It’s been a full year since I was last at the office. I’m continuing to work from home and will continue for months to come. I hope my company considers this in the future. Working from home, for me, is great. I get to do my exercises and be with my little one at all hours of the day. I can run my errands during the week during my lunch hour. I can be comfortable in my safe space. It’s all gravy to me. It’s Monday and I get up nice and early and I am so hungry that my tummy is rumbling. I eat my morning toast and drink my coffee. Then, I get my workout clothes on, get on the treadmill and get on a nice sweat session. I do my stretches and get showered. I log on to work and then I hit a wall. All of a sudden, I am feeling like a piece of garbage. I’m having a hard time starting my work day. I receive emails, I read them and then I have to read them again because nothing retained into my brain. My anxiety is through the roof and I don’t know what to do with myself. So, I decide to lay down on the bed and let my head hang down letting the blood flow to my brain. I was like this for a little while and then simply laid down for another few minutes. I get back to my laptop and I’m still feeling like I hit a wall. It’s going to be a rough day today. During lunch, I get outside and get some fresh air and also run a couple of errands. This helps a little bit with my anxiety, but I was still irritated because I continued to not feel like myself. Back at work, I continue to be on the struggle bus. I work on a few things but they don’t turn out to well. I created a ticket for my developers and my boss sent a reply back with, well, basically asking what the hell is this?! My request was typed half a$$ed. She had no idea what I was asking for the team to do. I replied back that I would update the ticket but man oh man what a day. In the evening, my husband asked me if I could find him his hot sauce. I turned on the light and even got out the flashlight and couldn’t find what he needed. Later, my mother in law did the same and she found exactly what we were looking for. Well, I feel like a dummy. In the evening, I get to bed by eight. I am very tired and very disappointed with my day. It’s been a total disaster and I want the day to end. So I take a sleeping aid and I get to bed. It’s Tuesday and I wake up way before the roosters and I am a very thirsty girl. I always have water by my bedside table, but today, I did not have enough. So I get to the kitchen and everyone in the house is awake and with my husband. He is getting ready for work and all of us are helping him out. One hug at a time. After he leaves for work, I go back to bed but I can’t sleep. I log on to my social media but that doesn’t make me happy at all. I then start to think about how much work I have to do. So I just think, forget this and I get up and log on to work. I work for a few hours and then go make some breakfast. I’m hungry and irritated. There is so much work to do and I am only one person. I feel like I am doing the job of three people. This is why I’m getting up at the early morning hours and getting work done that I am certainly not getting paid for. Work hours were filled with meetings and more meetings. One of those meetings was supposed to be a quick one and it turned out to be over an hour long. Way past five. It’s now seven and I am still online. I have a ton of products launching next week and I have so much work to do and items to post. Wednesday is simply a terrible day. Started off ok. I did my running and other exercises. Took my nice shower, got dressed made the bed, had breakfast. Then got online and everything was fine. Until it wasn’t. I became very irritated. Not sure what made me so damn freaked out but my feelings were all over the place and I was having a hard time being myself. This feeling continued throughout the day and I just could not shake it off. Then some emails that were going back and forth with people from work were not pleasant and my irritation grew even larger. To the point where I had to log off for a little while. Got to the point where I was going to call the boss to and advise I’d be taking the rest of the day off. The entire day goes like that and I need to take in deep breaths every few minutes so I don’t loose my sh*t and loose my job. I’ve even contacted my mentor to ask how he would handle things such as condescending emails. We will talk about that next week during our mentoring session. Wish he would have some sort of advise for me now, but I’ll have to wait. Meanwhile, I channeled my mother’s constant advise of ‘patience’ and so I did. I didn’t reply back to emails right away, I waited until my system calmed the hell down. I responded to most of the condescending emails in the evening after I was calm. This was way after five and after we’ve had our dinner. Meanwhile, I was listening to ocean waves all day long. Today, I downloaded the ‘Calm’ app. It has sounds of rain on leaves, ocean waves, water running down a creek. It’s a really nice app. Ocean waves all day long for me today. At first it didn’t do much as it was only white noise, but after a while, the sounds of the ocean did calm my nerves. In the evening, at around eight, I replied to those emails that put me over the edege earlier in the day. My reply wasn’t as peppy as I usually respond. My emails always start with a ‘Hi persons name’ and then I go on to the message, always ending with a thank you or best regards. These emails didn’t have a hi or any greeting at all. Just the basic facts and information needed and no send off. Hopefully they will get the hint. It’s Thursday and I wake up really early, it’s two in the morning and I am not able to sleep any longer. I keep thinking about work and how I’m no longer enjoying what I’m doing and what I’m going to be doing about it. Those rude emails have really and my moodiness have really taken me in for a loop. I get out of bed and grab myself a few pieces of chocolate. I’m hoping the chocolate will make me feel better and have me forget about my ruminating misery. It’s helping as I’m chewing the chocolate and the nuts that are mixed in the piece of candy. After I indulge, I get back to bed and try to sleep. It’s not working, so I log into my social media sites and scroll aimlessly. After about an hour or so, my brain eventually gets tired of racing and I finally fall asleep. Today, I am feeling better as I am not so irritated but the nastygrams keep on coming. Don’t know if everyone is stressed out or what the hell is going on. But good Lord, leave me be. I’ve mentioned to the boss that the internet company is working on the wires outside and I am having intermittent internet issues. Laying low until the tide goes out. During lunch I am listening to a webinar about graduate programs. Thinking about getting my masters in marketing. I have a BA in Communications and would like to get my masters. The college that was presenting has very flexible hours and better yet, virtual courses. Seems like something good for me. I will however need to figure out my budget as I will need to shell out the funds first before my company helps with tuition. Plus there is my issue with my memory. It is getting better, but I’m always stepping back because of this issue that I have. What if I take all of these courses and then get a bad grade due to my memory issues. Anyways, it’s something to think about. It’s Friday and I get up at six in the morning. I usually get on the treadmill on Fridays but today I get online as I have a ton of work to do. I’m sending and answering emails at that time and getting some work done. By eight, my alarm goes off and I take a break and have myself a nice warm shower. I have my breakfast and then log back on at nine to get my day officially started. I had to basically drop all of the work that I was doing for marketing and get to my business analyst work. Had a conversation with the boss and she tells me that the company will start to look at my job as a BA and no longer marketing. Which really sucks because I am doing very well on my marketing job. As for the BA job, not so much. Unfortunately, my boss assumes I know how to do this job. I mentioned for her to assume, I know nothing about processes, as there are many. She said I can ask as many questions as I need. So, I said that I would be asking many, many stupid questions. She said that it would be ok to ask many questions. So questions I will be asking. In the evening, I take a break and we have dinner together as a family. I then take care of the dishes and back to work I go. As mentioned, I’ve gotten a lot of work that needs to be taken care of and not enough time during the workday. I was online posting content until midnight. Glad my mother in law takes care of my little one during these times. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have to quit my job. While working I’m listening to John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight shows that are posted on youtube. I’m also on facebook and talking to friends and family members. It’s nice to connect. I’m loving that everyone is comfortable to connect online nowadays.

This week I have been reminissing with old photos as I have found the site flickr. Aparently I created an account a long time ago and now I get to see my old photos from when I was in my 20’s. As for work, I took a few days off this week as it was my daughters birthday and was my mother in laws birthday. We celebrated all week with cake and pokemon. My baby girl really enjoys playing pokmonGo game and likes to watch the cartoon. She’s an old soul. As she also likes music from the 90’s and some rock and roll from the 80’s. We’ll see how far she’ll go down the years. Who knows, she may like music from the 50’s. I’ve got some in my stach of CD, I’ll have her take a listen and I’ll report back to you.
The rest of the work week was bananas. So much to catch up on. And I noticed that the multiple people who were covering for me, were only able to take care of the work that I do. So, dear boss, please notice that I do a lot of work during my time and I would like to be complensated as such. Thank you!!

