Trial by Fire

First day of work yesterday.  It was lovely.  I got up early, spent some time praying, showered, dressed, had breakfast, grabbed a lunch, woke up Isabelle for several hugs and kisses and was off.  I wasn't sure how long it would take with traffic but I arrived about 10 minutes early so I know I don't have to rush out quite as early as I thought.  There is certainly a lot to learn on this job but I feel like with time I will be able to avoid hanging up on people when I transfer the calls and will actually learn most of the employees names so I don't have to write everything down.  My brother ate lunch with me, I had my new employee orientation and have filled out the forms to get health insurance.  I finished the day, drove over to my mom's to get Isabelle and arrived home just before John did with pizza for dinner.  I was not overwhelmed with exhaustion like I was when I started with Larry and had a lovely evening.

The others in my family, not so much.

About 10 minutes after I left John started throwing up.  Isabelle was having an extra emotional morning because mom left so early so he had to manage her out the door while managing the waves of nausea.  Luckily my mom was picking her up after school so he was able to go back to bed and sleep until after lunch and woke up feeling much better.

Isabelle had a lovely afternoon with my mom swimming in her pool despite the fact that it barely reached 70 yesterday.  Actually I don't know it even did reach 70 and I heard on the news the wind was around 40 mph in some areas.  Still they heat the pool and she would not be deterred.  When I arrived to pick her up she did not acknowledge me at all and didn't want to come give me a hug.  Once we did get home she would not leave my side, wanted to tell me what to do all evening and when I finally decided it was an early snuggle bedtime she literally cried for about 30 minutes while bemoaning all the injustices she thinks must be befalling her because of my absence.

When mom goes to work she doesn't go alone.

So we begin the transition.  We are learning what everyone needs and how we can meet those needs in our new normal life.  I am going to be calling Isabelle on my lunch break just to check in.  We will definitely need to figure out who makes dinner each night and I can see that I will need a snack for the desk.  I wasn't that hungry at Larry's but I was only there 6 hours.  With lunch I am gone 9 hours a day.  That calls for a little more than one bottle of water and a bowl of rice and beans.  And I am certain that while I wasn't wiped out yesterday, I will be feeling the effects next week when I do this every day.

Jake on the other hand seemed totally unphased by this major change in my life.  He even managed to get up and leave for school while I was blow drying my hair.  And I was looking forward to having interactions with him this last week of school.  I guess I will need to be more vigilant on Thursday morning.

And once we get through next week school will be done and it will be a whole new schedule the following week.  This is going to take some time.

"It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work."

I Cor 3:13