Homemade Lip Balm...Yum!

I spent last night putting together lip balm for my coworkers (not all of them- that would be impossible and completely unnecessary). They are for the people I most associate with and consider friends and acquaintances. They (the lip balm jars) will be in holiday tins, accompanied with other treats. It was an interesting project to try, to say the least. One of the few Martha Stewart moments I've had in my life. (If you're interested in trying these yourself, check out the recipe here.)

First, I purchased a big, 1 pound block of beeswax from Roberts Crafts. It cost me about $12.00, but I wanted to err on the side of caution. They had these little baggies of beeswax in balls (that looked sort of like Dipin' Dots ice cream) that were $5.00 per bag, but I didn't think that would be enough. I'm really glad I didn't get those. I would have accomplished nothing last night with those little bags of nothing.

The work was in the grating of the beeswax. I couldn't' cut it (too hard), so I grated down the sides, then grated down the middle. (My forearms would make Popeye envious.) The wax had a pleasing, sweet scent that I didn't expect, even though the label said that it was all natural from the bees and could have a slightly sweet smell and may have bee parts but not to worry because that's a good thing to have parts of the bees. Hmmm.

So, after grating onto wax paper (easy clean up) I scooped by measurements into the double boiler and stirred my wax with the Castor oil. Into the measuring cup, I added the essential oil (peppermint for the first batch and almond for the second batch...for Christmas) and honey. They turned out better than I expected. I increased my recipe to fill about ten of the little containers you see in the picture above. I hope the coworkers appreciate the effort and actually use the lip balm. I can envision the precious little jars of love being stored away in a drawer, never to be thought of again until spring cleaning, 2010, where the vial is rediscovered and tossed due to its mystery contents. FYI - The clean up was not fun. Imagine cleaning dishes covered in Vaseline. Soap, soap and more soap.

So, only two more days in the office and then I'm outta here (oh, my two days of training next week are off-site). Not sure how often I'll post during this time off. I'll try to get in and update on the events going on (interesting or not). I like having the journal to look back on in later years. I have paper journals on book shelves in my house. I sometimes wonder if my hubby reads those sometimes...peeking into my life to see how crazy I really am.

The girls watched Meet Me in St. Louis again last night. My eldest really seems to like it. Hubby was eager to leave the room during the musical numbers. He's such a guy. It's sort of funny because I have those songs on disc for the girls and, if he's in my car when the disc is in, I can catch him humming those tunes later. I don't think he even realizes he's doing it.

I Feel Pretty

At least, today I do. I haven't for a while and mostly it's because of the baby weight that's still plaguing me. But, even with the baby weight and all, I'm feeling kinda hot. Crimson, off-the-shoulder sweater with a very large, ornate, rhinestone choker. Black dress slacks and some sparkly, gold flats I bought from Ross a couple of months ago (intended for my Halloween costume, but that didn't quite work out). I'm actually wearing make-up (rare for me) with Mac eyes in gold-dust along with my Ardell lashes (not sure if mine are the same model as in the picture, but they look like them).

My other reason for feeling pretty isn't just what's happening on the outside, but what's been said that's affected how I feel on the inside. I got home yesterday, after a pretty awful day, to two dozen, long-stemmed roses (pink and yellow). The babe announced that she had picked out the pink ones while her father picked out the yellow. My hubby said, "It's been too long since I've gotten you any flowers. You deserve them." So yeah, it's been a couple of months but I do know of people who have only ever received them from a boyfriend or spouse once or twice in the entire time of their relationship. I consider myself pretty fortunate.

After inhaling the perfume of my roses for a bit, I saw that he had prepared dinner (New York Sirloin, thank you very much), roasted potatoes and an amaretto sour to make the dinner complete (I know...no veggies, but who's complaining?). We watched Ice Age: The Meltdown as a family and then tucked the kids in directly after. I'm on the tail-end of TOM so, I spent the first part of the adult portion of the evening pleasuring my hubby. I love to, but usually end up frustrated because there's not much he can do besides tease when I'm in my current state. But, as I said, I'm on the tail-end so, I "took advantage of him" (his words this morning) last night and got mine. Woohoo! He was like, "You have no idea how disappointed I was when you woke me up and took advantage of me." Hmm... I'm sure I know just how disappointed you were. I really love when he's home.

