Silly Me

After about a 4 year hiatus, I signed up on a whim for this year's A to Z Challenge which starts on Friday, April 1st.  

It could be silly me with blogging 6 days a week (off Sundays) with a different letter of the alphabet daily.  I only thought about signing up this week (official sign up started March 30th).  I have about 4 blog posts written for the month and a sketchy outline of a few days of what I'll write about for the other days and some letters I'm clueless on what to write (but I'm sure I'll think of something).

I have no theme this time around. Just random blogging because that truly is what it will be.  Random.  Spur of the moment more than likely.

Probably a lot of pictures.  A few stories.  Whatnot.  

Silly me! So far there isn't a lot of people who signed up, just over 100.  Last time I participated I think it was close to 1800 blogs.  Not sure if more will sign up over the next day or so.  

It will be fun to participate yet once again.  

Please do not feel like you have to read/comment on every post I wrote in April.  I know it can be overwhelming and time consuming.  

I'll back on Friday with the letter "A" for appendectomy.  

A week later

So, remember a week ago when we were talking about that obnoxious coworker? So many of you said it would play itself out, one way or another. And you were all right with it.  It truly did play itself out.  Truly in a way I didn't expect when I mentioned it last week and how soon it happened. 

I had prayed so much about this situation for a few months.  I was honest with God.  I told Him I did not like her and I wanted her gone yet I knew that He loved her and she was an image bearer of Him.  I asked for patience to deal with her and I asked for forgiveness on the times I had trouble dealing with her.  

I came close last Wednesday to quitting. To giving my notice and leaving.  She pulled into the parking garage the same time I did and I literally cried for a few minutes before I got my act together and went to work.  I texted my husband and said "I'm done here.  I'm going to give my notice".  I didn't care that I had nothing lined up for a job.  He was (and always has been) very supportive of me.

It was a very intense week.  I wrote an incredibly long post about it and if anyone wants to read it, email me at lv2trnscrb@aol.com and I'll send you a copy of what I wrote.  But I decided not to post it in a public forum as I really do not know who reads these things and though I kept names out of it, who knows who might have read it and put pieces together.

And then.........when everything was at the lowest it possibly could be at. It was announced by the obnoxious coworker to me that she was LEAVING.  That yesterday, Friday, was her last day. She left at noon.  I was so grateful to get her out of the building.  She said she had a new job. A place she had worked at before who wanted her back and was happy she would be coming back.  A wonderful opportunity for her.  I'm not 100% sure this was the case but I'm not going to question it and I'm going to remain grateful that this chapter is closed.

This past Thursday I prayed what I wanted to happen.  I prayed for her to get a great job, wonderful coworkers, great pay, benefits and the like.  And then I said "Your will Lord, not mine. Whatever you want to do."  And I surrendered it to Him.

And though I was prepared to walk away, I was totally surprised about the events of Friday.  So totally surprised.  I would not have imagined how it played out if you had asked me about it a week ago.

But she is gone.  GONE!!!! 

It will be quieter in the office which is a good thing.

A worker who was harassed, bullied and really stalked will be able to breathe a bit easier.

And I wish the obnoxious coworker well.  I will continue to pray for her for a bit but I am sure in time she will bump off my prayer list.  

I learned a lot from this situation. Something I have not had to deal with before.  I'll be wiser in the future if faced with such a thing.

I'm just grateful she is gone.

And I truly do wish her the best.

Life

This is going to be a random post, just all over the place, lol.  I'm not really sure where it is going but I do know it has been a week or so since I posted, so I thought I better post something.  

I'm writing this on Saturday afternoon.  It is a beautiful sunny day with a high of 76 anticipated.  We are due for about 87 degrees midweek and I'm looking forward to it.  Seriously.  I really do enjoy the warmth over cold.

Everyone else is getting ready to spring forward with the time, but here in Arizona, as you guys are probably aware, we don't participate in it.  I don't miss it at all!  I just have to remember that we will now be the same time as our family in California.  In fall, when they fall backward, then we are an hour ahead of them. 

This sign greeted me at work on March 1st.  I ditched the mask immediately as did about 98% of the employees.  We still have to have our health screening daily where we stand in front of a machine and answer questions about our health and the machine takes our temperature.  I laugh because on cold days, walking in from the parking lot, sometimes the machine will say "your temperature is too low".  Got to step away from the machine for a moment and warm up and then it will give you a normal temperature.  Honestly, I don't think it is 100% accurate at all with the thermal forehead reading because I get a lot of temps of 95.6 or the like.  I think one time since I started there, in the summer, I got a 98.1 reading.  

It was amazing to see people's whole faces! To see men who had facial hair or young women who had nose piercings and the like.  Last Thursday, though, walking in I said "oh no, I forgot my mask" and then realized I didn't need it.  (Senior moment).

