The "what's On Your Mind?" Thread -2018

[Alicia88]

Glad to hear that your grandma is doing well.
Aedan cried so hard with his shots. He had real tears and such a look of betrayal on his face. It was horrible. He's up to 12lbs 8oz. He's growing so fast!

 

[LTS3]

[QUOTE="artiemom, post: 4548177, member: 79876"
I did drive past MB/grocery store. OMG. . I could not believe the parking lot... and this was during school hours!!! [/QUOTE]

Stop and Shop wasn't busy at all this morning, just normal busy. Neither was the independent market. Maybe people in my area just aren't before a storm.

 

[Mother Dragon]

I just spoke with Grandma. She says she's having a little memory problems, but I couldn't tell that from talking with her. She remembered my husband's name even though she's never met him. Her speech is not slurred or anything that would indicate face paralysis. She says that she can lift her right arm and her right leg now. She says that she gets super emotional and cries whenever she sees or talks to family, so maybe there's some damage to the emotional center or self-control part of the brain? She said when it happened she was reading FB and she was able to manage to call both my dad and 911. My dad said they were able to use the clot busting drug within the 4 hour window, so I'm really, really glad that she could make both those calls.

Stroke victims may slowly regain use of their paralyzed limbs. It looks like she's improving already. Give her some time and you just might see a major recovery. It happened with my mom although the stubborn old coot refused the clot buster. Be patient.

 

[Mother Dragon]

Kit 'N' Carlyle by Larry Wright

 

[Mamanyt1953]

I just found out that my grandmother had a stroke last night.

I just spoke with Grandma. She says she's having a little memory problems, but I couldn't tell that from talking with her. She remembered my husband's name even though she's never met him. Her speech is not slurred or anything that would indicate face paralysis. She says that she can lift her right arm and her right leg now. She says that she gets super emotional and cries whenever she sees or talks to family, so maybe there's some damage to the emotional center or self-control part of the brain? She said when it happened she was reading FB and she was able to manage to call both my dad and 911. My dad said they were able to use the clot busting drug within the 4 hour window, so I'm really, really glad that she could make both those calls.

That's really very good improvement for such a short time, and bodes well for her in the future!

Another Nor'Easter!!!

This time 12-18 inches

I am on the borderline of this prediction

right on the coast

And you will be spitting an inch or two of that right on my head!

 

[artiemom]

[QUOTE="artiemom, post: 4548177, member: 79876"
I did drive past MB/grocery store. OMG. . I could not believe the parking lot... and this was during school hours!!!

Stop and Shop wasn't busy at all this morning, just normal busy. Neither was the independent market. Maybe people in my area just aren't before a storm.[/QUOTE]

Well, my city went through the Blizzard of '78 and most recently, the 2 storms, which pretty much devastated the city. Between the flooding of the first one, the 2 day power outages from the second one, along with the snow...

Over the week-end, people were stocking up their freezers, refrigerators from what they had to throw out, from the power failures.

Now, they are doubly paranoid about this snow. 14-18 inches is nothing to sneeze about.
They are stocking up on things.. probably more than what they need, but it is survival instinct.

You probably live in an area which does not see severe flooding, nor major power outages; or people are not as concerned...

When you have to shovel, it makes a ton of difference.

 

[Willowy]

People around here are generally pretty good about staying stocked up for the winter, so we don't all go rushing out when a storm is announced. And we know how to deal with our freezer stuff in a snowstorm (put all your stuff in a cooler and chuck it out in the snow, cover it up so the sun can't hit it, natural ice packs!). But that doesn't really make it any easier. 14-18 inches is a lot of snow! That would shut down just about any area I think.

 

[artiemom]

now the forecast is 15-20 inches!!!

 

[LTS3]

I'm just outside the city. The last storm took out a bunch of power lines on a main artery through town. I'm not in a flood zone but there is occasional localized street flooding, mostly due to storm drains clogged over with leaves and debris.

I don't have to shovel (we have snow removal service) but I sympathize with those who do. I hated shoveling snow as a kid Most kids are sent outside to play in the snow. My parents sent us out to not only shovel out the huge backyard and long steep driveway but the neighbors' walkways and sidewalks and driveways, too. The neighbors loved the free labor.

Well, I'm not going anywhere tomorrow. I'm on a mini vacation from work No clue who is working tomorrow but I honestly don't care.

 

[Katie M]

Rest In Pieces, Yellow Ball.

Man, those cats of mine are destructive. It certainly wasn't me carelessly stepping on it.

 

[Graceful-Lily]

View attachment 222426

Rest In Pieces, Yellow Ball.

Man, those cats of mine are destructive. It certainly wasn't me carelessly stepping on it.

I'm sure it was worth it for that shiny bell.

 

[segelkatt]

View attachment 222426

Rest In Pieces, Yellow Ball.

Man, those cats of mine are destructive. It certainly wasn't me carelessly stepping on it.

Shame on you for blaming those lovely kitties.

