(no subject)

[divinemadam]

I ended up staying home today because I had a lovely headache.  Oddly enough, I am glad that I did stay home.  Today was the day that people found out about jobs that would be cut and who would still be employed next year.  There were 34 people in out building alone that were affected.  We are losing 3 counselors in my department.  We are losing the testing specialist as well.  This means that I will now have 3 times as many students to address, the department to run and testing to do.  That is basically three full time jobs.  I have such mixed feelings right now.  I am completely freaked about the amount of work and the expectations for us next year.  At the same time, I feel like I should be happy that I even still have a job since so many people are being put out of work.  Over all, it's just a bad thing.  I knew that this was the worst case scenario, but I hoped that it would be different.  I have been debating on whether or not I want to find a new job.  I know that jobs are scarce in the current economy, but I just don't know if I can do the job that they want me to do.  As it is, I have worked until I have made myself sick this year.  I am still debating.  I suppose that if a great job came along I would at least try for it.  It's funny.  If you would have asked me if I would have thought about this kind of thing a couple of years ago, I would have laughed at you because I liked my job and I felt supported by the school system.  I don't have that same feeling anymore.  I just...  I'm at a loss.

I spoke with my father tonight.  He still has the catheter, and the doctor is going to do a procedure on him on Wednesday to see if he can shrink the prostate using a laser.  The procedure won't require him to be put under nor will it require cutting.  It will all be done in a non-invasive way.  Other than that, my father is doing well.  He is walking around outside the house, up and down the hill, up and down the stairs...  He can shower himself all except for his back and the bottom of his feet, which my step mother cleans for him.  He has gotten his appetite back and has started gaining weight.  They took him off the coumadin and they will see what his blood count is to determine if he can stay off of it.  My father told me that I didn't need to call him all of the time because he knows that I am busy.  I told him that I have gotten used to calling him every couple of days now and as long as he doesn't mind it, I will probably continue to call him that often.  He got all choked up and told me that he was blessed to have such a good daughter and that I was welcome to call whenever and however often I wanted.

On a somewhat related note, after I spoke with my father, I sent a text message to my sister to let her know about his procedure on Wednesday.  She asked me if I had spoken to my other sister, Tammy.  I told her no.  Apparently, Tammy's daughter, Taryn, is pregnant.  While she is engaged, they are not going to get married because she would lose her state benefits if she got married.  I understand why they aren't getting married right now.  After that, Angie told me that they didn't want Daddy to know that Taryn was pregnant because they didn't want him or my step mother to look down on Taryn for being pregnant out of wedlock.  This is ironic for a couple of reasons.  First of all, these are the same sisters who thought that they had a right to know about my father's surgery even if he had not wanted them to know.  Um hypocritical much?  Secondly, both of them ended up pregnant out of wedlock and my father never held that against them.  I won't tell my father because it's not my place to tell him.  They have asked me to not say anything, I will respect that.  I will wait for them to say something to him.  Of course, with the way that they call, or don't call for that matter, Taryn could have the baby and be pregnant with another one before they call my father.  (Tammy has talked to him twice since the surgery and Angie only once.)

Comments

[sairalinde.livejournal.com]

We are going through similar economic pains. Our corporate ownership at the paper has been consulting a bankruptcy attorney. They say they aren't selling our paper though because we are one of the few actually making money but it is because we are WAY understaffed and killing ourselves to continue the way we are. Our paper has been in our town over 130 years and we just can't bring ourselves to give up, ya know? But our staff has been cut and cut and cut. Ridiculously our paper is MUCH smaller than the others in the corporate ownership. Our paper has 51 total employees, this includes distribution, pre-press, newsroom, circulation, telemarketers, customer service, advertising, pressmen, and classifieds as well as office employees. We are down a publisher. We have no city editor, no features editor. We are operating in the newsroom down 5 people from when I started there alone! I mean 3 reporters to cover a 3 college town of over 70,000 people not to mention the outlying areas of the county and the three other fairly large incorporated towns in our county is laughable at best. We are killing ourselves all of us. The Jacksonville paper that is yes a larger town but really not by THAT much and they have 900 they just laid off and STILL have 1200 employees. WE HAVE 51! So yeah...I know how you feel about being overstreatched but with the economy as it is, there aren't any other options. The larger newspaper in our area just laid off 60 people.