very impressed and proud of me that I have been doing this.
“It’s almost like this job is making you…responsible!”
Very funny wiseguy.
If you don’t know me…let me fill you in. I am the Queen of late. I was born two weeks late and my mom said it set the pattern for the rest of my life. I worked in my former job for four years and was probably on time a handful of times. The new job has a very strict policy on tardiness. It’s going to take some getting used to but I will. I have to. I really like this job and I want to stay there.




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