Piloxing

With all of my upcoming travel and the craziness we have had the past few weeks, working out has been hard.  I have basically given up on my couch to 5K.  Mainly because I came back to the fact that I HATE running - always have, always will.  It doesn't feel good to me in any way - walking I can do any time, but running just isn't my thing.  So...I needed to find a way to burn a ton of calories without having to run.  I have used the elliptical in the past and really liked it, but unfortunately we own a treadmill and not an elliptical and don't have it in our budget to buy one.  Plus I don't currently have a gym membership (although am thinking of at least joining the local city one just because I can get reimbursed for the full amount of that) so elliptical is out. 

Yesterday, I went on the On Demand on our uverse and found Piloxing, and I'm now in love.  It is a combination of boxing and pilates with a few dance moves put in as well.  The On Demand version was only 23 minutes long but afterwards, I was soaked with sweat and felt amazing!  I have since ordered the DVD from Amazon and some small weighted gloves to add some extra burn.  I'm excited because everything I've read says the hour version burns anywhere from 500-1000 calories!  That's my kind of workout - quick and efficient!  :)  Tonight we are doing Bob Harper's Yoga for the Warrior so I get that in at least, but then after that, I will be on my own for the most part for a few weeks. 

Check out Piloxing if you have a minute - I think you will like it!  :) 

Happy Easter!

Crazy weeks!

I don't really have time to post right now but want to at least say something.  I started off the week more positive than last week at least.  I've come to the realization that even though it's not fair or right, the things my boss says and does are things that are out of my control, and apparently I have no recourse other than to move forward and hope one of these days she gets the karma she deserves.  If I complain too much or make an issue out of it, it makes me look immature and unprofessional - even though I'm right!!! - so I just have to move on.  I can't fix it right now, but it will get fixed one way or another eventually. 

On Monday afternoon, I received a call from my mom that my grandmother had been taken to the hospital that morning and wasn't doing well.  I knew then that it was her time, and by Tuesday evening, she had passed away.  It was peaceful and she was almost 104 (her 104th birthday would have been 5/5/11) so it was time.  When I saw her last (March 2010), she seemed like she was stuck in her body.  Her mind was still there, but she wasn't as happy and she felt like she was burdening everyone around her.  It was her time and I'm sad and I will miss her, but I am at peace knowing she is now at peace and with my grandfather and happy once again.  I was blessed to have much longer time with her than I really should have.  (And if you are wondering how my grandmother was almost 104, she had my mom went she was 35 and my mom had me when she was 37). 

Since she died in Florida (where my parents live and I grew up), they are embalming her there and then shipping her by plane back up to Pennsylvania.  We leave a week from today to go up there, pick out the final details (ugh!), and then hopefully have the service next Friday (4/29) and then we will fly back on Sunday after spending the weekend with family up there. 

January & February of 2011 were pretty rough - March renewed my faith that 2011 could be okay, and now April has been rough again.  I'm hoping that May will bring good things again!  :)  I will probably be in and out until after the funeral because I have a lot of work to get done both at work and at home, but I'll try to at least check in.  Hope you all are doing well and hope to talk to you again soon!

P.S. One other good piece of news - I just got my iPhone today (my other phone just couldn't last any longer and I figured I might as well get it before they take away the policy where I could get reimbursed for it!) so hopefully I can more often add photos and posts by phone!

I Give Up

I haven't written for a few days mainly because I am just not sure what to say.  I am frustrated, angry, and sad all at the same time.  My review on Wednesday was one of the hardest days of my life, and it has taken every ounce of strength in my body to show up to work all day long every day since then because the stress is just overly burdening my body.  But it's Friday and in about 4 hours, I plan to leave this place for the weekend, go see my friend who had a baby yesterday (yay for babies!), and enjoy a relaxing weekend with my friends and family.  I couldn't be more ready for this!

I have been praying a lot lately for things to get better, and yesterday I received a fortune cookie that said "Happier days are definitely ahead for you."  So I have put it in my wallet right in the front with my driver's license so I can open it and stare at it whenever I start feeling down.  I'm ready for those happier days...let's hope they get here sooner than later!

