What a week!

Lets see, we were short staffed at work all week, so that makes it just crazy to begin with…then Tuesday, I got hit with several calls in a row that were just difficult, a single dad wanting to commit suicide, 3 that weren’t even our patients that had nearly deathly high blood pressures and a woman whose husband of 20 some odd years had walked out on her that morning unexpectedly and she couldn’t cope. At about 4pm, I suddenly started having stabbing pains under my rib cage on the right side, at first i could kind of stretch out and it would almost go away, but an hour later, I was having difficulty talking through a call and Julie asked if I was ok…I said I didn’t know, explained what was happening and when I got off the next call, Talitha was standing there.

I explained it to her, she dragged me back to Dr Nielsen, who said it was likely my gallbladder. He gave me a prescription for painkillers and ordered an ultrasound for the next morning and i headed back to my desk. I was trying to finish out the day, with only 15 minutes to go but I simply could not talk through my calls, so Julie went and got Talitha again, who told me she was taking me home, there was no way I was driving, and to log off the phones and get ready.

So…I did. Logged off, got my stuff and went back to wait for Talitha to finish up a few things and just as we went to leave, it hit me so hard. I was doubled over, on the floor, could not take a breath, could not talk, could barely move. It didn’t go away like it usually does. For about 10 minutes it was like that. Talitha was getting a little scared and said we just needed to go to the ER instead. So, we went, but after that last really bad one, it seemed to be getting better. Well, no one wants to be the one sitting in the ER, making a big fuss over absolutely nothing….

They ran a whole bunch of tests, put an IV in, got me up for an ultrasound and basically the long and short of it is, they are almost certain that I actually passed a gallstone, which is fairly rare apparently, and there are no more in there.

So, I’m extremely relieved that I don’t have to have surgery, besides a little bit of weakness and fatigue, I am fine now. I wouldn’t have expected something like that to take a toll, but I’m just not quite back to normal yet. I did go into work at 10 am the next day, because I knew there was no one else to help out.

Thursday was my day off, and I got the kids registered for school, all three of them in for a Dr appt for the first time in a year and a half (they haven’t been sick or anything!), all three are healthy as can be. Then I surprised them with a trip to Roaring Springs, the water park. We had fun, got sun baked, unfortunately I was feeling pretty tired, but we still went on everything in there, some of it more than once and had a total blast!

Friday, the nurses at work came up and asked if I wanted to come with them for a drink after work and I agreed, with the intention of getting a quick one and then heading home. I’d only had a few hours of sleep the night before and was pretty tired. We headed over to the Ram restaurant for a couple of beers and I let them talk me into going on over to the Buffalo Club. Gabe was with his dad and I figured at 12 and 13, Clayton and Elizabeth should be ok at home for a bit, heck I was babysitting at that age.

We had a lot of fun, did some dancing and just made outright fools of ourselves. Apparently the tradition is, they always say it is Rosie’s birthday (unbenownst to her, she tries to watch them every time to keep them from doing it, but they get sneaky and do it anyway) and she got cake and a Happy Birthday at the Ram, and then at the Buffalo Club, a song and called up to the stage to do a shot.  Terrie and I faked our way through the “Cotton Eyed Joe” out on the dance floor alone. I had not actually been out to dance and stuff since before the kids were born! Definately not something I’d want to do all the time but the girls are a great group and we had a lot of fun. It is nice to spend time with other people who don’t mind being dorks!

WARNING: Though innocent in nature, the photos below may not be suitable for those with sensitive natures!

My job….

Quite a few people have emailed to ask how the new job is going, and I’ve been pretty busy lately, so here it is!

I’ve almost been here two weeks. The people I work with are great, we have a smallish office consisting of the owner (Dan), a bookkeeper (Donna), a general manager (Bill), a nat’l sales manager(Michael), a guy in charge of logistics (Mike),  and another in charge of making sure we all have our plans right (tech support type of guy)(Kerby, aka The Office Redneck), another recent hire of a CAD designer (Dustin), a receptionist (Melanie) and ME.  There is also a guy from Treasure Valley Forest Products, which is owned by the same guy, just different stuff.  The owner’s wife (Paige) is an integral part of the office and I suspect she is the one who actually runs the show . Half of being successful is knowing who’s butt to kiss!  I’m just kidding there…I’m not a good butt kisser anyway, haha!

I’m in charge of sales for our local area plus whatever nationwide sales the others can’t keep up with, and I also get to be a big part of the website, plus will be the one to write the company blog. Gee…not sure I can handle that last one . One thing is for sure, I definately have to work on my writing style and bring a little bit of the formality back to my writing if I’m going to do it ‘professionally’.

So far things have been a little bit slow, I’ve been sitting in on calls and walk ins, but there are only a few of those per day, I’ve been making notes and starting some of the process of updating the website. Luckily, we’ve hired a company to do the actual re-design of the site, I’m just giving input and organizing content.  I have my first official home, which I have help with at the moment, basically since I was the one up front when they walked in, I get credit for the sale, but Mike will be helping me through it. So….the truth is, he does all the work, I watch and get the credit .

By my own choice, I’m going to start going downstairs and sitting with Mike and Kerby, so that I can learn all of the technical stuff. I’m very hands on and need to learn everything from the inside out so that I can do my job better. I need to have the answers to the questions I’ll be asked, and to have confidence in my work, I need to feel like I know all I can possibly know about it.  As Kerby says, ‘you can make pigs fly…on paper’, and just as going out and helping with installs in cabinets really helped me be able to design and sell better, I’ll be better able to explain the mechanics of a log home and thus, portray much more confidence when I go to close the deal.

I do really like it here, though I am impatient for things to pick up a little more, to have an actual routine.  I’m really thankful for this opportunity and feel the need to give it all I have in order to be successful.  I’m reminded almost constantly of what kind of pay I could be getting for other jobs and while my salary alone here is not enough to make me rich, it is enough to pay the bills and the opportunity to make commission on my sales will get me the rest.  I was having a conversation with Gabe’s dad earlier, he had to be a part of a team that confronted a pharmacy tech with the evidence that she’d shoplifted, both store merchandise and various pharmacuetical items and she was a single mom of three, barely making $10 an hour as a pharmacy tech, and now she’ll be blacklisted from every pharmacy out there. All that education and knowledge…for what?  So she could steal and lose her job, a wasted education for a career that barely made her any money.  I could easily be making that amount of money and it is only through the Grace of God that I’ve been able to take advantage of various opportunities to pull myself up a little higher and be able to earn a decent living.  I’m still aware that that could be taken away from me at any time. These last few months when jobs weren’t popping up as fast as they usually did, I was faced with the cold, hard reality that I might very well have to accept something making less than I had been. All of that makes me doubly thankful for this job!