lifepassedby.com » work

Why are you wearing that?

kasper — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:49:59 +0000

So I’m not usually into the cutsie pregnancy t-shirts but I’m sort of at that stage where people are probably starting to wonder what’s up with my waistline. Instead of having to tell 600+ people (staff & students) the news I decided to let them read about it for themselves. My close circle of friends already knows, but there still lots of people who don’t.
I’m sitting at my desk on Friday (dress-down Friday) when this annoying Ed Assistant comes and hangs over my desk and says ‘can I ask you someth…’. At this point she reads my shirt and looks puzzled. ‘Um, why are you wearing that shirt?’ Being the totally un-sarcastic person that I am replied “uh, false advertising?”, I mean hello?! This obviously puzzles her further and after the smell of smoke from between her ears finally dissipates, she asks ‘is that true?’. Uh duh… I’m sorry, I realize I’m not very understanding, but I just don’t deal well with stupid.

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Work, ugh

kasper — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:03:12 +0000

Okay, that title isn’t exactly true. I actually really like my job, more-so now than ever before in fact. After my first week back after Christmas holidays I’m absolutely wiped out though. I meant to blog all week. In fact, if I can find a way to hook up my brain right before I fall asleep I’d have a blog entry every day! I often find myself thinking of all the things I would blog about, and I find myself quite eloquent too at that time of day. I’m just too tired to drag myself out of bed to get it all down. I think it’s kind of like when you dream, as soon as you wake up and open your eyes it all vanishes. I think if I did actually get my butt back out of bed after blogging in my head to get it all down, it would just fade away like a dream.
So this past week, I have been getting home and pretty much crashing on the couch shortly thereafter. Besides being pregnant I’ve been super swamped at work trying to do too much. I’ve been working on our school’s website, I have a payroll report (like 35 pages) due Monday and I had to get our Principal’s retirement flyer done. None of these things are part of my “job description”, but I like being busy, so I tend to take on way more than I should.
The one thing I really wanted to work on this week is yet another remodel of this site. Even though I actually really like the current layout it isn’t something I made and it bugs me. The only problem is, I just can’t get what I want out of my head and everything I’ve tried so far I end up hating before I can go live with it. Little D and hubby went to the mall so I hopefully will use the brief reprieve to my advantage. Hopefully the new site (whenever I manage to get the stupid thing done) will be worth the wait!

Back to work

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Mish Mash

kasper — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:36:48 +0000

More social bookmarking. I came across this site called Acobay, that while it is a social bookmarking site, is a bit different. This site aims to connect people via their “Stuff“. For instance, I drive a G5, so I’d add that to my stuff page with a review of the car and then others who have the same car would add their reviews. There is an area to discuss their stuff as well. Though it’s just in it’s beta stage, I think this site has some definite potential. Worth checking out.
Another weekend has flown by almost without me noticing. How the hell does that happen? Today I spent most of the day trying to get my front door knob replaced. When we moved into this house we were only given a single key for the front door, which I suppose was no big deal for the single lady living here, but since there are two of us needing the one key that can’t be copied we needed to do something about it. Moving at the speed of a snail, we finally got around to getting a new door knob and I finally decided it was warm enough today (0° C) to tackle the job of putting the new knob on. The old one was a total bitch to get off. It didn’t behave anything like the new one I was replacing it with, so I had to fiddle with it forever. It always seems that whenever I attempt to do some project for myself I end up calling my Dad up to help me with something I can’t quite do. I hate not being independent enough to do it myself, but I guess I’d rather have it done right. I love the new knob but the only thing that bugs me is that the locking mechanism on the inside of the door is like the bathroom locks where you have to push and twist the handle. The old one had a button in the middle that you had to turn to lock. The old one was easy to see if I’d forgotten to lock the door, but I’ll just have to get used to the new one.
Tomorrow I start my dual jobs. I will be doing my old-new job (wtf?), okay, the VP secretary thing which is new as of November, in the morning. So when I get in at 7:30, I’ll be getting all the supply teachers arranged for any absent teachers. Then from like 9:00 till 11:30 I’ll be across the hall in Guidance where I will be totally winging it since I’ve only had like 2 hours of training and the girl who trained me has left the country for the week. Wish me luck, cause I don’t think I have a clue how to do much over there. Probably would be a good idea to go to bed about 2 hours ago in order to get a good night sleep. Yeah, night.

