Judecorp.

I feel like all of my best laid plans are a total waste these days. I suppose it is enhanced by today's work experience.

I put our queen-size guest bed up on freecycle last week in an effort to get it out of our house. It was thatpatti's bed way back (thanks, Patti!) and it has served us well... we just need to ditch the guest room. So anyway, I had a taker that swore they were coming to pick up the bed yesterday at 1:00. And of course, they didn't come. At all. All day. Didn't call, e-mail, anything. Nada. So I sat around for nothing. And the bed's not gone. And I can't do the big furniture move until it's gone. Bleh.

Today was my first day of the "doing intakes in the office" thing at work. I had four offered intake times and all four were filled. Score! First my 9:00 cancelled, then my 10:00. At 11:10, I called my 11:00 and she had forgotten and was at the grocery store. Then my 1:00 cancelled. Are you effing kidding me? I left work around 11:20 and drove home to eat lunch. Today's paycheck - $0. Today's potential paycheck - $175. OUCH.

It just feels like I'm sitting here spinning my wheels in the mud. I have this intense urge to nest and plan, but can't get rid of the bed, can't move the guest room furniture to the basement (we need someone to help and I don't have anyone), so can't move the baby furniture out of Punk's room, so can't assemble Punk's furniture, can't get the baby clothes out of boxes and put them in drawers, can't steam clean the rug, etc. etc. Get up and get ready to go to work, prepare for work, pack lunch for work, and then... do no work. It's such a waste.

I am so freaking frustrated. And broke.

I think that it's reprehensible to work on a Friday afternoon, so I left before 2. I got the Focus's oil changed and was home before 3, even. It's a good deal. Of course there are a million things I should do around the house, icky cat litter being one of them, so I should probably get motivated again.

This was such a waste of a work week, productivity-wise. I was there for three days and billed 12.5 hours. Coworker Funk billed 9.5. No one was around and everyone got no-showed a lot. I got stood up for my last visit of the week, but that was cool because I was dying to have lunch anyway. Mmm, lunch.

I wonder when my doctor will call about the HSG. Next week? Not knowing is going to drive me batty.

Productivity-wise this day was a bust, but I got to enjoy a good deal of the spring weather, so that works for me. I'll take it, after yesterday. After a small group, I went to visit my family from last night, but they weren't home from court yet. My intern and I sat on the stoop for 30 minutes in the sunshine waiting for them to come home, and then left. We went to our next visit early and that went as planned. Then we went to our 4:00 and there was this crazy snafu nightmare so we were out of there by 4:15. I dropped Tay off at the T and headed home.

I probably spent the last 90 minutes or so sitting out on the porch downstairs getting some fresh air and catching up on your LJs. I love wireless internet, I really do. I'm looking forward to lots of eljaying on the porch. Maybe I'll let the cats out (but then they become fiends and cry all the time).

When I got home today, I had received a card from a former coworker that I had very little contact with. She worked in our nursery school and wasn't one of my co-teachers, so we spent very little time together. I'm not really sure why she wrote to me, except that she recently visited work and we said hi briefly, but it was an incredibly sweet message:

"Dear Jude,

You were on your way out as I came in to visit last week. A near miss. Anyway, just wanted to wish you well. For Candace's & EI's sake I'm glad you're still there. Seems like there's been quite a bit of transition there in the past 4 months.

Although I didn't have the good fortune to work with you directly in group, I could appreciate the patience, kindness and positivity you bring to work with you.

Best of luck,
Katherine"

So yeah, it's a little weird that she randomly wrote to me, but incredibly sweet. So even though I'm crap with the productivity lately, it's nice that people think I do a good job. (I received lots of very positive comments about my drama last night, things like, "I'm glad they have you working with them, you could handle that better than anyone," which is really good for my career self-esteem.)

It's true about the transition, though. We've lost so many staff people in the 2 years that I've been here, and there seems to be a sort of mass exodus brewing over the summer/early fall - our one PT, at least one OT (the supervisor who's been there for 7 years), one of my officemates who is a really good SW (who's been there for 2.5 years), and maybe one of the SLPs. And there could be more. It's pure craziness.

My boss is ready to stick forks in her eyes like that rapper dude.

I had three home visits after playgroup today and two of them no-showed me. That is so frustrating... it's like, okay, here I am ready to do the work and my productivity suffers anyway. Grar. I'm at 108% of quota right now so I don't have anything to worry about, but yuck. I'd rather just, you know, have all of my scheduled appointments.

I got home earlier than expected (I guess the one perk of no-shows) and after talking with Tim for a bit, have parked myself on the couch to watch Meet the Fockers from Netflix so I can send it back and get something else. It's not a stellar movie so I don't have to pay attention, which is nice.

I was supposed to have two Netflix movies but only got one. I hope it's not another missing movie. I wonder if The Movie Thief is involved. HA!

It's Survivor night. YAY! Coworker Gina and Ben are coming over, whee. :)

~//~

Funny story:

This morning I coughed so hard that I set off my gag reflex, and I threw up a little bit in the kitchen sink. I had taken my 4 honkin' Metformin XR about 10 minutes before, and two of them floated on up. I watched them, perfectly whole, fly out of my mouth and down the drain. They looked JUST like they did going down.

