The Totem Pole

Here at work I think the best place to be is some where in the middle.  It’s hard to get to the top.  My boss and his boss have both been here for 25+ years and there are still 2 positions above them just here in the plant, I don’t even want to know how many in the company globally.  I’m OK with this though because around here the people at the top of the pole have just as good of a chance of going as the people at the bottom. 

There was an unexpected meeting called yesterday afternoon by the VP of Engineering.  Engineering includes many different departments, product (my dept), equipment design, manufacturing, facility, etc.  Anyway, on the meeting invite there was no information on what it was for.  My boss realized though that there were names missing from the invite list.  At the meeting all the VP said was that the latest “reduction in work force” affected the Engineering dept in a big way.  From what we can see, we have lost at least 4 people from the engineering departments.  Thankfully my little department of 4 people wasn’t effected.

This has me thinking though.  Every time they let people go, it puts me closer and closer to the bottom of this pole.  Yes in seniority there is one guy below me because he started a year after I started full time, in time served it’s over 2 years, but he has many more year experience than I do, so in reality we are probably even although our expertise are in different areas.

I’m scared to death to think that in the next 6 months they could do this again and I could be one that gets let go… My family can’t handle that right now.  Our bank account can’t handle that right now.  I need to step up my game at work and start shining.  I don’t have much room to move up, but I can prove myself to be a valuable employee! 

Time to re-structure my days, so if you find me not commenting on your blogs as much, it’s not because I don’t want to, I’m just trying to fit it in some where else so I spend less time on the internet at work (shh I don’t do that).

*After writing this, another meeting was held where we were informed that the entire equipment design group was dissolved.  I’m glad to hear that about half of the employees were absorbed by other groups, but scary to think they can just get rid of a group like that.  Can’t wait to hear what our 1pm meeting holds…

Things For Me

Emotionally I'm feeling much better.  This week has been much smoother and I feel like B is listening to me more.  He's also been doing a great job working on having more patience.  I think even Lillian seems to be reacting pretty well to the changes.  I've been doing some things for myself lately and I feel like they are paying off!

I started the C25K program.  I actually started this when Delaney was only 2 weeks old and I've stuck with it. I am currently one day behind my "schedule" for it, but I can't do anything about my little girl being sick and wanting her mommy.  I skipped the run yesterday morning to lay with and comfort her, but I got right up and did my run this morning.  I may have to set my alarm for 3:30 in order to get my run in and not feel rushed the rest of the morning.  In my eyes totally worth it!

I've started using My Fitness Pal again.  While running was helping me, it wasn't helping me lose any weight.  I was stuck.  So I started tracking my food again last Wednesday, May 2, and I have already lost 6 lbs!  I'm not expecting most weeks to be like that just for the fact that when I had my little break down last week I couldn't eat anything.

To most this may not seem like a big deal, but I haven't worn a hoodie to work since I came back from maternity leave.  Around here they are pretty relaxes about the dress code, and since I'm the only girl and pretty much have no interaction with customers they didn't care what I wore as long as it wasn't too revealing and met all our safety regulations.  Most days this consisted of just jeans a T-shirt and a hoodie.  I LOVE my hoodies and they are the first thing I think of on cool days, tired days, emotional days, stressed days, ok, just about any kind of day.  It has take a lot of effort on my part (especially since I'm not happy with my body) to find an outfit every morning that doesn't include a hoodie.  Oh and by the way, I tend to freeze in the office, that's how I started wearing them to work to begin with. But we are going on 3 weeks now and I feel pride over that.

For now, this is it.  I'm changing things little by little and it's having a BIG effect!

Let's Talk Work

Everything in life is work.  Work is work, relationships (of all kinds) are work, parenting is work.  Even the fun things like vacation take work, whether it's the work to plan of the work you do to pay for it.

Right now my actual job is what it is.  I'm trying not to stress over it and just be happy to have one and focus on getting things done.  Some days are harder than others.  Normally by Friday afternoon all I want to do is go home and hold Delaney and watch Lillian run around like the crazy 3 year old she is.

Right now what is taking the most work in my life is my marriage.  If you've read my last few posts you know that I've had a lot to complain about and really I probably made those sound a little better than what things were really like.  After Friday morning's issue with clean boxers I pretty much lost it on the way to work.  I had had enough.  I sent B a message and told him that if Lillian was going to be gone for the night on Saturday that we needed to both be home and get things off our chest.  Problem was, the longer I sat at work, the angrier I got, the more I cried and the more I felt like just giving up.  In my hear I knew that's not really what I wanted, but I wasn't sure I had the strength for anything else.  Around 2:30 B sent me a message asking if he could go race his buddy's car at the track.  This made me livid.  Basically his thought was that if he couldn't go do something Saturday night he better do it Friday, which meant leaving me with both the girls all night.  I didn't know what to do.  Part of me didn't want to let him go because it was just going to add fuel to my rage, but the other part didn't even want to see him so I didn't really care.  I finally just text him and said "If you want to go ahead.  I'm honestly really upset and I don't think I can keep it together with you in front of the girls."  Don't get me wrong I don't want my girls growing up thinking relationships are always sunshine and rainbows, but right now it scares Lillian if we yell and she always thinks it's her fault if I cry.  B had no idea I was upset and asked what was wrong.  And although I didn't want to do anything over text messaging I couldn't ignore him.  I just told him "I'm sick of avoiding an argument and putting myself last.  I'm doing the best I can but its not working and I can't do anymore than I already am."  Of course he apologized for his fit that morning and said he'd do his own laundry, but that isn't going to fix things, I told him it's more than that.  I told him "I want to have a plan of who is responsible for what, I want to have less to worry about and get done, I want to be able to leave the girls with you and not worry about you being too stressed out to handle it."