I found out that my training from hell is only going to last two days, now. Hooray! I was really upset about the possibility of driving an hour for my commute into the heaviest, populated area of town, for four days straight. I can live with two days.

Speaking of which, I suppose I'd better get started on some work. This euphoria has a way with keeping one from the tasks at hand.

Starting Over

My mother has a new puppy; a black and tan coonhound. He's quite the character, from what I saw on Saturday. He's about half a year and has energy to spare...quite the opposite of her Rottie, in his last days. She's been spending a lot of time playing with him and running him around the yard. "He never seems to get tired," she said. He's very cute and has one of those amazing, guttural barks. Once he acquires a few manners (some training will do nicely), he'll be a great companion.

I've had a headache for the past two days and I rarely get them. I've also been drinking everything accept water. So, I've deduced I'm probably very dehydrated. It will be water, water, water for me today. I was doing really well with my workouts the week before last, then hubby and I both slacked all of last week. He'll be going to the gym this morning and I'll be motivating myself to come home and do something after work (with this headache, the idea of getting on the elliptical trainer was not appealing at all).

Only a week and a half or so more before I'm off for the holidays (I hope). There's this training that I have to attend, looming over my head, and I am not looking forward to it. Who schedules training the week before the holidays? Ugh! Supposedly, it's the only time the trainer can come in and work with us. I really find that hard to believe, but okay. I just wish we could have done this at the beginning of December rather than next week. Then, people could have scheduled the time off they really wanted.

Oh, and the shopping. We went to the mall last night. What a madhouse! I try to avoid stores in general, during the holidays (only trying to go early in the morning or late at night) but I had to get something from a store in the mall for my mother-in-law. People, people everywhere...seriously. We were bumping into people from both sides. I'm so glad I knew what I needed, knew where to go then got the heck out of there. I'll be so glad when I'm done and don't have to endure the crowds anymore. Yeesh! Just stopping at the grocery store now is a chore.

A Follow-up to Yesterday's Events

(And some answers to questions, GC )

So, today my boss pulls me into his office just after I got an IM from the VP I talked to yesterday. She's telling me that she knows it's not distrust and that, in her opinion, the telecommuting option is my boss having "hang ups" about it. When I talked to him, he put my mind at ease about the documentation issue and confirmed what she said. The answers to these questions ought to paint the full picture:

Are their set rules for how telecommuting works? Yes and no. For our doctorate holders, they are basically told that's how they will work when they're hired. For administrators and other staff, like myself, it's a case-by-case basis. This is part of the issue: there are no set policies (my boss and I discussed this in-depth)

Is it possibly part of your position why you have to document? Yes. That was discovered today when I talked to him. I'm basically working in an environment where there are only a few, defined tasks I do daily. Everything else is sort of customer service driven by the emails I receive throughout the day (and they are in the hundreds). The others I spoke of to him that are telecommuting, all have very defined tasks so, I'm unique. It made sense and I'm glad he got that cleared up for me.

Are there other people working for your particular supervisor and don't have to document? No. That is the other part of the uniqueness. I'm the only one, currently (but there are only two others in my department and neither one of them has been here a year, as of yet). Not that the time matters, but I think it should if ever policies are to be put into place. Also, I believe one of my department coworkers needs to be able to get up and go to the office for the sake of her own mental well being. She's also a part-time employee. The other person in my department has been with us a little over a month.

Have you heard of other things--perks or responsibilities that you had/have that make you go, "hmmm"? Not really a perk but, my boss is one of the few that isn't overbearing and controlling. Many of the managers around here seem to be that way. We (my department) are very fortunate. We have very little to complain about, in terms of how much time we request off and his flexibility with schedules. Some managers make it an act of congress even to take a sick day (and if some of those employees weren't so scared, they could really get their managers into a lot of trouble with HR if they said something).