It’s Monday and I wake up at four in the morning, really hungry. I go to the kitchen and have myself a snack of some chocolate. These little chocolate pieces make me really thirsty and I drink down a big old glass of water. I then go back to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I take out my phone and start looking through my social media. I wind up looking through hair transformations. Ones where the hair dresser is showing the viewer how to cut the hair. There was one that showed how to cut bangs that look like a cut from the 70’s. Turns out, it’s really nice. I may get that cut in a few years. After I cut my long hair and donate it. I will then grow it out again and get myself a 70’s bangs look. Who knows it may look right with my jaw line. I eventually fall asleep on top of my phone and then my alarm goes startles me at 6:15AM. I’m not ready to get up yet. I am groggy and just don’t wanna. I turn it off and sleep until my other alarm of 7AM. This time I do get up and I get ready to get onto my treadmill. I walk for about an hour and then I do some other excersises. At this point, my tummy is rumbling, again. The chocolate I ate at four this morning didn’t hold up for very long. I get my coffee and breakfast going then I continue my stretches and as the toaster dings, I drop everything and go ahead and eat my breakfast. I then head to the shower and I take my time getting clean. I usually have to rush through my shower since I have to hurry it up and get to my bedroom/office and get to work. But today I have off from work so I am not worried about the time taken in the warm water.
Later in the morning, I go to the basement and get all of my baby girl’s presents and place them in gift bags for tomorrow morning’s birthday surprise. I have a bunch of presents that, that ultimately she knows about as she picked them out online. She’s just not sure if I got all of them or just some of them hence surprises. She picked out carebears LOL dolls, coloring books and some other toys. Grandma has purchased her all of they things she wants plus things she needs, like a new pair of sneakers. Her little feet are growing and they’re almost ready to fit into my shoes. I have a small foot, my size is a 51/2 and she is almost there. Also, she is almost my height. It is no surprise her little feet are almost my size. She is going to be a tall girl, I think.
After, taking care of my little one’s gifts, I clean out the garbage that is out on the back porch. We’ve cleaned up the basement a bit and we have a bunch of glass vases, bags and kid items that we no longer need and I place them out on the curb. It’s a rainy day but I hope that someone picks up the toys and glass items I’ve placed out on the curb. I rather someone upcycle the items as oposed to have them go into the dumpster. Later in the day, I notice that the glass items and baby items had been taken by someone. I’m glad, I hope the items will be recycled or upcycled. While doing all of that work, I am listening to the rest of the book that I’ve been working on the past week; Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability and personal information about herself. It is a great book with a lot of good information about personal growth.
I’ve learned that March is Internationl Women’s Month. Here’s to all of the the great women who make things happen. I’d like to give a big thanks to all of the women in my life who are supportive of me and other women.

It’s Tuesday the 2nd of March and it is my little ones birthday! She is turning seven years old today. I remember the first time I saw her. She had bubbles coming out of her mouth and she was so tiny and very cute. I of course, was a mess. I had a c-section and couldn’t feel anything from my neck down so I was really unconfortable at that time. I was so numbed up that I couldn’t even hold her in fear of my numbness. I’m sure the doctors and nurses wouldn’t let anything happen to my little baby. But it was a terrible feeling, all that numbness. I remeber that at one point during my numbness telling my brain to move my feet and I could not do it. This really bothered me. Thinking about it, to this day, it still gives me the chills. I did not like that feeling of not being able to do what my brain was comanding my body to do.

As for my little angel, she had to go into the nicu as she was so little. The next day was when it all whent sideways. I didn’t feel right and after a day or two, my lungs decided to tell me to f*ck off and I cought pneumonia and couldn’t see my baby because it could be contagious. I then got even sicker and my lungs collapsed. At this point everything went black. I don’t remember much, if anything after that. Apparently, I had to have an oxygen mask placed on my face as I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my bloodstream. I think that at one point there wasn’t enough oxygen going into my brain. I still have the scars from when the nurses took my blood oxygen levels from my writsts. In the years after my little one was born, I payed dearly for that lack of oxygen. My short term memory did not work well, if at all, at times and past trauma that had been pulled deep inside my head, at the bottom pits of my brain, all came back up to the surface. It was a rough few years for me and my family. Luckily for my little one, she recouped beautifully. She was born ahead of her time, but she is a trooper and did very well in the nicu. Meanwhile, I was recouping and I needed to learn to get my balance back as I was in a hospital bed or about three months straight. My lungs really f*cked me over. I had to go from one hospital to another in order to do my rehab. I needed to learn how to walk again and I needed to have an oxygen tank with me at all times. Once I got home, it wasn’t over. I still needed physical therapy and a whole lot of mental health help. Thank gooness my mother in law is here with us and helping us out with our little one. Our heads were in such tailspins that we wouldn’t be able to handle our little bundle of joy all by ourselves.
Fast forward a few years and my little one is thriving and doing well. She is doing so well in school this year and I am so very proud of her. She has been schooling from home, due to covid, and she has been doing exceptionally well. Thanks again to Grandma. She pushes our little one to do her best and keeps her concentrated on what she has to do. I am very proud of my little munchkin.
As for work, I took off today. Since we can’t have a nice and big celebration for my little one’s birthday. We will do something small, at home, with just the four of us. But it will be grandious. I have a bunch of things planned. We’ve gotten her all of the gifts that she wants and a few more things that she needs. This will hopefully be a very special day for her.

It’s Wednesday and the house is up at six in the morning. We are all getting daddy ready for work. Poor guy is so tired he worke up way after the alarm clock. I heard something go off, but fell back to sleep. He then got up all startled. I asked him if he was ok and he said he was already late for work. I asked if he wanted help and he said yes. By the time I got out of bed, my little one was up too and ready to help daddy with whatever he asks for. Which is usually hugs and kisses. Her daddy needs all of those in the morning whenever she is up with him. It’s very cute to watch.

Thursday is a blur. I’ve gone back to work and I have over 400 emails to go through. I feel buried with all of these correspondences. I’m online until about six in the evening getting all of my work done. This is exausting. Taking a few days off from work feels like a month with all of the emails and IMs. Can’t type too much today, I’ve got work to do. But, hey, I am happy to do it. I notice the few people that covered for me had a lot of work to do and had a hard time doing their own work. I don’t know about you, but this sounds like job security to me. I do all of that work and then some. Hopefully the bosses will realize that and it’ll give me a leg up on my career at the company.

It’s Friday and I am not up for my treadmill this morning. I oversleep a little and wake up just in time to get to my bedroom/office and get to work. I’m still looking through all of the emails from earlier in the week. Plus some more that I’ve received yesterday and today. Lots and lots of work today. In the evening I am talking to one of my longtime friends, Sara. She was the first friend that I made in my elementary school when my family and I moved to the States Anyway, she is an Amway representative and I am looking through her site to find something to purchase. I find a lotion that I like and I place an order for the product. I will let you know how I like it. My friend said there is a guarantee for all of the products and that places me at ease. I have an issue with a lot of the lotions that I’ve used in the past as almost all of them burn my eyes. Don’t know what kind of ingredient they have, but man oh man do my eyes burn. So much so, that my eyes start to tear up. This usually starts to happen in the afternoon. I put on my lotion in the morning, during the day we’re all ok. Then by 5PM or so, my eyes start to burn and I’m tearing up. Plus, wearing glasses doesn’t help as the lotion starts to run into my eyes or something and there you go, I’m crying.
In the evenig, I am on a photo saving website and I find old treasures. Photos of myself in my 20’s, photos of my husband I while we were dating and some photos with our dear friends. I’ve posted them on my social media sites and am having fun with messaging my friends back and forth.

Until next time.
Stay Safe!
Isabel

This work week is filled with meetings and kudos. My boss gave me an atta girl email that made me feel all of the feels. We clean out a space in our house to make room for toys and a living area. And, I’m listening to a lot of books and podcasts online.

Over the weekend we played in the snow and made crafts. On Sunday, I listened to “Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown. It is a great book for leaders and success.

It’s Monday and I get up nice and early and get to my treadmill. I walk for a while than I run for a little while longer. Then, I do my situps and stretch. I get my coffee and breakfast going. Then on to my shower. I start my work day off earlier than nine in the morning because I have a lot to do and there are not enough hours in the day to do them. I work and work all day and barely have time for lunch. Now, it’s eight in the evening and here I am still logged on and holding on to my websites like they will die if I don’t pet them, nicely. The family are watching Game of Thrones and the little one is watching a cartoon called Gumball. I don’t want to watch either of those, so, I’m in my bedroom/office listening to Rachel Hollis talking about her book “Didn’t See That Coming” on youtube. While listening to my buddy Rachel, I’m also working on items that I need to launch in March, for work, of course. I am launching eleven items on the same day and then another ten items the day after. There are at least 100 pieces of content that I need to post on the website. I am not looking forward to doing this. But I must. So, to work I go.

It’s Tuesday morning and I wake up groggy and feel like I have a sore throat. I drink some water to clear my throat but it goes down the wrong pipe and I start caughing. Darn it, I’m hoping that I don’t wake up the house as everyone is still sleeping. Luckily, no one wakes up from my caughing fit. I then get online before eight in the morning and get started on my work day. As mentioned yesterday, I have a lot to do on my websites and am getting a head start this fine morning. I see my schedule today and notice I have a day filled with meetings. I even have a meeting during my lunch hour. It’s a good one though. It’s regarding our book club. The book club is going to talk about the book that I have been listening to; ‘Dare to Lead’ by Brene Brown. We talk about chapter one and there is a lot to talk about. It’s all about vulnerability. This vulnerability thing is a new one for me. I grew up in an environment where you’d suck it up and keep going. Vulnerability does not compute. It’s absolutely something new to me. One of the quotes that I like from the book is “Perfectionism and fear are keeping people from learning and growing.” We talked a bit about that during our meeting and I shared that I’ve been having some trouble with someone who, in my opinion, has fear and therefore not learning anything new. I shared that I provided proof of an item that I was speaking to this person about and they continued to either have that fear or perfectionism of knowing all about the subject or fear that they don’t know about the subject and therefore making me feel dumb. At one point when we talked, it was clear to me that the person didn’t read the proof that I had provided earlier in the day… #frustrating! Towards the evening I continue to work. I had so many meetings today that I did not have any time to do any of my marketing and content posting work. I have a product launching early next week and have a lot of content to post and templates to create. So, like yesterday, in the evening, to work I go. By the way, today, I’ve received a package from Target and noticed that their packaging baggies are scented. The bags that filled with air to hold everything in place. Babypowder scented, I think. It’s a great idea. Whoever had that idea is a genious. All of the deliveries that we’ve received has a stale smell. Now, everything that comes from that store has a powery scent. Like Elle Woods from the movie “Legally Blond” I remember her resume was pink and scented. “It gives it it that little somethin extra.” I say “Go Target!”
While doing my work into the wee hours of the night, I am listening to a TED Talk by Brene Brown called The Power of Vulnerability. Brene ended her talk with ‘I am enough.’ Great talk, take a listen when you have some time. By nine in the evening I’m finished with my work. It’s not completed, but I’m done for the day. Shortly after, I put on my pjs and get to bed. Sleeping away and getting ready for another meeting filled day tomorrow.

