I have consciously avoided updating, leaving the blog train freebie at the top of the blog as long as possible. I hate to have folks have to search for it. Folks, if you're looking for my blog train contribution, it's one post down.
Well, the big flare-up at work is more or less settled. Matthew forced the issue of having a conversation about it. Otherwise, I would never have brought it up. I'd prayed about it and felt it was God's job to take care of. But, perhaps, the conversation was God's answer to prayer. When push came to shove, Matthew more or less admitted that he was just in a foul mood that day and took it out on me because I was there. That's fine, Matthew, but it's not particularly a mark of a grown up. Nor is it the mark of a "professional". Further, you went to the owner of the company with it......... He says he was upset about the wording of a note I'd left him.
Before I close the books for any given month, I do a little financial analysis and some auditing. I have a spreadsheet on which I've displayed column by column our Profit and Loss statements for every month since July, 2008, when I started there. The next to last column in the spreadsheet is the average of the expenditures in each account for all the previous months. I then post the current month next to the averages and look to see what is out of whack. Sometimes I know right off the bat why there is a variance and it is perfectly legitimate. If I don't know, or simply don't remember, then I pull up detail on those accounts and work my way back through the entries to assure that everything is properly booked. In that process, I ran across 4 errors. Some were pretty serious, some were not but all were made by Matthew.....who shouldn't be messin' in my books anyway! I left him a note (since I don't always see him when I go in) asking for explanations of those 4 transaction. The note was very factually worded, no commentary, but something made him take offense. (I personally believe he took offense because he did not like that I caught him in these errors.) Anyway, according to him, that started the ball rolling and he doesn't like that I wrote him a note instead of just calling him on the phone. Well, first of all, my memory isn't all that great and I can't trust myself to remember until the next time I see him. Secondly, on those occasions when I have called him, there have been numerous times when he was far less than "gracious", to put it mildly. Thirdly, I thought the detail might be helpful to him in remembering what the transaction was all about and explaining it to me. Finally, the note forms part of an "audit" trail. When all this was explained to him (minus the part about him not being "gracious"), he decided maybe the notes were okay.
He went on to talk about how he is working on complicated stuff and how his concentration is disturbed when there is noise in the room. This is just laughable. I will be sitting there working and all of a sudden, he will shout at the top of his lungs F___. No working, just a shouted swear word. He plays what his father refers to as "crap-rap" music all the time which is also full of profanity. Sometimes he uses his Netflix account to watch movies while he works. He sings, he keeps time to the music by beating out the rhythm on his desk, he talks on the phone, he does all sorts of things that constantly break my concentration. He did not directly address my whistling, if I really do whistle, but talked about how what he is working on is complicated and when he isn't allowed to concentrate, he makes mistakes. Well, buddy, that door swings both ways. I simply agreed with him that excess noise was difficult when doing a complicated task and left it at that. Twenty four hours later we were together in the office again and he was singing and playing the drums on his desk.......
So, anyway, we are moving on. Honestly, I think one of the most helpful things that happened was when his father actually stood up and told him that he wouldn't find a more honest or dedicated employee anywhere and reminded him of the times I have spent an hour driving to and from work and left after an hour and a quarter because there just wasn't any more legitimate work to be done. Joe's idea was that he was just going to stay out of it. But the simple fact was that Matthew was wrong and I was not. I really felt that "staying out of it" was a betrayal to me. To my way of thinking, he and I are strapped together, back to back, and are supposed to take on all comers in that position, not back off because his son makes a horse's a__ of himself and screams the loudest. I had a very calm conversation with Joe about it, told him I felt he was being less than the kind of husband I thought he should be. So, he pulled up his big boy pants and said something to Matthew for which I am grateful. By Joe staying out of it, I felt Matthew would take that as having his Dad's permission to beat up on me again and again......
