mini Staycation

The changes in my job have created a lot of stress for me, and I have been getting very fed up with it lately.

I have to earn every minute I get to take off from work if I want to get paid for that time off. Even for holidays, as I have talked about here before.

I had banked enough hours to take a few days off to make the 4th of July weekend into a mini vacation (less than a week off of work, but the longest break I have had since starting), while reserving 2 days' worth of hours so that there's something in my "paid personal leave" bank in case I need it.

So, Tuesday was my Friday! Dave gets tons of paid time off, so he is off too.

Wednesday started out with Dave accidentally dumping his entire cup of coffee on my lap top computer. Then I had to go to the gynecologist. Oh what fun.

BUT, after that, we went and adopted the kitty cat Dave had picked out after looking at the adoption centers at all of the area PetSmart stores.

I don't have any pictures of her in my computer yet, because my computer was taken apart and left to dry for a couple of days!

Fortunately, the computer seems to work okay.

Anyway, she is a petite long haired calico with muted colors. Weighs in at 8 pounds.

She's very pretty, but seems to have allergies or something. Her eyes tear.

At the moment, she is running around like a wild cat, so she seems to feel okay! Her rambunctious play is bound to draw Jack out, and maybe they'll finally duke it out and establish some ground rules.

At first, she innocently approached Jack, but he was pretty well freaked out, and hid. Then, there was late night yowling, and they retreated to their hiding places, effectively separating themselves for the first full day she was here.

More late night yowling, and no progress the next night, but yesterday, they started coming out into the same room at the same time, and mostly now SHE is the one who is rejecting Jack.

Jack has wanted to be friends since yesterday, and she's having none of it.

The good part is that there was no late night yowling last night for the first time. So there's hope.

Oh, and she could not care less about my old cockatiel. This is good news! Her being in pet stores, and fostered at different houses, has probably desensitized her to such things as birds and people coming and going.

We have gotten stuff done during our time off, too. The office will be painted before we go back to work, we have decided! Then, all of the painting will be done!

Also got the last window shade for the bedroom, and a humming bird feeder.

The best part about this little break from work is that I have been sleeping pretty well at night....save for the yowling cats....

A couple of people sent me text messages that they elected me employee of the month, too, during my break.
Nice!
BUT....Given the fact that I was perfectly content with my boring A/R clerk job, and they went and loaded me up with some of the worst crap in the office because I actually WORK....the person who dumped all of this work on me so she could make more money should have nominated me 2 months ago, when I REALLY could have used it.

But she didn't.

My work load doubled, hers was cut in half, and SHE was the one who got the raise.

Anyway, I was employee of the month once last year, too. All it means is that I get 2 hours of free time off (which is what I could have really used during moving time), get to park in the special parking spot, and am eligible for employee of the year. Employee of the year gets half a day of free time.

Whatever.

Doing my best to stay disconnected from work during these 6 days....it's been good.

Oop~ yep, there they go.....screaming, hissing cats! Hope they get over this phase before our time off ends!