It’s Wednesday and I get up a little later than originally wanted. Today is a gym day but I am all sorts of groggy. I hope I’m not getting sick. Instead of getting on the treadmill, I take out my yoga mat and look for a video online. I found a video that I like and I follow along. As I’m doing my yoga poses, I notice that I’m all sorts of stiff. My limbs are a little tight but my back is really tight. Yoga helped to loosed all of these muscles up today. I then did my regular stretches and situps to complete my workout. I then get my coffee going and drink some of this sweet, sweet nectar. I love coffee. I drink Foldgers brand at home and it is delicious. Please note that I do not get paid to advertise this coffee, I simply like the flavor. To think of it, I don’t get paid for any of the items that are posted on my blog, this or any other. Whatever I write about are my own thoughts and likings and nothing is an advertisement. I should probably post this on every blog that I create. I will look into how I can put a disclaimer on my blog. If you have any experience with this, please share your knowledge.
After my coffee, I get online and start my work day. I am working on the items that I couldn’t get to yesteday evening. So this morning, way before nine in the morning, I am working away. What’s a real pain in the behind is how long some thing take to do as some items take a long time to create, systematically. Then systems need to talk to one another and this takes time, and so, I wait. Most days, I don’t have patience, so I multitask. This is not the greatest of ideas because then I am doing a few things at the same time and one of the things I’m working on gets lost in the midst. When I do this, by the end of the day, there are one or two items that have been left hanging. Maybe, I simply need to slow down and go through the process as it should. After all, multitasking is a bit of an oxymoron. Not many can do it and doing it well is not for everyone.

It’s Thursday morning and I am all stretched out as I did Yoga for about an hour again this morning. My husband was awake and he, of course, started making fun of the poses. He asked if I was going to fly away with my yoga moves. I told him to shut it…in a very colorful way. It’s way too early to be made fun of. I then have my coffee, take my shower and get to work. As per usual, I have a lot of meetings today. One of the meetings is regarding emails and why people are not receiving them from one of the websites I manage. The developers are talking about databases and other items. I have no idea of what they are talking about, but I stay strong and talk to the team like I’m following along. I think they knew I have no idea. But, I am trying and doing my best to follow along.
During my lunch hour, we are clearing out the basement. My husband is all about throwing a ton of our things out. I’m with him. We have a bunch of things that we’re saving; for absolutely no reason. So we take a bunch of things out and I will tossing them to the curb for garbage pick up next week. I posted a few of those things online in the facebook marketplace to sell. I have a bunch of leftover things from my wedding and other events that I clearly no longer need. They are on the site for sale, and I’ve just changed the price and lowered it for the items to move fast.
In the afternoon, I am testing an item on my website that just isn’t working. I’ve tested a slew of excel spread sheets and nothing seems to work. I removed and added things and then I eventually removed all of the special characters from the spread sheet and uploaded the sheet one more time; and it finally worked. I then sent an email back to our internal user to let them know what I tested and to let them know that all of the special characters that are on the spread sheet have to be removed. I mention to the user that characters such as parantheses or the dollar sign are commands on html files. I also let them know that the system works on html files and since the spread sheet has all of those item in it. It is the reason why it is sending back errors and why the user can not upload the file to the site. With that, I provide a clean spread sheet to the user and let them know that, that is what it should look like. I also send a screen shot along to them with proof that the upload worked for me. I’m telling you this story because my boss gave me kudos for doing a thorough test and providing proof. I am a very happy camper this afternoon after receiving my ‘atta girl.’ In the evening my little one, daddy and grandma are watching the live action movie, Aladin! Such a great movie. I’ve of course, I’ve already seen this one. Many times! The cartoon is my favorite Disney movie of all time! While they are watching that, I am in my bedroom/office listening to The 7 Steps To QUICKLY Get Out Of A RUT! on youtube and writing affirmations at the same time. At this time, I see a quote on instagram that I love. Here it is; “My actual goals are to be so successful and independent that I can spoil myself and my family and do what I love and go where I want whenever.” I am really feeling this. My montra has always been to be ‘indpendently wealthy’ but the quote to ‘spoil my family’ is more meaningfull to me. Love it, Love it!

It’s Friday and I sleep past my alarm clock. Sure it wakes me up, but I stay nice and cozy in bed for a little while longer. No treadmill or yoga for me this morning. After I get up and get my coffee, I get to the ‘office’ and log on to my email. It’s seven thirty in the morning and I’m answering emails and taking care of the product lauch for I have for Monday morning. I will be out of the office on Monday and will be handing over the information to my coworker. She will do the simple part that is the work for the day of launch. I’ve already sent my multiple coworkers ‘how to’ documents and sent emails about all of the content that is supposed to be on the website. So far no feedback, from anyone. I trully hope that everything runs smoothly on Monday. I’ve told my boss that, if all else fails, I will be home on my day off and she can give me a call if something does not work out. Meanwhile, I am notified that there will be another product launching mid March. I have a bunch of items launching on the week of the 15th of March for all sorts of our product groups. I have so much to post and not much has been provided to me, content wise. I will probably have to be online late nights and early mornings that week in order to get everything ready. “Can’t wait,” I say sarcastically.

It’s Saturday morning and guess what I’m doing…you gessed it; I’m posting content on my website. The house is still asleep and I am online posting leftover price lists and memos that I was not able to post yesterday since it was getting late in the evening, and quite frankly my eyes were getting tired of being online. I notice that one of my coworkers is also online this morning and I send him a quick instant message. But he doesn’t reply back to me. Either he’s already offline or he’s simply ignoring me. Was going to tell him that I felt like that song from the 80’s, Everybody’s Working for the Weekend by Loverboy. Just listened to it, it’s such a cheezy song lol. Don’t know if my coworker would get the reference, he can be as dry as toast. But hey, I think it’s funny. Don’t you? For the rest of the day, my little one and I are working on the 100th day of school project. We are making a t-shirt with a gumball machine. My husband, the handy one, sews on some tule onto the t-shirt as to make it into a tutu and then draws the bumball machine with pencil. He is so cretive! All we have to do now is add fuzzy pieces to the t-shirt to make the ‘gum’ for the gumball machine. My little one gets bored of working on the project and so we put on a movie. Today, we are watching Lady and the Tramp the cartoon from 1955. She is enjoying it very much. Watch, now she’s going to want a puppy. Well, I mean, who doesn’t?! Meanwhile, I am working on the paperwork for our taxes. I take pictures and send the information over to our CPA. He is a dear friend of ours and we’ve been working with his company for many years. If you’re shopping for a CPA for pesonal or business, I highly recommend Ken Higgins as he and his team are fantastic. I’m not advertising, per se. I’m simply a fan. It’s a rainy day today and we are inside all day watching tv and doing crafts. Tomorrow will be more of the same. Too bad we can’t go out into the wild. Covid is still in full swing and we do not want to catch this crazy virus. So, at home sweet home, we stay.

Until next time.
Stay Safe!
Best,
Isabel

Hi there my dear reader. This week was fun filled with snow here on Long Island! My little one and I made some crafts. And, work was the same old bull. Lots of things to do and dealing with interesting, aka annoying, projects.

It’s Monday and it’s Presidents’ Day. I have the day off as it is a national holiday. And, since we can’t go anywhere due to covid, we stay home and play bored games, I mean board games. Those games are so boring to me. But, my little one loves them, so I play along with her. We spend the entire afternoon playing these types of games. We also play with blocks. The ones that have letters and little pictures on them. My little one likes to build with them. So I am thinking of getting her a Jenga game for her birthday. Her birthday is coming up early next month and we are working very hard on figuring out what to do to make her day special. I’ve gotten balloons and other items from the party supply place and we will be getting her a little cake. Not sure what else to do, because she wants to see her little friends, but due to this terrible virus, we are stuck having a small party at home with just the four of us. I feel for my little one. She wants to see and play with her friends very much but…no can do at this time.

