I got another job. A better job, by far, for me. Especially at this point in my life. I work for a promotional products company, and the atmosphere is relaxed and the people are awesome and funny and friendly, and I think that I will be good at the job. I started in mid-October, so I’m still learning, but I think it’s going well.

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We’ve had a busy fall, and things are just getting going. We were in the cities the past 2 weekends, and we have to go down this weekend again for a family wedding on Ryan’s side. That’s a lot of traveling to the cities (or Rochester, in one case). James has spent a lot of time with his Auntie Lisa and Grandma and Grandpa on that side, that’s for sure. We are home the weekend after this coming one, and then it’s Thanksgiving, which is in Roseau this year. More driving.

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Halloween was fun this year, although our costumes were not as high caliber as years’ past. Ryan was some kind of crazy, murderous doctor, and I was one of those pictures where they eyes follow you around. Needless to say we didn’t win the costume contest. James was a cowboy for halloween. When you would tell him he was a cowboy he would say “Moooooo!” HAHAHA. That was fun. He was a little unsure of trick-or-treating, but by the end of the night he got the hang of it and enjoyed himself. It helped that we were with our friends/neighbors, and their son had done some trick or treating the weekend before with family, so he knew what was going on.

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What else is going on in my life? Hmm. Not much. I’m working, Ryan is working, James is going to daycare/staying with our friends during the week. It’s Ryan’s birthday this week, so we’ll go out for dinner for that. It’s kind of a laid-back year for birthdays for us. By necessity in part (since I was unemployed for a month and a half), but it’s good. It’s also going to be a small year for Christmas, but I am hoping to do some hand-made gifts (I love you, Pinterest), so that will be fun.

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(This section was written on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, the day it happened)

I was let go today, after 6 1/2 years with my company. 5 of those years I did great work. I was a HARD worker. I picked up on things quickly. I didn’t mess around, other than a little water cooler talk here and there. Then, I got pregnant, and had a baby. And from that point on, things were not the same. I still worked hard, but I spent more and more time doing non-work things during work hours. Mostly reading blogs or visiting facebook. If someone else had told me they were doing those things at their job I would have judged them as lazy. I would have said “You are going to get fired. You need to stop doing that.” And I would have assumed that if they didn’t stop that they were stupid. That they were arrogant to believe that it wasn’t a big deal. Probably I would have thought “They deserved it,” if I heard they got fired. And I would have been right. Kind of.

As you always find out when you are on the other side of something that is being judged, there is no such thing as a black and white world. Yes, a person who does personal business while being paid is doing something wrong. That part IS black and white. But I still don’t think of myself as lazy, despite what all of you might think. Improperly motivated, yes. Naive (maybe stupid) about thinking that I could do my job just as well while visiting the internet in between tasks as if I wasn’t? Definitely. But not lazy, and I also don’t think that I am bereft of morals about the workplace either. I know what hard work is. I would imagine that my family is almost as mortified as I am that they raised a daughter who was fired for something so…stupid. But there it is. The fact that when the issue was brought to my attention last spring and I fixed the workload part of it is beside the point, I guess. I no longer read blogs while I was at work, and I cut back on the other stuff too. My former employer focused in on the visiting non-work related sites by itself, and that is their prerogative.

So, where do I go from here? What kind of a job do I look for? Will I be able to even FIND a job, in this economy, with this black mark against me? I don’t know. I sure hope that I can find a job. In the interim one that pays the bills, but I’m hoping to use this opportunity to do something that I should have been more proactive about. I have known for quite a while that this job was not a permanent one for me. Now that I’m not there, I can honestly say that I had grown to hate my job. I have written about it here before. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I let fear of choosing wrong/not getting the job I wanted stop me from pursuing something different.

