I seriously feel like I'm cracking up. SO stressed! Let's start off with the fact that my schedule after work every day this week has been INSANE and looks like it will be that way until the end of the month. Not a second to myself except late at night when I'm exhausted.
I'm venting here ok?
How is a working Mom with 2 little kids at home supposed to get a minute alone? When are we supposed to get recreation time either alone or as a family? My life seems to be full of "have tos" and I'm totally beyond FED UP. It's either the work week or Friday/Shabbat which isn't restful by any stretch of the imagination. It's one long marathon. Something to be "got through". When do we have time to go as a family and visit friends during the week? When do we have time to take a day trip up north or down south? In the lunch room at work on Sunday I am regaled with stories of what everyone did over the weekend: "Oh we went hiking in Nachal X with the kids on Shabbat and the spring flowers were so beautiful!" one woman gushes. Another woman, "We took the kids to Zoo Such and Such!" or "We went scuba diving in Eilat!" I also would like to be able to come back with stories about the adventures we had over the weekend. Nobody wants to hear, "Well, we went to shul. Again. We had friends over for lunch. Again. I took a nap. Again." Boooooorrring!
This Friday I just. could. not. deal. and said to hell with the cooking and cleaning. Just........NO! I ain't doin' it. After I dropped the kids off at gan and school, I went to the beach for 2 1/2 hours until I had to pick E up from gan. It was sorely needed and far too short and just left me feeling resentful that these moments of recreation are taken on stolen time and are so rushed and that Shabbat impinges on them. HAVE TO rush back to get the cleaning and cooking done. HAVE TO rush back because Shabbat is coming. I'm ashamed to say it but I'm really having a hard time with this right now. I came home and told DH, "This Shabbat thing is NOT NORMAL. It's either work or Shabbat, Shabbat or work. No Sunday even where we can take a deep breath - where I can do something FOR MYSELF - and recover from Shabbat before jumping back into the work week. Work isn't about ME. It's about me jumping through hoops for someone else. Shabbat isn't about me. It's about Hashem. The I, the ME, has nowhere to express itself and just be, just do something purely for enjoyment's sake."
For an adventurous, creative person like me, the monotony of the Friday routine is just a killer. A KILLER.
Then there's work......
I'm losing my motivation at work fast. Lately I've been very involved in the translation process (Hebrew to English ) of no less than 130 documents. I'm the contact person for the person who actually does the translation. I send them to him, he translates, sends them back to me, I have to check the English translation against the original Hebrew, mark any corrections or mistakes I find with "track changes" in WORD and send them back to him to either accept my corrections or not. If he doesn't then we have this back-and-forth by phone or email about it until we agree. Fine. So yesterday I sent him 9 WORD documents with small corrections marked with tracking that I wanted him to accept. Today he sends me back those exact same 9 files which the tracked changes still marked in red. When I expressed surprise, he said, "Oh yeah. I had a teleconference about it with Orly and Tamar in your company and this is what was agreed." I wrote him back and ccd those two women he'd referred to and I said to him, "No one informed me as to what was agreed in the conference call." This Orly jumped all over me about "airing the company's dirty laundry" and that if I have questions or need a clarification I need to inquire internally. OK. Fair enough. I said ok and apologized to her. I did tell her that it really bothers me that I have to hear from her THROUGH HIM what the outcome of the conference call was. Like, until now all my dealings with him have been handled one way and then all of a sudden he's telling me, "Noooooo, your people told me that now it has to be done THIS way." He sounded shocked - and rightly so - that I wasn't in the loop. I felt like such an idiot. I told this Orly that I have NO problem switching my modus operandi with our translation people but I just need to know what the new rules are and NOT hear it from someone outside the company. So that set me off to a bad start today. I was ticked.
Then, for a different study I'm responsible for administering, there are these bi-weekly T/Cs that are recorded and then the next day I listen to the recording and transcribe the meeting minutes. It's a PAIN IN THE BUTT but hopefully this won't be going on much longer. Not sure. Anyway, I spent TWO HOURS on Thursday transcribing, every minute of it is torture and then another girl came into my office and asked me to quickly help her edit a document of hers and in doing so she shut down my document with the meeting minutes that I'd worked on for two hours. I lost the whole thing. It's my fault for not saving it before starting to type. But still. I hate when people come in and help themselves to my computer even if I'm sitting right here. I wanted to STRANGLE her but I had to be nice and say, "Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. I'll just spend ANOTHER TWO HOURS on Sunday redoing the WHOLE BLOODY THING!" I was this close to crying. Especially after the thing about the translator. I feel like I got NOTHING done at work Thursday. Just one of those awful, awful days.