It’s Tuesday and I get up nice and early and get my coffee and breakfast going. I then get online and send an email to my HR representative. I have a friend who is interested in working at my company and I would like to submit her resume through our intranet system. I log on and the link is not working. So I send an email to my HR person. But she is out of the office. So I forward that email to another representative. Hopefully she will be getting back to me with a site link so I may submit my friend’s resume. She doesn’t so I ask a friend who is in the education division and she directs me to another person. Well, that person is also out of the office. Is anybody working today. So I search some more and then I find someone in the department that I am looking for and send her an instant message. She is very nice, I was very impressed on how nice this person was. She sent me the link right away and said for me to contact her if I encounter any issues. How lovely! I should send her boss an email to let them know how delighted I was with her customer service.
In the evening we go out for a drive. Today, we get to listen to a few different radio stations. My husband has been all about hip hop recently and we’ve been listening to the latest hits. But today he must have been bored and we listened to another station and the station had a lot of songs from the 90’s and I was singing along to all of them. I know almost every top 40 hit that is on the radio. It’s a gift. Can’t remember what I at this morning, but I remember the song lyrics. I have a love for music and know almost every chorus to every hit song made in the 80s and 90s, some of the 2000’s too. I’ve lost track of songs after my little one was born. I am no longer in the radio business, like I used to be back in the day, and I’ve gotten bored with the latest songs. Anyway, I was singing along and my daughter was shocked that I knew all of these ‘new’ songs. Then my husband heard a slow song and he wanted to, as he put it, slit his wrists lol. The song was from Leann Rimes “how do I live” Yes, it’s a very slow song but I really like it and I was belting it out. It reminded me of my prom, yes, my prom was way back in the 90s, yup, I’m that old. So, after the song was over he turned the station to a grunge station. And I said I did not like it, no sir! Then a Dave Matthews Band came on and I was singing along to it lol. Just because I don’t particularly like it doesn’t mean I don’t know it. Then there was a song from Nirvana. Oh brother, do we disagree on this band. He likes the band very much… I do not. I think our buddy Kurt Cobain is a complainer. Sorry…not sorry. Then a Foo Fighters song comes on and I turn it up. My husband is now confused. He said, “you know, the Foo Fighters are just Nirvana minus one.” So I told him that the complainer had left us and the rest of the band stayed around for us. If you don’t know, Kurt Cobain took his own life. Then the rest of the band made a new band and call themselves the Foo Fighters. I like their music. It’s rock without the whining. Sorry Nirvana fans. It’s just not for me. Don’t get me wrong, he was a fantastic singer and song writer, but the music was too grunge and sad for me. Not enough rock & roll.

It’s Wednesday and I woke up way before the roosters. It was still really dark out, it was four in the morning. And then my husband was rustling around in bed and then got up really fast from bed. So I asked him where he was going. He said with a bad attitude that he needed to go to the bathroom. I asked him what his problem was and he said it was the way I asked him where he was going. Guess I must have asked in a nasty way. Wasn’t my intention, I just wanted to know where he was going so fast. I couldn’t sleep after that so I get up and get ready for my day. Today is my exercise day, so I put on my gym clothes. As I’m doing that my alarm clock goes off. Oh can you hear that , it’s time to get up. I get to my treadmill a little earlier than expected, but not to worry. I have an early morning meeting that I need to attend to so getting to my exercise earlier in the day is just fine. On the treadmill I walk then run for a little while, then walk again and run again. Doing my exercise in intervals today. My cousin, who’s a trainer, told me it’s the best way for strength and, I’m guessing, weight loss. So I do just that for about 45 minutes. After my exercise, I get my coffee going and then, get in the shower. I’m now ready for my early morning meeting. So I get to my laptop and message my colleague to see if he would like to get on the call earlier than our 8AM call. He said he has a meeting to attend to. I was thinking, yes silly, my meeting. But nope, my stupid a$$ set up the meeting for us for tomorrow, not today. What a dummy I am lol. Oh well, this gives me time to get other work done in the early morning hours. While I’m working, I start to feel drained. It’s way too early for this. But I get myself onto my bed and lay down for a few minutes to see if I can get out of this funk. It doesn’t! I hope it won’t be like this all day today. I have much to do and no time to waste. I eventually get my energy back and get myself to working just fine. The day went well and I stayed online until about six in the evening to get all of my work completed for the day. There is some left over for tomorrow.

It’s Thursday and it is snowing on Long Island. There is to be four to eight inches of snow on the ground by tonight. I am not looking forward to the clean up. But my little one is looking forward to playing in it. This year has been a snow filled one.

While at work, I’m sleuthing to find out who is the individual who is looking for a marketing specialist. I instant message a few friends and after a while I find out who the individual is. I send him a message and let him know that one of my friends is looking into the position. We talk a little bit about life and find out that he and his wife are having another child. I am so very happy for their growing family. I then throw my friend’s resume at him so he can take a look right away. He is looking for someone with a lot of experience. I may even look into it. Kidding, I am very happy doing my BA work. Just wish the paycheck was a bit better. But hey, who doesn’t, am I right? Anyone could always use a salary increase.
In the evening, it stops snowing. So after work, I have myself a slice of pizza for dinner and then go outside and shovel the snow from the back and front stoops as well as the walkways. These days the cold doesn’t bother me that much anymore. My body has started running warmer than what I’ve been used to, so being outside for an hour or so, is no big deal. Plus, I have a lot of warm clothes on. I have a snow suit and snow jacket, that I’ve had for years. As for boots, I use a pair of crocks that I got a while back that I was going to use for gardening. But these are very comfortable and great for the snow. I wear two pairs of socks as the crocks aren’t that warm. But again, I am running hotter nowadays and it’s no big deal as long as I keep on moving. Once, everything is all clear of snow, I come back inside and my little one wants to do a craft. Poor thing is so bored. The school is on spring break and my little one must be bored to tears. So we get out her crafting box and we make a craft for Gramma. It is filled with hearts and and I love you’s and other pretty spring kind of stickers. And we add a small plastic flower to the craft. The little one wanted to use glitter tonight. But mommy was not about it. It makes a huge mess and honestly, I hate glitter. It gets everywhere and it never leaves. So we had to negotiate that we’d play with glitter tomorrow or on the weekend. She tried and tried again to be able to add glitter to the craft, but mommy was adamant about it, no way Jose! We made a couple of crafts, all filled with love and she gave it to Gramma. Of course Gramma she loves them. She has so many crafts from my little one that she will need to get a box to add all of these. Tomorrow we will make some more. Maybe one day, she will make a craft for mommy…here’s hoping lol.

It’s Friday and I should have done my exercises this morning. But I got a little lazy. I shoveled last night and that counts as exercise right? So instead I get up a little later and get my breakfast and coffee going. This morning I cheat on my diet and have a maple glazed doughnut with my coffee. It’s a couple of days old but it’s still delicious! I then get online and start my workday a bit early. I take a pause from work and get outside and take a few pictures of the snow. One of my coworkers is from Vietnam and really likes the snow. So I get out there and take a few creative photos of the snow.

I then get linkedin this morning and remember my friend who is interested in the marketing position at my company. I’ve found out who the hiring manager is and I’ve let her know who to address her cover letter to. I also let her know the wage range for the position but also let her know that everything is negotiable. This is so she is aware of what the company has to offer. She can also go to glassdoor.com and find out what is available out there in the area. I’ve checked, and the wage my company is offering is reasonable. Again, it all depend on how the deal is negotiated. I’ve learned that one the hard way. I didn’t know any better so I did not negotiate for my position. I was so happy to get a new job offer that I took whatever they were willing to offer me. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I did not know any better back then. But now I do and I will need to negotiate. Once covid is over I will be doing some negotiations with my own company. As for work, I am testing a lot of items for us to launch at the end of the month. They sites in the backend are a pain as they sometimes do not work properly. I constantly have to clear my cache, going into an incognito window does not help, I still need to clear cache. Clearing cache is like clearing the cookies and other items that are stuck on the site. I need to do this multiple times a day and it tends to get very annoying. I am also working with my Latin America people and today there was an issue where our internal people could not reset their passwords, as the site was giving back an error. As their BA, I had to figure out who to contact to fix this issue and get it resolved as quickly as possible. We found out that it was a language issue. If a user was on the Spanish version of the site, the system would not allow the user to reset their password. So we figured out the issue, now it needs to be solved. I am working with the developers to get this fixed. I had to troubleshoot and try a bunch of different things in order to figure all of this out. Meanwhile, having to clear cache each and every time. Seriously #annoying. But at least we have a plan. It’s a matter of the developer to figure out how to fix the problem and implement the fix.
In the evening my little one and I do some more crafts with paper and play with her dolls. It’s a quiet evening as my husband is sleeping on the couch. He has been working very hard lately and we let him take his time to take a nap on the couch. Meanwhile, we are watching Kitchen Nightmares on TV with Gordon Ramsey. I notice that some of the people at the restaurants are just dumb. I don’t know if it’s for the show of it all or if they are actually like that in real life. After

Here we are again, another week flying by. It was a meeting filled week and we’re bored to tears since we’re still restricted, at least at my house, from going out into the wild. We continue to quarantine ourselves and are the better for it. We haven’t caught anything and hopefully this will pass without us catching this awful virus.