 

[artiemom]

So tired of this snow.... at least a foot, with more to come...

 

[Margret]

I just found out that my grandmother had a stroke last night.

I won't be able to go home. I can't afford it. Even if it was just me and I left the husband and kid behind, that's still too much.

Oh dear, don't let it affect you too much that you can't go. After all, what would that accomplish? Your husband and baby need you more than grandma who is in good hands. Since she can talk you can visit by phone. With so little movement it probably is bad and the older one is the harder it is for things to come back but one never knows. They say it can take as much as a year before everything is static and there is no more improvement, so send good thoughts and hope for the best

That's what my mother (the Physical Therapist) said. It isn't just 48 hours after a stroke before they can give a proper prognosis; even months after a stroke is too soon for a negative prognosis.

She said when it happened she was reading FB and she was able to manage to call both my dad and 911. My dad said they were able to use the clot busting drug within the 4 hour window, so I'm really, really glad that she could make both those calls.

This is extremely good! The first thing it means is that the stroke itself wasn't nearly as bad as it might have been, and the second thing is that the clot busting drug is incredibly helpful. Your grandmother may well make a full recovery.

Aedan cried so hard with his shots. He had real tears and such a look of betrayal on his face. It was horrible. He's up to 12lbs 8oz. He's growing so fast!

I know. It feels horrible. But trust me - this hurts you more than it does Aedan. Aedan will forget it soon enough; you're too old for that. You, on the other hand, are old enough to know what horrors this is preventing for Aedan down the road, something that he's too young to choose for himself. Hang on to that knowledge; let it comfort you whenever his little crying face pops into your head.

* * * * * *​

I just ran into this story: United confirms a puppy died on one of their planes after flight attendants forced it into overhead compartment It makes me so angry! As far as I'm concerned this is the last straw - United has lost too many animals, overbooked too many flights, and bullied too many customers. I don't do much flying; but whenever I do fly in future it won't be with United, with or without a pet.

Margret

 

[arouetta]

Glad to hear that your grandma is doing well.
Aedan cried so hard with his shots. He had real tears and such a look of betrayal on his face. It was horrible. He's up to 12lbs 8oz. He's growing so fast!

Vaccines hurt. It's not the needle, it's the stuff in it. If they want my blood I'll joke with the phlebotomist or nurse as they are filling 6 or 7 tubes. But hold an even finer needle and say I need a vaccination.....I'll cry like a little girl whose brother stole her doll and seriously consider running away.

But that burning pain for several seconds (whimper) is far, far better than a full blown case of measles...or worse polio. A lot of times in life greater safety or better health can only be obtained with a little discomfort. And think of it this way - that vaccine probably hurt him a lot less than having his brain squished through a 4 inch hole when he was born.

 

[arouetta]

So work vent.

I am by no means perfect, and sometimes my attempts at doing things properly at work fall far short of the expectations, but I try. I'm getting pretty convinced that some of the newer coworkers aren't even trying.

We have a lot of items where either clothes have become separated from their tags or packages have been damaged. New tags need to be generated for the clothes, socks and underwear have to be gathered together and matched to what remains of the packaging, and anything that doesn't matched has to have an item number written down and prepped for salvage/defective. Last week I had a few minutes to work on the backlog, and I found that the printer was not connecting to the network. If it won't connect, then I can't print. Sometimes this happens but only lasts a couple of hours, so I figured that if it didn't work my next shift I'd swap it out. I had things that were obvious salvage/defective and I didn't need a printer for that, so squished that in and moved on.

My next shift, I asked the person I was relieving if the printer worked. She told me that it hadn't worked for days, and that's why no one was working on the backlog. Wait, what? She knew for days, and she hadn't bothered to tell our direct manager or the store manager on duty about the loss of network connection and she had been too lazy to carry the printer to the same cabinet we get our walkies and our portable computers and get a new one?

This same coworker has a tendency to leave a huge bag of trash under the desk at the fitting room and even though she's usually at the desk when I relieve her, several rooms are always full of clothes, like she had not been clearing them at all during her shift. On top of that, the clearance racks are at the fitting room and it always looks like several tornadoes went through it. This happens often, not every now and then. It's like she doesn't give a crap about keeping the area looking neat.

Since I didn't have time to work on the backlog that shift, I took the printer up with me at the end of the night. That was Thursday. I expected that someone would say "Hey, where's the printer?" and then walk up to the cabinet we get our equipment from and grab a printer. If they didn't, I'd grab one on Saturday. Well two hours before my shift on Saturday I found out about my grandmother. Saturday and Sunday was a combination of apathy and numbness. Absolutely nothing got an emotional reaction from me on Saturday, and only one thing did on Sunday. I went in, I did what I was told to do, and that was that. Anything involving initiative, like grabbing a printer, nope not possible.