Don't get me wrong. It's a good company - a lot going for it - and good people but like I've been saying for a few weeks now, someone is starting to make some really bad management decisions and it's affecting not just me badly. It's really hard to keep the motivation up long-term under these conditions. I wish I could quit. I have to close my eyes a few times a day and grit my teeth and just say thank you that I even have a job. I spent 2 years at home under atomic financial pressure and that was enough to last me the rest of my life.
Y has an end of year school party to go to for which the kids have to wear ALL black from head to toe which means I have to rush out and buy her black everything - more stress - which she'll never wear again. (I do NOT dress my kids in black! Why? Who died?)
Y has been taking gynmastics two times a week this year. Then recently she said she's bored with it and wants to try soccer. So we stupidly signed her up for soccer in addition to gymnastics through the end of this month. Which means she has an after-school activity that she has to be schlepped to FOUR nights a week! WHAT were we thinking???
Then on the 28th she has an end of year party for her gynmastics class AND the end of year party for soccer was also scheduled for the same night so we told her she has to go to the gymnastics party since she's invested a lot more time in gymnastics this year.
But wait. It gets better. DH popped me a message on Skype today that we have been invited to his sister's house, also on the evening of the 28th, to help her celebrate her birthday! I nearly lost it. You've GOT to be joking! I desperately need to clear my schedule, not double book on the same night!
T's cousin is having his Bar Mitzvah next Shabbat so she wants to go out to buy a new outfit for it. I seriously have ZERO time to go shopping with her and the thought of dragging E with us while we do it doesn't bear thinking about. I told her last night she should go shopping with a girlfriend, find something nice and ask the store to hold it for her and I will go in a pay for it. I told her to take a picture of whatever it is she finds to show me when she gets home. We'll see if she remembers that bit.
I feel like crying just thinking how frazzling these next two weeks are going to be..........I haven't even told you the half of it but.......duty calls.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Long Time No.....Blog
I'm back after an unplanned blogging absence. Life got away from me for a while. Again.
No, but seriously.....about 2 months ago my workload increased about 10 fold at work. I won't bore you with the details but suffice to say someone around here has very unrealistic expectations and their sense of how long our (my and the two other admin girls') tasks take us is very "off". When I voiced some complaints recently about this insane workload to my boss, she said after the summer vacation we'll all sit down and raise problems, reassess, etc. OK. I'm prepared to give it that long but something's gotta change and if it doesn't, I'm NOT sticking around here for 6 years like I did in my last job. It's a shame because the people here are NOT bad people. The company's been around for 20+ years and you'd think by now they'd get people management and company management down pat - but nooooooooo. Someone around here is making some really bad management decisions and employees are starting to leave because of it. One employee has already announced that she's leaving and 3 others in the past week have said they're thinking of looking for something else. But what?
DH has been out late 4 nights a week for the past month and a half at play rehearsals. He was in 3 performances last week so now that's finished with, thank goodness. On the one hand, he's very dramatic and TALENTED when it comes to acting (how come acting comes to naturally to Brits?) and needs an outlet for it and it's nice having him out from under foot in the evenings so I can conduct my evening and do what I need to do with the kids without interference from him but........I barely saw him the whole 6 weeks except on weekends which was hard.
I've booked my ticket to the U.S. for 2 weeks in October. I'm going to meet for the first time my half-sister who I found on Facebook a year ago February. This is my Dad's daughter from his first short-lived marriage. The plan is that while I'm staying with her in the Seattle area, Dad and his wife will drive up to see me and meet his daughter and her family for the first time as well. Needless to say it's going to be a VERY intense trip. So I'm looking forward to the trip and having a break. I just hope DH will manage with the kids while I'm away.
I'm taking T to a play at the theater in Tel Aviv tonight. It's a comedy and came highly recommended by a few people I work with so hope it will be good and that she'll enjoy it.
The summer is fast approaching.....Y will be in the camp run by her school for the first three weeks of the summer.
