Keep Calm and Carry On

Work has been so incredibly busy for the past few weeks, especially given that nobody has been in the office. I guess, when you’re the reports person, there is no downtime – especially not at year end and year beginning. Right now, I’m running a macro on a report so it’ll be ready to go out before the end of the day, and only because I can’t use Excel while it’s running, am I able to write.

Things have been going ok in our neck of the woods. Poor Sophia was sick last week. She went back to school on Wednesday; she woke up really excited that she was going back, but by time I dropped her off at John’s parents, she told me her ear and throat hurt. She wasn’t running a fever, so I had my MIL give her some tylenol and sent her on to school. She apparently went to the nurse during recess, and cried most of the day at school. She came out of school crying, and she had note from the nurse saying she may have been exposed to strep, so I told my manager that I was going to come in late on Thursday after I took her to the doctors office.

Thursday morning, she woke up crying and was running a fever. She told me she couldn’t hear herself, which immediately told me it was probably her ears, and she said she couldn’t walk. I got both kids dressed and into the car. We were seen pretty quickly and she did, in fact, have an ear infection in each ear. On the plus side, she tested negative for strep. We headed towards Target to pick up the prescription, and by time they got it filled and I headed towards home, it was already 10:30. I figured, that there was no sense in me taking two sick kids over to the IL’s and going to work for a few hours, so I just called and told my manager that I wasn’t going to be in. I put the kids down for a nap and had a mostly quiet afternoon.

Friday it was back to work, and I swear, anytime I take time off, the world immediately screeches to a halt. I don’t know how it goes on without me. I ended up working until way late, which I had done on Wednesday as well, just trying to put out fires.

I was pretty excited today, to get in and see that they had updated our bonus based on November results. It is AMAZING. A lot of times, I find myself feeling really grateful for the job that I have. As much as I complain about it, there really is a lot of good that goes along with it; great coworkers, the ability to mostly self-direct where my position is headed, I have a lot of input in what I do and don’t do and the opportunity to grow and stretch professionally. I think I’m going to go back to school and work on my MBA this year. Nationwide will pay for it, so why should I not take advantage of this opportunity?

I’m also working towards one of my goals for this year, which is to get in shape. I really, really want to run a half marathon in October. It’s something I’ve thought about for a few months now, and last fall I had started running on my treadmill trying to build up to longer distances, but I ended up dropping it because my shins hurt too bad. I’m trying to ease myself back into it. Everything I’ve read says you should take 4-6 months to train for a marathon or half marathon if you’re a new runner, so starting with shorter distances now will certainly help.

We’re also trying to plan our Disney vacation for sometime this year. We’re not sure when; if it will be spring break or summer, but we do know we want to go. it sucks that we have to plan it around school, but I just don’t feel right taking her out of school for a family vacation.

Anyway, back to work. Just wanted to come write while I had a free minute. Hope everybody is doing well. 🙂

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