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Back in the saddle

kasper — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:32:50 +0000

Finally back to my very dusty corner of the web! The long absence from this site started with a little boy (who shall remain nameless) who no longer wanted to sleep in his crib. I must admit I tend to take the path of least resistance whenever possible. So instead of simply putting my son in his crib and walking away I would let him fall asleep on my chest while watching tv, then transport him up to his bed. This worked very well for a while, though it didn’t leave me with much time to myself. It eventually got to the point where I couldn’t even get him into his crib after being asleep. Somehow the little darling seemed to sense that he was being put in his crib and would immediately wake up, jump up and start screaming. It was almost like he was terrified of his crib. This progressed to me sleeping with him in my bed. As you may well have guessed this left NO time to blog, knit or shower for that matter. This went on all summer. It’s only been in the last month that I finally dismantled his unused crib and put his mattress on the floor. He still doesn’t sleep on it (I think because it’s plastic and makes a fairly loud crinkly noise when he moves), so I’ve set up a thick comforter on the floor. Finally with a consistent bedtime routine and some perseverance, I’ve managed to get him to sleep in his own room… for most of the night. From time to time he still gets up in the middle of the night and crawls into bed with us, but I feel like we’ve come a long way and am proud that he mostly sleeps on his own.
I returned to work full time in mid-August. It was a strange adjustment but I quickly fell right back into things and soon felt like I’d never left. In mid-October I got an email from an old colleague out of the blue, offering me a promotion. I stewed over the offer for a LONG time, and finally decided though the job sounded tailor made for me and was fantastic, the much longer commute would leave my son in daycare for 10-11 hours which I couldn’t deal with. With a heavy heart I turned down the promotion, but it just got me thinking that there were other opportunities for me out there. In the last month and a half I’ve had the opportunity to try my hand at a different position within the school. Our guidance secretary Dawn, is out on stress leave and Jenn, the VP secretary moved into her desk. We were going to get a supply to cover Jenn’s desk, but I suggested that I take it to get a bit more experience with different job duties. It’s a refreshing change, since I used to be on reception and therefore chained to the phone. Now I don’t answer any phones (okay, except mine), I can have a conversation with a co-worker without checking to see who’s at the counter, and I can move around without anyone hollering for me to get back to my desk. The best part about this job is that I’ve managed to automate our staff attendance coverage using excel and some handy formulas. It’s so fantastic to be able to use my brain and computer skills instead of the same old, same old on my old desk. I guess the only thing about the new (temporary) position, is that I start at 07:30 which basically means that I should’ve been in bed oh, like 2 hours ago…

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Mosquitoes, back away from the kid

kasper — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:24:03 +0000

The grad ceremony went off without a hitch. Except maybe that it was blazing hot! Every year we seem to have the hottest evening on record and I was pleasantly surprised to see the forecast called for a comfortable temperature. However, this year we had the most grads ever since the school started. Ninety-two students out of about 680 graduated. You can imagine that once you’ve packed all the grads and their parents and whoever else they wanted to have in attendance that the place was a little warm. It was so weird seeing all my kids again. It was great to see that they appreciated me being there, in fact one girl came running up to me when I arrived and threw her arms around me saying that she was going to cry she was so happy I was there.

Sunday we are headed off to Barrie to Spring Water Park. We will be meeting hubby’s family there and having a picnic as a belated birthday celebration. I’ve never liked mosquitoes but am even more afraid of them now that I have a little guy. I know I can’t protect him from all things forever, but would like for him not to get bitten. I don’t want to be smothering him in bug spray that he might ingest that’s for sure. So I went hunting for something different. My local kids consignment store is carrying Baby Buzz patches that look like a great idea for baby D. They are a sticky patch that once squeezed activates a smell to ward off the pesky critters while supposedly not touching the skin. The big question … do these patches actually work? I think I will go and pick some up and report back with my findings next week.

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Gearing up

kasper — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:29:07 +0000

Yes, I’m gearing up for the end of the year (school year) madness. Even though I’m not back at work yet, I still have a bunch of stuff to do. Like tomorrow night is my school’s grad. Even though I haven’t been there for over a year, I promised the students that I would be back to announce the grads as they walk across the stage. This has always been my thing, and I really enjoy doing it. Besides they always seem to have a problem finding someone who can say some of the names. For instance Sathananthalingam is just the last name of one of our students. Her first name is still 12 characters long. I don’t seem to have much difficulty in saying these names so I’m always called upon when there’s a long name like that to pronounce. Then on Thursday is our end of the year staff breakfast. Even though I went last year, I think I’m going to beg off this year. I don’t really want to sit through all the goodbyes of staff I don’t really care about or know. Besides I anticipate it being difficult keeping a little guy who is *almost* walking still for like 4 hours. It’ll probably be more trouble than it’s worth and frankly I don’t care that much.

