We worked from 3 p.m. until the late hours of the night importing my 5000 + contacts into my Mac, so, oops, I may have missed a day of the 30 day challenge.
I’ll make it up to you later, I promise, with entertaining stories and lots of laughs.
Yeah, I've been laughing - a lot! And that, me maties, is a very good thing...
I’m going to be writing this in a delayed fashion, because...
1. I’m still in a little shock
2. I’m still returning voice mails and e-mails and that’s taking up huge portions of my day. People are pouring out love, though, and I thank you for all your sweet and straight up comments. I love you all!
So. It’s Wednesday morning. I woke up at 6 a.m., a little late for me. Zack the Wonderdog was snuggled under the covers next to ThatManILove. I stealthily crept into the TV room, popped open the Mac (another story in itself) and started returning e-mails. I worked on this hard for about an hour.
And then, I lay back down on the couch and crashed.
At 9:30 a.m., ThatManILove came in to the room, concerned that he woke up and I wasn’t by his side. He said, “Babe, your phone’s been ringing off the wall.”
He gave it to me, and, dang. The voice mail was full AGAIN - 14 messages, and 15 e-mails. He started laughing. And then, he said, “Well! I checked my phone, and I have two messages, and three e-mails.” I just looked at him. He said, “Well, okay, yeah...they’re from yesterday.”
He is so funny.
He asked me if I wanted to go eat breakfast somewhere. Did I? No. I wanted to bury my head under the covers, but I knew that I could not do that. I had to get busy.
We compromised. He offered to make me cinnamon toast...a comfort food that hails back to my youth.
So off he went to the kitchen, dogs in hot pursuit. I hear him banging around, and before long, I smell cinnamon and butter. Yummmm. In a second, though, I smell something burning, and I cry out to him. He quickly assures me he’s got it, and in a minute, he comes back into the TV room bearing cinnamon toast. His is burned, but mine is not.
He sits down by me, and grabs a piece of toast, and bites into it. Immediately, his face screws up. Something’s not right. He spits it out.
I say, “What’s wrong?”
He smells of it, then reaches out for my plate.
He says, and I kid you not, “I put salt on it instead of sugar.”
And off he goes to make the real thing. You think we’re turned a little sideways by all this job deal? ThatManILove is a gourmet cook, I swear. The dogs wouldn’t even eat it.
I laughed until I cried. I did. It's never boring around here.
Okay. No more suspense.
My job was “eliminated” yesterday.
I am now a statistic. Female. Executive. Over 50. Unemployed.
I’ve been a statistic before, just not “unemployed”.
I’ve been married. Divorced. Single mom. Single working mom. All those things.
But never, ever, unemployed.
And certainly not in a recession, much less a bust in the oilpatch.
I knew it was coming, my boss let it slip that I was “on the list” two weeks ago. ThatManILove and I cut a traveling trip short, came home to Midland, went straight to my office and cleaned that sucker out. (I didn’t think I could stand the pressure of someone standing over me while I boxed up my office.) My boss told me many things yesterday. Affirming I was their top producer in 2008, affirming how I conducted my business throughout the almost 2 years I’d been there. But here’s the kicker - I need affirmation, and keeping my job, in some weird way, was one of the places I somehow got that affirmation. So, I needed to know “why”. I’ll probably never know the real reasons. My boss did tell me one thing - he said if he’d known the company was ever going to go down this road, he wouldn’t have brought me into the company at all.
I’m a rainmaker. I make rain. And I made a huge amount of rain for this company. The Lord seeds the clouds, and those clouds rain relationships, and I watch over those like a hawk. I nurture them like the best mom. And I win - because a huge part of those relationships become friends, and family friends at that. For those relationships, I am so very thankful.
My employer let me keep my phone, and gave me all day to do what I needed to do. I wanted to get out of there right away, but I took the time to send out bulk mails to all my customers and clients, letting them know I was leaving and giving them my new contact information.
In retrospect, I could have done that from the house. Immediately, my my work e-mail flooded. And I felt like I needed to answer all that I could, though I forwarded some to my home e-mail for later response. The voice mail on my phone filled up 3 times - before I could get it emptied, the messages recorded on paper for later attention, it would fill up again. This morning, when I awoke, the voice mail was once again full. I still have a magnum of phone calls to return.
And in the midst of all the storm, this is where things went right. People were calling to check on me all day long, and today as well. I have never felt so loved.
Now, my bloggy friends, you’re going to get to walk this road with me. My emotions are running the gamut, but I promise to keep the rants down to a certain decibel. Already, some hilarious things have happened. Welcome to Mi Vida Loca.
I know.
Don't shoot me. I'm just posting this to keep going on the 30 Day Challenge. I no longer am working where I was. I'll fill in all the details tomorrow.
I have to go to sleep now, I'm exhausted. But...all is good!
I promised to post every day for 30 days. Tonight, this is all you get...
Tomorrow, an entirely different story...and the start of a new Janie adventure.
Sleep with angels, y'all!
The push...
The takedown...
And it all begins again...
As you remember, we had drawn for two sets of tickets to the James Taylor Tanglewood Concert with Sheryl Crow and Yo Yo Ma.
The winners were seats 1&2 – Terri, aka Pepsi’s Mom, from Kansas – and, Jeannie S, seats 3&4from Connecticut. Both of these ladies wanted these tickets to bless (a) a daughter and (b) a friend recovering from cancer. I think that’s really cool.
So, remember, we started with 6 names, typed out, cut up, dumped into my cool yellow bowl.
And then we drew names here:
And the winners are (and yes, Ryan Seacrest is off for the weekend, so there will be no more delays):
Barbara, from Connecticut - you’ll hear more from her later…she won seats 5&6~
And…
Evan, from West Michigan, who won seats 7&8:
My wife gave me a fathers day and birthday gift (I turned 53 on July 22) to go to the concert in Tanglewood but was only able to get lawn seats for the Sun. afternoon concert with JT and the Boston Pops. We live in West Michigan and are going drive the 12-13 hours even if this is the only concert we can take in. We have been looking on line for months for tickets to the Sat. concert with Sheryl Crow. We have been effected by the 14% unemployment rate here in Michigan and because my job is directly related to the housing market things have been really slow. Being able to go hear my favorite artist, James Taylor, in seats where I could actually see him without binoculars would be so awesome. Let me commend you for your gracious gift no matter who you choose. You could have gotten a ton of money for these tickets and to give them away shows you are person of real integrity. God bless!! You can contact me at evan@********** if I am selected.
Well, Evan, your wish came true! Happy 53rd Birthday! I hope you give your lawn tickets away, in turn!
Congrats to the winners!!! Y’all e-mail me your contact info and addresses, and I will be mailing out all these tickets no later than Monday, August 3, 2009. I will most likely mail them receipt confirmation, so you must sign to receive them.
Have fun , thanks for playing in the contest and we’ll catch you on the next one.
After this morning’s activities with my WonderDogs, who knows, there may be some spotted hounds up for grabs in the near future!
Saturday to do list:
(1)Take Zack and Zanna to run at the dog park so they'll quit driving me crazy (not too far of a walk, anyway - to crazy, that is!)!
(2)Meet TexasRed and ThatManSheLoves for the very first time and share lunch! YEAH!
(3)Go see Elder Son team rope at the Lamesa Rodeo – I’m excited – if I’m lucky, I’ll get to post pix of him roping…
