This week we’ve been on the dyi path at the house. I’ve found a jewelry company that I love. I’ve finally meet with my mentor. I’ve met with my mentee. It’s the circle of life. As for work there are meetings and more meetings.

Over the weekend, we took care of the piping in the house. The picture is the evidence of my #wfh by way of fixing the house. We’ve had to clear out a little bit of the cement wall and the cement fell from the wall and scratched my both of my arms. This was the worst of it. Considering what had to be done and how clumsy I can be. I am surprised it’s not worst. This is what you get when you DIY at your own place.

The basement flooded bit and we’ve had to place the dehumidifier in the middle of the basement to pick up all of that water.
On Sunday, my husband goes to the grocery store and picks up all of the groceries that we need. He also goes to the hardware store and gets the rest of the items needed for the piping in the basement. We have a water pump that burned out and we need to replace it. Not fun, but it has to be done. The water pump was filled with muck and water and I had to bring the water bucket from the basement and dump it all out outside. It is heavy and it smells terrible. I’m getting a crazy workout today. From learning to close my nose to the awful smells to the heavy water bucket. It is a crazy Sunday. As we take a break I get on my laptop and am listening to Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer. I’m not a scrum master but I am in the Scrum meetings every day for work. This is where the developers let us business analysts know what they are up to on the tickets that we have created. So I am learning more and more about it. Who knows what the future may bring. I may have to do more work when it comes to these meetings and I will need to know how everything works when it comes to scrum.

It’s Monday and I am up way before the roosters. I needed to use the bathroom at about five in the morning. After that I got back to bed but just couldn’t sleep. I kept on thinking about stupid things that happened to me when I was a teenager. Things that happened at school, why I didn’t date that one guy. The reason, by the way, was because I wasn’t popular enough. He saw how many friends I did not have and changed his mind on going out with me. I was upset back then. But looking back, I’m glad it didn’t happen. He was looking to get his popular status up and wouldn’t necessarily like me for me. So F*ck him. Now I’m angry and can’t sleep lol. Don’t know why things like this bring back so many feelings. But it’s as if I was still right there in that moment. Rotten brain. So I get up and my husband is still home and having his breakfast. My mother in law is up too. It’s a party. A quiet party, we don’t want to wake up the little one. I put my coffee pot on as I am hungry and ready for breakfast. Breakfast is a warm piece of home baked fresh bread. My husband makes makes it every night for us! I get out all of the ingredients for him and he puts them in the bread maker. He is the scientist. We all eat it in the morning. This morning, the kitchen smells fantastic, fresh bread and coffee. It’s my favorite meal of the day and I am ready to feast.
My husband goes to work and I finish eating, then clean up the dishes and the mess that I have made with the bread crumbs. Then quietly head over to my bedroom to start my day. I make the bed and slather on my lotions and potions on my skin. From working on the plumbing over the weekend, I’ve gotten a whole lot of blemishes on my skin. Clogged pores from all of the dust and dirt from the weekends shenanigans of DIY. After my beauty routine of a bunch of layers of lotions, oils and creams, I get dressed and get online. I am looking for ideas on gifts for the holidays. I am looking at TJMaxx and Marshalls for ideas. I’ve gotten gift cards for those stores and this is the perfect time to think about using them. They have a bunch of new arrivals that I really like. I may just get something for myself and give it to my husband to “surprise” me on Christmas day. And, I may just be surprised. I’ll probably forget what I bought.
Then I look on instagram and see Atrio. OMG I’m in love. The jewelry is made from tiles from the 1500s. I love everything they make. I may just get myself a treat.

I’m a sucker for old tiles. I used to live next to a tile factory. They used to throw out a bunch of tiles and I used to go pick them up and use them as plates and other things for my toys. Now this company makes jewelry out of them. Love it!!
As for work, I am doing “how to” documents in order for others to be able to do work on the sites that I work on. This take a lot of time to take care of. It took me over an hour to document something that takes me twenty minutes to do. I am documenting everything step by step, screen shot by screen shot. Hopefully the user will be able to figure it out without me showing them what to do.

It’s Tuesday and at work I continue to do the how tos and work is piling up. Today we’ve had a meeting regarding our mentors at work. I’ve learned that I have a new mentor that my company has hooked me up with. I will be speaking with him later this week and we will see what we have to offer each other. In the evening, the family has gone out and I am sitting in my bedroom/office working away.