My mum was down for a couple of days and we had a really nice visit. This was the first time she stayed for more than one night. We decided the last time she was here that it didn’t make much sense to just stay for one night because it was all so rushed. We really didn’t do much. We managed to get out for a long walk and admire other people’s front gardens. It gave me all sorts of ideas for mine. And we had my brother and his wife over for dinner Saturday night. They left around 21:00 and my mum, dad, hubby and I stayed up till 23:00 talking about baby D and his birth. Even though it wasn’t that long ago (14 months) there were a couple things I had actually forgotten. I love reminiscing! Yesterday we went to church together and then came home and finally hung up some pictures I’ve been meaning to get on my walls. I will still have to get some more pictures as I have a humongous wall in my family room that could use some lovin’.

This time next Monday I will be at work. I am trying desperately not to think about it for fear that I will lose my mind. It’s only for 2 weeks; 9 days in fact so I’m sure I can do that. The worst will be when baby D goes into daycare and it’s a full time arrangement. If hubby was staying home with baby D the whole time as we had planned I probably wouldn’t be as nervous, but my Dad will be watching him for 3 days. I’m sure it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but he’s old-school German and tends to have his own way of doing things and criticizing mine. I guess I’m just afraid that he’ll be letting baby D scream himself to sleep or feeding him large chunks of stuff that he might choke on or possibly being too rough on him. I’ll just have to keep thinking happy thoughts that everything will go fine or I’m going to make myself sick thinking about it.

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Lazy, lazy, lazy

kasper — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:53:59 +0000

I’m such a slack. I have no idea where my weekend went. I guess between watching movies and working on my new layout all the time just got sucked away. I really want to get this new layout finished up, but it seems that I keep changing my mind about how it should look. Maybe by next weekend I’ll have it looking spiffy enough to put up.
I started doing the Weekend Snapshot and was really looking forward to making myself take some photos so that I’d be able to post along with everyone, but I’ll refer back to the first statement of this entry. That’s right, I’m a slack. We were supposed to go to London to my Aunt’s house for my Mum’s “surprise” birthday. The “surprise” part is a joke because my Gran told my Mum to ask us (my brother & I) if we could come down to her party. Seeing as she already knows about it, it’s not exactly a surprise. I talked to her Friday and she said that she had been practicing looking surprised. I was really looking forward to seeing everyone and showing off how big baby D’s getting, but it got postponed due to weather. We got a dumping of like 25-30cm! As I suspected it was sunny on Sunday and melted the snow pretty fast. That figures. So we’ll be heading south next weekend instead. Since I don’t get out and do stuff much, find myself being inflexible when plans change. So with the family doing nothing interesting over the weekend, I once again have no photo to show for it. We may actually make it out of the house today and drag baby D through the snow on his sled, so if we do I’ll be sure to get some photos up. FYI I don’t post baby D photos publicly (or mine either for that matter), so if you’re interested in seeing them let me know here and befriend me in Flickr.
I did manage to get some things straightened out about my maternity leave. So, I’ve been in to work and done the paper work, here’s how it’s going to play out. I am taking an Infant Care leave after my maternity runs out. This will be unpaid, but I don’t have to return to work. I will return to work on June 30th for 2 weeks until our summer starts while hubby takes 2 weeks holidays to stay home with baby D. When I go back to work my unpaid vacation time (20 days) will be processed and paid out to me which will hopefully help get us through the summer since I can’t claim EI. Then I will be back full time for the new school year in mid-August. The other hitch of this scenario is that my Dad (Mr. Financial) thought I was insane to even consider such a stupid idea when we discussed it a couple of weeks ago. To go without money when we’re stretched as it is would be suicide. It’s true, it will be extremely hard on us but I feel that it’s what’s best for baby D. So on Thursday night we all went out for dinner and while I searched for a good way to break the final news to my Dad, he said ‘so March Break is coming up, I guess you’ll have to go back to work soon’. “Actually no.” ‘Oh, so you are staying off until August?” ‘Yup, got it all cleared through work.’ And that was the end of it. No arguing, no yelling, no ‘you can’t possibly afford to stay home’. It was sweet. So one less thing for me to worry about. Yay! Now I’ll just have to think of something else…

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Imagine

kasper — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:59:22 +0000

Tuesday was baby D’s last baby sign language class. It was kind of sad since he has been around the same babies for 2 months and won’t see them anymore, but maybe if I put him in the next session we’ll see some of them again. Hubby laughed at me when I showed him baby D’s diploma from the class. He said ‘yeah you did really well in the class, but I don’t see him having learned much’. It’s true. I think I have a range of 50-60 words that I can sign and baby D’s maybe signed 1. Oh well, we’ll just keep plugging away and eventually I’m sure I’ll be thrilled that we persevered.

