User:Simsilikesims/Welcome to my life 2022

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2022

February

Took a wiki-break, worked overtime hours about 45 hours per week at my job at the medical facility processing payroll and accounts payable. Since I don't have kids nor grandkids to look after, the only ones waiting for me at home were my husband and cats. And he always fed the cats anyway. Our cats are very picky - they prefer their food mashed down with a fork, and broken into pieces. And they want both dry food and wet food. But not just any wet food. They are particular about the flavor and brands. Our cats prefer seafood; they do not like chicken or turkey, unless it is human-grade, fresh off our plates into their mouths. They also do not like pate/mousse textured cat foods. They do like pieces in gravy.

On the weekends, we watched Marvel and DC television shows on the CW.

March

At work, the printer went haywire, used up all its ink, and the "automatic refill order" feature did not work. As a result, I had to use other printers the entire month, which doubled the time it took to complete the accounts payable work. As a result, I worked a lot of overtime to do the same amount of work that I had done the previous month in a normal 8 hour day. The wiki-break continued, although I would pop in occasionally to see what was new.

April

My 90 days probation period were completed, and I was still working the same place. So I could relax just a little, and start taking PTO. I took full advantage of my new PTO privileges for doctor visits that I had postponed during the 90 days. Most of these visits were before or after work, but the ones before work often required about one or two hours PTO or arrangements to start late on the beginning of my shift.

An all-staff meeting and the Easter holiday meant that payroll took up much more of my time than accounts payable at my job. Unfortunately, this meant that the backlog at work went back up from one month to two months. More overtime to try to compensate for this.

May

Took some time to update Uncyclopedia.org to change links for this wiki from uncyclopedia.ca to uncyclopedia.com. This was only about 2 or 3 months after the fact.

Meanwhile at work, I found the evening hours much less distracting since most people had already gone home (less noise) and had gotten used to overtime. However, now I was getting pushback from my boss, and was beginning to burn out. There were also concerns that the payroll was not reconciled by noon biweekly. I sent copies of overdue time correction forms to my supervisor. I began writing the time and receipt date on all the timecard correction forms that were received the Monday that payroll was due. I also tried storing purchase orders on shared folders in case something was backordered several months, or several shipments were invoiced separately. I learned some new things about the SAP system and demonstrated them to my supervisor.

The arthritis in my fingers that I had first noticed in February had become intolerable. I made an appointment with a specialist and in the meantime, ordered and attempted to wear a finger brace. Unfortunately, I did not know how to use one, and it made things worse rather than better. The chronic pain made it difficult to sleep, and I started becoming snappish about texting. My husband did not want me to have a device with a microphone turned on in our house, and he told me that there was no way to turn off a microphone on a phone once it was turned on. So I could not use text dictation either. But I am still more than 10 years away from retirement age. Fortunately, ten-key numbers were still not a problem for numeric input, which was most of my job.

June

Overtime by now had become almost habitual, especially during the last week of the month and on Mondays. My supervisor was not amused. I tried listening to music with headphones at work to tune out distractions so I could work more efficiently and try to get more done during a normal work-week. It worked to a certain extent: the backlog was reduced back to 30-60 days. But there were still some unfinished items from March that did not have all the documents available to me. Naturally, I got blamed for those documents not being available. Since purchase orders were not kept on file by the supply manager, I started having him email the purchase orders so they would be available for as long as we might need them (including for backorders that took over 6 months to come in). I also started tagging all the emails and moving them to email folders to keep them organized.

I have always found that documents kept on a computer, in organized folders, are generally much harder to lose than loose papers, both personally and professionally. (How do you think I manage up to 30 GB of custom content for The Sims 4, 10 GB of content for The Sims 3, 5 GB of content for The Sims 2, and 500MB of content for The Sims (2000) and usually know exactly which Sims 4 mod files to remove every time the game is patched?)

