Appliances

Well this morning I went to the refridgerator for the first time in about a week(no kids or husband around don't you know so I was eating out a lot) and discovered that it was no longer cooling anything. I checked the freezer and everything in there had thawed and was cold but thawed. SOOOOOOOOOOO I called hubby at work and we met for lunch to go to the local thrift store to purchase a new fridge. I spent a good portion of the morning cleaning out the old fridge and disposing of the rotten food. I wonder sometimes it is that these things happen the way they do. I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it but if I had checked the fridge on a more regular basis maybe we wouldn't have had to throw away a lot of food.
I am just thankful this has happened when we had money to replace it and actually we got a really nice side by side refridgerator for less then we would have paid for a brand new one that had less storage space and had a top load freezer. I like the fridge we got.... now just to get in there and get the old one moved out so I can move the new one into place. Hubby is going grocery shopping after work so I have about 3 hours to get things in order and moved around..... Hey Karen have you found Consuela yet? I really need you to airmail her to me.

Mountain of paperwork

Somewhere amidst all the paperwork there really is a person working as hard as she can to get out from below the mountain. That is what I am feeling lately. There is a lot of stress in what I do at work even though you wouldn't think it for having a desk job. Each day I go through a series of items that need to be done.... I work on the health insurance papers (reading quotes, working up financials based on the quotes, handling new enrollees, terminating old employees, handling the bills so they get coded properly), I then work on wrecked vehicle accounts (taking claims information, calling adjustors to get claims paid, letting our salesmen know when a customer will be back in for a new car, talking to customers to tell them calmly how to handle a claim and what we need from them), then I start the insurance verification processes (a 12 page report with about 500 people without valid insurance at any given point in the week) where I call and confirm that yes "June" did actually have her policy cancelled last week and then I have to call her about it wherein she acts like I don't know what I am talking about. Add to all that I have at least one filing cabinet drawer full of alphabetized documentation that needs to be filed into the customer insurance files that I just never seem to get around to.

Up until January I also handled all the insurance mail data entry, telephones for 15 hours a week, all new customer insurance verification and all business insurance issues. Finally after about 6 months into my 7th year with the company they allowed me an assistant. I bless her soul and heart because now she does the all day data entry, handles the phones, and the new customer verifications. She also deals with a lot of the phone calls from customers saying that yes they do too have insurance and we are just all idiots who don't know what we are talking about.

You would think with all this stress I wouldn't have time to gain weight and would actually lose it.... not the case at all. So now I stress further trying to determine whether I really want to take my happy big self off to the gym to work off some of this extra padding I am carrying around. Whoopie.... the gym is on the way home BUTTTTT (oops I am showing what a big bottom I have), I can never seem to get there and be able to work on the machines because, bless their hearts, everyone else has the same pea pickin idea! SOooooo no gym workouts on the way home and once I am home I don't have the energy to head back out again......

Oh well... maybe one day the mountain will just collapse on me and flatten me enough no one will ever know how "padded" I became.

update on life

Life in my house has been quiet the last three weeks. The kids have been up in Pa visiting their grandparents and other family members up there. They go every year for a few weeks at a time. This year has been harder for me than any other since the very first time they went. I think partly it is because Mike has worked third shift for about 2 months now. I would come home from owrk and start the process of waking him up to be sure he went to work on time. This is usually about an hour process because he is just fully exhausted and each time I would wake him he would drift back to sleep. Usually I would have to finally say "If you don't get up right now you will be late" and then he would get moving.
The next three weeks will be a little better because Mike is starting days again in the morning. For the next week he will have crazy hours still because of the remodel he is working on. Then he is one week in his regular store at his regular hours and then a week of vacation and we go get the kids. I look forward to them coming home.
We have a new dog that we got last week and the kids are looking forward to meeting him. He is a cocker spaniel mixed with something. He is getting on better with our female mutt ( lab, pekenese, australian spaniel?). She didn't like him at all when we first brought him in. She is calming down and liking him better. I am glad because I really like him and want them to get along.
Work has been really stressful to me lately. We have had some issues with the boss being sick and since it has been so much time that he is out of work they have chosen to bring a COO in. He has made some changes and I don't handle change really well. Most of the time I just figure I need to do my job regardless of how or what changes come about. Sometimes it is distracting though when there is a change that comes in... i.e. we now need to write a step by step explaination of how to do our jobs. First of all, I do my job automatically and don't necessarily think about how I do it. I mean since I am really the only one that does the health insurance and the business insurance WHY do they need a manual about HOW to do it? I know I need to still write that manuel but WHY should I if I am not planning to go anywhere. One of the biggest issues too with having to write that manuel is that there are laws as to what information is available and to whom it is available. I don't want anyone to have access to that information so I don't feel that I should tell anyone how to obtain the information. I am just really frustrated with all of this.
Anyway.... that is the way things have been going for the last several weeks around my house and work and life.