The things that have happened

In no particular order…

• I have another new job… well a seventeen month old new job
• My sister and I went on a road trip
• and we went to Epcot Food and Wine
• and I went to visit her again at her new house
• I barely did any theater
• I took a seminary class
• I preached one of the last nights of our departed Evening Vespers service
• I had minor surgery
• that let me gain back most of the weight
• Ryan Bradley won the US Championship
• Many hours of “So You Think You Can Dance” were watched
• More youth got confirmed
• I agreed to help with Youth Sunday School
• so I am going regularly to the contemporary service at church
• I cut my hair short
• I cried my eyes out too many times
• I took a 12 week Biblical Greek class
• I put up a half done online dating profile… then took it down
• I applied for about 20 jobs… got one phone interview and no jobs
• I finally turned some acquaintances into real friends
• Visited Lakeland to go to FTC see old friends, waive at FSC, and see my beloved drama teacher get a distinguished career award
• I got lots of books
• I nominated myself to be a delegate to General Conference and did not win the vote
• I saw the first national tour of the Hair revival
• I spent holidays at home
• I picked up a bad YouTube watching habit
• I got asked to speak at next year’s Women’s Retreat
• I rode lots of roller coasters
• I went to the PCC reunion
• I went to my ten year HS reunion
• I help organize an emergency cold weather shelter for homeless people
• I got a new car
• I had a Seder meal at my house
• and more… can’t decide if that’s a lot or a little

But I did work today

And how!  We were so busy today.  I ended up working ten hours straight though.  At about 4 was thinking wow I’m really hungry.  That 7:30 yogurt couldn’t last that long.  We received 13 clients during my shift… about double of a normal shift.  And then I had a lady who we were trying to transfer out because her insurance wouldn’t pay.  That took up every spare moment on the phone with the insurance company, the hospital, my administrator on call, and the behavioral center in Panama City that they wanted us to send her to.  My RN said today was trial by fire.  All those spare moments I used to have… I didn’t have one today.  Tomorrow will be better because we will start the day at capacity, so we won’t have to deal with as many transfers our way.  Well here’s hoping!  I’m going to bed.

I’m not at work

Well, I won’t have been anyway because it’s 7:50pm.  And I actually did go into work today for a going away celebration for two of my office mates.  One is moving to New Jersey to be with her boyfriend.  That’s great because we actually trained together and like 2 weeks after we started in the office, her long time friend was coming to visit from Crestview to see if they wanted to start dating.  Well anyway it’s nine months later, he got moved away in the Air Force, and now they are planning on getting married.

The other is the girl who had my same job.  After much drama, weird things with HR, passive-aggressive prospective supervisors, not to mention talks of lay offs and crying… she got a promotion to a Case Management position in the out patient department.

But anyway… I did not have to work today because I got a promotion too! WooHoo.  I stayed in the same department, but I had to switch over to the twelve hour shifts that inpatient staff does.  Yesterday was my one week of doing it.  So far so good.

I had much HR drama as well, and after seeing what my friend went through I’m convinced that the HR system is broken.  We both happened to reach our one year of experience at about the same time in June and put in for a promotion then after much encouragement from our supervisors.  (That’s always nice.)  At the time I applied for a transfer as well (as to avoid the 12 hour shifts)  but my friend wanted to stay were she was because our job was so low stress and she was starting grad school.  She could just pick some weekend shifts for some extra cash.   Well bottom line is that HR never got back to either of us.  We puzzled out that they were unsure as to how or if they were going to count my part time experience.  Her’s didn’t have her experience documented properly (even though she had work a year at the company.)  And there may have been some wrong position numbers (which you know came for the HR website, so that I just don’t get.)

Well time goes on and thing are not straightened out.  The positions for my out of department transfer are all filled up.  So I told my boss that I’d take the 12 shift that was opening up, if we can get the HR ok.  Well like the next day, we here that our positions are being eliminated and that the majority of what we did day to day would be transferred up to a clerical position.  At that point they said we could keep our jobs with a demoted title but no cut in pay.  Well that did not sound good to either of us and we let people know it.  I continued to pray for the HR ok, for the job that I was already doing and she put in applications for various other promotions, but was met with, “well we already have so many applications…”

Well luckily by the next week (magically when the person left the job and they needed shift coverage) and a matter-of-fact letter calculating out my full time equivalent experience for them, I was approved for the promotion.  And my friend was resigned to make the move to the clerical job.

Well things really got dicey when on Tuesday, the head of HR called her to say that, no they would not be letting her just move over, she would have to reapply and take a pay cut.  I mean really?  So she basically would have been laid off.  She sent up the application (because who want to be without a job) and got called to meet with the clerical supervisor.  And it did not go well, she was apparently none to pleased that we were not happy campers about a demotion and pay cut.  My friend asked if she would have a place to work on Monday, and was told that they’d be getting back to her on that.  Hence the crying.  Oh my gosh, I don’t know what I would do if it was me (which, you know, it almost was.)

