Everyone has heard of the expression, "Don't bite off more than you can chew", yet some time I believe in most people's lives we do it anyway, well, I think my first round has come. The last month there has been so much going on, from one thing to the next. I will try to break out in pieces what I have been up to or what is or has been coming at me.
Work -Work is busy and continues to get busier. I have worked on a House Bill project for the last 3 years at the county that brings in a lot of money if we pass our outcomes. This year I was not supposed to be a part of the project because I was supposed to be in full swing of training for my new position, well, I am doing the project again this year with help from co-workers. I returned to work from maternity leave to learn that the project that I would normally start in mid-February had yet to be started on at all and now I am scrambling to get it done in 2 months with help, this means though that I have to train and check work from others and try to do some work myself on it as well. We have a month and half left and I am really starting to have some anxiety over this, but alas, there is no time to stress over it now. I have also started training for my Business Analyst position which means I have 6 hours a week that I must train on Crystal Report Writer, some independent study and some with our current report writer and then also squeezing in time with him to work on our current reports that are due. Next, I am being scheduled for numerous meetings for Project Management projects that I will be doing on the job training and hopefully getting into a 3 day class later this month at Front Range Community College as well. In the seven years I have been at the county I have had meetings, but the majority of my time has been spent at my desk doing actual work and being very confident in the work that I am doing, this is an entire new ballgame for me. I have my laptop, so I am pretty much packing it up and taking it to an office to work or to a meeting or to our other office location to work on stuff. I am meeting new people at the county and have determined that of all the BA's I am thinking that I am quite a few years younger than everyone else, but I can deal with that if they can. At this time I have to watch my hours closely as well and complete 15 hours of BA work and the rest of the work week needs to Dept. Specialist work in order for them to keep my from re-classifying to a BA before I am really able to do the job duties and receive the pay. Once my House Bill project is complete I will be allotted some additional hours to train on whatever they seem fit, but I can see from all the trainings that are 2 days or more that my time is going to be sucked up fairly quickly and they didn't leave me much time to travel from office to office. That is how the work aspect of my life is going.
HOA - The HOA lately has been crazy and started shortly after I took over as president. First it was choosing a landscaping company and having resistance from another board member to go with who we had last year, which ballooned into interviewing 3 candidates, doing reference checks, and having meetings with the board and then finally choosing who we had last year anyway. Now we have a ditch in our subdivision that is entirely out of control and needs to be dug. I have walked this ditch with 5 different excavators and have sent email upon email, phone call upon phone call to them, the board members, our property management company and still need to keep digging for some answers that I need. This is a whole new experience for me and not many people that I have asked for advice seem to really have the direct answers that I want, the main one being, "Are we really responsible for paying for this ditch to be dug ourselves?" I don't see how the city or county or the damn farmer that runs his field overflow into our ditch doesn't have to pay for some of this and then the question to the excavators - why do you charge so damn much to dig a ditch and move some dirt, there are not that many houses being built, you can't be that busy. I am also up against a time crunch because the city is turning on the water and the ditch is going to attempt to start having water run through it and then city has told me I have one year to "fix" the ditch - my question to them "or what?" help me pay for some of it because I know that the people in subdivision can't afford to have an assessment, who knows if we can get a loan and we don't have enough many now to cover all the expense. AHHHHHHH
We also had to do a walk-around with the landscaping company and a couple of the board members are more worried about the damn flowers they want to plant here and there and I've had to put the kibosh on it stating, "we have no money" and we have a serious ditch situation. You can about imagine the crabby husband I have at home leaving him to watch the 2 kids himself to attend meetings and take phone calls. Hopefully soon some of this will settle down and we will be back to meetings once a month and a few emails that I can deal with on my breaks at work or at night.