So, Jennifer attended her conference in St. Louis last week. She left early Wednesday morning and returned Saturday evening. In the meantime, Joe and I helped out a lot with transportation for the boys to and from daycare/school and other activities. She sent out an e-mail describing what needed to be done on each day of the week. Quite honestly, I got lost in the words, so I converted it to a chart and signed Joe and I up for the days we were available. For example, the boys needed to be transported both coming and going on Friday. Well, Joe was able to take them, but I had received a Jury Summons and was a little freaked out about signing up to pick them up. Last time I had jury duty, they made me sit there all the way up until 5PM. Had that happened, I'd have had to fight my way across town in 5 o'clock traffic to get to the boys. As it turned out, I was not needed for jury duty so that was good, but Jason had already agreed to pick up the boys that evening. Jen ultimately adopted my "chart" idea and adapted it to record the things that had to be sent to school each day and the things she had bought for Jason to feed the boys for dinner each evening. She joked that she thought it was really funny that it took three of us and a chart to do what she does in a week. Well, yes, but Joe and I, for sure, don't see the notes from school, don't follow her to the grocery store, don't even talk to the boys on a daily basis. For us, the chart was really helpful.
I picked her up at the airport and asked her about St. Louis. While we were having temperatures in the 90's here, she said it was only 57 degrees there when she arrived. I guess she was pretty tied up in all the meetings, but she did have one free evening. A bunch of people got together and went to the Gateway Arch. I asked her what she thought about that and here is where being raised in Vegas makes a difference. For her, it was kind of ho-hum after the Stratosphere Hotel & Casino. Yeah, I guess it would be........
So, we had fun with the boys last week. Joe was very surprised at Atticus Friday morning when he dropped him off at day care. Around here, if there is a choice, he's after Grandma all the way. But when Joe went to drop him off at day care, Atticus actually clung to Joe's leg. That was surprising because he's had the same day care provider for quite some time and really loves her. We went to Will's last ball game Thursday night. We had the bright idea of taking Punkin and Max with us. AFTER we got seated and they calmed down, that worked out to be a fine idea and they behaved well. But Punkin was her usual self--pulling like a maniac when attached to the leash and Max is no expert at being on a leash either. It still amazes me that a 60 pound dog can pull a 200 pound man, but Punkin turns Joe into a pull toy every time. It was a beautiful evening to be out, just the right temperature with a light breeze. It's times like that that living in Vegas is a treat.
So, the stage production of The Lion King is here in Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. Through work, Joe has two free tickets. We're trying to figure out how to work it out that we can take William. Joe took Erica when she was 9 and she just loved it. Hopefully, Will will love it as well.
I am currently working on designing a kit. I love the color scheme and it's coming together pretty fast, thank the Lord. I hate when I "labor" over a kit. Anyway, it will be entitled "The Mighty Jungle". I was on the net last night researching the lyrics to "In the jungle, the mighty jungle" and ran across this. I e-mailed the link to Joe under the heading of "how many beers does it take before a person is willing to spend his time doing this?" I don't know how to embed the thing here, so here is the link. It's a hoot......I watched it once with my mouth hanging open. Then I watched it again and laughed til my sides ached. Then I forwarded it to Joe who also thought it was hilarious. I'm not having a lot of luck with links lately, so if the link doesn't work, it's worth it to take a second and do the copy and paste thing. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1832527/in_the_jungle_the_mighty_jungle_lion_king/
Well, a couple of scrapbook pages and I'm outta here. This first one was done with a kit by Bella Gypsy Design called "H2ology". As you might guess, it was intended for use with water play photos. Well, not me, I used it for something else entirely. Anyway, you can find the kit at ACOT and at Elemental Scraps.
This page is done with a kit called "My Dad Rocks" by Bella Gypsy Designs, also available at ACOT and Elemental Scraps. Hope you like 'em!
LaWanna Desjardin came out with a new kit called "Pop". It is simply gorgeous and the elements are such fun. I did two sets of quick pages with the kit which should go up in the store at Scrapbook-Bytes shortly.
Gotta run now. Joe is awake which means that I can finally get dressed without fear of waking him!