On weekends, now that our favorite shows were on hiatus, my husband and I watched various other movies and shows on Netflix or from his collection. We watched Scooby Doo and several of the other old Batman cartoons. Seeing Scooby Doo through the eyes of an adult, instead of the eyes of a ten-year-old as I was when I first saw it, it seemed much more cheesy and the characters seemed far more like teens than adults. My husband was good at estimating what actual physical damage would be done to a human if it happened like in the cartoon: like falling 20-30 feet through a museum window when breaking in, which at least made it seem more interesting. The Scooby snack thing was one thing that stood the test of time though. We also watched some of the old Looney Tunes cartoons: and both of us knew which parts from the originals were edited out. For instance, the gun escalation scene got more outrageous in the original: when Bugs and Yosemite pulled out bigger guns in response to others ("Oh yeah?" (pulls out bigger gun)) you saw handguns the size of planets before Bugs shoots Yosemite with a peashooter. In the edited version, you only see about 3 or 4 of the bigger guns. The edited version is still available on YouTube. After we finished the final episode of the last season of Lucifer, we started watching Supernatural.

July: The inevitable

If something seems too good to be true, it usually is. In mid-July, I was written up, and told that I was not "efficient" enough. There were no specifics on what "efficient" meant, and no specific, measurable goals set. I could not sleep that night, and the next day I had a serious meltdown. My husband had to come get me from work. About a week later, upon recommendation after meeting with my specialist, I took extended leave from work and attended a full time "class" in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy between 9am and 4pm. I had to drive myself about 2 hours to the class both ways (due to horrible traffic that extended the travel time from 30 minutes to 2 hours). There are a ton of acronyms used there. I strongly recommend Googling images of "DBT Cheat Sheet". I used my remaining hours of PTO.

August

My PTO was used up, and I began collecting paid family and medical leave. The two hour drives during rush hour took too much of a toll on me, and made it difficult to concentrate on the concepts. So I joined a class and support group via Zoom instead through the same organization. This was my first Zoom class, and I had to use my husband's laptop since it was the only personal computer in the home with a webcam. He was also working from home 4 days a week on a work-issued computer, so I had to work across the house further away from the router. This sometimes caused technical issues.

September

My employer began to inquire when I would return to work. I sent them another copy of the letter from my specialist that I had first sent to them in July. My specialist also contacted my employer's HR department to follow up as well. They relented, but I noticed they quietly put out a job notice on a mobile-only job application board. The novelty of education via Zoom was wearing off, and I was beginning to get distracted by other notifications, email, and websites on the computer after the first two hours of the Zoom meeting (it was 4 hours daily). In the last week of September, I completed my Zoom class, and collected some of the contact information from some of the people in my support group. Sadly, some of this information later got lost.

October - An Ending

If something seems too good to be true, it usually is. My employer was unable to accommodate up to 2 hours, once per week, for telehealth visits. So a day or two after the first week of October, I was sent a termination letter. The third week of October included my termination date. I went in at the end of the termination date to collect my things, and turn in my badge and key. For the next couple weeks, I was exhausted and did not want to do anything except lose myself in games. I followed up on the most promising job lead, but this lead did not work out. After my husband chewed me out, and we had an argument, I applied for unemployment on the last day of October.

November - Starting Over

During the Month of November, I was approved for unemployment, and began receiving benefits in exchange for making three job contacts or activities per week. I typically made one or two employer contacts, and attended one or two job search events/activities. One of my first activities were dusting off and polishing my resume, watching a mock interview video, and registering for online job boards.

December - Disaster

In the first week of December, my husband seriously injured his back. His pain grew worse until, unable to walk, he had to be transported to the hospital ER. The ER was at 130% capacity. In practical terms, this meant that once inside the ER doors and out of the lobby, we waited in the halls inside the ER for all of the first day, and my husband slept in a recliner there. When I returned the second day, they had him in an exam room. They were concerned about the results of some of the lab tests, so had delayed some of the diagnostic tests. He spent the night in the exam room, and they told me he would be upstairs by the next day. But by the next day, they put him back in the hall. So I stayed with him that entire day, and that evening they finally moved him to a real hospital bed upstairs.

