9/19/12

Big Rocks

If you’ve ever taken the Franklin Covey “7 Habits of a Highly Effective Manager” training, you might know all about big rocks. In the video they demonstrate how you fill your day (or jar) with many tasks (or rocks) – each of those rocks sized in accordance with their importance, with the largest rock being the most important. Long story short, if you fill your jar with too many little rocks you won’t get to add in the big rocks. At work, we use the term “Big Rock” a lot. I’ve unfortunately transferred this term from being a work term, to an anytime term. I just found it to be catchy.

 

Work Big Rocks:

-          I find myself in a slump at work since my return. I’d like to go into detail, but unfortunately since this is a public blog I will not. I will simply say that since my return from leave I think my day-to-day duties have lost their luster. I no longer take pride in my work, I long for more exciting projects and I daydream about leaving to go home to the baby… I just don’t long for the professional life like I used to. On that note, my review is tomorrow and I wonder if I will give my resignation on a whim if I don’t get some changes in place.

-          Gene got transferred within Schnucks. He won this big award and got recognized by the Schnucks’ themselves, and then he got offered a new position. This all happened the first week after we had Emma. We thought we hit the jackpot – a great baby girl AND all of this wonderful news for Gene!?! They had given him some time to think it over and talk to me about it all. He took a week off for his “bonding time” (which is a man’s maternity leave), and when he went back they had given him his transfer papers (without even letting him decide yes or no – FYI, he decided no). He started his new spot on September 5th officially. Now, when he first started working there 12 years ago he had this position. Well, it was a lower position, but the same warehouse. It is 30-32 degrees inside. Gene hates the cold. That’s why he transferred out of there way back when. So, each and every day he works he comes home absolutely miserable. I feel so awful for him. To see a man look that low everyday is hard on the heart. So, we are going to try to find him a new job. There’s no more sucking it up. I can’t look at him like this anymore.

It’s going to take a lot of prayers for him to get something good, for decent money, with all the perks that Schnucks has.

 

Home Big Rocks:

-          Our dishwasher has broken. Well, it broke like a month ago. Oy, I’ve been doing dishes by hand for a month now! Gene can’t figure out how to fix it, so we decided to call someone to fix it. We purchased it from Best Buy, but the Geek Squad wants $100 just to come out and look at it. Gene said “hell no” to that, and that’s about as far as we’ve gotten. I did call Samsung to see about who to call to repair it, and they gave me some guy who works out of his house. With the babe now I can’t bring myself to trust just anyone. I called Keeven Appliance in Florissant, but the three times I dialed them there was no answer and no voicemail or machine to leave a message. I’ve almost resorted to just buying a new one… although ours is just over a year old. They don’t make things like they used to, do they?

-          On Sunday our Washing Machine went out. We had left the house after starting a cycle, got home and it was still full of water. Turns out the little clicker thing that the lid hits, that tells the washer the lid is down and to start again, is all that is broken. But, it’s no easy fix because it’s super hard to get to. In an effort to fix it Gene has rigged some plastic foam piece to the top of the machine with duct tape. It has worked for two loads so far, but he did make it a point to say that it could work for 5 minutes, or 5 years.

-          Our garbage disposal has been out for about a year or two now. Little did I know that the design of a garbage disposal makes for bacteria and stinky water to get trapped in there if we can’t run it. I dumped some stinky stuff in there like a month ago (I want to say it was something with garlic or vinegar) and Gene lectured me about it because it still smells. My response was “at least I didn’t throw food down there.” Ugh. He says when we get someone to fix the dishwasher they can put in a new garbage disposal too.

-          Our upstairs shower/tub is unusable right now. Is unusable a real word? Anyway, like 6 months ago I decided to re-tile the shower because there was mold growing behind the walls. So, my Mom and I decided to rip out and re-tile (with glass tiles) the entire thing ourselves! Mind you, neither of us have any experience with it. If my water shut-off wasn’t stripped at the time we would have replaced the tub too! We watched some videos on YouTube, and got to work. It should have been done in 2 days, but we didn’t finish it for 4 weeks. That was fine, it isn’t our only shower, but in the 4 weeks it sat unused, something corroded… and then stripped when we used it again. So, needless to say, our basement closet got all wet because there is a leak behind the will we just tiled. Want to hear more great news? We have to tear out parts of the wall to fix the problem, put all new fixtures in so it’s up to code, and then re-tile the parts that need it. Oh, and the tile we used isn’t made anymore as we bought it on clearance. OH! And I only have a very little supply of replacement tiles. Who knows how much that will all cost when it’s said and done. But, it needs to be done soon!

-          Why you may ask? Well, while the upstairs shower is broken we’ve been using the downstairs shower. We thought it was all fine and dandy, until we realized that when they built the shower (before we moved in) they kind of half-assed it and now there’s mold growing behind the shower walls down there. Mold is nothing to mess with people! So now we have to get the upstairs shower fixed quick, so that we can tear out the shower downstairs altogether and put a new one in.

-          This is probably our smallest big rock right now, but it’s a big rock nonetheless. We need a ceiling fan/light fixture put in the living room. Our house is set up to where when you walk in the front door and flip the switch, it turns on whatever you have plugged into the corner outlet on the opposite wall. It has been fine for all this time, but the lack of circulation has done a number on our allergies and sinuses, not to mention that the lighting right now is awful and we have two floor lamps on all the time! This is mainly for Emma. She sneezes a lot. We’ve bought two air purifiers, and it seems to help a tad, but not enough. Spring and fall are the worst too because the A/C and Furnace isn’t really on so the air just sits there and gets stagnant. I used the furnace fan for a few days, but that has to just add to our electric bill. We just need a ceiling fan put in to help out everyone.

They have the expression “When it rains, it pours.” And, as most people know it’s very spot on. My entire pregnancy was great, good things happened; I spent the last 5 months of it wondering what was going to fall apart because the ball had to drop sometime. Emma came out perfect, so then I started to get even more anxious. Then, all of this. I am still very grateful and blessed that it has nothing to do with any of our health, but geez!!!

Let’s hope that things start to look up soon.

J

Jenni

No comments:

Post a Comment