morning thoughts 11-23-08

Well, here it is...8:10am and I am wide awake. Why is this noteworthy you ask? I worked third shift last night and I usually come home and go straight to bed. I get to crawl into a warm bed and drift off and get to deep sleep before the girls get up and the house gets loud. This sounds sooo appealing to me right now except that if I go lay down I will simply toss and turn for quite some time. :(

Ok, different subject. We FINALLY got our photos tonight from the lady we hired to shoot our wedding. Sure did take long enough. One thing I have to say about it is that you get what you pay for...truly. She was an amateur student looking to get her portfolio started and wanted to use our wedding pics to help her with that. She only asked for us to reimburse her for the overhead (she had to rent a large flash and needed $ to get to and from wedding stuffs) This total came to about $60. I know...a steal right? No...not really. I would say that for all the pictures that she did I am about 60% happy with her work. The other 40% was an honest waste of her talent and my time. She never once consulted with me about what pictures I liked or didn't like and then delayed getting them to us until all the post-editing was done--on 700+ photos!!! You've got to be kidding me!!! Anyways, there are some really beautiful pictures but how much of it was the location and how much was her skill? Not to mention, she did have some exclusive shots that no one else got of just me and Lucas. I really don't want to sound ungrateful but if she is trying to make this a career then she should have approached this a little more professionally. I would love nothing more than to be a professional photographer or be able to show off my photos to everyone. When I first met with her to go over details of the wedding and what would be expected of her as well as "interview her". Her experience seemed limited but what I had seen I really enjoyed (or else I would never have asked her). There was one thing that she said that bothered me very much. She went on about how a friend of hers just "takes a lot of photos but since she doesn't take them with a professional camera she shouldn't call herself a photographer...she is just someone who takes snapshots" W....T....F? You mean to tell me that I cannot call myself a photographer just because my camera is a high end point and shoot camera? That is just plain insulting! Photography is not determined by the equipment that one has but by the eye looking through the lens that must interpret what they see to how it will translate to the picture!! There are plenty of BAD photographers out there that have all the finest and up-to-date equipment and don't have an eye for it at all! I may not have the fanciest camera around but I feel that I certainly have an eye for art and beauty! Not to mention, I have had some formal training, not much, mind you and it was years ago, but I still carry with me all those lessons I learned. I have even taken some of her pictures and made them better just by cropping and framing them better! I really am upset about the whole thing. Her comment about "photographers" really pissed me off. Oh well. We are paying her only the bare minimum and not even going to entertain the thought of a tip. She wants to use us for a reference? Go ahead, be my guest...although she might not like what I have to say about it. I certainly will not be spreading referrals around for her. Not until she starts acting like a professional.

I am not use to anxiety

Yesterday I talked to my boss for a little while. She is a really neat lady and we talk a lot outside of the context of work (aka we call each other at home to bitch about work). I have known for a while that our department is planning on restructuring its policies and its shifts. The proposed plan I heard was that we would implement three set schedules and everyone must fall inline with either the 7am-3pm (first shift) 3pm-11pm (second shift) or 11pm-7am (third shift). There would no longer be those extra shifts like 8a-4p, 10a-6p, or even my original bidded hours of noon-8pm (not that I have worked my bidded hours in MONTHS--too busy on frakkin' thirds). Well, here is where the anxiety comes in. While talking with her, she began to talk about what is happenening but then paused and said that she isn't really allowed to talk about it and I didn't push it. She said that she isn't at liberty to discuss the details of what is happening. Alls I do know is this. I was able to discern out of her that there may be two jobs in our department on the chopping block. Also that those two jobs would be taken from the two employees that have the least amount of seniority. The first is Landis who has only been down in our department for about 4 months. The next one on the block is me. Thats right, yours truly. I feel so completely helpless. I have been fired before and I have quit jobs before. This really doesn't fall into either of those catagories. I mean, there is absolutly nothing wrong with my job performance so it isn't even that there is anything I could do to improve myself to try to save my job. The only saving grace may be that since I am qualified to do other jobs in the hospital I will simply be reassigned within the establishment. I would be able to stay in the union position and keep my state job. The pay is really nice and if my job is abolished and I am reassigned, I keep my current pay grade. This is nice considering that the starting pay for Medical Assistants at the hospital start around $10-ish. I would transfer everything over with my current hourly wage (which is over $14 at this time and I am due for another raise in January). I really don't want to lose my job. I like it, I am good at it...(wait for it...) and gosh darn it, people like me! And I mean that! I have found quite a rapport with all the nurses and doctors that work thirds with me. Some of the nurses have even told me that they prefer me over the guy (Landis) that works the rest of the time and they even like me over the lady that use to work thirds (Michelle). Whatever. I am just anxious about maybe losing the job.