Tick tock

Hmm...I haven't written in a few days mainly because I haven't had much positive to say and I don't want you all to think I'm such a negative person.  I know I have definitely been very negative lately, but that's not really me at all.  And it makes me even angrier at my work that they are making me into this bitter, angry person!  (which just sounds silly to say but it's the truth)  So I'm trying...trying not to focus on the negatives and focus on the positives, trying not to care as much about the things that are hurtful that go on around here and just show up for work and earn my paycheck and benefits, trying to figure out what's next for me and how to make it happen, trying to have patience to wait it out and find out what is in store for me.  I know there is a plan, just can't wait to see where that plan will take me.  It's time...

After delaying my review for days/weeks, I am finally scheduled to have my review in 1.5 hours.  I am dreading it.  Moreso because it is never a good thing here.  Actually, let me rephrase that - it hasn't been a good thing for the past few years.  Funny thing is that when I was brand new to the job and knew nothing about recruiting, I always got the highest rating, etc.  Now suddenly, when I've been here almost 6 years and am lightyears ahead of where I was before, I never seem to be able to get the highest rating (2nd hightest but still).  And after the year I've had where I worked my butt off in both my regular job, the job I am doing for our GLOBAL recruiting team, AND for my local office in setting up a new mentorship program and training program, I find it hilarious that I likely will not be getting the highest rating.  Actually not hilarious - just infuriating! 

I also hate it because my boss typically hands me the review, tells me to read it while she stares at me (awkward!!!) and then wants to "talk about" which involves me having to push her on things I have questions about, her not having any answers, and her getting offended that I'm asking...I can't wait!  Here's hoping I can live through the next few hours and just have this bs over with!  Then maybe I can try to adjust my attitude to deal with this place for the temporary time being and keep working to find something new for the future.  Wish me luck!

New Haircut!

Here's a photo of the new 'do!  I think I love it, but we'll see after I wash it and fix it for the first time myself.  :)  Let me know what you think (and please don't let anyone from my work find this blog and now know who I am - ha!).  :)  Happy Sunday!

New haircut - what do you all think?!

Also, here is a photo of the cupcake pull-apart cake from hubby's birthday party.  Unfortunately it did NOT turn out how we had hoped - well really the sleeves of the shirt were the worst part and it looked off center and a bit sloppy.  But it did what we needed it too and we complained so we are going to get it for free!  :)

We called it T-Rex since the arms were so small on the shirt!

War of My Life

I'm trying to listen to my iPod right now to not think of all the things in my head and the John Mayer song, "War of My Life" is on and I am just thinking about how appropriate it is right now.  I know it's dumb, but I really think I am in the war of my life right now.  I feel like I'm fighting for everything these days, mainly related to work and my future career. 

I told you this was going to be a stressful week because it's review time and every one is stressed out and crazy.  I went into this week thinking that if I could just survive this week, it would all be over and done with and I could move on in whatever direction God had planned for me.  But unfortunately I was wrong! 

I still have yet to have my review - in fact it hasn't even been schedule despite the fact that it was in our original process for HR that all reviews were to be delivered between April 1st and April 8th.  Yesterday, my coworker got ballsy enough to ask when our reviews might be and my boss said "Oh I thought I would do them next week." Um okay but why?!  And if we hadn't asked, were you planning on sharing that piece of information?  My boss told us then "How's Monday?", we said Ok and it is YET to be calendared for either of us.  All this despite the fact that my coworker got promoted and found out by looking on our internal peoplefinder program that she had gotten promoted, not because our boss actually TOLD her.  And I heard from my counterpart in LA who actually did get her review on Monday morning that they may be changing us back from exempt to non-exempt again so I have no clue what that means for my salary, etc. 

Additionally, our boss got HER review yesterday directly across the hall from us (her boss sits directly across from my coworker/my office and our offices both have glass walls so you can see directly across from one to the other).  Must be nice!  I was stupid and got my hopes up that they would ACTUALLY take the feedback they asked for and had received and do something about it, but it doesn't seem that way.  She is like a slippery seal and gets by with everything and I work my @$$ off and get nothing.  Fair huh?!  :)  

Additionally, she had a meeting with my other two bosses this morning and didn't invite me.  Not sure why or what it was about - I was hoping that meant they had actually decided to take her off my direct report and that she was talking about it with them before talking to me.  But she left that meeting and came into another meeting that I was supposed to be leading and proceeded to try to take over my meeting, change up things I was working on and had already talked to her about, and genuinely giving the impression that she was running the show when an hour before she hadn't a clue or care about what was going on.  So now I'm afraid that the direct OPPOSITE of what I wanted is going to happen and now she will micromanage me again.

