8 Days a Week

Well Shad's ALMOST been working 8 days a week.  It's been a bit rough for the kids to come back from a long weekend with Dad in Colorado to...quality assurance being revamped and Shad's got mandatory overtime on Friday and Saturday for who knows how long?  At first, we thought that Shad's manager Mitch had stepped down from management and that Andrew had been the one to replace him.  Why did we think that? Because that's what Shad was told. But let's step back and explain some things that have been going on at Natoma for a while.  There is this one part that Natoma machines that has been causing back ups and loads of overtime since last summer.  Part of the problem is unrealistic promises with scheduling the production of the parts.  The timelines set just don't match up with what is actually possible.  So what really happened with Mitch is that someone asked him if he can't possibly get these parts finished up in QA any faster.  Mitch kind of blew up over that, given that he's been working 70 hours a week for months on end while his family and farm are falling apart.  Andrew's been working Fridays and Saturdays as well, and most of the rest of QA has been working Fridays.  These guys' typical schedules are Monday through Thursday 10 hours a day.  When Mitch got upset at being asked to get the work done faster, he got demoted.  He didn't step down, as Natoma told their employees.  Natoma also told everyone that the manager of the lathes side of the shop just up and quit, when in reality, he was told to get out when he gave his two weeks notice after working there for 13 years.  There have been a couple other people let go recently, as well.  Our friend, Adam, who we referred to Natoma, was fired for no reason after working 2 months.  Natoma practically BEGS their employees to refer friends to work there, promising a $750 bonus to the employee and referred hiree at 6 months and again at 12 months of the hiree's employment.  If they really want all these referals, they should treat them with a bit more respect.  And they hired a guy in the shipping department and then fired him after a couple weeks when they decided they didn't actually need him.  It just kind of irritates me that Natoma is starting to treat their employees like this when they really are in a period of growth and need to be working on GROWING their employee pool.  They already have a relatively high turnover rate, so why add on the negative light that firing and mistreatment brings?  I dunno.  It just bothers me and I'm done with my rant.

So the kids and I have been doing our best to stay happy and entertained with each other these two weeks that Shad's been working 56 hours.  Last week I didn't have any problems until noon on Saturday, and Shad got off at 2:30.  I just suddenly was out of patience and had to try to ride it out until 1:30 for naps.  We've done better this week.  The kids were really clingy to Shad last week, unwilling to let him out of their sight, even.  This week Tommy was very accepting of Shad needing to go to church on Wednesday night.  Luckily, just outside of town, Shad found out that the only young man who would be attending church that night was the one in the van WITH HIM, so they turned around and had their activity at our house.  So we even got to join in and share the time with Shad.

Shad and I tried to have a date Friday night.  We volunteered to work at the theater and then we watched Jack the Giant Slayer.  Or at least, the first half hour of it.  Half an hour into the movie, I got a call from our babysitter.  Tommy had thrown up.  Shad and I thought it'd be a one time thing, I'd get him cleaned up, put to bed and return to the movie.  But Tommy threw up several more times while I was there, so I called Shad to come home.  We finally got him settled down, mostly done throwing up and resting in bed enough to have Shad take the babysitter home.  Then we watched a movie at home, which is honestly more preferrable to me in this stage of my pregnancy anyway.  It's just so hard to try and be comfortable in movie theater seats.

On Sunday, we went out to the state park.  We walked the nature trail, which is somewhere between a mile and a mile and a half in distance.  Tom walked or ran the whole thing.  He only stopped when we made him to wait for Katie, who was determined to walk as well, but a bit slower.  She made it to the 3/4 mile marker before she gave out.  We had fun listening to the birds, watching geese fly to and from the lake, and saw a couple deer bound across the path not too far in front of us.  Then we played at the park in the campgrounds until the wind picked up too much and sent us home.  That weekend was also what is known as "trash swap" weekend.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were County Cleanup days, meaning that the city would pick up anything you have out on your curb.  We always drive around scavenging what's still usable.  We didn't come out with much this time, but we did find two window shutters.  I've been looking for a window shutter for a year now.  I'm going to hang it horizontally in my laundry room and put coat hooks on it for a coat rack.  I'm really excited, too, because since the shutters are already white, it's an entirely free project for me.  We already have the hooks from the coat rack that was in the laundry room from the last owners.

Sunday night, Shad and I ended the night with a delightful bowl of Cookies N Cream ice cream...and woke up around 4 am with food poisoning.  Great.  So Shad called in sick to work and I found someone to take the kids for a few hours in the morning.  We got blessings from the missionaries and our home teacher.  I had a good nap and was able to bounce back quickly.  Shad still felt bad the whole day and was slow to recover the next two days.

We had my cousin Michael and Uncle Dave stay at our house Wednesday night.  They left the next morning to continue their drive from Cincinnati to Utah.  Michael is going to BYU.  It was fun to see them, even if it was only for a couple hours.  Tommy was so sad to see them go in the morning.  He started crying even before they left.  He had loads of fun playing and chasing with Michael, doing the things he usually does with Shad--the games that I can't play because I'm pregnant and can't chase him in circles around the house or play Boom Bang.  Katie was very quiet in her high chair while I consoled Tom.  Turns out that she could reach the rubberband ball of hair ties that are on our bar.  She thought they made pretty good bracelets and was busy entertaining herself.

Katie's language is developing a lot.  She's combining more and more words to make phrases.  Even though it makes her sad to talk about it, she usually tells me in the morning, "Daddy work 'Toma.  Daddy back home."  Tommy watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on our way to Colorado, and has been singing his own version of the dwarves' work song--"My Ho, My Ho."  So...he's either a pimp, or a gardener.  We're leaning toward gardener.

We're all excitedly anticipating the arrival of our new daughter, who has already gestated longer than Katie did.  Crazy to think that yesterday was as far as I made it in my pregnancy with Katie.  Tomorrow will be 37 weeks.  And I've finally entered the stage of the hip widening.  Best I can describe it is that it feels like I'm a roast chicken and someone is pulling my drumstick off.  It stops me in my tracks and makes me double over sometimes.  But we're almost through.

Today we've had a busy, but productive and fun day.  We played in the front yard after breakfast.  There's a truck and ditch witch in our neighbor's yard running fibers down our street, so I asked them where things are in our yard so we know where not to plant fruit trees when we get around to that.  Deaira, our new Parents as Teachers representative, came for a home visit and told us that the program is ending July 1 due to lack of funding.  So we'll only see her one more time because I'm not scheduling anything next month.  She usually brings age-appropriate developmental activities for the kids, but this time she brought things from the age group ahead of them because everything else has been too easy.  Tom got a challenge today.  Then we had a picnic lunch with Shad at Natoma.  We went to Dollar General to pick up seed starting soil.  I've determined that I'm awful at starting seeds directly outdoors (my March planting has produced nothing) because I'm not good enough at watering multiple times a day to keep the seeds moist so they can actually sprout.  It's particularly hard to water on these windy spring days when the wind pretty much makes it impossible.  So starting seeds inside should be a better way for me to go.  We also went all around town trying to find a farmer's almanac.  Seems that no one has it.  They just have gardeners guides, which are not the same at all.  We had a park date with Mallory and her kids, and didn't get down for naps until around 2:30, just minutes before Shad came home.  Now it's time to go decide what to do with our evening:)