It’s Monday and I have a lot of work to do. My boss would like me to create functional specifications for a website we’ve just launched and I need to figure out how to do just that. I’d show it to you, but the site is and extranet site and it is behind a password and I am not at liberty to share. As for writing the functional specs, I’ve asked one of my colleagues to please provide me with an example. And she basically told me to go ahead and figure it out on my own lol. That’s ok, I do need to do that. Maybe I’ll ask someone else if they can provide me with a company approved example. I’ve looked this up online and on youtube and have found a few variations of this type of document. I’ll need to figure out exactly what my company is looking for.

It’s Tuesday and the day flies by. I get up early and do some yoga on this lovely cold morning. I don’t have much time to do my exercises, so I get some stretches in and then get right to work. Today I’ve been working on the same as yesterday, figuring out functional specs for the new website. Watched more videos and looked through old documentation to see if there are any examples. I thought I saw something on one of the many folders but it didn’t state much. I’ll have to keep digging. In the evening I played with my little one and her LOL surprise dolls. These things are tiny and so cute, she love all of the little toys including the Calico Critters, these are little mice and bunnies who live in a village together. Anyway, we played pretend doctor with these little guys and we learned a little bit about doctors and bedside manor. We also learned a bit about the immune system and how it works. She’s very interested in this doctor stuff. Hopefully it will turn into something good. She originally wanted to be an animal doctor, as she put it. I told her she’d need to take care of all kinds of animals as a veterinarian. After a few months she changed her mind now wants to be a children’s doctor. So now we need to learn all about the human body. She also loves science and space. Mommy has a lot to learn if we’re going to be going over these things during play time.

It’s Wednesday morning and I cannot sleep any longer. I am up at four in the morning and I can’t help myself but get started on my work day. I get my coffee, can’t forget that, and my english muffin and then get to work. I’m watching and reading more and more on how to do functional specs and I think I can get started on the documentations. All I need it to figure out which one out of the nine request, I’ve received, need to tackled first. So I set up a meeting with the business partner to go over all of the requests. It’s probably my best step instead of tying to figure everything out all by myself. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t be doing all of this by myself. So to Microsoft Teams meetings it is.

It’s Thursday, and again, I am up at four in the morning. I wake up suddenly look around the dark room and then try, but cannot get back to sleep. Today, I took care of my time. I did my things nice and slow. I get dressed in my gym clothes and go on to the treadmill. I take a walk for about an hour and watch Victoria on my phone as I walk. I really like this show. It’s about Queen Victoria from the United Kingdom. If you know me, you know that I am a very big fan of historical fiction. I love the costumes and the furniture, especially the furniture. I know, I’m odd bird and I have issues. But I really love this time period. I like the life of the rich, all of the other people were living in misery. They had to get water from the fountain and no indoor plumbing. Life was hard for them. Oh, but the rich! They had it good. A lot of responsibilities, but otherwise life was filled with comfort. I think I was part duchess in my past life, or a Portuguese Princess lol Yeah, right, I wish!
But I digress, as I’m taking my walk this morning, my tummy starts rumbling. I slow down just in case my system tells me it’s done and I fall over. It’s happened before and I don’t want it happen again. I’ll tell you quickly what happened. So, I was at the gym one time and I hadn’t had much to eat all day, but I wanted to get a workout in at the end of a work day. So I go to the gym and am on the rowing machine and the next thing I know I’m on the floor and a bunch of people are around me asking me if I’m ok. My stupid a$$ fainted at the gym. I was so embarrassed. The owners at the gym wouldn’t let me finish my workout, they had me sit in the main lobby and I had to have someone pick me up, otherwise they were going to call ambulance. I didn’t want that, so I called my brother and he picked me up from the gym.
So, now that I am in the basement all by my lonesome I don’t want to faint like I did that time. I would be on the floor for hours before anyone would wake up and realize I had face planted and was on the floor. And then I have nightmares of the treadmill spinning and eating at my face. Not a pretty sight. That is why I slowed my walk down and started to go at a slower pace. I eventually stopped as my tummy grumbled some more. After my workout, I toast an english muffin and drink my wonderful morning coffee. My tummy is now content. I then take a nice shower and condition my very long hair a couple of times. As you may know, I am growing out my hair so that I can donate it to Wigs for Kids. I’ve wanted to donate it a few months back, but with this pandemic, I haven’t gone to the hair salon to get it cut. So, I continue to let it grow and have been taking very good care of it so I can donate very long strands of hair. Maybe they can cut the hair in half and make two wigs out of the hair. I’m not sure how it works, I just want to do good for a kid who needs it. It’s the easiest charity I could possibly be part of. All it takes is some extra time to take care of the hair. I haven’t gotten it cut in a lot of months, but looking at it, I don’t have any split end or damage. It’s surprisingly growing very well and it’s ready to be part of a wig. When the time comes to cut it, I will of course document the process and will let you know when the hair is put to use. The company is nice enough to send a postcard to let the person who donates know when their hair has been used for a wig. My heart was very happy when I donated and received that postcard a few years back.
Today is International day of Women and Girl in Science #WomenInScience. As mentioned, my little one wants to be a doctor and she will need to know everything there is to know about the sciences. I’ve been finding myself watching videos about the human body so I can explain to her how the body works so she may be interested in actually becoming a doctor. If not, it’s always good to know how the human body works. The more you know the further you’ll go. Isn’t that the saying? Well, who know what she will do in the future. It’s a wide open road out there and she can be anything she wants to be. If you look at me and my career, I went from working in a beauty supply story to TV then Radio to working on websites to now being part of the IT department in my company. You never know where life will take you. With that, my advise it to always be kind to everyone you meet and encounter, you will never know where you may wind up.

It’s Friday and today is all about meetings. I’ve had meetings back to back all morning and then will have some more in the afternoon. During my lunch hour, we have yet another meeting. But this is a good one. It’s from the WiLL (Women in Leadership Levels) committee. We have team leaders speaking on leading and the pandemic. One of the women panelists said to have meetings and have them often. Especially with your team and during this time of working from home. It is essential to keep a dialog with your peers and management. And, that’s what we do at our lovely IT department. We meet with the business teams and then meet with the vendors and developers. Meet, meet, meet, meet, meet. We also have one-on-ones with our manager. And once every other month or so, we have a meeting with our upper management. It’s time consuming, but I think it’s a good thing since we don’t see each other in the hallways or in the café for lunch. We also have a lot of communication with our instant messaging system. And of course emails. So many emails. As for me, I like emails. It’s something I can revert back to and re-read what we talked about. With my memory being as bad as it is, it’s helpful for me.
Today, one of our very own Business Analysts is leaving the company. I send him a quick instant message to wish him the best of luck with his future endeavor and then I connect with him on LinkedIn. I looked at his job description and even stole a line or two and added it to mine. Of course I changed it up a bit, don’t want to plagiarize. I’m not that kind of person. Not going to lie, I’ve also updated my resume with this new description. It’s good stuff, I tell you! Take a look. Meanwhile, I am working on getting an appointment through my pharmacy for the covid vaccine. I believe in vaccines and I would like to get this type. However, it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to get the two doses any time soon. They are all booked. But, I’ll keep on trying.

In the afternoon, of course I have yet another meeting. This one is with one of the ladies from the Latin America group and it is a pleasure to speak with her. After this meeting, I have a lot of work to do, but it is always a pleasure speaking with her. The meeting makes me happy so I decide to get in touch with friends and get onto my social media sites. Today, I am happily getting in touch with people I’ve worked with in the past. I hope they are happy to hear from me. I am genuinely happy at this point and want to share the wealth 🙂 That meeting really put me in a good place and I am in a really good mood. So, in my past live I used to work at a radio station that had a couponing site. I worked there as a sales assistant full time, and promotions director and board operator part time. I really wanted to be in the business so I would pick up anything that I could to learn all about the radio business. At one point they needed a content creator for a new couponing site they were working on, so I applied and got the job. Initially as part time and then I was able to secure myself the job at full-time capacity. This is where I learned a lot about websites, how they work and how to create them. This is where I fell deep for the love of the interwebs. I am in internet marketing today because of that job. I reached, learned and helped out. Now I have a career that is part of the internet, and I am enjoying it very much. So I reached out to some of the team members from that particular job to let them know I was thinking about them. I was also talking to a long lost friend. I saw her daughter on social media and she looks exactly like her mamma. So we got to talking and I’m glad we did. We talked about life, our parents and how much of a pain they are lol. Also talked a little bit about life in general and how things are going. All the while I was continuing to do my work until about nine in the evening. Since I had so many meetings, I wasn’t able to get my marketing work completed, so I took on the work in the evening. My husband took our daughter out for a drive, just to get out of the house for a little while. Poor thing has been cooped up in the house the entire fall and winter. Only to go outside every once in a while to play in the snow. So the house was quiet and I was able to get my work completed and multitask by typing to my friends.

Until next time.
Stay safe!
Best,
Isabel

It was a very busy week with work. So much so that I don’t have much details on my work week. However, I saw this quote from one of my sistas Queen Rania of Jordan and absolutely love it. Women bringing up others including a society as a whole. Empower a woman and see what kind of magical things happen.