It’s Wednesday, I did not want to get out of bed this morning. I had a really hard time falling asleep. I kept on waking up. Every sound would jolt me awake. I was tired as I worked the night away last night. But I kept on thinking about old things, ruminating again, and I just couldn’t sleep. I kept on having dreams about old boyfriends and kept on waking up in order to move on from those dreams. I don’t wanna think about old boyfriends. What for?! They are not going to do any good to my life. Talking to myself “Quit thinking about these people Isabel!”
It took me a while to get going in the morning. I did get my breakfast in since my belly was yelling at me to eat. But then I got slow again. I did get dressed into my jeans and t-shirt, no socks today, it’s too warm. It’s been in the 70s and it’s been unseasonably warm for November in Long Island. The leaves are falling off the trees but its feeling like Spring. The bed doesn’t get made until noon. I’ve had my coffee but it didn’t kick in. It winds up never kicking in today. Anyway, work goes on. And it keeps going until about eight thirty and beyond. So much to do, I’m not sure my boss is aware of how much work I put into this company. I have a meeting with my boss soon and I may just send a list of all of the work that I do.

It’s Thursday and I am beat. Been working to the bone this week and am mentally done. Today we had a Mentor meeting to run over our presentation of “A day in the life of the mentor.” We all have a lot to say and a lot of advise for our mentees. It was a long meeting and through the middle of it, I had to excuse myself and go to the bathroom. When I have to make a speech, I need to drink lots of water so I can speak well without my throat going dry. This meeting was a two hour meeting and it went over. Towards the end, I had to go as I had another meeting with the developing team.
The rest of the day was continued to be filled with meetings. I didn’t get to see my family until about six o’clock in the evening. That’s when we had dinner. Dinner was meatballs with pasta. Yummy! After dinner, I finally get to take a shower. I wanted to take a shower this morning but woke up late. Then I had planned to take my shower during my lunch hour. I had so many meetings that were during the afternoon that I did not have any time to shower nor have lunch. This has been happening way too many times during my work week. No lunch, no time to take a break. It’s been all about working and meetings. I will need to set up meetings with myself. Between this time and this time, it is for me have lunch or time to actually do my marketing work.

It’s Friday and I rolled out of bed fifteen minutes before I had to be online at work. I said to myself forget about breakfast and logged on right away, pjs and all, and started looking through my email right away. Shortly after, my tummy was rumbling. So after I took care of answering important emails I went ahead and made myself some breakfast. I had a nice cup of coffee and a cinnamon raisin bagel, delicious! Right after, I had my morning, scrum, meeting with the developers. Finding out what they are up to on projects. Then I had a nice half hour break from meetings where I got to post a couple of items on one of my sites. After that I had my weekly one on one with my boss and it all went well. I mentioned to her that I have a lot of work and she told me that it would be ok to pushback if necessary. I’ve had a couple of instances where there is a request to name something one way and then the next day a request to name the same item a different way. It’s a lot of back and forth. But this has been a norm for my type of work…Create this, update that. Update that again, and then again. This was my life and now I can say NO Way!! This makes me very happy that my boss is ok with doing this. This will take a lot of items off my plate. The other thing my boss wants me to do is to provide list of all of the items that I take care of. I have a lot of lists and my boss wants all of them. I am more than happy to share. And she wants to share them with upper management to show them how much work I do. This makes me happy to know that my boss thinks I do a lot of work. At one point I was thinking that I wasn’t doing enough work for the team. This talk made gave me all sorts of the good feels. It looks like I am doing good at my job. Today is Friday the 13th and I’ve gotten good news.
After this meeting I have a two hour meeting with all of the mentors in my company. Today is shadow day and we are showing our mentees a day in the life with powerpoint presentations of the workers in my company via microsoft teams, its like zoom but microsoft. We all have a lot to say and a lot of advise to give. Like yesterday’s runthrough, I again had to step out and use the facilities. I probably should have gone before but hey, I had a meeting.

