No room to breath

You really have to watch what you say.  I put challenge out out to the universe and it came back to smack me in the face.  I didn't do it on purpose.  At work the next few weeks are going to be totally insane.  In the next three weeks I have two meetings for all employees.  One is off site and has two times so everyone can attend one and one on site. I have the fall food show on what is usually my day off. I have two employees on vacation, one each on the following two weeks.  I have 12 hours of online classes that must be complete before the 9th of Oct. I am walking in the race for the cure on Sat.  All this is to be done with no overtime, everyone getting to the meetings and the online class time turned in also but not if it makes me go over 40 hours.  I actually had a schedule written that accomplished everything. Had everyone off where they needed to be off, had all the shifts covered, gave me time off to get the online stuff done and no overtime.  This is where I made my mistake.  I said to my boss that it seemed like the powers that be wanted to see how much crap they could throw at me and I still be able to write a schedule that would be approved.  I told him I did it but that there was no room to breath at all.  Well last night my newest employee walked out for who knows what reason and totally snarled things up.

I ended up staying and working a double last night which threw off my hours to do the online stuff.  I had to pull on of this mornings workers to this evening to cover his shift tonight. That left the morning shift horribly short.  I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to do the walk on Sat since he worked a shift there as well.  I was getting mad because I have a team of 16 from this store and one other location walking with me.   Its important to me.  I asked one of my employees to work a double that day.  She'll do it cause she just bought a house and needs the money.  She works anywhere and any shift I need her to.

I also had to completely rewrite the next weeks schedule which had no room for error to begin with.  I did it.
It is rough and I'm sure we will all be grouchy and tired by the end of these few weeks. I told one of my employees that I really need to change this blogs name to The grouchy Bitch cause I sure am one lately.  I have vacation coming up in about four weeks and I am ready.  I don't think I have to worry about hiring a new worker.  I have the demo girl who would like to come back into the deli and also a guy they moved out of the meat dept that's willing to come back and work in the deli.  Hes been filling in where ever they can use him for right now.OK enough of that.

I think I have a bunch of hummingbirds traveling through on their way south.  My number seems to have jumped alot.  I have four feeders and I had four hummers circling one feeder the other day.  I tried to get a pic of them but they dart around way too much.  I got alot of pictures of the feeder alone or with a couple of blurs next to it.  I have one male that every year his favourite hobby is chasing everyone else off the feeders.  That is why I have four feeders.  No matter what he only has site of two at a time.  There are always two out of site that the others can go to.

I have now lost 18 pounds. It is way harder to get it off this round compared to early last year.

Im Back

OK I know this is way past Wednesday.  I went to Illinois to see my parents and I didn't think it was good idea to post online that I would be gone for a few days. 

Alan drove the truck up with the two dogs who like going to see grandma too, while I drove up with my daughter Jamie and my granddaughter Lexi.  I just got my car cleaned out today.  It looked like I had a daycare in the back seat. While we were there we went to see a high school friend of Alans.  He lives out in the country and Lexi got to see his animals.Sorry the pics aren't great I really couldn't see what I was clicking at the sun was glaring too much.  Lexi got to pet a chicken.

                                     

  She got to see a llama, a donkey and a miniature horse.  And lots of chickens.  She also got to see 4 very large horses and too feed them corn.  I didn't get any pics of them.

  My pumpkins are a complete bust this year.  I only had one getting any size on it and it was rotting when I got home.  Ill just have to chalk this up as a bad year and try again next year.  My window boxes however are doing great.



When it was first planted.

Look how full they got this year.

This is just a very large spider living in my flower bed.

Last day of August

Not much to write about this week.  Have been invaded at work by our techs, vendors and our two merchandisers for the deli/bakery.  They are rearranging everything and adding new products.  They were stressing me out.  Too many chiefs and not enough indians. They were stressing out my employees also.  Boring week otherwise.

Squirrels, pumpkins and crazy dogs

My dog Holly can not stand squirrels. The sight of one turns her into a barking crazy dog frenzy.  The squirrel above seemed to love tormenting her.  He got a whole ear of corn from the field next to us and took it up to this branch right outside my kitchen window.  Of course Holly went bonkers and was having a barking fit right under my computer desk.  I know he could hear her barking as he kept looking at her and ignoring her.  I finally had to send her to her crate to calm down and wait for rotten Mr. Squirrel to clear out.  This is Holly.  It's very hard to get a good picture of her because she is always underfoot.