I was off Monday, able to work to my usual level today. When we trade the phone, we also relay information about what's going on. There was a pile of hosiery and packaging on the desk and I asked about that. My coworker (and not the one who leaves trash under the desk and knew for days the printer didn't work, a different one) had the cajones to tell me that she was told to repackage the items and put a discount sticker on them but she couldn't do it because there was no printer. "You don't have a printer?" "No, it's been missing for a week."

So let me get this straight. You were told to do something, and you chose not to do it because you didn't want to have to go fetch a printer, and you think that saying there wasn't a printer there already is a reasonable excuse? And you think it's so reasonable of an excuse that you apparently aren't worried about this conversation getting back to our boss?

And there was trash under the desk.

I try to keep the fitting room neat, and by extension women's general wear clothing neat. But it's getting harder and harder to want to try. Some things take a long time to fix and get right, but very, very little time to maintain. But no one will maintain what I fix and make right.

That backlog of stuff? Final week of February I had 5 days off in a row. Before my final shift of that mini-vacation there was no backlog. I was closing pretty regularly, and people would just dump stuff on me even though they were supposed to do their own stuff, but I would find a way of getting it done. Came back after 5 days off, 2-3 feet of bar space had untagged items and a basket roughly 3 ft by 4 ft by 6 inches was full of packaging and loose underwear and socks. I almost cried when I saw that. I really did, I felt that all my hard work to maintain the room was for nothing and it was really upsetting. If I could afford it, I'd have quit on the spot.

I was told to clean the closet. I did. Part of that was taking three shopping carts filled with fixtures (shelves and hanging bars and pegs, things like that) to the fixture room and putting them away. If I manage to take a picture of the fixture room and post it, you guys would faint. It looks like a hoarder is running the room. There's a little path winding through the stacks of shelves and bins full of shelves and bars and boxes of pegs and mounts, usually wide enough for me to walk through, though some areas I have to turn sideways because my hips won't fit. The place for your feet is only about 6 inches wide most of the way, and every now and then you have to step over something. Things are just randomly piled up, and while there is some sense of order, you still have to dig through layers to find exactly what you are looking for. The back 10 feet of the room, there is no path, there's just piles of different fixtures. That place scares me. I am not exaggerating when I say that if something falls on me I am dead because there is zero way EMTs could get to me in time to save me. I'm not the only person it scares, most people just drop off tubs of fixtures outside the room and leave. But I put away all three carts' worth. I was told that fixtures would now have to go immediately back, and they would not be kept in the closet anymore. I had just finished the closet and one of my coworkers comes trotting up with some shelves and starts to carry one to the closet. I said no, fixture room, and she said "You put them away then." I stood my ground, she seemed genuinely surprised that one of the managers had said no more fixtures and took them away. However guess what? Fixtures are in the closet and I've found two shopping carts full of fixtures placed out of sight near the fitting room. At some point I'll have to empty those carts. But why is it that it builds up until I do it?

Same thing with the shopping carts full of stuff. Everyone is supposed to do their own putting back overstock items. We're not supposed to leave it in a corner in men's. Three days after the boss told all of us, it was back. I would need about an hour to do it, because it's not my stuff, it's everyone's and they keep adding. But I don't have an hour available that I can remove myself from the floor.

We just launched a new brand, denim based style, and we are supposed to be keeping the folded jeans in perfect order. It takes me a long time to get it right. But if I'm working several days in a row, each night the upkeep is easy and quick because most of it stays in order. I just have to fold the stuff customers unfolded and look at the stacks to see if they are size order or if a size 16 has migrated to the top of the stack, and look for the occasional wrong style when a customer found something better and left the original choice on top of a stack. If I'm not scheduled for two or three days, it is a complete disaster. It's obvious no one tried to maintain it, and often it looks like a coworker just dumped a pile of folded jeans in an available spot rather than putting each in their respective right spots.

It's just so frustrating.

Hearing my coworker say that she didn't do something she was told directly to do because there was no printer there has pushed me past my breaking point. Tomorrow I'm going to make a list of my complaints concerns, formatting the list and practicing what I want to say. My boss does not work tomorrow. She does work on Thursday though, and I'm planning on going in on my day off and have a long talk with her. If people were trying and good intentions meet retail environment, it'd be one thing. But lately....it's just laziness and I'm not paid enough to be my coworkers' maid.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

She does work on Thursday though, and I'm planning on going in on my day off and have a long talk with her.

\

Please do. I mean that. You are doing the work of several people, and as long as they get away with it, they will continue to leave it for you to do. Just let her know that you are really tired of being the ONLY one actually putting things away properly.

 

[Margret]

We've lost another great man. Rest in Peace, Stephen Hawking. He was 76 years old.

Iconic physicist Stephen Hawking best known for his work on black holes

Stephen Hawking - Wikipedia

Margret

 

[arouetta]

I remember a few years back he published a paper arguing that black holes don't exist, that they are actually something else instead. I hope his soul has the freedom to go check out one and find out first hand what they are and aren't.

 

[Katie M]

I'm not really religious or spiritual, but this brought a tear to my eye.