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(Back to present day)

In the couple weeks since this happened, I have been staying home with James. It has been wonderful and frustrating and awesome and horrible, sometimes in quick succession. Today, for instance, we had a great time this morning down at the canal, watching boats come in and go out, and touring the museum. Then, he had a doctor’s appointment that went great (29lbs, 33 inches), and then we went home. And he wouldn’t nap. And he was being a terror. Finally I realized I should just put him in the car and go for a drive, because he’d probably pass out. So I did. He slept for maybe an hour. I read in the parking lot at the mall. When we got home he was mostly great. Until he hit me HARD in the face with a hard plastic toy. Intentionally, because I wasn’t looking at him when he wanted me to. That was probably the 4th time-out for today, and there was no prior warning on it. Some things do not require a warning, I think. But nothing makes me feel like a terrible mother like admitting that I gave my 19 month old 4 time-outs in one day. They aren’t long, but I am unsure what else I am supposed to do when he intentionally throws food or bites me/tries to bite me repeatedly.

Thankfully, days like today are not the norm. He is usually a really good kid. And so I can say wholeheartedly that I am glad to be spending this time with him at home while I look for another job and figure out what I want to do next.

After reading a friend’s blog post I’ve added a plug-in to our blog that automatically presents a mobile version of our blog to smart phones and other mobile devices. What does that mean for you? Now it’s easier to take us with you everywhere! You know you’re excited!

p.s. If you’re curious, the plug-in is called wptouch

I feel like a wimp. So many people run and don’t have problems like this, and I wasn’t running that hard. I feel like it’s ridiculous that I am in this much pain for this long. That people probably think I’m either faking it or making it seem worse than it is. I hate that idea. I want to be better.

My other knee and back have started to bother me a little because of how I’m compensating for my left knee. I’m not really sure what to do about that other than try to maintain good posture and stay off my knee. Wearing the brace seems to help some too, as I don’t limp as badly.

Anyway, sorry for dumping all of this. I said earlier today, someone needs to start an email address where you can send all your whiney messages and they just get trashed. I can’t email myself because I know that I’m just talking to myself. It doesn’t work. And I don’t want to direct this whining toward anyone who would feel obligated to read what I say. So I’m dumping it here instead.

Other than that, there isn’t much going on around here. I’ve been rendered lame, and Ryan’s been taking care of me and James. Good thing we have him around here. James is being a typical 18 month old (it still boggles my mind that he’s that old already). He is alternately adorable, hysterical, and immensely frustrating. Sometimes he is all 3 at once.

On a closing note, what is with all the mosquitoes in our house this summer? We’ve never had this problem before, and they are positively annoying. Ryan thinks they might be coming in where the air conditioner is attached. Wherever they are coming in, it’ll be closed up soon enough. The evenings are getting cooler and the daytime temps are coming down, slowly but surely. Fall is coming. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about that. On the one hand, football, chili, hot cider, pretty leaves, snuggling under blankets. On the other hand, end of camping weather (for me, anyway), less amenable weather to being outside with a toddler, and daylight is leaking away.

Hmmm…other news. Not much to report. I just watched Precious tonight. I had wanted to see it, but it wasn’t something Ryan was really interested in. He had to go to work for a while, so I put it on. It was horrifying, but I’m glad I watched it. If you haven’t seen it, I would recommend it. But know going in that it’s a very sad story.

I’ve been reading a lot lately. I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which I thought was great non-fiction. It’s about a black woman who had cancer in the 50s, and scientists took some of her cancer cells and have used them in millions of types of research since then. They were the first human cells that could be grown in culture (all others would die after a few days away from the person who they came from). It was horrible in some ways; reading about the things scientists and doctors did to patients back then because it was just standard practice, and thinking about how sad it is that this woman contributed so much to society, but her kids and grandkids can’t afford health care. I would highly recommend it.

I also tried reading some HP Lovecraft, because I LOVE Stephen King, and HP Lovecraft is supposed to be like the grandfather of horror stories. I liked the short stories in the book I had, but I had so many other things going on, and because it was older it was a little harder to read, so I didn’t finish it before it had to go back to the library. Maybe another time.

The 3rd book I just finished reading was The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson. It is also a non-fiction book, and centers around the Psychopath Test as developed by Bob Hare. It’s a really fascinating book about mental illness and our perceptions of other people’s mental illnesses. Also, it confirms what we all “know;” psychopaths are freaking creepy! They don’t experience fear. They are reoffenders. And they are charming.