So I didn't know what to do - do I take two more? Do I just leave it as is? In a compromise maneuver, I took one extra. Heh, I'm even diplomatic with drugs.

I'm fighting off a cold right now.

That's what my Boss tells us to say. I guess it's some sort of "Power of Positive Thinking" crap, somehow more empowering to say than "I think I'm coming down with something." She has some sort of belief that if we /say/ we're fighting something off, we won't get sick. Really, I think she doesn't ever want us to miss work. What should she care, she left for a week in St. John today. Lucky.

I have a killer headache but that didn't stop me from talking to Wink for nearly an hour this evening, a conversation sparked because he cracked me up in his recent e-mail about spotting The Shat (W. Shatner) somewhere in town. (He's in LA. Ooh la la.) I do believe it was the sentence, "Or should I say, 'Shat myself?'" that did me in. I'm so easily amused.

It was Two-Kid Wednesday so I actually managed to pound through a significant amount of work on my desk /and/ file two weeks' worth of progress notes. I consider this a huge accomplishment, even if freeing all of this time up was disastrous to the Productivity thing. Aah well, I'm sure last week will cover it.

You know, I really wish love was easy. I don't know how anyone does it. Personally, I don't know if I'm coming or going most days. I can wake up in the morning on the wrong side of the bed and immediately get into a tizzy over something she's done or said, and ten minutes later when I'm still feeling down about it, all I want is to crawl into her arms. There's something mildly /wrong/ about that. How can I want comfort from the person who caused me to want comfort? Love, you're a crazy beast.

I really hope a time comes, and soon, when things settle down around us and we can go back to being Crazy In Love again. Those were good times, and I miss them. There's nothing quite like falling in love, and all of the living together and daily life stuff just messes with that in a lot of ways. Whatever happened to wanting to hold onto every moment and devote every ounce of energy to falling in love? I would like to bottle some of that and sip it every time Real Life tries to get in the way of my love affair.

I just want to go back to those wild and crazy, carefree, nutty-in-love days:



How do those of you in Long Term Loves keep that courtship spark? I'm all ears.

This is officially No Productivity week for me. The last two weeks have been really good because I've been stockpiling other people's assessments, but now that the assessments are slowing down, I suppose it's apparent that I don't have many families right now. I guess I need to get some more. I've been a case-closing machine!

I drove all the way to Dudley Square to someone's house for them to tell me that they forgot I was coming and they are going to the daughter's dentist appointment. Whups. I didn't need that time or anything.

I went to Lambert's instead and splurged on tons and tons of fresh fruit and vegetables. Having the bottom drawers of the fridge jam-packed only reinforces how painfully empty the rest of the fridge is. Yowch. We sure do need some groceries. Where does the time go? Maybe we can go late tonight or something.

I am going to meet with some train collector dude about my dad's trains on Saturday morning. Then maybe I can make a pitstop at a high school friend's surprise 30th birthday party (it starts at noon - who starts a freaking surprise party at noon?) really quickly before I take a million pictures of the truck and snowplow to post it to craigslist. Or something.

Someday, my wife and I will spend some quality time together.

Okay, so two totally cool things happened at work today:

1. Since I've been a totally stressed-out space cadet for the past couple of days weeks months, I managed to schedule an assessment with a family today but forgot to post it on the assessment board to get two helpers. (We have to bring three people on an assessment.) I realized this at 12:45pm (it was a 1:00 assessment) when I couldn't remember who was doing the assessment with me and couldn't find the slip. By 1:00pm, with a little batting of the eyelashes, I had two people to take with me and we were out the door!

2. One of the people I conned into coming with was one of our new hires (we have 4 people starting in the next couple of weeks) and she is totally a lesbian. YAY, I'm no longer the Lone Queer at work!

Also, I am so excited that I worked like a dog up until today so I could flex tomorrow off to take Grandma to the casino! Hooray for days off without having to use vacation time! I billed 26 hours in 4 days!

Also, the financial situation is much happier now that I got my bonus at work. The sad thing is that I only got the half-bonus.

(Backstory: My work offers a $2000 bonus each year if you make 100% of productivity. Since I started this job after the start of the fiscal year, I was eligible for a half-bonus if I made productivity for the second half of the fiscal year. But see, I started only 2.5 WEEKS after the start of the fiscal year... and pretty much had a full caseload built up a month after that. So I thought that if I hustled I could catch up to my coworkers and get the full bonus. At first I thought it wasn't possible, but then the day I got married, rght when I was leaving work to head for City Hall, my supervisor pulled me aside to let me know that I was really close to catching up, and if I pulled about 24 hours/week (I'd been billing between 23 and 28 on average) until the end of the fiscal year I was going to get the BLING.)

We needed 1040 hours from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005. (20 hours/week for 52 weeks) I ended the fiscal year with 1024. Sixteen hours short! Less than one week of work!

I lost an unexpected week of work when my dad died.

Dang. Dang it all.

I mean, sure, I still got $1000 (before taxes, so I ended up with significantly less)... but that was one expensive week off.)