This is Jazzy (Jasmine).  She doesn't go crazy and bark at the squirrels.  She goes crazy and barks at Holly barking at stuff.  She also thinks she is a chihuahua and want to sit in your lap all day.  She doesn't fit.

I am taking a trying a new medication to help with the grouchiness and the mood swings.  It is supposed to take a few weeks to build up in your system but I think I am feeling somewhat better already. If its a placebo effect, who cares.  I feel better. I Haven't felt like going off into a crying jag for no reason most of this week.

I now have 3 pumpkin bumps.  One on the regular pumpkins and two on the jumbo vines.  The largest is about the size of an eggplant.  They may make it yet.

Tomorrow is going to be a crazy day.  I have way too much crammed into tomorrow.

Humpday

Its Wednesday and here I am.I know Wednesday is called hump day for a lot of people it means that the week is half over, they are on the downhill side of a work week.  How many people actually work a nine to five, Monday to Friday work week anymore.  Unless you work in an office I'm thinking that that concept went out in the fifties.  People are all working all different shifts and have many days off in the middle of the week and are working on Saturday and Sunday and overnight.  It kind of aggravates me when reading magazines that say get out of work early on Friday and give yourself a long weekend.  Or talk about taking a little longer lunch on a stressful day to sooth out.  They obviously don't have a clue that the majority of their readers do no have that kind of lifestyle, work environment or schedule.  Even the radio announcers talk about hump day and the work week being half done.  No it isn't. Sorry.  Told you last time that I'm grouchy.

I have poison ivy again.  Third time this year.  I really don't think its actually poison ivy since all I've done is work in my flowerbeds.  I think its just something that my skin is sensitive to and makes me break out like poison ivy.I spent all last Sunday working outside since it was such a nice cool day for a change.  We've had such a string of scorchers.

I went to make a spice cake for tomorrow and forgot to spray the pan for the first layer.  It did not work well.  So we have a single layer spice cake for tomorrows dessert .Rhonda and Brian are coming over here tomorrow for our 25th anniversary.

In a Funk

OK. Lets try this again. I wrote this entire post out last night and blogger lost all but the first sentence.  So here we go again. 
I know its been a while since Ive posted. I haven't been in the greatest of moods.  There were four of us from my company that were going through cancer treatments the last year and a half. Two of us with breast cancer, one with an extremely rare form of cancer that is untreatable, and another bakery manager who had leukemia.  She had a liver transplant last year.  She developed a massive infection and just couldn't fight it.  She died a couple of weeks ago.  The pill I take has some nasty side effects including grouchiness and depression.  I am always irritable and my mood swings are horrible.  Sometimes I just want to cry for no reason. I don't think I'm depressed. I'm just pissed off at everyone and everything.Well that's enough griping.

I plant pumpkins every year and usually do OK with them. I have enough for fall decorations and Halloween and such.  I usually just throw the seed out and let the pumpkins do their thing.  This year I decided to try growing some jumbo pumpkins also.  This year I put them in some really good dirt and Ive been giving them plant food.  Since it has been so hot I have also been watering them quite frequently.  Out of 8 vines, 6 jumbo and two regular, I just now got a pumpkin bump on one of the jumbo vines.   Lots of blooms but no pumpkins.  Is this a bad year for them or what? The little pumpkin isn't even the size of a golf ball yet.

I'm going to try and post more regularly.  Since I am always off on Wednesday I'm going to try and at least post then every week.

Graduation

Last Wednesday my youngest Ashley graduated from Rogers beauty school.  She got a job on Friday at Borics salon.  My parents and my sister and brother-in-law came down for the day also.

This is the cake I made for her.  It didn't survive the trip over to the school.  It was hot and the air does not work in my car.  The icing started to melt and the borders started to roll.  She said she wanted lots of pink so that's what she got.

Frustration at work is getting worst.  I received my hours and sales projections for the next quarter.  They took 32 hours a week away from my dept.  Of course they are still expecting the sales to be just as high or higher.  I am becoming more and more stressed.  Then I found out that a deli/bakery manager from another store had put her notice in and was taking another job.  They gave her a dollar an hour raise to keep her from leaving.  She is making the same as me now.  She hasn't been with the company even two yrs.  Ive been there for 14 and haven't received a raise in over 5 yrs.  I was told that Houchins thought we were making too much already.  I am mad.  I know that she could use the money but it seems they reward those who don't deserve it and the ones who have paid their dues get nothing.  I keep making less and less every year as everything else goes up but my pay.  I feel like a tube of toothpaste.  They have squeezed all they can get out of me.