Beyond the questions posed, he went on to tell me how he feels about my telecommuting full-time (which I requested, again...this is like the fourth or fifth time). He stated that he feels this is an "in the office" type of position but that he is willing to "revisit that notion" now that he knows I really want to do this. He made little jokes like, "changing his way of thinking about telecommuting" which I took for somewhat serious somewhat joking, jokes. We discussed policies coming into place and what my idea of said policies should be. I even voiced my ideas of trial and probationary periods to see if it works for the employee. He said that this may be a possibility (but honestly, he didn't seem like he was going to turn a cart-wheel over it or anything).

Over and over he said several times, that he enjoyed working with me and had no qualms about my work and in the times I have telecommuted, he saw no problems. He said that he has this fear of "out of sight out of mind" and my friend said that to me, too. She said she told him how he doesn't need to worry about that with me and she doesn't with her folks. The resolution? (if you can call it that) in a month or so, we can talk about it again. Well, I have my review in January and I think I'll bring up trying the probationary period again. Even a couple of days a week again to start would make me so happy. (Oh, and I mentioned the cost of daycare and how I could potentially cut that in half by doing so).

For now, I still feel a bit in limbo...stable and secure about the reasons why I document, but still feeling like, "Hey, it's the 21st century and there's information to prove that people are more productive working from home. I wish my boss were a little more open-minded about the idea." It seems so odd that his mind seems so closed to it, since he's fairly liberal minded about other things. I guess I could gather information about proven cases of successful telecommuting but, I'm not sure if that will change his mind or not. I'll think about it.

Sad news...my mother's beloved doggie has died. This was her Rottie, who she adopted after her thirteen-year old English Springer Spaniel passed away about a year and a half ago. Her Rottie was diagnosed with bone cancer in his leg. The leg was amputated, then he was put on antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory. The anti-inflammatory caused her doggie to get hepatitis, which moved some how to his lungs and he died. My hubby took it really hard because her dog did not like any men, accept my hubby. They were good buddies.

A Good Reason for Coffee

Not a big java drinker...I like the fru fru types when I do drink it. I'm living on four hours of sleep right now (or there abouts). Four. I think I'll get a cappuccino this morning.

Throwing Down the Race Card

I'm not one to get on the political bandwagon (although I do think our country was in a much better way when a certain sax player was running the show), but I may have to do so in my work environment today. Not so much in terms of who's running our country as it is who's running the office.

It's now 10:00pm (the above paragraph was written about twelve hours ago). Here's the situation: I telecommute a couple of hours every day and have been since my daughter started school. I do so in order to take her to school (since daddy works the death shift). After I drop her off, it's off to the office I go to work the remainder of the day (the office, you'll recall, is more than thirty miles away). To make a very long story short, there are those who telecommute full time, but I seem to always get cut off at the knees when I ask about doing so for any length of time. Okay, maybe to put it a better way is I always seem to feel very guilty about asking, after my request is granted with multiple stipulations.

My years of seniority don't seem to matter and that just adds salt to the wound. I found out yesterday afternoon that I seem to be the only one documenting what I do each morning where there are multiple employees who telecommute full-time and have never done so. This morning, I spoke to one of our VPs (that I'm friendly with and trust) who has two employees under her telecommuting. She does not require it of either one of them. In fact, her boss recently asked her if she had additional employees who wanted to, in order to free up office space. I should mention that her boss was the one who told my boss to "find a way for her to document how she spends her hours." Hmmmm.

Well, is it distrust? I'm crushed, if it is. After six years, many accolades and an award to show that I'm worthy, are there possibly those that don't trust me? Or...dum, dum, dum, dum...is it race? I hate to even through that out there but, there are those who have worked less than a year, who went through no probationary periods and reside in our community (could easily come into the office to work). These individuals all telecommute and are of European decent (if you wanna get technical, so am I...but you couldn't tell by looking at me).

I talked to my mom, who has been in HR for years, and she suggested that I talk to my boss. So, I did. He was shocked and had no idea about these people and their lack of documentation. I was not surprised in the least. My boss is a kind, decent man and in general a rare breed of human. He's sees the best in people and always will. Much of the time, the other management staff are much more aggressive and are "climbers". This does not interest my boss. He doesn't participate in gossip and pretty much does his job, socializes a bit with us in the office, then goes home. There are plenty of times when we (his department) are more in the know about the goings on in the office than he is.