I got an unexpected settlement of a class action lawsuit I was part of.  My horrid former employer when I did medical transcription lost the class action lawsuit someone from California had filed for wages not being paid.  Actually I'm not really too sure what the lawsuit involved but they kept really good records and it was proven that they were not paid for what they should have been paid for like a 5 year period.  Because I had worked in California for 2 years of that 5 year span, I had gotten a notice about a year or so ago if I wanted to be part of the class action lawsuit.  I didn't expect anything to come of it since so many other people had tried to sue this company (they really were a horrid place to work at) that I just signed the papers and sent them back.  Imagine my surprise when a few months ago I got a letter that said the company had agreed to settle the lawsuit and I was told what my compensation would be.  It was more than a few pennies.  I got the check today.  We're going to have fun with it and be a bit frivolous with it.  I was just gleeful that they actually had to pay out a few million dollars and then had to pay the legal fees too.  So glad I don't work there any more!!! 

Winslow is shedding like crazy.  There is an old joke that says something to this effect.  "Corgis shed twice a year.  January to July and July to December".  And that's about the truth . They constantly shed but he does have a shedding season which we are in right now I do believe.  We call his fur "the gift that keeps on giving" as we shake out our clothes and the like of his fur.  Otherwise, he is as spunky as can be and energetic as can be and I guess I wouldn't have it any other way.

Work is slowing down a bit and I'm not sure what is going to be happening there.  For those who might not remember or those new to reading me, I am doing a temporary job for a major grocer (not Wal-Mart) processing their terminated employee paper files to be scanned to be saved in digital form.  We used to get several big boxes of files from all over the country daily where they have stores but it has been consistently slowing down since October.  Not sure why.  There are three of us who are doing the work but in reality two could do it.  We also open and process mail but again, three at this point is too many.  I'm the longest one there and we are all temps.  My supervisor is aware that things are slowing down as I have notified her of the volume of boxes we receive (she works from home and has not been in the office since August when the vaccine mandate came into play).  My original temp contract was for 6 months but was extended the first part of this year, but if work is not coming in, then of course I could be done.  I'm not sweating it.  If it ends, I'll find something else and can collect unemployment in the meantime.  I am dealing though with a coworker (one of the other temps on the same project) who I am not really fond of (the other temp is not fond of this person either).  This particular coworker is a bit of a bully to the other temp and controlling as well as being loud and obnoxious and rude at times.  So it might be a relief to be working some place else.  We'll see.  Having the supervisor not in the workplace to observe the situation makes it difficult to convey things to her without sounding petty.  It has been frustrating and at times I think I can't stand being around this person and I'll just look for something else even though I do like the job (super simple and not stressful except for the coworker).  So if it plays out that that there isn't enough work, it could be a good thing.  Again, I'm not sweating it.

And that is life today, March 12, 2022, in Phoenix Arizona.

How is life where you are at? 

February in books

To continue on with my book reviews for 2022 and to keep track of books read in 2022, here are the books I read in February (okay the last one I finished March 2, 2022).  I set 50 books as my goal for 2022 and have read 8 so far, so I think I'm on track.

This was the first book I read in February.  Briefly, it is a story about a young woman who is addicted to alcohol.  She has a young boy she is raising as a single mom.  Because there are concerns by her family and neighbor about her inability to raise the child when she is intoxicated, she is given the option of going to rehab or having the authorities called on her.  She enters rehab and does become clean (sort of).  My take.  It was an okay book.  It was written in first person and there is a lot of imagery in it.  It lacked something in the writing and I have to say she had some weird mothering practices. I'm glad the main character was not my mom.  It also ended abruptly with a lot of loose edges that were not resolved.  

My second book read has been around for a long time.  If I remember correctly what I read, this was the first book picked by Oprah for her book club.  I don't know why I hadn't read it before.  I believe it was written in 1995.  1995 was a busy year raising kids so I probably wasn't doing as much reading as I've done in later years.  The story involved a family with 3 children and one of the children goes missing at 3 years of age.  No spoilers here but it sort of worked out okay in the end of the book, but there was the obvious grief of not knowing where your child was for many years and trying to live a life without them.  It was good writing and I enjoyed the book.

The third book was the sequel to The Deep End of the Ocean.  I usually don't read sequels but this one kind of got my curiosity wondering where the story would go.  The events that take place in this book happened 23 years after the child had gone missing with the children all grown up, pursuing their different careers, etc.  It was about half the size of the first book so it was a quick read.  It lacked a lot of substance and not the best story line.  I was glad it was a short book.  My advice.  Read the first and skip the second.

This was the last book I read in February.  Actually I was reading it simultaneously throughout the month with the other books as this was the hardcover book I read before bed most nights.  I have read a lot of Danielle Steel's books over the years and she pretty much has the same theme covered in every book and within pages you can figure out where the book is going.  Recently after I've read some of her books, I would say "okay I'm not reading any more" and then a new one would come out and I would read it.  I don't think her recent books are as good as her first books.  She's been writing forever so maybe she's reached the end of creativity? This book was different than her usual ones.  It covered 6 nurses who during WW2 would fly on planes that were designed to pick up the wounded, leaving England and flying to battle fields to transport the wounded back to England.  It covered the lives of the 6, how they got into nursing, their families, etc.  It was an interesting read as it wasn't predictable like some of her other ones and ended on a pretty upbeat note.  If you have some free time and don't have anything else to read, I would recommend it as a quick read.  

And that's it for February.  Let's see what books March has in store to be read.