The Kids - Katelynn and Junior are actually falling into place really well. Both of them have an 8pm bedtime and are asleep (or at least in their bedrooms, Katelynn) by 8:30pm and have been staying put and not waking up until 6:30am, thank god for that, I can't ask for more. Katelynn has still been tough and I think she is going to have anger management issues if we don't get them under control soon. Dan and I really need to have serious follow through on our consequences and we are working on it. Junior is a peach, he is either hungry or tired and has really taken to sucking his thumb, when I can I try to replace it with the "paci" but he plops it out sometimes fairly quickly and pops the thumb back in, for now I will deal with the thumb and have a happy little boy. Dan and I did have to have a little sit down and some serious communication when it came to the kids and that we both need to be doing our share, it took 2 to make them and it's going to take 2 to watch them, since our talk we have both been doing our share and have a much happier household. One of the problems is the TV, if it's off we are all great and can really concentrate on what is going on, but once it's on someone gets distracted or plops down and doesn't want to do anything (Dan) and I then lose my cool, which is what I need to work on. Junior will have his 4 month appointment next month and I am wondering if they will give us the green light to start him on solids / cereal and then am wondering how am I going to fit this in?
The Marriage - Why didn't anyone ever tell me that marriage can be this hard after you throw kids into the mix? Mom, where were you? Oh yeah, you wanted grand baby's. How do you juggle everything else and then attempt to have time for this as well. We have been trying to at least spend a little time together before we continue to feel like roommates, nags, or maids and nannies in the house. I have found a summer bowling league that starts in June on Monday nights that we would like to do, at least I would and kind of told Dan that he needs to go along with it if we want to stay married or figure out something else weekly that we can do together and both enjoy, my point was taken. I have been trying to find a babysitter now for Monday nights all through the summer and have not had too much luck. I am getting a lot of 15 year old's calling and wanting to do it and there parents will even drop them off and pick them up, but I am just not comfortable with someone that young watching my 3 month old and 3 1/2 year old, I mean really, sometimes I wonder if I can handle it and I'm going to trust a fifteen year old that has never had a child, I just can't do it. I had one stay at home mom call and want to do it, but she had to bring her 5 month old with her because her husband works at night and I wasn't comfortable with that either, I wouldn't want to wake up my children at 10 or 11pm and put them in the car to take them home and put them back to bed, I just wasn't comfortable with this either. Hopefully something or someone will turn up in the next couple of weeks and we'll be able to do this. Dan will kill me for saying this on here, but it's what's happening. We both know that we are done having kids, 2 is enough for us and our family is now complete so after discussion we decided that Dan will get the deed done and has his consultation this week with the "snip, snip" doctor. It's funny as the week progresses and the date gets closer, he has some anxiety / nervousness around this and it's just been really funny, at least for me it is, but ya know I did push out 2 children already, so ya ain't getting much sympathy from my end.
The House - With the new expense of my car and daycare and formula and diapers the cleaning crew I had coming every 2 weeks is no longer. After I let them know I wouldn't need them anymore I pulled out my Scooba so at least I didn't have to actually mop my own floors and the fricken thing is broken. I have been emailing the techs at irobot.com and after many attempts and talks, it's broken and not fixable, shit. I still am on strike from mopping the floor and Dan broke down and did it on Mother's Day for me. I hate mopping and I loved my Scooba. I have been looking on craigslist for one and have made an offer to one lady, but she hasn't called me back yet to buy hers, must not have like my offer?! The scooba's cost $300, but irobot did offer me their out of warranty price of $180.00, it's one without a battery (which my battery works fine) and I am going back and forth and maybe in the next 6 months will go with that offer if I don't find someone else to sell me theirs for cheaper. All in all I have also had to give up some of my anal cleaning and attempting to have a spotless house every night before I go to bed, it just can't be done with everything going on. It took a few works for me to really let go, but I do feel some relief that as long as the dinner dishes are done at night then the rest of the stuff will be fine if some toys are not put away and the floor isn't swept and there may be laundry that needs to get done and so on and so on. I will try to do what I can on the weekends I guess like I assume everyone else does as well.
I am sure I am missing some stuff, but all in all I feel like I am swimming or drowning from one thing to the next, but I am really excited and happy with all of these new experiences and lessons that I am learning and I will keep on chewing, but hopefully not be biting off anymore, my plate is full.