I'm not trying to be dramatic - I really am not, but there are certain things that need to happen to make this job tolerable again.  I have woken up twice this week (once this morning, once on Tuesday morning I think it was?) at 3 in the morning and while I am no longer having panic attacks as well, I just lie there in bed awake for about 2 hours thinking about everything and then fall back to sleep for about an hour before I have to get up for work.  I may be goofy but I don't believe that a job should cause that much stress that it is waking you up in the middle of the night.  But what do I know?!  

I just don't know how much longer I can take this.  However, our family really relies on my income and benefits, so I'm going to have to find something really good before I can go somewhere else.  But I am just going to start looking even harder and praying about it, and I know that something will come along one way or another.  God is testing me for a reason, just ready to find out what it is and why.  Of course all of this comes right before my hubby's birthday (his birthday is actually on Monday), so I'm trying my hardest to get it all out of my system before I get home tonight so that I can *try* to be happy and celebrate with him.  He doesn't deserve to be punished for my crappy situation at work, so I need to get a better attitude before then (hence the need for my angry blog! ha!).  

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend and hope I can survive another few days of this chaos and then can figure out what's next! 

Weekend Update & The Craziness of the Week

I've been a slacker for a few days and haven't posted.  So here goes a quick version:

-Friday night, we went to dinner with Alli and the Architect.  It was fabulous!  The Architect is a great guy (and we all know how great Alli is!), and the four of us spent over 3 hours just chatting away about everything from work to friends to everything in between.  It was a blast and I can't wait to do it again!  :)
-Saturday, I got a lot of errands done that I really needed to do: got our son's savings account transferred over to the new bank and requested an ATM card so we could make ATM deposits, went by the library to drop off and pick up books, took and picked up a photo of what I want for hubby's birthday cake (we are doing a Hawaiian theme so I took a picture of one of his Hawaiian shirts and they are going to do a pull-apart cupcake cake in that design), picked up party decorations for the party (it's his 30th!), went to Target and did some grocery shopping (and got the new Target debit card so I can now save 5%, get pharmacy rewards, and give rewards to our son's new elementary school - love me some Target!), and then finished up the bakery/meats/produce shopping that evening after dinner.  It was a whirlwind day but we got everything done!  :)  We also got to go out to dinner with another of our favorite couples - the husband is one of my hubby's best friends since like 2nd grade and the wife went to school with them as well and they have a daughter who is a bit older than our son and are expecting another baby at the very end of May. 
-Sunday, I got up and did my 3rd run for week 1 of the Couch to 5K.  For my reward in completing the first week, I purchased "E.T" by Katy Perry (the regular version, not the one with Kanye because that one is a bit too dirty for my taste and I usually don't get bothered by that stuff!) and the new Britney song (something about on the dance floor!).  :)  Then we headed to R2GoKids to check out some new furniture for the little guy. The main piece we are looking at is below.  We love it because we think it will be functional for a long time and his room is kind of small so it will allow him to have lots of storage plus a desk and two bed options.  We are going to keep looking a bit more and mainly research mattresses and hopefully purchase it in the next month or two.  


Photo from Rooms to Go Kids website

 The rest of Sunday was lots of laundry and trying to clean up the house although we have a lot of spring cleaning yet to do!  :) 

After such a fabulous weekend, I didn't want it to end and have to go back to work and yesterday started off crazy with scary thunderstorms waking me up in the middle of the night, followed by forgetting my laptop at home and having to turn around yesterday morning, and just a generally tense mood around here because it's "review" week.  I'm sure I will have more good stories to tell soon enough!  ;) 

Other than that, I did my 1st run of my 2nd week of the couch to 5K this morning and it felt really good.  We also did our workout here after work last night so I'm getting in a groove with the workout part of my life at least.  ;)  Looking forward to the weekend even though it's already Tuesday because this is a rough week and I'm ready just to relax and celebrate my hubby's birthday (which is actually Monday but we are big into birthday weekends in our family and his party is Saturday night!).  :)  Hope you are having a good week and will try to check in more often.