It’s Monday morning and it is snowing and there is a lot of snow out there. It started last night and it continues this morning and it is coming down; heavily. There are about four inches already on the ground by my house. I will need to take my lunch break to go shovel the snow from the front and back walkways. Not looking forward to it, but hey somebody’s gotta do it.
This morning, I was awakened by my lovely husband, so very abruptly, by him tuning on the lights and telling me to get up lol. He’s such a nice soul! Anyway, we were all up as he is working today. The entire family was up nice and early to wave good day to him this lovely winter morning. He is a very hard worker and we all need to give him a warm wave good bye and for him to have a safe day at work. We plead for him to stay away from others and to be safe on the slick roads. Meanwhile, I am really hungry and I eat a nice morning snack…ok so I had a piece of chocolate cake. I know, who does that at five in the morning? Me, that’s who. It was delicious by the way. It hit the spot lol. After I indulge, I immediately feel like I needed to burn it off, so I get dressed with my gym clothes and get myself onto the treadmill. I walk and run, then walk and then run again on the machine. The machine continues to be noisy. I’ve placed silicone oil on the mill but the machine itself makes a ton of noise as I am running. It probably needs some WD40 on the joints. The machine has seen better days and it probably needs retirement. But it’s all I’ve got right now, so noisy it is.
As for work, I have a product launch this morning and it launches nice and smoothly. Thank goodness! The product we launched is the printer imagePRESS Lite C170. Then at nine in the morning; it’s back to meeting after meeting until noon. All of these meetings are with people who’s first language was not English. So I must master thick accents and figure out what they are trying to say. It wasn’t easy at first, but once I got used to the accent and the person… we’re good! The culture plays a big part as well and I am always learning.
It’s three in the afternoon and the snow keeps on coming down. There is about a foot of snow out there already. I wanted it to stop snowing so I could go out there and shovel out of the front and back steps. The darn snow just won’t stop coming down. Of course, my little one wants to go out and play in it. It’s all fun and games when you’re a little one. As a responsible adult, I gotta work.
It’s five in the evening and I log off to go outside and clean up that snow. I get myself and my little one dressed and ready to go. We are both really bundled up and ready to play in the snow. There’s about 14 inches on the ground when we get out there. It is very windy and the snow keeps on falling. While I’m cleaning up the snow, she is throwing snowballs at me. I take a quick pause from shoveling and we have ourselves a snowball fight. She calls it a snowball war and throws a big chunk right at my face. My glasses are now all filled with snow and I can’t a thing. I take them off to and try to clean them up, but it’s no use. I don’t have anything to wipe them down with, so I put them back on, snow and all. Can’t see too well but we keep on playing. We then go to the front yard and I continue to shovel. And, oh look, we got a package by the garage door. The package is all wet and filled with snow. Meanwhile, I clean out a path to the front stoop and also clean up the steps. Then, we make ourselves the littlest Olof we can muster up. We find some sticks from a far off tree and turn them into arms. We find some more pieces and we make eyes and a smile. My arms are hurting at this point from shoveling and she wants to make a bigger snowman. I tell her, we’ll make a big guy…tomorrow. As for today, we make snow angels, have us another snowball war and then go inside and get some tea. I’d rather hot chocolate, but that will just give my baby girl a belly ache. We get out boots and snow gear off and we have ourselves some hot tea instead.

After the tea, I then get back on the laptop as there is more work that has to be done before the end of the day. I was told there would be content to post. And these pieces of content are very important ones. I log on and notice there is a full excel page of items to post on my website. Oh boy, can’t wait to get started. Believe me, it’s a lot of work. Half way through, I take a break and I heat up my dinner of chicken and sweet potato fries. Then, I take care of the dishes and my little one tells me she wants to play. I have so much work to do still…what to do what to do? So, I go ahead and play with her! I will take care of work later. After all, its not going anywhere. As long as I get the majority of it completed before bed, or midnight, we’ll be just fine. So we played and played and then it was time for bed. Grandma was already falling asleep on the couch so it was only natural for everyone to retire to their rooms. As for me, I logged back on to work and took care of the other items that I need to post online. I am at this until ten in the evening. Then I called it a night. I’ve had enough for today. I’ve bee up since before the roosters, got myself a workout in, worked all day, shoveled snow, played pretend with my little one. It’s been a full day. It’s time to put the pencil down and close the laptop. Good night everybody!

Today is Tuesday and I woke up nice and early. I got my coffee going and then I call my husband to see how he is doing. He is tired and wants to get some shut eye. I get online at seven in the morning and take care of some of the items that were left over from yesterday’s work. There are about thirty pieces of content that I need to add to the site and I get to work bright and early.
Once I see that my husband is home. I get my snow jacket and boots on and head on outside to help him bring in all of his belongings that are in his truck. Like his cooler and extra clothes. He gets in the house, changes clothes and I give him a nice backrub. I only have about ten minutes before my meeting, so I have to do it fast. I get all of that smelly muscle rub cream all over his back and then I try my hardest to do a deep tissue massage. It’s not easy, he’s a big guy! But I get it done and he is content. I then run to my desk and get onto the meeting. I am just a minute late and they had already started, but I catch up quickly. Then, there are more meetings. During one of my meetings one of the phones goes off and the ringtone is the music from “Psycho.” Those violins really going hard. I had to put myself on mute as that mess was going off. And quite frankly, giving me goosebumps. Now, this is my husband’s phone that’s ringing. He thinks it’s funny to have such a ring tone on his phone. Who’s the psycho now?

Wednesday and Thursday fly by. I’ve been so busy at work with new items launching and updating the site that I haven’t had any time to do anything else. The new item that we launched is launched is a Transmitter for our EOS Cameras. We launched the Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT (Ver. 2), take a look at the Canon USA site if you’re interested in seeing what this transmitter is all about. While working, I’ve been catching some of the news here and there and learned there are a few different strains of the covid 19 virus out there. The vaccines are being worked on, but still need more testing. It’s scary out there!
All I know is that after all the work that I do, I get to play with the apple of my eye. She likes to play with her new calico critters toys and we do just that. And act silly of course. As we play, we laugh as much as we can.

It’s Friday and I get up early and get a work out in. I’ve finally gotten my energy back and have restarted to get myself some exercise in the morning hours before work. I’m very happy about getting my energy back. I was in a little bit of a slump but now, just like that, I have it back. I’ve got my groove back lol.

In the morning hours there are meetings and more meetings. These meetings are good, however. I’m learning more about being a Business Analyst (BA) as well as streamlining launch information with different groups. Of course there are more meetings involved for this type of streamlining, but I am very happy about this. Some of my colleagues and I scramble around during launches in order to get content to post on the sites. I’m glad we met and figure out how to streamline this process. Nope, can’t believe I’m using the “streamline” word, over and over again. Sound like one of those fun middle management individuals lol. But hey, it’s something that needs to be done to get everyone on the same page and things working smoothly. We have other items launching, as we always do, and the future ones will be a little easier to handle.

Until next time.
Stay safe!
Best,
Isabel

This or next week, I will need to get out of the house. I will need to go to the office to pick up a new laptop. I’m waiting patiently for my IT counterparts to get back to me regarding when the new laptop will come. At this point, I am at their mercy!

It’s Monday and I am up at six in the morning. The lights were abruptly turned on for me in the bedroom so that I could wake up and wave good day to my lovely husband. Ha! Joke’s on you buddy, because I was already awake as the alarm clock went off at five in the morning and I woke up with all of the sounds that were coming out of that phone. So I get up and wave goodbye to my love and make my coffee. After I drink my morning coffee I get online and am looking through my insurance to figure out how to get claims, once I think I figure it all out I get to my emails and am returning emails to my lovely people. It’s shortly eight thirty in the morning and my alarm clock goes off…guess it’s time to “get up.” So I get dressed and ready for work. I do this because I never know when I’m going to be on a video conference call. Better to be prepared than to get caught with your PJ’s on. So, I put on a nice sweater and some jeans. This morning I have a bunch of conference calls and they go and on and on…until noon. I don’t have time to do anything else besides having my headphones on and be on these calls. At one point my anxiety gets the best of me and I start multitasking. I’m glad no one can see me. I am doing my other work as I am in all of these meetings. It worked out alright. At one point, I got so into what I was doing that I kinda sorta tuned out from the meeting. But no worries, there weren’t any question or to do’s for me. Need to be more careful, not so good at multitasking. Apparently, I can only do one thing at a time. I have friends and family members that I know who can be listening to a conversation and do their work at the same time. Or listening to two conversations at the same time. So jealous…I wish I could do that! During my lunch hour, I am scheduling and rescheduling doctors appointments. I’ve been able to get a teleconference type of appointment for one of the doctors. Nice! Now we don’t have to go into the doctors office for the appointment. We’ll go online and go through the appointment that way. Love technology! After al of the phone calls, it is back to work.
Today, one of the items that I have requested from our developers has come to fruition. You see, there are a few systems that I work on that takes half an hour for them to “talk” to each other. This means that I post an item to one system and this item then takes half an hour to get to the other system. It’s like waiting on hold at the DMV. Not fun! What do you do in the meantime? Within the half hour that I am waiting I have to multitask. I’ll do another project as I wait for the systems to do their thing. So today, our developers were able to change that and turn half an hour into five minutes. They do magic like that. This new update makes me so very happy!! I no longer have to wait for such a long time to get my work done. No more multitasking then forgetting that I have work from the other systems that I have to get to. Anyway, Go Developer! I thank you for your quick turnaround.
And I did! I found out who worked on this request and then I sent a quick instant message to that developer who worked on the request. As a Business Analyst, I now have a direct line to the developers’ team as I am able to talk directly to them. In the past, I would have to go through one of the Business Analyst or IT. Now, I am that Business Analyst, and I have a that direct line. Sounds better than it is. Trust me. All that means is that I am responsible for stuff…lots of stuff. As they say…with power comes responsibility.
In the evening we have dinner of steak and bowtie pasta. My little one is finishing up her homework and then she has some of Grandma’s sweet pumpkin soup. Delicious! After dinner, I wash the dishes as fast as I can as I still have to take out the garbage and am dreading the outside cold. It is really cold outside and it is going to snow tomorrow in the afternoon. I hope it’s not a lot. Not a big fan of the snow. Sure it’s pretty, but the cleaning of the said snow! What a drag. Makes my shoulders hurt. I’m not used to that type of workout.

