One More Week....

Did everyone have a good Mother's Day? It was a pretty day.

Parental Update
After talking to the parents, sibling, bosses and God, I'm going back to DC next Monday to help Mom and Dad. I'm going to stay until the emergency room doctor releases him back to his real doctor. That could be weeks, could be a month. I've taken time from work, and I'm going to take the kitties with me. (Is that selfish?? )

Everyone in my family seems to have lots going on, my niece is moving from Newport News to Richmond, my sister Becky is helping her mother-in-law move from Martinsville, Va to Richmond to resettle in a retirement community, she's also retiring from her teaching job in mid-June and my other niece has 2 young boys and a man-child-husband she's got to take care of.

How will this affect the job hunt? Well, that's a big question isn't it? I can spend more time looking for a job in DC (I'm even putting my parents address on my resume, I guess I'm serious!), but at the rate I've been getting interviews here, it doesn't matter where I am.

Depression, Stress and Stuff
I have been very depressed these last few days. I have no energy, no interest in much, no motivation. I have gotten out of bed and taken a shower, and I did manage to clean the kitchen pretty good yesterday, but I just can't seem to do much. I've got a list of things to do, so we'll see. I doubled my dosage of happy pills today, and I'm going to see my counselor this evening. I do have a lot of stress in my life now, and then there's the dreaded Change of Life. I'm sure my hormones are working their magic.

Saturday at work, I put in for time off to go home. I requested from May 20 to June 20 off, and the CS manager had told me it was OK, the Asst. Store Manager said it would be OK. The Asst CS manager told me, at the Customer Service Desk, in front of customers and other employees, that if I took off a month, as a part-time associated, I would be terminated. I told her I had to go, and she said I'd be terminated, and shrugged her shoulders. (This is the same manager who told me there was no one to relieve me when I was cooking outside and walked away.) I almost walked out of the store. I went to the Asst Store Manager, who proceeded to explain to me what the policy was and that I could come back, punch in for a day and get another 30 days off.
All that Asst CS manager had to do was explain stuff to me and work with me, but she was just going to let me walk. They don't pay me enough to put up with this crap.

I came back to work on Friday, the day my dad went back into the hospital. I punched in, talked to the CS manager, and had to go home. I wasn't good for much. So when I went in on Saturday, the place I worked was filled with flowers on display for Mother's Day, no room for me. I wasn't scheduled to work again until next Thursday, so why go thru all the hassle to move the flowers, set up 2 carts, get all the ingredients together and cook for one day? Finding a place for the flowers and physically moving them would have taken a few hours. I cleaned all my carts, and threw out some old ingredients, and managed to piddle around until 3pm, then went home. I was bored. They say they want me to work there, that I'm doing a good job and they are trying to promote me, but everything is always a hassle. I have to fight for all the supplies I order, and I have to fight to get all the ingredients displayed, adn now I guess I have to fight to have a place to work. They don't pay me enough to do all this. There is something empowering in being able to just walk out of a job. I haven't quit...yet.

Relocation
I'm not sure I want to relocate, but maybe I need to. The job market is MUCH better in DC, but the cost of living is higher. The older you get the harder it is to uproot yourself, but maybe I need a change. I've had to 'reinvent' myself several times since I've been in Atlanta, joining different groups, making new friends, so how is that different from going to a new place? And it's not like I don't know the area up there, hell I grew up there! But I've been gone for 20 years, things change. I wish someone would just tell me what to do! Driving around up there last week, I said it wouldn't be too bad moving back up there. I got to drive during the week, not as much traffic and the weather wasn't too bad. I remember August in DC, miserable, hot, humid, not unlike Atlanta....

More to come...
As things happen, I'll be posting. Thanks for taking the time to read. You're opinions are welcome but if you have to start calling me names, don't bother, I won't read them. As my Dad says 'Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.'