(no subject)
I'm sitting inside of a Peet's coffee house so I finally have time to write an update!
I've been needing a few hours to myself to finish up some paper work and work on applications so Lawrence has also joined me for the day then we're going out for wings since we haven't been to our favorite spot in over a month. Afterward I'm going to attend a pole dancing class with my new friend Ashley. I met Ashley via the Girlfriend Social website last week and since then we've literally been inseparable. It all started when she messaged me on the website while I was at work telling me that she lived in the same neighborhood as me and judging by my profile we have a lot in common. So we started corresponding that day and since it was kind of annoying for me to always log in to respond to her messages on the website I gave her my number and we were constantly texting throughout the day. Then we made plans to go see a movie the next day but on a whim she decided to join me and Charlie at the dog park that very same day. After meeting us she became absolutely crazy about Charlie and has been bragging to everyone who will listen how big a personality he has and how adorable he is plus to top all that off she has tons of pictures of him that she now sends to her family and friends haha. After the dog park I invited her over to my place so that I could drop Charlie off and in the process she met Lawrence. Then we went to a bar and chatted some more. The next day we had dinner and saw a movie and a few days ago she took me out to all you can eat tacos, bingo and margaritas at this hip Mexican restaurant lol. So literally we've been hanging out every chance we get and now we're taking boxing and pole dancing classes together =D!
Although I've been extremely busy with work I'm also trying to keep up with my social life, hanging out with Ashley and my other girl friends and of course spending quality time with Lawrence and going on our weekly dates. Since the weather has been warming up Charlie's also been able to go to the dog park more and I'm still taking in my regular client's at Pawsitive Petcare. As for work, being a life skills educator for juvenile offenders has been a little stressful. I have my good days and my bad days but overall I'm exhausted from working long hours and trying to balance my personal life. Last week a fight broke out and I had to put in over time to defuse it. What started off as a silly argument escalated so I removed a client from the situation placing him upstairs. Then the client he was arguing with came upstairs with his friend and then they continued to argue so I went back upstairs and saw a knife. I asked for the knife but he had refused to give it to me. So I sent my co-worker upstairs to see if he could remove the weapon, no dice so the other client called the police. They arrived on the scene in less than five minutes and arrested both clients, one for disturbing the peace and one for assault with a weapon. I wish they would have arrested the other client's friend as well because he was instigating the whole fight, filming it and just being plain annoying. The fight broke out during the last hour of my shift so defusing the whole thing took over an hour and then it took another hour and a half to do the paper work for it. I'm also extremely disappointed in how my co-workers and the management handled the situation. I know these things are going to happen with the population I'm working with but I would have liked to have more support from my supervisor and co-workers because apparently the instigating client told my other co-workers and my supervisor that I had sat in the office the whole time for forty minutes and not intervened, which was obviously not true because I broke up the argument and when it came upstairs I intervened there too and so did my co-worker so for my supervisor to believe the word of a client instead of her staff (not to mention the clients are all known for lying) really set me off. I addressed the incident with my supervisor again and all she said to me was "well if that's what you said happened, that's what happened." Then my crazy co-worker had to chime in and say she doesn't like the sound of my voice and how I wear makeup every day (which she does too), like really what does that have to do with my job performance? I guess if that's the only negative thing she can say about me so be it but that's incredibly petty and immature. Then when we have team meetings it's basically just my co-workers throwing each other under the bus and blaming each other for things trying to make themselves look good. I was also really annoyed that the other day I had to work alone for 4.5 hours when the clients were trying to act fresh. If it wasn't for this one client who's 6"7 400lbs having my back I would have felt really uncomfortable trying to control everything. Anyway, I'm just hoping for this one problem client to leave the program in the next week or so and then my job will pretty much be a piece of cake until the five month mark where I can transfer into a higher position. In the meantime I'm looking into other jobs and working on getting my LPC or LCPC to widen my options. I'm grateful that I got this position and it's a quick commute for me but I want to do MORE.
In other news, my car has been having issues again and at this point we're so fed up that we're ready to sell it ASAP and have stopped using it. It's been a huge inconvenience but it's not the end of the world. In the meantime we're going to look into renting a zip car, Ubering it and taking public transportation which isn't too bad to do here in Chicago.
My Mom's birthday was last Sunday and I had mailed her gift two weeks ago and the post office seemed to screw that up and still charged me $30 something dollars for a package that didn't get to her in time. It got there today, almost a week late but it took a lot of aggravating phone calls to get it sorted out. Other sources of frustration for me lately is that my land lord has been showing our condo whenever she feels like it because our lease is up in July and she wants to find someone to rent it out ASAP. Not cool, especially when I'm coming home from work and wanting to have dinner, a shower and be in bed early. Oh and after lots of chasing down I finally got my forty hour domestic violence training certificate, the coordinator was giving me the run around and not answering my emails/phone calls because we left on a bad note...she accused me of being disrespectful because I wasn't looking at the speaker during the training during my last class but I couldn't see the powerpoint so I was following along by reading the handout. Lame right? Ah well I finally got certified and that's one less thing for me to do!
Anyway, enjoy your weekend everyone. I'll try to do a better job at making my presence known on LJ but this job keeps me busy lol.
