Catching up briefly
It's been a while. I know. I've been busy. It's not going to get better until at least April.
Maybe later, depending on my unknown scores from my last 2 CPA exams (3 taken out of 4, but I only have my score for the first one). It would suck to have to re-take any of them, but I won't be surprised if I end up needing to. I've been overscheduled for a while now and really didn't make enough time to study for my last two exams. I have my score for #1 and I passed. I think I did ok on #2, but I have very little confidence in my performance on yesterday's test. Sometime in the next month I will get my scores on both #2 and #3. Please keep your fingers crossed for me (intermittently, of course - it would be very uncomfortable to keep your fingers crossed for an entire month...).
My entire life, right now, is completely focused on work, CPA exams, and The Boy. Not in that order.
The Boy always comes first. My son is growing and changing at an amazing pace - as toddlers do. My mom has been out of town since mid-December and she will be completely amazed at the change in just that short time. He's communicating well - he knows a surprising number of words and has started stringing words together to get his message across. No complete sentences yet, but he won't even be 2 years old until May so I'll give him some more time on that one. He delights and amazes (and exasperates) me every day. He's starting to learn how to "help" me around the house. His help makes everything take twice as long, but that's ok. I want to encourage his desire to help out so that when he's older and more coordinated he will still want to help. He likes to help me with the laundry - mostly by taking things and putting them into piles of stuff for each person and then taking the folded things and putting them in the baskets (which usually un-folds them again, but I fix that later when he's not looking). He also loves to feed the kitties in the morning. I scoop out the food and give the measuring cup to him and he dumps it in the bowls. Then he makes sure we give them water in all of their bowls too. He helps me cook too. He likes to stir (though if I'm not careful he will stir things right out of the pan), and he already understands the concept of sampling as you go. We made pizza the other day and I had him grab handfuls of cheese to dump on the top of the pizza - it went like this: Grab a handful of cheese. Open hand over the pizza to dump the cheese. Eat the pieces stuck to hand. Repeat. With all of the drama at work and all of the overtime I end up needing to work, The Boy keeps me focused on what's really important.
Work is work. I like what I do, but it would be much nicer without all the drama and BS that go with it. I'm glad I have a job, and I'm very glad I got the promotion I got back in November. It has made a big difference in my ability to both get my job done and to pay my bills. But I end up needing to work a lot of hours of overtime. I did the math on my most recent paycheck and so far in 2011 my average is a little over 12 hours a week - which usually works out to 25 hours during month-end weeks and 8 or 9 hours the other weeks. It's still a lot of working and would never happen if I hadn't gotten my work-laptop in January and started being able to bring work home with me (which I really should be doing now instead of posting to LJ). I can easily see how I would end up working 60 hour weeks every week if I didn't have The Hubby and The Boy around to keep me from getting lost in my job. The real problem is that right now rulings have come down from above that no hourly employees are to work any overtime hours. Well, I'm the only non-hourly employee in my department besides my boss which means that I end up picking up all of the things that everyone else can't finish in 40 hours. It sucks. And I don't get true time and a half for my overtime. I get something (for which I'm grateful) but it's a weird calculation based on my salary and my actual hours worked and the more OT hours I work the less each one is worth. Usually they end up being about $6 or $7/hour. Better than being purely salaried and not getting paid anything for my OT. I look forward to completing my CPA exams and getting my CPA certification. That will make me eligible for a lot of jobs that pay considerably more than my current salary. I don't mind needing to work long hours, but it would be nice if all that work would result in the ability to pay all of my bills. Right now my salary by itself doesn't do that.
The Hubby is still unemployed. That sucks too. But he's applying everywhere he can and getting interviews and is still in the running for a few jobs for which he interviewed. It's just the waiting game now and we both hate it. He's still getting unemployment, which is good because so far that's the only reason we can still pay our bills. Financially things suck, but we're still squeaking by. Sooner or later (and we're definitely hoping for sooner) The Hubby will be employed again and then our entire financial outlook will change. We look forward to that.