After this meeting, here comes another planning meeting. My team in IT are going to have a meeting with our upper management and we are planning what we will talk to them about. This time we are going to have a fun meeting. Maybe we will do jeopardy questions with upper management. We’re meeting again next week to go over this. We have some time to think about what we are going to do. Maybe a game of true or false questions. Like, I have five children; True or False? Or I’m African America; True or False? Something fun that will stump upper management.
After this fun meeting I had yet, another meeting. This time with my mentor. We introduced each other and I learned that my mentor will be able to help me on my managerial path at my company. In the past I was really looking forward to a management position. Now that I am in IT, I’m not so sure I want to manage people. Of course everyone is different and have different personalities but my people in IT are very different than the personalities I am used to. This team is more of quick questions and answers. No nonsense type of people and more fast passed. Not sure I want to go that direction at this point. But we will see what kind of direction the new year takes me.
Hopefully the new year will be better for everyone including my company.

Until next time
Stay safe
-Isabel

Over the weekend was Halloween and my little one had save trick or treating from home. We gathered a bunch of candy, some toys and some Pokémon cards that she likes. We then got some trick or treat bags and filled them up with all of these fun things. I then, hid them around the house for her to find. Like an Easter egg hunt, but with a Halloween theme. It wasn’t ideal but it was the best we could do during the circumstances of covid in the air.

My little one dressed up as a Pokémon, Charizard. She loves to play the game and wanted to dress up as one of the characters this year. We usually go over to our cousins house for trick or treating, but year of covid. We skipped. We miss our cousins very much, but during covid season, we will stay safely at home. The day ended with us watching some spooky movies on tv. It was a great day and the little one loved to get all of her treats. And that is all that matters to me.

On Sunday, we received some crap news that some of my mother’s properties located Portugal are going to court for lack of payment. Don’t get me wrong, the properties, from what I understand are little pieces that have been divided a lot throughout the years. It may just be a small little piece that still belongs to her siblings as well. It’s really crummy because we are not there and I have no idea about the laws over there and my parents will not allow us children to take care of their itms. They want complete an utter control. Even at the ages of 82 they will not give up and let their adult children take over or even have a say. At least, help them even. I’ve tried to have a conversation with them in order to help us adult kids help them, and they always change the subject. They used to have someone help out with all of the bills, but that person is now in their 90s and they can no help any longer. Nor does he want to. And then my father did something else, I think he gave permission for his big brother to help with the paying bills, but his brother is also in his mid 80s and he can not do anything either. So here we are, as children, we are useless. We can not touch any of their assets, because they will not allow us. We can not pay any of the bills because we don’t have the assets needed. It’s a cluster. I’ve tried to figure out what is going on and I am more confused than ever. We will probably need a lawyer to take care of their assets. From my understanding, most of the assets they have are really worthless. But it’s a sad moment to know that my parents may loose everything they’ve worked so hard for to the government because a few euros weren’t paid at the right time to the right place. Thinking about it, who knows, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Having an inheritance and dividing it between a bunch of people is a pain in the behind. We will most likely need to lawyer up and I have no knowledge of what is going on. I barely know what’s going on in my own personal life, now I have to figure out what my parents want. Which of course they do not know what they want, either. At this age, I think, they should have gotten it together by now, but not my people. They still do not know what they want to do with their inheritance. They still need to “think about it.” People, you’ve have over 80 years to figure it out. Come on, help me help you. Oh well, there is nothing much that we can do. It is their inheritance and us kids can only make decisions when it becomes our inheritance. Until then, there isn’t much we can do. We can have a conversation with stubborn 80 or so year olds but, all they want to talk about is how much everything hurts them and how everyone is against them. Are your people like that too? I hope not. Being this stubborn must be exhausting.

It’s Monday and during the day I’ve been working on product launch stuff. We keep on launching products and more products. This keeps me busy, busy. I work until about five thirty. Then go outside and help out my husband as he is digging up a trench to find the pipes from the house that go to the cesspool. He is thinking of replacing all of the 50 year old piping and I am here to help. I get out a large light from the basement and light up his way. While he is digging up the dirt, I am making sure my little one doesn’t get herself into trouble. It is cold outside and we are all bundled up. Shortly after this, we come inside and have dinner. I wash the dishes inside a bucket so not to get water to go down the drain. The pipes have clogged up somehow and there is no need to add more water to the system. So, I rinse off the dishes. Then toss out the water. I then soap up all of the dishes, then rinse them into the bucket. After I’m done, I have a large amount of water in the bucket that I must dump outside. It’s a pain in the behind, that’s what it is. Today, we will all need to take quick showers as to not fill up the tank with water. Good thing we’re taking care of this now that it’s still warmish. We do not want to do this while its freezing outside. Hopefully it’ll be warmer this week so we can take care of all of the piping and get this settled.
After dinner, I get back to working for the man. I have the launches to take care of. Plus, I need to take care of all of the marketing content that needs to be added to the sites. It doesn’t end.