Ahh Tuesday…it’s cold out there. The snow is to come down at noon and it is very cold. I get up at around seven in the morning and get ready for my day. I write down my affirmations, get dressed in a comfy sweater and then get right to work. My boss sent me a reply nice and early about my laptop refresh and I was able to get down to the nitty gritty of it. So, I won’t be getting my new laptop for another few weeks. That means that I can take my car to the shop to get it fixed. I need a new muffler, oil changed, new blinker and a few other, hopefully, minor things. The check engine light is on but everything seems to be in tact. We will take it to the car doctor and they can tell me more. Cuz, there’s always more.
During my many morning meetings I am bored to tears as we are testing a new application and the the people testing are taking forever to figure out what needs to be completed. It took two hours to figure it all out. After those two hours, we find out that the systems that are used for this new app are not talking to each other correctly. Well, there’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.

It’s now the afternoon and the snow is coming down. Heard the news report this morning and it sounds as if it’ll only be a dusting. Hooray, no cleaning up. All the pretty none of the work. That is how I like it!

It’s Wednesday and I get up early enough to get on the treadmill this morning. I bought some silicone oil to place on the treadmill so that it’ll run better, and not make so much noise! It has become a very noisy treadmill throughout the year. I’ve learned that treadmills need to be oiled every three months or so. Who knew?! While running on it, I see the advertisement on it stating that it is a quiet treadmill. Isn’t that ironic? lol So I added the silicone to the runner and then I walked on it without turning it on. That portion was as workout itself. Anyway, I took an uphill walk for about half an hour and then I had to go as I still had to shower and attend a meeting at nine. So many meetings this morning. All about the new app that will be launching next week. This app is only for our dealers so I won’t be able to share what it looks like. But, believe me, the site looks pretty. It’s following the amazon.com formula. It’s clean and it looks beautiful. It functions well and I am looking forward to being the Business Analyst for this new application.

It’s Thursday and it’s almost over. I get up at five in the morning and don’t do anything. I was going to go for a run but then decided against it. I was on my social media instead and looking through my emails and through my insurance. Turns out, I can claim some of my medical through one of my insurance companies. At least I think I can. I put the claim through online and we will see if it will take. I then get to “work” earlier than usual, at about eight, and get going as I have a long morning filled with more and more meetings. This new app is taking all of my time. But it’s ok. Everything is running pretty smoothly. There are a couple of things that aren’t working right now. But the team is fixing them and all should be good for launch date.

It’s Friday, woohoo end of the work week. We launched the new application that we’ve been working on all week and it is working beautifully. There was a setback for one of the items, but it is being worked on and hopefully it will be fixed over the weekend. It’s not a show stopper, simply something that is a nice to have. It took us a very long time to test the new app… a few hours in the morning and another few hours in the afternoon. But we eventually got it to work beautifully. This site is behind a user name and password and I will not be able to share it with you. But believe me, it is beautiful. The way the site works is much like the great amazon and it is amazing. The design is wonderful as one of my friends and his team created it and I am very happy with it. The backend however; that is a different story. It has to go through two systems and it takes a few days for orders that are placed to be processed. Apparently this process is correct, however this is what we are working on to update. Hopefully the backend systems will be a little faster. This will be a job for their new Business Analyst…me! Yup, this will be part of my new responsibilities. This new application is in multiple languages, English, Spanish and Portuguese. Right up my alley. At one point the team was testing the site and speaking in Spanish and I understood everything they were talking about. As long as they don’t use slang type of language, I’ll be fine and will work with the team beautifully.
In the afternoon we had a farewell send off to one of my good friends who is leaving the company. I felt compelled to create an online meeting and have as many of his people on the call, as possible to send him off on a good note. I will miss my friend very much. We worked very well together at the office. We are very similar in thought and would laugh, a lot, during our workdays. You will be missed my friend. I wish you all the luck in the world.
After the fun meeting, I went ahead and went to my daughters school and picked up work that her teacher has left for her. There is a math book and other types of work that she will need to get done within the month. So now, I will now need to go to the school every week or so, so that I can pick up her work. I’m so confused because from my understanding, the teacher mentioned they wouldn’t be adding work for pick up. For remote students, they would have everything online. Now I will need to march on over to the school and pick up the work. It’s not a big deal to do this, but I’d rather not. I’d rather the teacher provide the information online. As opposed to having to go ahead and pick it up. Otherwise what is the point of being remote and avoiding the virus? Make up your mind people! Anyway, the way things are going with covid are not good and we will continue to work and learn from home. Things are turning a bit for the worst and getting out of the house is getting even more scary. I’d like to take the time and let you know now thankful I am that my little one can do remote schooling. Thank you Grandma for taking the time to work with my little one on her remote learning. I’m also thankful that my company allows me to work from home at this time. I am truly thankful that my family is all healthy. All of my extended family are all healthy as well.

Until next time!
Stay Safe.
Best,
Isabel

It’s Monday and it’s Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day. The office is closed and I am off and able to do whatever it is that I please. I get up and do my affirmations right in the morning in my notebook. In the afternoon I pass by my parents’ house to see how they are doing. I then head over to the pharmacy to pick up a bunch of scripts for us. I then get home and am determined to clear out the blowup balloons we have outside from Christmas time. The weather is just fine and I am in the mood for cleaning up. We have four balloons, one with Jack Skelington, another is a unicorn, we have a Santa, a Mickey and Minnie and a snowman. Our yard is big and we could probably hold a few more, but four is enough for now. Maybe next year we will get one more for our collection. We then have dinner of chicken with mushrooms and some rice. The day was filled with running around but I am glad I got to see my parents. They are well and healthy and they actually took their medicine today. I had to entice them a little bit, but they took the meds in front of me. My mother made a face, my father did too. They don’t like to take medicine. They think it is bad for their bodies. They would rather go the holistic rout with some sort of tea. But at their age. Holistic just doesn’t work anymore. It did when they were young but now, it is time for the doctor prescribed medications for the heart disease and diabetes.

It’s now Tuesday and I get up at six in the morning as I could eat a horse lol. I get up with at the same time as my husband and have something to eat and make my morning coffee. We get him ready for work and then I get into my bedroom/office and get to my affirmations. I write and write, then I put on the PBS show, Victoria and as I write, I watch a few episodes of the show.

At eight or so I log on to my work email and start looking through to my day. I have a lot of meetings and I need to get “dressed” for work. One of the meetings may be on camera and I must look presentable. No PJs. Maybe a nice sweater and a pair of leggings or jeans.
My work day flies by with all of the meetings and work that needs to get done. In the evening we have dinner and help the little one with her homework and then we go out for a drive for a little bit. Just to get out of the house. I notice some people continue to have their Christmas lights on. We still have the lights on the house but I am planning on taking them down over the weekend. If the weather permits of course.