In the mean time he had found out he couldn't race the car and wanted to invite his friend and wife over for a cook out.  In my head all I could think was great, as if I don't have enough already going on.  I told him no, I'd been crying all day and the last thing I wanted was to entertain. He ended up calling me and I lost it.  At my desk, at work, in our new open office area.  Talk about embarrassed.  I went to the bathroom and told him we needed to talk, but I couldn't do it then.  He figured out that I didn't really want to see him and I explained I don't, if I do right now I might say things I'll regret and it's just going to be a fight.  I told him I was taking the girls to my mom's camp for the night.  When we hung up I could tell he was crying.

I grabbed the girls after work, we went home, I packed in about 10 minutes and we were off.  I was already feeling better just knowing I wasn't going to have to put on a face for the night.  We did pretty much nothing that night, walked to town, grabbed dinner, walked back and it was bed time for the girls.  B text me a few times told me he was worried, but to take all the time I needed.  I told him I would and that he needed to make a list of things that bother him and the things he does in a day.

I had a few glasses of wine with my mom and I was exhausted and went to bed too.  Saturday morning I woke up with so much running through my head so I made a list of all the things that bother me.  Lillian had a blast playing with her cousins all day and we finally headed home about 5pm.

Tomorrow I'll tell you how our "talk" went.

30 Days of Thankful - Day 2 and 3

So it hit me this morning that I started this a day behind, surprised? I didn't think so!  So, today I'm going to do 2 and be caught up.

The first thing I'm going to be thankful for is my home.  More specifically, my home that has a working furnace again!  We went a week without a working furnace.  Thankfully we have a space heater that did a great job of keeping us warm.  Especially considering that the day the furnace quit working, this is what the house looked like:

The second thing I'm thankful for today is my job.  This is mostly because at this moment I need to remind myself I need to be thankful for this.  I could have a toddler and a baby on the way and be trying to live on a laborer's pay.  I got to work this morning to find that a worker threw away my samples I need for testing.  Partially my fault because I am behind on submitting the samples for testing, but there are several reasons not to throw away samples!  For Heaven's sake we don't even throw away samples for years after they have been tested!  She said "They were in the way."  Ugh.  But I am grateful to be hear and have to deal with this since it could be a lot worse than just needing to find samples.

Flaws

I have decided to give up on the party, there is just too much crap going on between the day we find out and the weekend we were going to have the party.  I'm very disappointed because this was going to be the only "celebration" for this baby.  It's just been too stressful trying to plan around this and that.  In reality it doesn't really matter to anyone else how they find out the gender of the baby.

There is also a flaw with my Poll, I still want to do the drawing for the hat, but if you want to be entered you also have to leave a comment with your guess because apparently I can't see who votes for what using that poll.  Sorry for that.

Then we have my own flaws, or possibly pregnancy flaws, but either way, I'm going nuts.  I'm already having anxiety attacks over leaving my babies when I have to return to work.  I still HATE leaving Lillian every morning and I know that when this baby gets here I'm going to feel even worse about leaving her because I will have even less one on one time with her.  Moving her to her big girl bed has really hit me hard.  I didn't realize how much the cuddle at night in my bed meant to me until it was gone.  I know that for her own good and mine I can't let her continue to be in the habit of going to bed with mommy, but I miss it.  It makes me cry.  I know it will get better, but these damn hormones make me feel like I'll always feel this way.  I've even wondered if I'm really cut out for this whole Mommy thing.  I mean I know I can raise my children up to be good, decently intelligent adults, but what I don't know is if I can handle the "firsts" and the letting go.  This Big Girl Bed has made me realize how many firsts I have coming, there are so many!!!  Her first day of school, her first time being left alone, her first shower without me in the room... That's just a few, but right now the thought of everyone of them makes me want to cry!

I'm sure it's just hormones, but I just feel like this feeling will never go away...

Hard Work

I got a nice surprise today.  Well, kind of nice.  It is review time at work, a time I generally dread for many reasons.  Today it was a nice surprise to read what my manager had to say about me though.

A little background is that back in 2009 after returning to work from my maternity leave, I found it very hard to get anything done, I couldn't concentrate on my work and I spent way too much time using the companies internet to communicate with fellow mommies.  So much so that my boss and the HR lady called me into a meeting where I broke down crying about how hard it is to be away from my daughter and how depressed I was.  Thanks to my boss, who I've been working for since 2002, I was not fired as he assured HR I was a very capable worker.  We came up with development plan to get me back on track and for the most part it worked.  After only a few month on the plan and meeting weekly to review my project statuses and sign papers for HR saying that I was following my plan and improving my work ability, the meetings started stretching out farther and my boss was complimenting on accomplishing some things and coming up with some great ideas for the group.

Last year's review was positive in the fact that I didn't have to have a special plan and I got a raise again.  I still struggle with my concentration on work and getting certain things done in a timely manner, but I'm working on it.

This year I think I've improved a little maybe.  Nothing drastic, but I work and get things done before the detrimental dead lines.  Which let me note, around here is not always done because everything is an emergency.

Today I got my review from my boss and to my surprise he feels that I am exceeding expectations in some areas and feels with a little improvement in a few other areas I will qualify for a promotion next year!  This is amazing to me cause honestly I had no idea what it would take to get a promotion around here.  Really, it's just a job title change and a little more $.  Even though this is a fortune 500 company, there isn't much room for career advancement  My boss and his boss have both been here 25 years or more and are still a distance from retirement.  There really isn't any where else to go besides their positions unless I move to another department, but then it's the same situation in all the departments...

So that's my happy news on hard work.  I'm thrilled at even the prospect of a new job title.  What scares me is the thought of what could happen when I come back from maternity leave this time.  At least I think HR will be more willing to work with me on the return to work transition this time, I hope...