T is looking for a job waitressing in one of the many wedding halls around town although since she's not 16 yet (legally employable), she's not sure anyone will hire her. In lieu of that, she has been asked to work as a mother's helper for a friend of mine who just had her 2nd baby but I'm not sure how full-time that will be. In addition, she was asked by another friend of mine to babysit her three kids for three weeks, 4 days a week from 9-1. Not sure how she's planning to coordinate those two child minding jobs but it's nice to be in demand. She wants to work as much as possible this summer which I am very glad to see. She said over half the kids in her class have jobs of one kind or another and I guess it's rubbing off on her so......something positive. Yay!
I have completed another set of earrings from a new beading book that was just published and which I ordered off the internet. These patterns are more complicated than anything I've done until now and I wasn't sure I'd be able to follow the written instructions so I started off with the earrings. I figured if they didn't turn out, I wouldn't have wasted a lot of money on a huge quantity of beads such as the bigger projects call for. Anyway, they came out AMAZINGLY and I've started a BIG necklace project that will take me some time to complete.
Y lost her 3rd tooth on Tuesday and found a nice letter AND 10 NIS from the tooth fairy in an envelope under her pillow yesterday morning. :-) That tooth was a loooooooooong time in falling - whew!
I am SO happy to announce that E seems to have FINALLY cottoned on to pooping in the pot and hasn't missed once in the last 8 or 9 days. All of a sudden it clicked for him. Of course the first few times we all made a huge deal over it and him and danced and cheered and gave him treats afterwards. We told him, "See? Abba's smiling and Ima's smiling and T is smiling and Y is smiling and your teacher is smiling. EVERYONE is smiling." He likes when he's pooping for me to sit on the edge of our bed and talk to him. So this morning he was pooping and we were talking. Then with his two index fingers he pushed the corners of his own mouth into a smile and said, "Ima! Smile! You're not SMILING!" LOL
And another funny....On Friday E said he had to pee. He pulls his pants down and....um....he had a little erection. So he sits down on the pot and he's trying to explain what's going on. He's like, "Ima? Um....Ima?....um....my willie (DH's word for penis).....hu ("he's" or "it's" in Hebrew) GROWING!" LOLOLOL. OMG, now WHAT do you do with a statement like THAT???
And a funny from Y....she said, "Ima, does the hospital have clowns who come to make the children happy when they come for a vaccination?" I said they might have clowns who come to make children who are very ill and who have to be in the hospital for a LONG time happy and help them to forget for a little while how bad they feel. I said, "Would you like to have a job like that of being a clown who makes ill children happy?" She said, "Nah. I want to be a policewoman." When I asked why she said, "I need a job with more action - riding in the a police car, chasing people......" She kills me!
Y also informed us that she is bored with gynmastics and wants to take soccer next year. I took her for a trial lesson (she is the ONLY girl there!!!!) at the community center across the street from us where it is offered and she said she definitely wants to sign up for next year. (I thought her being the only girl would be a deterrent but no. She's ok with it! The girl has so much self-confidence it's not even funny.) And I'm the last one who's going to discourage her. I asked at the center if she could join the team already this year even though there's only a month left in this school year and they said yes. DH and I figured that will give her a month to try it on a twice weekly basis and then she'll have to decide between soccer and gynmastics for next year.
No, but seriously.....about 2 months ago my workload increased about 10 fold at work. I won't bore you with the details but suffice to say someone around here has very unrealistic expectations and their sense of how long our (my and the two other admin girls') tasks take us is very "off". When I voiced some complaints recently about this insane workload to my boss, she said after the summer vacation we'll all sit down and raise problems, reassess, etc. OK. I'm prepared to give it that long but something's gotta change and if it doesn't, I'm NOT sticking around here for 6 years like I did in my last job. It's a shame because the people here are NOT bad people. The company's been around for 20+ years and you'd think by now they'd get people management and company management down pat - but nooooooooo. Someone around here is making some really bad management decisions and employees are starting to leave because of it. One employee has already announced that she's leaving and 3 others in the past week have said they're thinking of looking for something else. But what?