So … happy ending after all… she got called to a mystery meeting on Wednesday afternoon.  She thought she was going to get fired.  But it turns out they wanted to interview her for a Case Management position.  And it went great, of course, because she’s been working for the company for a year and at the end of the day the called her to tell her she got the job.  So she gets a promotion and to keep her 8-5 job and doesn’t have to work with the crazy clerical supervisor.

And I have to go to work tomorrow, my first weekend shift: 7:30am-8pm Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I like it so far, the mid week breaks are kinda cool.  I have much more to do, and I feel more challenged.  I used to (this is not any exaggeration) listen to a 3 hour radio show and read (well scan) the updates on about 200 blogs everyday at work.  But I had to change when I listen and I picked out about 20 blogs that I will keep up with at off times.

But so far I feel a lot more useful and important, and it makes the time go faster.

When did I become a music snob?

This is old news I know, but I was bummed that Adam Lambert did not win American Idol.  I could be influence by my love of tenors and or the fact that he was a professional theatre actor before coming on the show.  But the weeks that have followed have got me thinking.  Kris is completely my type of artist… my taste, you know? Singer, acoustic guitar the whole bit… and he did the song from “Once”, great stuff.  So why did I find him so boring, never bad just dull?

This and I’ve been using my iPod as intended lately (for music, as opposed to just podcasts) and so I decided I’d listen to the whole Tyrone Wells (singer songwriter, former “Christian” artist) CD on my car trip home for memorial day weekend.  And I have to say that it moved down a few pegs in my esteem.  I bought the CD in iTunes late one night about a year ago after hearing some songs (“Wondering Where You Are” rocks my socks)… and “Dream Like New York” and “Sea Breeze” and “What are We Fighting For” are awesome.  That first listen through the whole thing, I thought “this is going to be one of those CD’s that I love every song.” I was lying in bed smiling the whole time.  But this time I found myself scoffing at some of the lyrics’ predictable metaphors and slant rhyme.  It bummed me out.  When did I get so hypercritical?

Could be the hipster music on TBTL, my newest podcast/ something to do at work.  And I would not even know what a slant rhyme was had in not been for Musicaltalk… my first podcast/ still something to do at work, (besides write blog posts.)  My iPod is at war… the podcasts against the music.  The music is holding ground, no Sondhiem or She & Him yet. But who knows what tonight will bring.

Series of Sundays, Part 1

Like I told the Facebook world, I spent most of the day crying on Easter. It was obviously a very emotional day. First think I was up at 6:00 to sing at the sunrise service and that’s enough to make anyone cry (well me.) It was bit chilly but not like it was last year. Singing went fine, we did this kind of old fashioned-y “Easter Anthem.” No, that’s really what it was called, creative right? Joyce preached the sermon for the morning service, and it was great. I think she’s getting to be a really great preacher. I love that she always uses personal stories, it’s really brave and vulnerable, and it really makes the message seem sincere.  She was discribing a scene from a movie to illustrate a point. 

There was little boy in a consentration camp that got assinged to cleaning the commander’s bathroom. One day he stole a used bar of soap and brought it back to his teenaged friend to show it off.   The theft was soon discovered and everyone was called together to be questioned.  Just as the boy was holding his hand out with the soap, his friend snachted it away and yelled out that he had the soap.  He was shot on the spot.

Wow… that got me.  There is just something about sacrificial love.  Someone else taking the blame.  It’s real easy to say “Jesus died for our sin.”  But it’s good to feel it sometimes.

We had bruch of Sam’s pastries and frozen fruit, not quite the Easter spread we get in Pensacola.  But when Cynthia sat on one of the said pastries that almost made up for it.  That kind of made me cry too, with laughter.

For 8:30 service we were in the sactuary.  The theme for Clarke’s sermon was transformation, and we used butterflies to decorate the window sills and we brought in potted plants to the narthex.  During the service we added butterfly garden stakes to the plants… you know like the tranformation had just taken place.  It was very pretty and colorful, but a little less impactful than it could have been because our narthex is a bit cluttered (my hospitality workshop told me that’s not a very welcoming thing.)    That work great for 8:30 but the service was so long that the 9:45 people were already waiting and saw them before the other service let out.

The thing during 8:30 that made me cry was the lady that was sitting next to me in the pew.  We had a bunch of kids, of course, and they were all being cute during the children’s sermon.  But the whole time the lady who was maybe in her late fourties was holding her husband’s hand and weeping.  I don’t know anything more than that, what happened, if she had a loss.  She was just sitting there in pain.  Besides my empathy for her, I just thought about all the other people who feel pain and regret during happy times.

Then I had to teach Sunday School, which was maybe a little too creative.  I took the kids to the 9:45 service to remove the butterflies from the plants, and to watch my friends play in the pickup band that was playing that day.  Then we had our lesson outside, which was a bit challenging and distracting for my little people.  Then we went back to play Easter symbol memory, which is always the biggest hit ever.  They love it.  Cokesbury must be up on their developmentally appropriate materials (I think I want that job) because they always include at least three memory card sets for each unit.

Then I had my Easter Whataburger meal and had a laundry and movie day.  That night was the Tallahassee episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  Which was just sad in the classic, human interest story way.  You can watch it for yourself.  But that was so sad.