There. Two and a half months worth of update. Don't be surprised if it's that long again before you see another one.
Maybe later, depending on my unknown scores from my last 2 CPA exams (3 taken out of 4, but I only have my score for the first one). It would suck to have to re-take any of them, but I won't be surprised if I end up needing to. I've been overscheduled for a while now and really didn't make enough time to study for my last two exams. I have my score for #1 and I passed. I think I did ok on #2, but I have very little confidence in my performance on yesterday's test. Sometime in the next month I will get my scores on both #2 and #3. Please keep your fingers crossed for me (intermittently, of course - it would be very uncomfortable to keep your fingers crossed for an entire month...).
My entire life, right now, is completely focused on work, CPA exams, and The Boy. Not in that order.
The Boy always comes first. My son is growing and changing at an amazing pace - as toddlers do. My mom has been out of town since mid-December and she will be completely amazed at the change in just that short time. He's communicating well - he knows a surprising number of words and has started stringing words together to get his message across. No complete sentences yet, but he won't even be 2 years old until May so I'll give him some more time on that one. He delights and amazes (and exasperates) me every day. He's starting to learn how to "help" me around the house. His help makes everything take twice as long, but that's ok. I want to encourage his desire to help out so that when he's older and more coordinated he will still want to help. He likes to help me with the laundry - mostly by taking things and putting them into piles of stuff for each person and then taking the folded things and putting them in the baskets (which usually un-folds them again, but I fix that later when he's not looking). He also loves to feed the kitties in the morning. I scoop out the food and give the measuring cup to him and he dumps it in the bowls. Then he makes sure we give them water in all of their bowls too. He helps me cook too. He likes to stir (though if I'm not careful he will stir things right out of the pan), and he already understands the concept of sampling as you go. We made pizza the other day and I had him grab handfuls of cheese to dump on the top of the pizza - it went like this: Grab a handful of cheese. Open hand over the pizza to dump the cheese. Eat the pieces stuck to hand. Repeat. With all of the drama at work and all of the overtime I end up needing to work, The Boy keeps me focused on what's really important.
Work is work. I like what I do, but it would be much nicer without all the drama and BS that go with it. I'm glad I have a job, and I'm very glad I got the promotion I got back in November. It has made a big difference in my ability to both get my job done and to pay my bills. But I end up needing to work a lot of hours of overtime. I did the math on my most recent paycheck and so far in 2011 my average is a little over 12 hours a week - which usually works out to 25 hours during month-end weeks and 8 or 9 hours the other weeks. It's still a lot of working and would never happen if I hadn't gotten my work-laptop in January and started being able to bring work home with me (which I really should be doing now instead of posting to LJ). I can easily see how I would end up working 60 hour weeks every week if I didn't have The Hubby and The Boy around to keep me from getting lost in my job. The real problem is that right now rulings have come down from above that no hourly employees are to work any overtime hours. Well, I'm the only non-hourly employee in my department besides my boss which means that I end up picking up all of the things that everyone else can't finish in 40 hours. It sucks. And I don't get true time and a half for my overtime. I get something (for which I'm grateful) but it's a weird calculation based on my salary and my actual hours worked and the more OT hours I work the less each one is worth. Usually they end up being about $6 or $7/hour. Better than being purely salaried and not getting paid anything for my OT. I look forward to completing my CPA exams and getting my CPA certification. That will make me eligible for a lot of jobs that pay considerably more than my current salary. I don't mind needing to work long hours, but it would be nice if all that work would result in the ability to pay all of my bills. Right now my salary by itself doesn't do that.
The Hubby is still unemployed. That sucks too. But he's applying everywhere he can and getting interviews and is still in the running for a few jobs for which he interviewed. It's just the waiting game now and we both hate it. He's still getting unemployment, which is good because so far that's the only reason we can still pay our bills. Financially things suck, but we're still squeaking by. Sooner or later (and we're definitely hoping for sooner) The Hubby will be employed again and then our entire financial outlook will change. We look forward to that.
There. Two and a half months worth of update. Don't be surprised if it's that long again before you see another one.