Survival mode...

I survived my week of work travel and the teen from the building that traveled with me survived and make it back too (even though I threatened to leave her behind if she didn't behave).  She and I actually had a great opportunity to get to know one another on a different level while we were on this trip.  Even though I was not happy how the trip was passed along to me, I am glad that she and I went.  I know that she would have had a different experience if the other staff would have been able to go but there's nothing that can be done about it now.  On the plus side, many of the teens and other advisors this past week told me that I seemed like a very fun/unique individual so I guess I was able to show "me."

The travel consisted of some very long days and on Thursday the plane landed at 9:45 pm.  After handing off the teen to her Mom and saying good-byes, I had to go pick up my dogs.  Once I picked them up, got them cleaned off (one of them gets carsick) and to bed, and then got myself together, it was after 11 pm/midnight before I got to bed.  The next day I went into work early to run customer billing and work on signing off on payroll.  While I was working on that, I got a call from my boss asking me why I was at work because we had discussed me coming in later (because I had to work our late night on Friday).  I told her that I didn't recall having a discussion about not coming in to run billing and payroll.  She told me, as my boss, that she was telling me to go home for awhile and to come back later in the afternoon to work the late night.  I ended up leaving work at about 10:30 am and heading back in around 4:30/5:00 pm and then I worked until 10:30 pm.

Looking back, it was probably a good thing that I went home for that time.  I was exhausted and definitely had my "grumpy pants" on while I was at work.  Ironically I was given a hard time for having on "grumpy pants" when my boss often says that she's wearing a pair of her own.  Oh, well.  I guess that's one of the reasons why she's the head boss - she can get away with doing things like that. I know that one of the reasons why I had on my "grumpy pants" on Fridays was just not feeling as if I've had any sort of a break since Christmas.  This is something that I'm definitely going to have to work on remedying - and soon.

Unfortunately, even as I typing that I need to go on a break soon, I don't know when I'm honestly going to be able to make that happen.  We have huge things upcoming at work (budget inputting/brief with the boss of the boss, upcoming summer programming, self study evidence collection/submission for the building's upcoming accreditation, and our yearly national inspection....).  If I survive all of this, I think I have definitely earned some time away from work.  At this point, looking at the list, it's my hope that I do survive it all...  I guess it's time to kick it into survival mode.

While I was gone on my work trip this past week, they actually didn't have us staying in a hotel like I thought they were going to but we were basically in a temporary rental house.  It was a 3-story house (basement with a full bathroom, a living floor with a kitchen/dining room/living room, and the upstairs with three bedrooms and another full bathroom) and it made me really miss living in a house.  I live in a basement apartment and the only time I'm in a house is when I'm visiting my parents.  I don't know if it really hit me about the housing situation because I'm still drooling over the house I found/fell in love with or what but it made me really miss having the separation of living areas and stairs.  Maybe one day...

Well, my dear readers, on that note, I'm going to bring this to a close for tonight.  I have some things to do around the apartment to accomplish that I didn't get done since I was gone last week and I'm busy this next week at work and extracurriculars.  Because I'm going to be so busy, I'm hoping to carve out a little bit of time for me; we'll see how that goes...