It’s Wednesday and it is snowing on Long Island. I hope it’s only a dusting. Otherwise, I will need to get out there and shovel. I am not a fan of the shovel. Snow, sure, bring it on. Cleaning it up…no way.
Today is another busy day at work with all of the meetings that I continue to have.
I’ve been able to contact my human resources department and finally update my email address from my maiden name to my married name. I should have gotten it done from the start, but I didn’t want to cause any waves at my new job because they had the incorrect last name. Well, now that I am in a new department, I decided it was time to make the updates to my email and instant messaging systems. It took a few weeks and a few departments to get it done. But it should all be resolved by tomorrow. That’s what the team says. We will see. I’m not worried, it’s been like this for many years. Another few days isn’t going to be an issue for me.
During my lunch hour, I send an email to my cousin in Portugal. I’ve mentioned to her that I have a new Gmail account and we have been communicating via that email address for a while. Gmail fixes my words in Portuguese. There are many letters with accents and Gmail fixes them. It’s a great tool. I highly recommend. Don’t know if it fixes other languages, but it should, if it fixes mine. So I let her know about her Godparents, my parents, and how they are doing. She’s tried to contact them via telephone but they just simply don’t answer. I told her not to worry as they don’t answer me either. They have a cell phone and they always forget to charge it. It’s not ideal for old people, but it works better due to all of the scam phone calls everyone keeps on getting. When they had a landline, they received a phone call from someone who wanted money. He was threatening them that they would go to their house to get it. It’s crazy how some people are out there just to fool the elderly. The latest phone scam that we keep on getting is regarding a car’s extended warrantee. My car is way passed that and there is no way there is an extended warrantee for a 10 year old Honda Civic. But for those who have newer cars, they could potentially get scammed. It’s a crazy world out there.
It’s now the afternoon and there is only a dusting of snow. Thank goodness. All of the pretty without the cleaning. Next week I will need to buck up and go into the office as I have to get a new laptop. Mine has to go back in and I will be getting a fresh new one. In the evening I continue to work away as there is much to do.

It’s Thursday and I woke up hungry again. So at five in the morning, there I go and have my breakfast. I then say my, see you laters’ to my husband, as he is getting ready for work and I go into my bedroom/office and am looking through my social media for positive vibes. I write some of them down in my journal. As for the workday, it went nice and smoothly. I’ve taken care of all that I could and by four I hit a wall and that was that. I listened to a webinar and was learning about how IT and Marketing mend together. Nothing exciting today.

It’s Friday and its the same old routine. Get up at eight thirty. Make coffee, drink coffee. Go to meetings starting right at nine and then more meetings throughout the morning and early afternoon. Took a small break for lunch and then back to the grind. Busy, busy.

In the afternoon I had a break between meetings and did my affirmation feel goods. My heart always feels happy after my affirmations are completed in my journal. In the evening I play with my little one and her toys. She wants to make videos with her and her toys and she makes a few of them and then she shares them with Grandma and Daddy. They are very cute. As she is playing along with technology, I am falling asleep at the kitchen table. It’s nine in the evening after all and that time is now midnight for me. As soon as she is satisfied with her videos, I say my goodnights and go to bed.

Until Next time.
Stay safe!
Best,
Isabel

It’s Monday and I took off from work today. I got up at the same time as if I had to go to work but then looked through my social media for a little while as I was in bed. I made my morning coffee as my little one was online with her teacher. I then had the urge to go for a run. I got on the treadmill and ran for about half an hour. I then get ready for my day as I have a doctors appointment later today. I have to see a neurologist as my brain and memory are a mess. After I had my upper respiratory distress syndrome, URDS, and was in a coma, my memory has been faulty. This is one of the reasons why I blog. So I can look back and read through my memories. Also for my little one. So she can see the daily goings on of our life during this covid season. Anyway, while I was doing my exercise I was watching Frozen II. Partially watching, it was on in the background. Whatever I watched, it was cute! I recommend it.

Over the weekend, I finished putting all of the Christmas items away. My husband helped to put away the tree as it is heavy and really tall. My mother in law helped with putting the large box in the basement. Teamwork! All that is left are the blowup dolls outside and the lights on the house. Last year we got lazy and left them on all year long. This year, I want to get them down. I will need to get up on that ladder and get them down myself. I would like some company, but everyone is very busy and they probably won’t be able to keep be with me booo! lol
I’ve been looking through Instagram and looking at affirmations and feel good vibes. I write a bunch of things down on my journal and am feeling the feels inside. All the while, my little one is learning how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in music class. It’s cute. I wish she had the instruments needed for playing. I remember at school we started with the recorder. What a terrible instrument. It is loud and high pitched, I hope she doesn’t have to go through learning the recorder and goes right to piano. I’d rather hear piano being played badly than any other instrument. But we will see what she likes to play. If she even likes to play anything.
In the evening I get to the doctors office early. I get there about half hour before the appointment and wait in the parking lot. I then go in and they tell me I am an hour early. Son of a gun, I must have written down the wrong time on my calendar. This is why I need to see the neurologist in the first place. I forget things.
I get back home way after five and everyone is waiting for me to eat dinner. I of course am thankful for this. Of course I don’t say it. Idiot! I should tell people more often that I am thankful for what they do for me. Anyway, I just go ahead, take a shower to get rid of all of the outside from me and then go and have dinner with my family.
Before I forget, yesterday we had Popeyes for dinner. We had us some down south chicken and my husband also ordered beignets from the fast food restaurant. We ate all of them. Oh my! They are soooo good! I can only imagine what they taste like if we ever go visit New Orleans. So today, my awesome husband went back to the restaurant and ordered us another dozen beignets for dinner tonight. I have them with tea after dinner. What I didn’t realize is that they have chocolate on the inside. I thought they were simply fried dough. Like zeppoles. But these have dark chocolate on the inside and powdered sugar on the outside. Plus they are fried dough. Mmm Mmm! I’ll have another. Sorry belly, you’ll have to do some more sit-ups tomorrow. But tonight; we feast.

It’s Tuesday and I wake up in a foul mood. I had a bad dream about the old days and it just annoyed me. I wish there were some of those fried beignets available. I’ll eat them cold…I don’t mind. I then did my affirmations and I truly felt better. I got up earlier than my alarm clock and wrote on my journal including my affirmations, for about an hour. Then back to work at nine in the morning. The day flew by as I had to catch up from the day before since I was out of the office. It’s nice to be busy. Busy is really good, it keeps my mind out of dumb things and keeps me focused. Also, as we say at my job…”job security.”
In the evening we worked with my little one to help her make her book for school. This week we are doing a “how to” book on how to set the table. First you put down the place mats, then the plates after that the silverware, etc. She then has to do drawings of everything and explain everything in this so called book. I also look for pictures of these things online so we can have drawings as well as photos. I don’t remember having to do such things when I was in grade school. But hey, these kids are learning a lot of things as little ones. After homework, my little on was hungry, so Grandma made her a PB and J sandwich. She ate it all with some milk as I had a couple of pieces of chocolate. Shortly after that to bed we go. I wasn’t sleepy so I was looking through my apps to see if I could watch something to my pleasing. In amazon prime, I noticed they have PBS shows. So I started to watch the period piece Victoria. It’s about queen Victoria and it starts when her uncle passed away and Victoria became queen of England at the ripe old age of eighteen. I love period pieces and this one is no exception. I watch two and a half episodes when sleep takes over. I will watch more tomorrow.

It’s Wednesday and I started off my day nice and early and wrote on my journal to get my day started off well. I have many meetings today and will be very busy.
Very busy indeed! It was meeting on top of meeting. And a lot of marketing work.
At the end of the day, I got to get out for a little bit. I had to go to the pharmacy to pick up my scripts. Hey it’s somewhere, just to get out of the house. Covid has kept us cooped up in the house and we barely get out. A run to the pharmacy is like taking a nice little vacation. Yes, it’s sad. I hope covid goes away soon. Or a vaccine is available. Correction, a good vaccine is available. I know some people, health care workers, who have gotten the vaccine already. They are all fine. At least they seem fine. I’ve only seen them on my social media apps not in real life. Everything is always fine online.

It’s Thursday and guess what…more meetings. The day is filled with them and I am super busy. I have bills to pay during my lunch hour and then it’s back to meetings. At the end of the day we help our little one with her “How to set the table” book for school. It’s almost done. They are doing these how to books almost every week. We are starting to run out of ideas of what to do next.

It’s Friday and another busy day. Meetings all morning and some more in the afternoon. I receive a bunch of things to do as the office is closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. day. Everyone wants in on the mad dash to the sales. My marketing work is keeping me very busy today. The rest of the work day is smooth sailing. A lot of work, but smooth. At least for me. As for the team, it was another story. Everyone was typing madly on instant messaging for email issues we’ve been having for a week. The developers, Business Analysts, managers, everyone was on this instant message system going back and forth. All trying to figure out why something wasn’t working. I read the messages but did not get involved until the very end. I put in my two cents and I helped the situation for future emails. I hope this was actually helpful and not confusing. We will see next week.

Until next time.
Best,
Isabel

This morning we got up early and had a great conversation. We talked about our little one and how well she is doing in school. Meanwhile, I turned on the TV and put on a cooking show. My husband must have gotten inspired as he got up and started cooking up a storm. He started with bacon on the stove. Then I got the potatoes and he started to peel them.

After the bacon is all done. We look through the fridge and find mushrooms, thyme and onions. He chops them all up and adds them to the pan. It cooks and cooks and the scents coming out of the kitchen are phenomenal.

The potatoes chopped and boiled and then added to the skillet to make home made potato hash browns that we usually get from the deli or bagel store. He wanted to go get breakfast from the deli, but I thought it would be a better idea if we made something at home.
He chops up some of the bacon and adds it to the skillet. These hash browns are going to be delicious.

Meanwhile, he also makes scrambled eggs and we toast english muffins in the toaster oven. The skillet is on the table along with coffee and we are ready to eat.

Yummm

Until next time.
Stay Safe!
Best,
Isabel