It’s Tuesday and I am working hard to get ready for tomorrow’s product launches. This morning, I’ve woken up very early, since I couldn’t sleep anymore and got a lot of work done. I then taken my time to eat my breakfast. A pumpkin spice bagel and some coffee. Then I do my beauty routine of lotion, then beauty oil and then a moisturizer. This takes a while to do as I’ve been advised by Rachel Zoe, stylist to the stars, to apply beauty lotion, wait for about 15 minutes than beauty oil, another 15 minutes for the skin to absorb. Then moisturizer on top of all of that after another 15 minutes or so. After that, is when one puts on makeup. I’ve passing on the makeup. I’ve been passing on it since March or covid season. After all of this work on my skin, I get onto the laptop and get to work.
I work and work and work until five on the dot. My brain is tired and am in the need of a mental break. My husband is outside taking care of the cesspool disaster. Looks like some roots got into the piping and now there is a leak on the piping. This is why the main line in the house wasn’t working properly. This is what happens when you have a house that is over 60 years old. It has good bones, but the pipes and other items need replacing eventually. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Meanwhile, our dishwasher continues to not work and we will most likely need to replace it with a new one. After 10 years or so, everything is going to pieces and needs to be fixed or replaced. Nothing lasts anymore. As soon as the appliance’s warrantee is up, so goes the machine. They aren’t even that cheap. Appliances are expensive and they are not made to last. Everything needs replacing after a while. Even the better brands have to be replaced after a while. We have LG brands and the warrantee is up, as is the machine. Guess the company needs to make their money somehow. And that somehow is to make crappy things that won’t last. A homeowner has to purchase new every few years or spend another fortune to fix. It’s all a scam lol.

It’s Wednesday and I am again up early so I can launch my products on the extranest site. If you’re interested, we launched a couple of EOS RF lenses and a PRO printer. Some accessories too like inks and lens hood were launched as well. To do this take a lot of work and coordination with the marketing team, product control team, Corporate Communication team, Administrative team and so on. Lots of email communication going on. By noon I am tired and ready for a break. But nope, I have a meeting instead. We talk about how the site I work on works and if it can be optimized to do more. I don’t have all of the answers, I must inquire my upper management and the administration group to see if the site can handle the requests. Here’s to another project! This is a good thing though, it will keep me busy and hopefully bring more functionality to a site that our Partners are used to utilizing. By the end of the day I am mentally drained. But I must go on. There is pipping work that needs to be done.

It’s Thursday and I am not up to working. I had a terrible dream where I was throwing things at people at the dinner table during a meal. I hope it’s not foreshadowing Thanksgiving this year. Not only does this dream make me grumpy, but we were up until midnight last night. We were trying to figure out how to do the plumbing in the basement. I felt like we were playing legos when trying to figure out how to put the pieces of pipe together. Usually legos are fun, but this time around; not so much. My brain was shot, so my husband was doing all of the thinking.
As for work, it is a light day. We are getting ready for the holidays and I am cleaning up the sites to ensure all looks good and everything works the way that it should. I’ve had lots of planning meetings and lots of other meetings this morning and have a lot more to go in the afternoon. A couple of them are knowledge transfer types as I will be out of the office for a little while on vacation and need to transfer my expertise with others. My coworker, wants nothing to do with my marketing work. She is does not want to do any of the work that I am showing her to do. As far as she is concerned, all will be pushed back to the team and wait until I come back to the office. Well, that’s too bad my friend, you may need to get some of this work done while I am away.
During my downtime, I look for work pants for my husband. They are very hard to come by. He is a big guy and likes the stretch type of pant that he can move in while working. The regular working pants are like jeans, nice and stiff. Not ideal for him. So I’m looking at a bunch of stores online and looking for ones that we’ve purchased in the past. Of course the ones that he likes are out of stock. So I am looking for similar ones that aren’t going to cost a small fortune. I’ve tried Amazon, even they don’t have what we are looking for. I eventually find a pair at good old walmart. They are described as the stretch type and look like they are nice and light. They are in the hikers section. Hopefully these will do.