Am I being unfair???

Today the girls came home from school and in the usual style, they get snack and then its right into homework stopping only for bathroom breaks. So Gillian gets right to it and it takes her a little while but nonetheless, she is now complete. Naudia on the other hand.....this is where I am having difficulty. Forgive me, but she is such a scatterbrain. She and Gillian sit down at the same time with the same homework and logically, they should be finishing up at roughly the same time (give or take a few). Not the case today. Naudia decided that homework wasn't as important as writing a letter to her penpal. This letter of course, is not homework and she insisted on making it as artsy as possible. This is not inherently bad, I encourage them writing letters. The issue is that she chose to not do her homework. So now I become the bad guy. I get mad that she hasn't even begun it (oh, its 5:30pm at this point, they've been home for an hour and a half and Gillian is finished) So I tell her to go get her homework and get started. I try to be private about this since I firmly believe that by calling out her mistakes in front of her sister, Naudia gets a sort of inferiority complex. I do not want that at all! I want both girls to be confident and independent.

So she (Naudia) goes over to her back pack, gets out her folder and proceeds to want to give me ALL THE PAPERS ONE AT A TIME. I finally tell her that she just needs to get to work. She takes her homework over to the desk, turns around and hands me a stack of papers. I start to go through them, look up and see that she is turned around facing me and watching me read the papers! GRR. So I frustratingly tell her to turn around and get started on her work!

I feel like such a bad guy when it comes to Naudia and her scatterbrained-ness. Gillian can be stubborn but she usually gets it and that is that. With Naudia, it just seems that she just doesn't get it and won't ask but then looks like a deer in headlights when you finally get so frustrated with her to the point where I am yelling at her to do the simplest of tasks.

I really need to find some patience for my daughter. She is smart and funny and talented and so self conscious. Gillian is, in many ways, her opposite. Overly confident to the point of being obstinate. I really don't know how to help Naudia build her confidence when her biggest rival looks just like her, in the same grade, competes for the same attention from the same parents and lives in the same house and sleeps in the same room as her.

Well, I have company and I need to get dinner on the table so I will write more soon.

OKTHXBI

A word on Gay marraige

Obviously, I am straight. I am also married...to a man, of course. But something has me quite unsettled from our recent election but it has taken a backseat to the absolute whirlwind of our new President we elected (YAY!!!). In California, they passed into law an amendment to their State constitution that will "restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman." This really bothers me. I firmly believe that if a man wants to marry another man or a woman wants to marry another woman, there should be no restriction to them. I don't find their love and desire to be married an assult on the sanctity of marriage. To even think such a thing is rediculus! Some may argue religous "facts" that would tell you homosexuals marrying would corrupt traditional values. Hogwash.

I found an interesting site that I wanted to share. Its written on a blog called Slate. This whole thing started when I was looking through Wikipedia reading about the Republican party (interesting, huh?), trying to educate myself on the differences in the major political parties so I can become more educated on the political world and more importantly, on the party that is opposite what I have come to align myself with. I am a Democrat. This site was cited in the footnotes. Here is the link. Also, there is a link within this article I found to be interesting, here.

It is just still surprising to me how people are letting their "religious beliefs" dictate the way the write/pass/implement LAWS in this country. Wasn't there something called Separatioin of Church and State?? Ok, I could go on and on but I won't. Not to mention, I already feel that my ADD is in danger of taking over and going on too many tangents!!! There is enough to read on the few links I put up in this blog. (I love Wikipedia!) I just want to leave you with an unrelated comment from another blog. This comment was made after a Massachusetts Supreme court ruling but I feel that it has application here:

"And why can't it be "forced on the people"? Integration was forced. Woman's rights were forced. Interracial marriage was forced (78% of the American public found it "immoral" at the time the Supreme court struck laws banning it down). The public eventually caught up. But generally people don;t pay much attention to issues which doesn;t affect them directly. One of the fuctions of the Judicial branch of the American government is to protect the rights of the minorities from the tyranny of the majority. I am sorry that is inconvenient to your misplaced notion that this is always about "what the people want" but that is not how a Republic works. Besides, civil rights are innate. They are not dependant on the the irational beliefs or ignorance of the majority of the populace."

OKTHXBI