DH has been out late 4 nights a week for the past month and a half at play rehearsals. He was in 3 performances last week so now that's finished with, thank goodness. On the one hand, he's very dramatic and TALENTED when it comes to acting (how come acting comes to naturally to Brits?) and needs an outlet for it and it's nice having him out from under foot in the evenings so I can conduct my evening and do what I need to do with the kids without interference from him but........I barely saw him the whole 6 weeks except on weekends which was hard.
I've booked my ticket to the U.S. for 2 weeks in October. I'm going to meet for the first time my half-sister who I found on Facebook a year ago February. This is my Dad's daughter from his first short-lived marriage. The plan is that while I'm staying with her in the Seattle area, Dad and his wife will drive up to see me and meet his daughter and her family for the first time as well. Needless to say it's going to be a VERY intense trip. So I'm looking forward to the trip and having a break. I just hope DH will manage with the kids while I'm away.
I'm taking T to a play at the theater in Tel Aviv tonight. It's a comedy and came highly recommended by a few people I work with so hope it will be good and that she'll enjoy it.
The summer is fast approaching.....Y will be in the camp run by her school for the first three weeks of the summer.
T is looking for a job waitressing in one of the many wedding halls around town although since she's not 16 yet (legally employable), she's not sure anyone will hire her. In lieu of that, she has been asked to work as a mother's helper for a friend of mine who just had her 2nd baby but I'm not sure how full-time that will be. In addition, she was asked by another friend of mine to babysit her three kids for three weeks, 4 days a week from 9-1. Not sure how she's planning to coordinate those two child minding jobs but it's nice to be in demand. She wants to work as much as possible this summer which I am very glad to see. She said over half the kids in her class have jobs of one kind or another and I guess it's rubbing off on her so......something positive. Yay!
I have completed another set of earrings from a new beading book that was just published and which I ordered off the internet. These patterns are more complicated than anything I've done until now and I wasn't sure I'd be able to follow the written instructions so I started off with the earrings. I figured if they didn't turn out, I wouldn't have wasted a lot of money on a huge quantity of beads such as the bigger projects call for. Anyway, they came out AMAZINGLY and I've started a BIG necklace project that will take me some time to complete.
Y lost her 3rd tooth on Tuesday and found a nice letter AND 10 NIS from the tooth fairy in an envelope under her pillow yesterday morning. :-) That tooth was a loooooooooong time in falling - whew!
I am SO happy to announce that E seems to have FINALLY cottoned on to pooping in the pot and hasn't missed once in the last 8 or 9 days. All of a sudden it clicked for him. Of course the first few times we all made a huge deal over it and him and danced and cheered and gave him treats afterwards. We told him, "See? Abba's smiling and Ima's smiling and T is smiling and Y is smiling and your teacher is smiling. EVERYONE is smiling." He likes when he's pooping for me to sit on the edge of our bed and talk to him. So this morning he was pooping and we were talking. Then with his two index fingers he pushed the corners of his own mouth into a smile and said, "Ima! Smile! You're not SMILING!" LOL
And another funny....On Friday E said he had to pee. He pulls his pants down and....um....he had a little erection. So he sits down on the pot and he's trying to explain what's going on. He's like, "Ima? Um....Ima?....um....my willie (DH's word for penis).....hu ("he's" or "it's" in Hebrew) GROWING!" LOLOLOL. OMG, now WHAT do you do with a statement like THAT???
And a funny from Y....she said, "Ima, does the hospital have clowns who come to make the children happy when they come for a vaccination?" I said they might have clowns who come to make children who are very ill and who have to be in the hospital for a LONG time happy and help them to forget for a little while how bad they feel. I said, "Would you like to have a job like that of being a clown who makes ill children happy?" She said, "Nah. I want to be a policewoman." When I asked why she said, "I need a job with more action - riding in the a police car, chasing people......" She kills me!
Y also informed us that she is bored with gynmastics and wants to take soccer next year. I took her for a trial lesson (she is the ONLY girl there!!!!) at the community center across the street from us where it is offered and she said she definitely wants to sign up for next year. (I thought her being the only girl would be a deterrent but no. She's ok with it! The girl has so much self-confidence it's not even funny.) And I'm the last one who's going to discourage her. I asked at the center if she could join the team already this year even though there's only a month left in this school year and they said yes. DH and I figured that will give her a month to try it on a twice weekly basis and then she'll have to decide between soccer and gynmastics for next year.
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