It’s Friday and TGIF!! I’d really like to get some more sleep in the morning. Last night we were again at it with the piping for the house. We’ve updated all the majority of the piping outside. My husband took out all of the old pipes and replaced them with new ones and the little one and I were his helpers. We were outside with the lights on for a long time. We get a bunch done and then go in and have dinner. Yay, we can finally shower and use the sink to wash dishes. No more bucket. Everyone takes a shower except for me. It is getting late and I need to get my beauty sleep. I’ll take my shower tomorrow. Turs out, I overslept and got up just in time to get to my wfh laptop. I take my shower during my lunch hour instead. I’ve work comfy pjs until then and then I get dressed and presentable for work.

This afternoon I have a class and am not sure if we will be on camera or not. Anyway, I am ready. The course is on Personal Branding. It is a three hour long course, hopefully I will learn something from this course that will help me along in my career. I am looking to advance in my career at my current employer and taking these sort of courses will hopefully help me out. I find out that my personal brand is “Isabel uses her knowledge and creativity to empower herself and others.” I’ve learned that speaking up is a good thing. In my past home life, I’ve always been told that I should be seen and not heard, especially as a child. Now as an adult I continue to have that information ingrained in me and it is something that I need to be removed from my brain.
After the course I have a meeting where I am showing my team one of the sites that I work on. I show the team how I get the work done. But don’t have the answers when I am asked why things are done the way they are. The site is very pretty but the backend is very convoluted. I have to add html to a page that should not need html added to it. If anyone is to work on these pages, they need know how to do html as well as work on a content management system. When I am away in a couple of week there may be something that needs updating and I don’t think the person who is covering for me knows exactly what to do. I have created a how to page but it’s not easy to describe exactly what needs to be done. Job security for me, I suppose.
I end the day at five and have dinner. We then get out and go to the hardware store. We need more pipes to do the pipping over the weekend. While my husband is in the store, my daughter is taking a nap in the back seat of the car. What a great idea, I think. And I take a little nap as we wait for him. He took a little while longer than anticipated as bought a ton of extra thing we may or may not need for the set up. After the hardware store we get to play PokémonGo. We will need all day on Saturday to get the plumbing done. Might as well play a little bit while we are out.

It’s Saturday and we get up earlyish. It’s eight thirty and we are having our morning coffee. We will begin our work shortly after breakfast. The little one is still sleeping and we do not want to wake her. We’re going to have to make wholes in the walls and make a whole ton of noise. Meanwhile, we make bacon for breakfast. My husband has a bagel with cream cheese and bacon. We talk about how he is not a fan of lox. I like lox on my bagel. I’ve had it before and it wasn’t too bad. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure if it was actually lox or if it was just plain old salmon. Not smoked, just plain. I’ll have to go to the bagel store one of these days and ask for it. Really see if I like it. It’s funny, but I’ve worked in a bagel store when I was a teenager and I never tried it when I was there. I tried everything else, but the lox was not appetizing to me at that time.
After breakfast we get working on removing the old pipes from the basement. These are about sixty years old and are really tight in there. They have to be removed using a machine. This machine makes a ton of sparks and smoke as it’s cutting the old pipes. We are surprised the fire alarm doesn’t go off. Some of the piping comes off but other pieces are really stuck in there. They are being hammered out and being broken into little pieces. This is going to be a messy clean up. And of course the clean up crew is me and my two little hands. This is going to suck! lol
Later in the day, as we are working, we learn that ex vice president Joe Biden has become the President Elect and will be the 46th President of the United States. My congratulations to him and his team. My Democrat friends are very happy today. As for my Republican friends, not so much. There is a lot of debate on my social media sites. All in all, I wish the future becomes brighter for everyone no matter who the winner has become or what party you root for.
By five we have done all we can do for the day. We need to go back to the hardware store to return all of the items that were not used and to purchase more items that are needed to complete the job.
I stay home so I can rest and try on my new jeans that came in the mail. One pair of jeans fits just right, the other not so much. That pair will be going back to where it came from. And there is the pair of shorts that I got on sale at Old Navy. These fit right too and will be going right to the basket with gifts for Christmas. It’s almost that most wonderful time of year. And I am getting ready.