I've been needing a few hours to myself to finish up some paper work and work on applications so Lawrence has also joined me for the day then we're going out for wings since we haven't been to our favorite spot in over a month. Afterward I'm going to attend a pole dancing class with my new friend Ashley. I met Ashley via the Girlfriend Social website last week and since then we've literally been inseparable. It all started when she messaged me on the website while I was at work telling me that she lived in the same neighborhood as me and judging by my profile we have a lot in common. So we started corresponding that day and since it was kind of annoying for me to always log in to respond to her messages on the website I gave her my number and we were constantly texting throughout the day. Then we made plans to go see a movie the next day but on a whim she decided to join me and Charlie at the dog park that very same day. After meeting us she became absolutely crazy about Charlie and has been bragging to everyone who will listen how big a personality he has and how adorable he is plus to top all that off she has tons of pictures of him that she now sends to her family and friends haha. After the dog park I invited her over to my place so that I could drop Charlie off and in the process she met Lawrence. Then we went to a bar and chatted some more. The next day we had dinner and saw a movie and a few days ago she took me out to all you can eat tacos, bingo and margaritas at this hip Mexican restaurant lol. So literally we've been hanging out every chance we get and now we're taking boxing and pole dancing classes together =D!
Although I've been extremely busy with work I'm also trying to keep up with my social life, hanging out with Ashley and my other girl friends and of course spending quality time with Lawrence and going on our weekly dates. Since the weather has been warming up Charlie's also been able to go to the dog park more and I'm still taking in my regular client's at Pawsitive Petcare. As for work, being a life skills educator for juvenile offenders has been a little stressful. I have my good days and my bad days but overall I'm exhausted from working long hours and trying to balance my personal life. Last week a fight broke out and I had to put in over time to defuse it. What started off as a silly argument escalated so I removed a client from the situation placing him upstairs. Then the client he was arguing with came upstairs with his friend and then they continued to argue so I went back upstairs and saw a knife. I asked for the knife but he had refused to give it to me. So I sent my co-worker upstairs to see if he could remove the weapon, no dice so the other client called the police. They arrived on the scene in less than five minutes and arrested both clients, one for disturbing the peace and one for assault with a weapon. I wish they would have arrested the other client's friend as well because he was instigating the whole fight, filming it and just being plain annoying. The fight broke out during the last hour of my shift so defusing the whole thing took over an hour and then it took another hour and a half to do the paper work for it. I'm also extremely disappointed in how my co-workers and the management handled the situation. I know these things are going to happen with the population I'm working with but I would have liked to have more support from my supervisor and co-workers because apparently the instigating client told my other co-workers and my supervisor that I had sat in the office the whole time for forty minutes and not intervened, which was obviously not true because I broke up the argument and when it came upstairs I intervened there too and so did my co-worker so for my supervisor to believe the word of a client instead of her staff (not to mention the clients are all known for lying) really set me off. I addressed the incident with my supervisor again and all she said to me was "well if that's what you said happened, that's what happened." Then my crazy co-worker had to chime in and say she doesn't like the sound of my voice and how I wear makeup every day (which she does too), like really what does that have to do with my job performance? I guess if that's the only negative thing she can say about me so be it but that's incredibly petty and immature. Then when we have team meetings it's basically just my co-workers throwing each other under the bus and blaming each other for things trying to make themselves look good. I was also really annoyed that the other day I had to work alone for 4.5 hours when the clients were trying to act fresh. If it wasn't for this one client who's 6"7 400lbs having my back I would have felt really uncomfortable trying to control everything. Anyway, I'm just hoping for this one problem client to leave the program in the next week or so and then my job will pretty much be a piece of cake until the five month mark where I can transfer into a higher position. In the meantime I'm looking into other jobs and working on getting my LPC or LCPC to widen my options. I'm grateful that I got this position and it's a quick commute for me but I want to do MORE.
In other news, my car has been having issues again and at this point we're so fed up that we're ready to sell it ASAP and have stopped using it. It's been a huge inconvenience but it's not the end of the world. In the meantime we're going to look into renting a zip car, Ubering it and taking public transportation which isn't too bad to do here in Chicago.
My Mom's birthday was last Sunday and I had mailed her gift two weeks ago and the post office seemed to screw that up and still charged me $30 something dollars for a package that didn't get to her in time. It got there today, almost a week late but it took a lot of aggravating phone calls to get it sorted out. Other sources of frustration for me lately is that my land lord has been showing our condo whenever she feels like it because our lease is up in July and she wants to find someone to rent it out ASAP. Not cool, especially when I'm coming home from work and wanting to have dinner, a shower and be in bed early. Oh and after lots of chasing down I finally got my forty hour domestic violence training certificate, the coordinator was giving me the run around and not answering my emails/phone calls because we left on a bad note...she accused me of being disrespectful because I wasn't looking at the speaker during the training during my last class but I couldn't see the powerpoint so I was following along by reading the handout. Lame right? Ah well I finally got certified and that's one less thing for me to do!
Anyway, enjoy your weekend everyone. I'll try to do a better job at making my presence known on LJ but this job keeps me busy lol.