The book for September’s book club is A Visit From The Goon Squad, which I’ve heard mixed reviews about, but should be interesting. I can’t make it next month (family wedding shower), but I’ll still read the book. What else am I reading/do I want to read? Hmm…I have a Stephen King book that just hasn’t made it to the top of my pile, due to book club and stuff I had on hold at the library. That might be my next project.

What are you reading? Anything you would recommend?

The blog sent someone to rough me up.

Or, I may have tripped stepping into a boat last weekend and this is what the damage looks like 4 days later.

Either way, I promise to be back on a more regular basis. I missed this (and James has grown a ton, as you can see…maybe…under all that dirt).

Ps. We had a great time camping; injuries aside.

I’m sorry that I’ve been MIA on the blog for so long. Between the changes at work and life in general I haven’t had a lot of time to come back here, which makes me sad. Also, even though there are constantly things running through my mind during the day that I wonder or want to talk about, none of them are really enough for an entire blog entry. And then when I finally get a chance to sit down and write something, nothing comes to mind, and I end up wasting the time checking facebook or catching up on the 100+ items in my Google Reader instead of writing.

Things are going well at work. We launched a new company website this week, and I think it’s a pretty big improvement over the last one. One of the features on the new site is a blog, and I’ve asked to be involved with that. I think that will be a fun project. If you have any insurance questions/issues you have wondered about or want to discuss, please let me know! We’ll be constantly looking for ideas. I think sometimes we’ll tackle current events (how would an event like the nuclear reactor meltdown affect your business if you were in the evacuation zone, and would there be coverage?), and sometimes we’ll talk about insurance concepts in general (what is Professional Liability insurance, and do I need it?). My contributions will probably center around business insurance topics, and other people will write about personal insurance topics.

Other than that, things are going well. James is going through a phase where he thinks it’s fun to scream at things, and boy does he have some good lungs. We are working on getting him to use his inside voice, but I know it’s important for him to experiment with making different sounds, so we are also trying to let him do that some times. He also has started biting me occassionally again…I think his upper molars must be coming in (he’s been in a MOOD in the evenings lately). He’s still pretty adorable most of the time, though. This morning while Ryan was changing his diaper and getting him dressed he would make a noise to James, and James would repeat it back to him (rolling his tongue, making a “ba” or “tuh” sound, etc). One step closer to talking.

He runs all over the place now, and is very independent. Last night we went to Barnes & Noble, and he did not want to hold my hand or be held in the parking lot; he wanted to walk on his own (or swagger, I should say). Of course that’s not safe in the mall parking lot, so I carried him screaming into the building. But after that he had a lot of fun playing in the kids’ section with his friend Odin.

He also LOVES to read books. He will sit and look at a book from beginning to end and then back again over and over, and he will take a book and bring it to us and ask to sit in our lap so we can read it to him. He gets very angry if we can’t drop whatever we are doing to read, but we are working on patience. It’s hard when he doesn’t realize that the world doesn’t revolve around him (which is a developmental thing; he won’t realize that until about 18 months or so).  His favorite books lately are The Big Red Barn, Bunny My Honey, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider (because I sing the song).

He is some kind of crazy dancing kid. He will sway back and forth or bounce up and down whenever he hears a good beat (last night he was sitting on the floor when James Durban was singing on American Idol, and he went crazy rocking back and forth to that drum beat).

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That’s about it for news around these parts. We went to Ryan’s parents’ place last weekend, and we plan on going to Roseau for Mothers Day weekend, as long as Ryan’s not on call. I hope not; I would love to get up there to visit soon!

The time for polarized political views in regard to the budget is over. This isn’t a black or white, right or left, right or wrong issue. You need to realize this and start working together to find some common ground. Bargaining in good faith and compromising is the only reasonable solution to the budget stalemate. While everyone has the right to their own opinions and idealogical views please don’t let them get in the way of being open minded. Nobody wins if the government shuts down and the lives and livelihoods of many who are less fortunate than yourselves hang in the balance. Please get it figured out.

Sincerely,

A concerned and frustrated voter