Until next time
Stay safe!
-Isabel

It’s Monday again and I’ve woken up ready for the work week. However, I stayed in bed until the last possible minute before nine this morning. I started my day in my comfortable pjs. I eventually changed into my work clothes and was ready for the day. But prior to that, I was in my comfortable wear. During my lunch hour I made my bed and had my breakfast. I’ve taken only a few minutes for lunch as there were meetings to be had and lots of work to do.
I’ve been doing some holiday shopping. For now it’s for myself so the family doesn’t need to worry about getting me anything later on. I’m in the need of a new pair of jeans as the the ones that I currently have are either too tight or too loose. Need new ones to fit me right. So, I’ve been shopping at Banana Republic, the Gap and Old Navy. Looking for sales. And for the items that fit me that are actually on sale or even better; clearance. I’ve found a few at the Gap, but then I couldn’t find my Gap credit card. I think I gave it to my husband the other day so he could get some clothes for my little one. I’ve asked him about it and he says he knows nothing about that card. I think he lies lol. He just just doesn’t want me to spend any money. We’ve been saving up so we could do some projects around the house and he doesn’t see any need for me to be buying any clothing at this point. I have plenty of pairs of pants for work and do not need anymore! But I do need jeans to work from home. The ones I have look terrible. Maybe TJMaxx has some. I have gift cards for the store that I haven’t used and maybe I can get these for zero dollars.
Anyway, work was filled with well, work. All day, I’ve been playing tennis with the developers and the business teams. The business asks questions and I ask the developers questions in return. I test on my end, things don’t work. Then I get to talk to the business and developers all over again. Table tennis maybe, as it was all a little fast. We kept on emailing each other at the same time with our findings or answers to the questions asked previously. Email has become snail mail over here. I will need to go through our instant messaging system in order to speak to people in real time. This is a little too crazy for me still. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, eventually, but for now, I’m used to working at a slower pace in order to get things done. I’m used to working with systems that take half an hour to talk to each other. I post the content and then, only half an hour later can I get some of the work done. Since, I’ve been talking to developers and business all day long, I haven’t had time to do any of my marketing work. So here I am, way after five o’clock posting content to our extranet sites. I will eventually have dinner, maybe.
Tonight’s dinner is one of my husband’s favorite. Chicken hearts and livers. Not my favorite. Even the smell of these types of pieces of meat make me dizzy. Not a fan at all. Instead, I had leftover skirt steak with black beans.

It’s Tuesday, and again, I am risking it by getting up as close to nine as possible. I have been having trouble falling asleep and then in the morning, I am paying for it. I’m all sorts of groggy and not necessarily ready for work. Today, I had a bunch of meetings in the morning and then one that I was leading. This was actually a good one. I was talking to a team about something that is near and dear to my heart. My marketing sites. Kidding, but I do know the sites frontwards and backwards. I went over what they look like and how they function. I may even have gotten a project out of them. If there is a project, it will be a fairly large one. As all of the business groups would need to agree on the updates for the site. If this happens, it will be an interesting thing for me to do. Of course I will be all sorts of scared and also happy as this would be something that we’ve wanted on one of the sites for a long time. Anyway, like everything else in business, this may take a very long time to accomplish.

It’s Wednesday and I get up an hour earlier than my usual time. I take my time getting my coffee and breakfast. Lately, I’ve been running around so much in the mornings that it’s nice to finally take my time. The rest of the day was all about meetings. I’ve had a class for project management and had to leave it because I had another meeting at the same time. This meeting was with the boss, so forget the course and meeting instead. After all of the meetings and way after five, this is when I get my marketing work done. It’s becoming a norm for working after five. I don’t like it at all. But, during covid season, it’s kind of expected. I’ve been receiving emails from my colleagues at seven or even nine o’clock at night. This means I’m not the only one working way passed quitting time. This is what you get when you work salary not hourly. It’s ok, it’ll pay off in the end… Am I right?!

Thursday was a blur. Lots of work. Creating standard operating procedures, SOPs, for my colleagues and these take a long time to create. Sharing knowledge with co-workers is a lot of work. And, this is only what’s on paper. Next, we will need to meet and go over that paperwork plus do a screen share and show my co-worker how to actually do the work. After that, we’ll probably need to meet again so my co-worker can do the work and I’ll watch to make sure it’s all done correctly. I’ve already done this multiple times, so it’s not a big deal, but it is a lot of work. Last time I did knowledge sharing, it took about a month. Hopefully this time around it won’t take that long. We don’t necessarily have the time.

