Saturday, April 19, 2008

A Long Shaky Week

This has been a long week, but at least the weather is starting to turn bearable. This week seems to have been incredibly long and definitely full of shaky events.

My employer has announced some personnel changes that have left many unsettled. They are offering select employees an enhanced severance package with little knowledge for how things will look beyond the point of choosing to stay or go. In this seemingly increasing economic downturn, everyone is just concerned and considered taking that old CV out of the back of your computer "closet" and making sure it is up-to-date. While I am not personally feeling threatened at this point in time, it is a humbling reminder that we are all truly vulnerable. Keeping me focused on debt reduction!

The next unsettling event was the EARTHQUAKE! Seriously, a big one, here in the midwest! D had left to go work out early in the morning and the next thing I knew my bed was being tossed around as if someone were roughly jumping on it and honestly, I thought there was an intruder in my bed. The fight or flight instinct deep within me went into overdrive as did the overprotective mama gene. I could not have been more relieved when I realized that a) there was no intruder, b) a vehicle was not ramming my house from the outside, and c) that it was ONLY an earthquake. The kids slept through it and D was driving, so I was the only one who felt it. I was shocked at the magnitude of shaking a 5.2 Richter-scale quake could do, it literally shook me awake, and not gently!

The final big event of the week (besides the normal school and work headaches) was our grand idea to have all of the church trustees over to our house on Friday evening for a "thank you" and house blessing. As you might imagine, this included the cleaning, from top to bottom, of our house. Now we do try to keep a clean space, but with 3 kids and both of our school books, regular house paperwork/bills, and my NFP paperwork, it is hard to keep it spotless. But let me tell you, it looked like a magazine on Friday evening, thanks in large part to D and Shenzy who cleaned and hung some pictures and things that we have never gotten hung. I was proud to have them tour our house and we had a nice time entertaining them all, but it was an exhausting endeavour...

Oh yes, how could I forget, my next oldest cousin had a baby girl on Monday. We visited on Tuesday and she is the cutest little button. She slept the whole time so I couldn't see her little eyes, but she truly was adorable and I am excited for my kids to have a cousin on my side of the family that is closer in age. It is so weird to see people become parents, especially people who still think of as so much younger than you, but my cousin is married and in her mid-20s so plenty fine to start a family, but it is just weird. I wish them all the happiness in the world.

All for now, off to bed.

CC

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh, an EARTHQUAKE in your state?! I've never heard of such a thing. Now around here... yeah, I've ridden a couple of 5.2s... and they scared the pants off me too. (The 6.7 or whatever we had in 2000 literally made my life flash before my eyes). And every now and again I start thinking we must be "due" for a big one and then I'm laying in bed and hubby does a toss in his sleep which shakes the bed a little and I'm convinced it's an earthquake. Cracks him up every time. Anyway, all that to say I can imagine how you felt! But I'm glad it didn't do any damage and that you are also surviving work stress and everything else!

B-squared said...

We slept thru the whole event - can you believe it? If it hadn't been for the morning news coverage, I wouldn't have know.
As for your employers changes....everytime I think about coming back from leave, I hear something like this on the news. I hope there is something to go back to!
Take care! Hope things are feeling for solid now. :-)