Better late than never

Oh my, it’s been such a long time since I posted anything.  It’s been a month since I’ve been on this computer.  I finally was able to get on here today and clear out some of the 5500+ emails.  It’s definitely time for an update.  I hope you’re well and doing great.

I’ve had my share of trials lately.  It’s far too much for one post, but let me say I had some eye surgery so was down quite a while from that.  I took a total of twelve days off work when I was intending to take four.  Things ended up being a much bigger ordeal than I was anticipating.  I’ve spent hours and hours icing my face.  For the first two weeks all I did was ice twelve hours a day.  You can only imagine how old that can get.  Now its been a month and I still have swelling and some bruises remaining, so I got permission to wear sunglasses to work until that subsides.  At least the original goal of fixing my runny eyes was accomplished.  I don’t know when things will really be back to normal in that whole eye department.  My eyes are so sore and somewhat numb in places.  I’ll fill you in with more details in a separate post later.

My hubby caught the worst cold at work, or so we thought.  He brought it home to me.  I wasn’t at work two days when I was home again, this time with the flu and pneumonia.  After another week off I’m finally back at work again.  Hopefully, this is the last pitfall for a while.  I’m so tired of being sick.  But so many people are out with this and some have ended up in the hospital, so thankfully that didn’t happen to me.

I’m thankful that our new boss is working with me and all my problems.  Yes, we got a new boss while I was out having my eye surgery.  Everything at work has changed and not necessarily for the better. But as we all know, change is difficult when things have been done certain ways for years.  Apparently, the old way was the wrong way to do it.  Everyone is going through a learning curve.  Plus, we have to get to know the new boss and she has to get to know us.

It’s so good to be back at work, even with all the changes and things we must learn a new way.  At least I’ve been able to stay out of the coolers and deli area at work, which I’m very thankful for.  I always strive to do the best job I can do with whatever my demo happens to be for the day, but I was totally beside myself with the one I had yesterday.  I had never done it before, but that’s okay because it’s fun to do something new once in a while.  However, I was having anything but fun with this one.  Number one, I’m not a very good pancake maker but it’s a real challenge to make them in a dry pan with no oil.  Several of our workers tried to help me out, but the pancakes also stuck for them.  I found out it wasn’t just me.  I almost made myself sick over this ordeal because presentation means a lot to me.

I finally closed down my demo and put everything under my cart and turned it to the display rack because I needed to go back to the office to see if I could please get some oil for my pan.  Of course the answer was no.  “It’s a non-stick pan so you don’t need any oil,” I was told.  So I was left with two choices – bring my cart to the back and check out and go home – or figure out how to make it work with no oil.  To say I was angry wouldn’t even express my feelings.  Why didn’t she just throw me in the dungeon and beat me with chains?

But this is one of the instances when my stubbornness pays off because I rarely let anything get the best of me, no matter how difficult and “hair pulling” the situation is.  I could have had a good blood-curdling scream, though that wasn’t an option.  I took some deep breaths, boiled out my pan, which had pancake goo all over it.  These things didn’t look like pancakes, but by the time I cut them up and put them in sample cups and put on some syrup people seemed to like it.  And they didn’t look nearly as bad as the heaps in the pan.  I was afraid I would pull the handle right off that skillet before the day was out.  I had to scrape it hard to get those pancakes turned over.  Eventually, I calmed down when I realized I just had to stop giving a damn about how they looked and keep on cooking and scraping the pan until the torture of that day was behind me.

I needed today off to cool off and be ready for whatever bombshell awaits me tomorrow.  I really hope my name is way down the list for those pancakes.  I’m going in full of optimism like I try to do every day, but I long for the old days when we could find out what our demo for the next day was.  You know sometimes it’s helpful if I find it’s something new and I want to google some ideas, or history on the product ahead of time.  But that probably won’t be happening much, if any, in the future.  I think the new boss likes to surprise us.