I told my Sunday Schoolers that Easter is the happiest day of the year.  For me it was little crazy too.

Why I may have sympathy for men with million dollar offices.

You’d think that I’d learn my lesson, but I managed to overdraft my checking account for the second time in a month.  It makes me mad at myself because I prided myself on being in tight control over my finacial life (maybe one of the only areas really.)  The problem is that the job I have now literally pulled me back onto the finacial cliff.  I did not have enough money to pay my November rent.  But it also marked the first time in 3 years that I was back to living on a paycheck basis.  I lived two years being paid in big chunks and then I lived off the savings of the big chunks.  And about 3 years ago I stopped using my checking account.  I’d pay my bills out of the chunk, I’d make purchases on my credit card, then pay it off in full at the end of the month from the chunk.  While I was working I alway had the big chunk and it was plenty and more.  In fact I managed to save about a third of what I made that got me through the year.  But as that chunk started running out I started to carry a balance on my credit card.  Which I don’t like at all.  So now that I’m working again and living literally paycheck to paycheck (which are luckily enough) my chunk mentality is still getting me in trouble.  My expenses have gone up at least as much as my salary from the last time I was on the tight biweekly pay. Stupid grocery costs plus internet plus about $1000 more per year in rent.  So that control  I need it back.  But some things are hard to learn and when you make money mistakes you literally pay.

Realistic Expectations

Happy New Year to everyone… and I’m back once again.

Okay I’ve been gone awhile, but keeping up a blog while you’re unemployed is immensely easier than when you are working full time. But like everyone else in the world does it. So I’m gonna work back up to posting more often. And in the meantime I’m going to continue to get used to having a real job.

Overtime Adventures

So I got this new job and I thought I was going to be doing the job that Access Coordinator IIs do. But I’m an Access Coordinator I.  Which means I’m an NPR (New Patient Registration) specialist instead of an E&A (Evaluations and Admissions) specialist.  So I get to make appointments for outpatients all day, while the ACIIs get to see and process  the new inpatient clients.  I think the idea is that we all will kind of know what each other is up to so that we can be flexible answer eachother’s phones and stuff like that as necessary.  Oh and the other weirdness is that we don’t have a supervisor that’s directly in our department right now, she’ll start next week.  So right now we are reporting to the Vice President of Inpatient Services, crazy right?

So today the morning shift ACII didn’t show up. (I say morning but she really works from 7:30 to 8:00.)  So the problem came when it got to be 4:30 and everyone realized that the day shift counselor would be alone from 5 till 7:30.  So the VP came down and was frantically calling the scheduleing person and all the ACIIs to get someone to come in for those 2 and a half hours or even someone who’d been promoted from out of the department.  And she had no luck.  So I volunteered to stay and at least answer the phones and run insurance verifications until the night shift guy came.  So now I hopefully will have some extra credit plus 2 and a half hours of double pay. Woohoo.

And I actually had a good time. It was like being thrown head first into the fray.  I think that’s why I like Stage Management too, because it’s like a hundred little issues being thrown at you at once and you have to figure out what’s most pressing and what has to be put off.  So do I like it because it was novel or because it really was fun? Once I know all the answers it won’t be as challenging. Hum.

Illicit Blogging

I’ll have to check the employee handbook to see if blogging is permitted on duty.  MP3 players are not allowed so you never know.  Today’s my first full day of real work.   I sent the first three hours working straight through, but it’s been hit or miss since then, I spent about a third of the data doing data entry, a third of the day fielding appointment calls, and a third of the day hanging out waiting for the next thing to come in.  I have to take calls and determine whether the people who want appointments are qualified or not and basically follow up on all appointments.  That’s part one of my job.  Part two is being administrative help to the rest of the folks in the office.  And finally we heard today that we are going to be in charge of the insurance prescreening process for all inpatient clients.  And I think that’s why we’re over here in the psychiatric hospital… so that we can be in the know about client status and be the “how are you going to pay?” part of crisis patient intake.  Anyway… positives and negatives… just like anything else.

I think the key will be to be proactive about getting clinical experience.  The funny thing is my supervisor is the clinical person and she was telling me I was going to be doing like all data processing.  And then the data processing people came down today and told us how they really needed us to do clinical things that they couldn’t do.  Anyway, I think the bottom line is they took two positions (and four people assistant level people) and made one new position for two of us degree-d people.  And they still haven’t worked out the kinks.

Oh and here’s a thing.  The CEO came to welcome us on orrientation and I was introducing my self and he said “oh, I’ve heard about you.” Now since it was the first day I think that must be good, right?  He didn’t say that to anyone else.  But I have been know to missread a situation… infamous on the first day…sheesh.

Reason #154 why I could use a husband

Because Sunday school classes don’t teach themselves, when you had a power outage and your alarm doesn’t go off.

So I went and bought a battery powered alarm clock that has a outdoor temperature sensor, bonus! But it’s just not that fun to hug.

——–

“There are always uncertainties ahead, but there is always one certainty–God’s will is good.”
-Vernon Paterson

Always, huh? I guess so. I guess that’s why you have to be content in the way things are now, because God always has what’s best for you in mind.