I don't mean to imply that he's a door-mat, just not one for conflict if it can be prevented. He's gone to bat for me plenty of times. He's honestly the best boss I've ever had. With our discussion, he was eager to seek out the reasons why and help level the tables if possible. I indicated that I wouldn't have balked at documenting my time spent, but once I heard no one else had to, I was really quite bothered. I also inquired as to if there were policies beginning and they are using me as a test, if there was distrust with what I was doing or "heaven forbid it's a race issue." He squirmed a bit at that, but seemed ready to discover the truth. I hope he does because being the Aquarius that I am, I want everything to be fair. I was really nervous before going in, but I'm certainly glad that I asked. It just always seemed to be such a touchy subject.

Now, it's late (for me) and I'm blogging about the events of the day still worried a bit about the possible outcome. I don't want to stir the pot for others who haven't had to, only to have that put into place for them and then they find out it was me (Ugh!). I shouldn't care about what they think, but I do. Three of them are terrific people and I'm glad they get the opportunity to telecommute and I also consider them friends. I want them to have that option for however long they want it, but I also want to open up the options for myself, too. Paranoia is creeping up on me more than usual...TOM hasn't appeared yet. I need a hormone dump quick and in a hurry! (I know, too much information).

Baby, it's Cold Outside!

We've had record breaking temps for the past couple of days. First, a storm from the pacific northwest ambushed us on Tuesday evening. My area got about three inches of snow, not a big deal, but Salt Lake was a complete white-out. When I drove in on Wednesday morning, the temps had dropped to the single digits (rare around here). This caused what moisture had fallen on the ground to freeze. Freezing is also rare here, but we had our share of ice storms back in Nashville. This caught the service crews off guard, so the salt trucks weren't much help. It took an hour to get to work, not bad, but not fun to be in the car so long. My poor car looks like it was dipped in salt and I'm cringing to think what it's doing to my paint. Guess I'll run it through the gas station car wash this weekend.

Outside, the fresh powder has made things look extra Christmassy. The lights that are on at night have that extra reflection off of the snow. Icicle lights look exceptionally pretty with snow covering them. I'll be glad when we have a regular snow storm...the kind where it dumps and then stays fresh on all the yards, but melts on the streets.

Inside, cuddling is so much more fun when it's freezing cold. Twinkling lights from the tree that light up our family room, hubby and I spooning tightly underneath a heavy blanket. It's been grand. This morning, he was home and randy (Awesome!) and after our hot and heavy session, it was hard to get up and get ready for work knowing that he could lay there almost indefinitely. I got to work early today to get home early tonight. No overtime scheduled and this is his weekend off. I can't say how thrilled I am. I'm extra happy because old TOM is due and there will be no lovin' after it shows up. (Oh, I'm extra happy because the way my luck runs most of the time, it would have shown up this morning and I would have been totally pissed off).

Christmas movies are playing at my house again. It's time. The babe has watched A Charlie Brown Christmas twice since I've "okayed" the watching of holiday movies again. She's also seen, Toy Story, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Disney Princess- A Christmas of Enchantment, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (live action),Meet Me in St. Louis, the tale-end of Home Alone and White Christmas. She's yet to dig out the Garfield: Holiday Celebration since watching the Halloween special in October, but I suspect it's coming soon. There are so many more that will play in my house, during the month of December. Hubby can't understand why I wait till this time of year for her to watch these movies then get frustrated when she tries to watch this stuff during the middle of the year. I dunno. I just don't want to hear, "Have a holly, jolly Christmas" singing through my home in May. It's unsettling to me, somehow.

This year, though, her school is doing "Christmas Around the World" assignments. I don't have a problem with this but, then I got to thinking: "I live in Mormon-land, where most everyone celebrates Christmas. Where I grew up in California, I had Catholic, Muslim and Jewish friends. In fact, I made dradles and latkes in my second grade class. She may be to young for that explanation, but I think it's important for her to know a little bit about all faiths. I'll probably start introducing them next year.