summer

The last few weeks have been brutal at work.

Omar was never friendly, warm or helpful toward me before, but once I kept having to work overtime, things deteriorated fast.

It's a vicious cycle; Bill's truck suffers some kind of breakdown (lately it's been the lift at the back. Once that goes, just try getting anything in or out of the back. It's very dangerous as well and must be fixed immediately.) When that happens, he will dispatch me to deliver to the hospitals and depots on his route. Invariably, this adds two to three hours to my route, which means I work through my lunch and at four o'clock, I have to call Omar.

"Hi Omar, Kate here. I'm into overtime."

"Why are you working overtime?"

"I'm delivering to the Prairie Depot."

"Why?"

"Bill delivers to them on Tuesday but that is the day his lift broke and he had to get a rental. He didn't arrive until after 6:00 pm and by then everything was locked up and he couldn't deliver."

"I meant, why are YOU doing it?"

"They called the answering service last night. They're out of oxygen and need it today."

"You didn't answer me. Why are YOU doing it?"

"No one else can do it."

"Why isn't Bill doing it?"

"He won't return from the east until 6:30 tonight. Prairie is another 90 minutes to the south, which would put him over the fourteen hour limit."

"This is unacceptable. I will have to come up there to see where these inefficiencies are coming from."

The thing is, he knows. Bill keeps him apprised and often leaves him messages breaking down all the details of the breakdowns and resulting changes to our routes. He's always friendly and helpful toward Bill, but openly hostile toward me.

At the end of last week, things got even worse, and I had to refuse some unsafe work. I just hope that everything can start to settle down a bit after this!

Some good news I have is that I recently gave up caffeine, as it's been causing reflux since I quit smoking four years ago. I've been trying to figure out what my pain was all these years, and one day Jamie saw the topic discussed on Dr. Oz.

I looked into it, spoke to a pharmicist, and went decaf the next day. What a difference! I had a few days of withdrawal but I feel pretty good now.

Our whole family was able to go camping last weekend - it was fun, even though it rained the first night. We rented a little cabin out by the lake near my parents farm. We had a fire and Jamie made S'mores (which I tried for the first time) and the next day, we all rented paddle boats and cooked ribs on the fire outside.

As I write this, Bill is unloading the dishwasher and Jamie is still asleep. Em is staying with Bill's sister out on the farm, so it's a lot quieter, lol. I think I see some laundry in my immediate future, so happy Saturday!