It took them another 10 days to determine the source of his pain. But then they wanted to send him home, before he was even able to sit up fully without pain. I called his mom, and she flew out from the East Coast. I spent the entire day before she arrived, cleaning up my place in case she visited. Fortunately, she found a much more comfortable hotel instead, with more space than would have been available at our house. The next day, she spent the entire day with him, and I spent the day on my job search, laundry, and grocery shopping. I managed to see him briefly the last 30 min. of visiting hours.

On the second week of December, the hospital had begun physical therapy. From what I was told, the first day of physical therapy went well. But the second day of physical therapy was the end. The End. All the stress and pain had taken its toll and worsened his heart condition. During his second day of physical therapy, he coded, and although they were able to briefly bring his pulse back, he coded again and never woke up. I informed his workplace the next day. In accordance to tradition, he was buried within 3 days. Although not raised in the tradition, my mother made this possible. After my husband passed away, I stopped looking for work. There was another funeral via Zoom for all relatives and friends who were unable to attend the graveyard service. The final week of December was spent visiting family and relatives, and watching the holiday celebrations. Until the 26th, I spent the night with relatives.

2023: its not about me

Ok, it is, but it isn't.

One thing in common during the last two years: Except for my games, I have been spending the rest of my time on or with others. This is not an easy thing for an introvert.

In January, after a futile search for a will, we obtained probate documents to complete from the county court. Although not a large estate otherwise, the presence of real estate and an attached mortgage complicated the process. My aunt and uncle from out of state visited to help with the paperwork. We made contact with everyone on his bills, and all the banks. We contacted his HR department to arrange return of work equipment and also regarding post-mortem employee and retirement benefits. Although used to dealing with paperwork when employed, the sheer amount of paperwork, and unfamiliar formats, gave me a headache. We began arranging for an estate attorney to assist us with handling the affairs.

In February, I continued the work required to open the intestate probate case, and began looking for work. I also invested in various storage solutions, office supplies, mailing supplies and organizers to get everything together, and started looking for work again. I then proceeded to spend most of my time playing mobile games and shredding old papers to make space.

In March, I found part-time work with a former co-worker who started her own business. The probate opening process was complete by the end of the month. I also hired a new housecleaner to come in for 2 hours every 3-4 weeks. My tub has never looked so clean. Meanwhile, my Sims games are not working properly except for the mobile versions. Maybe I should not have tried to install the Steam version as well as the EA games app version.

In April, my dishwasher broke. My computer broke too, and I have to reinstall all my games and apps (on the same computer since it was a corrupted registry issue). But at least I have the paperwork to show for executor/estate admin duties. I bought a new office chair to replace the one my cats have shredded. But it is so heavy, it sat in the trunk for a week before I could bring it in with the handtruck without getting soaked. Now it is in the house at least, where it may stay in my living room for another week till I get it assembled.

Ok, now its mid-April and I'm supposed to be working on my taxes. I KNOW how to do taxes, I did them for over 10 years. I even did a few estate returns, plus several partnership and corporation returns, and even a couple nonprofit tax returns. But now I don't have an employee discount nor free software to work with. And yup, the box with the chair is still there, over a week later. It seems to me like the hardest thing to do lately is simply stay out of bed for more than 2 hours when I don't ABSOLUTELY need to go anywhere for the day.

Even my cats are wondering what is up with me, but at least I still have some little furry buddies that actually need me every day. Yup, I get up for them, and because of them. My part-time job only needs me 2 days out of the week. But at least I reinstalled the basics of what I wanted back on my home computer, which by the way, works way better and faster than my work computer for....basically everything. Then again this one is less than 2 years old...and I know for a fact that the others at work are probably at least 5 years old, though they do run Windows 10.