Yesterday after my parenting group, I stopped by work to talk about my intentions of extending my maternity leave. Hubby and I have decided that I will stay off until the beginning of July, work the 2 weeks before the summer while he takes holidays and stays home with baby D. Then I go back full time in August and we (unfortunately) find daycare for the little guy. This way I still have some money coming in and I don’t have to worry about care. It was a nice visit strangely enough. I ended up staying for like 2Â½ hours which is unusual since I usually don’t like being there very long. There may be a bit of a bonus for me – if I’m lucky. Lyn (Office Administrator – my immediate boss) wondered if I would be getting vacation pay and when, so my principal got on the phone and called around for me and ended up leaving a message for someone to get back to me. I got that call last night and it sounds like I’ve got 29 vacation days left and that I could use them, BUT (you knew there was a snag coming right?) that it would be up to the principal’s discretion because for me to use them he would need to pay my replacement out of the school budget instead of the board paying. Doug (principal) and I are fairly close, but I really don’t know if he’d be willing to do this for me. I think hubby and I are going to go in on Monday and talk it out and see if there’s any way of having that bit of extra money come in. It would be SO great if we could, but I’m trying not to rely on it. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I’ll leave you with my newest obsession. For those of you who don’t watch American Idol, this is 17-year-old David Archuleta’s version of Imagine by John Lennon. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but the more I hear it the more I love it. Enjoy.

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I see dead people

kasper — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:24:32 +0000

Something has gotten into baby D since yesterday. He’s just not himself. Who knows, maybe he’s finally getting a tooth. First of all this is generally a happy kid. He really doesn’t cry unless there is a real reason. So yesterday I got him up from his afternoon nap and he was wet right through his sleeper. I changed him and put him on the floor with some soft blocks and started pulling the sheets off his bed. I kept an eye on him and noticed that he kept turning around to look out into the hall. Since he had toys with him and there was no one home except the two of us this seemed strange. I found it a bit creepy actually. I’m not totally sure why. Maybe because hubby has commented a few times that he thinks that the place is haunted and that baby D can see ghosts. I always say that he’s full of crap and I really don’t believe it, but to see my son continue to check the empty hallway gave me a funny feeling. Then when my back was turned he started to cry. My first thought was that he had fallen over, but when I turned around he was still sitting exactly where he was surrounded by the same soft toys. The crying didn’t make any sense to me. I gave him my undivided attention after that and then he was fine for the rest of the day.

Today the strangeness continued. He was fine all morning though he didn’t nap more than 10 minutes. So when we got home from my “Bringing Up Boys” group and a quick visit to my work, we played for a bit. Then according to our usual schedule I gave him his bottle and went to put him down for his afternoon nap. He gave his usual tired cues, but when I put him in his crib he cried and didn’t settle down. Instead of being flat on his belly like he usually is in bed, he was up on all fours. I got him up, cuddled him and rocked him for a bit and as he started to drift off I tried to set him back in his crib. He was not having it and wailed. I still had to eat something as I hadn’t eaten all day and get the laundry out of the dryer from last night, so I put baby D in his exersaucer which is usually a big hit. Nope, not today. Again he cried like crazy. I popped him in the hip carrier I just bought (but will be returning because all his weight is supported by a strap that pulls against my neck) and brought him along as I grabbed a quick bite to eat. He kept cuing that he was tired so after I finished eating once again I took him upstairs to put him to bed, but I got as far as the door to his room and he started to whine. So strange. At this point I gave up and took him into the family room where I cuddled him until he finally fell asleep. Even then he woke up about 4 times crying but did settle down fairly quickly and drifted back off to sleep. I know everyone has their off days and I’m probably reading into his behaviour, but it’s still unnerving.

As mentioned, I went in to work this morning. I know it’s exams right now, so that’s always a perfect time to visit since there are no kids around. Don’t get me wrong, I love them and everything, but I get swamped when I go in and since I just wanted a quick visit no kids was easier. It’s so weird being back there. It’s like another lifetime ago that was my home away from home. So I chatted a bit and people fawned over baby D before going in to see my Principal. That was the main reason for going. I wanted to see what my options were for extending my leave. I have since discovered that my unemployment can definitely not be extended. Great. Even better? Little to no chance of using some of my sick days (I have like 200) to cover from the end of my maternity leave until I return in August like I had hoped. I’m so totally running out of options. I feel like I need to stay home. I REALLY want to be a stay-at-home-mom, but that will probably never be an option. August will be hard enough to leave baby D, but I’m definitely not prepared to do it now with my mental state and lack of daycare. I am able to extend my leave for up to 2 years, but with no pay. I don’t think that will be feasible. Hubby even suggested that he could take the unpaid leave and I go back to work since I make more. The problem with this is that he has a company vehicle to get him to work everyday but we have no car (I borrow my Dad’s when I need to), so I’d have to get a car immediately. I hate thinking about all this stuff it totally stresses me out and makes me crazy!!!

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