It’s Friday and it’s chilly in the house. It’s nice to be under the blanket. But nevertheless, I must get up and get to work. But not until a quarter to nine. Yesterday, I was up and working until nine at night, so today, I am not getting up until right before I have to log in. Today was filled with more standard operating procedure work. I’ve started the long dreaded product launch SOP. It will take many days to complete this one. This takes a long time to do and will take a long time to teach as well. But we will get there. Tomorrow is Halloween and we are doing save trick or treating from home. We’ve gotten little Halloween bags, some treats, some toys and some other trinkets for the little one. I will be hiding the bags around the house and my little one will be going tick or treating in the living areas of the house. We’re still hunkering down from covid and will not be going around town like we usually do. Every year we’d go to our cousin’s house and go around their neighborhood to get candy. This year, we are opting out and staying home. Safer that way. We will be missing our cousins this year. Hopefully this will be a fun day for the little one.

Until next time
Stay safe!
Best,
Isabel

2020 keeps on happening. Including my brain take over.
Don’t want to read my blog. Check out my video below or read it whatever you want.

Over the weekend, my depression really kicked in. I’ve been thinking and thinking over and over, if I should share this information or not but, I’ve gotten to the conclusion that if I don’t share, it’ll be in my brain and never come out. So here goes. I’ve been taking medicine for depression for a long time. It became really bad after giving birth to my daughter. My postpartum was filled with depression and anxiety and thoughts of fear and quite frankly suicide. It was awful. I struggled a lot, but continued to fight for my daughter. But, this is a story for another blog.
As for the medicine; sometimes, it just doesn’t work. I’ve been upset about everything and everything upsets me. Not being able to figure out something from work really gets me worked up and I keep on ruminating on how dumb I feel when I can’t figure something out. This something is probably so simple, that I’m having trouble getting through the hump of my depression. My husband has tried to be helpful as has my mother in law. But my brain just can not kick it out of the way. Anyone else have that issue? When you’ve got something in your head, that is probably going to sabotage your day, but your brain just can’t get over it? This is how I’m feeling over the weekend.
I’ve felt a little like this during the week as well. Keeping busy with work helps to keep me in focused mode and not think about my depression. Luckily, this will most likely pass. I’ve had this feeling in the past and then it goes away. But unfortunately, in about a month or so, it comes back again. It’s seriously annoying at times, and during this time of depression, I’m just not sure what to do with myself.
When I feel all sorts of down, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to go for a walk or run, I barely want to eat. Until about 5PM rolls around and my system can’t take it anymore and I need to get something in my belly before I pass out. Anyway, I don’t know how I can kick this awful feeling.
One thing that I do to get my mind out of my own head is to color an adult coloring book. I got this one for Christmas last year and I’ve been coloring it on days that I feel like this. It does not make me feel better, but it does keep my mind distracted from, well, stupid thoughts. But, then my daughter also wants to get in, on the coloring. She wants to make everything rainbow color. She’s a happy kid and wants everything happy. Meanwhile, the page that I’m working on is mainly monochrome colors with the exception of the rainbow colored section that she worked on. I’ve asked her to color on her coloring book; we have the same coloring book. Twinsies! We’ve gotten the same exact one for her so she cold have one of her own and not color on mine. But that doesn’t work on the mind of a six year old. She wants to share and color from the same book. How do I say NO to her? Well easy, right? By telling her, “No baby girl, you color on your own book that santa got for you.” It’s just that she has the personality of a persistent person. She will talk herself into anything. She is like her daddy that way. Where, she will talk and talk and talk until she gets her way. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a great feature in ones personality to have. But, I don’t have that, I’m a very reserved person and a lot of people think I’m probably dumb, because I don’t talk a lot. I’m not the mingling type. I’m more of an observer and a thinker and not much of a talker. Most of the times you don’t want to know what I’m thinking anyway as it’s probably not pretty or maybe I think it’s a dumb thought and it will not add to the conversation. Some of the times, I’m in another planet and thinking about what I need to do tomorrow or what I need to do for work, or maybe I’m thinking of what my mom would think in this situation. I, for the most part will think it’s irrelevant to the conversation and will not give my opinion.
This is one of the reasons why I have a blog. I get to put some of my thought on “paper” and release some of the tension that I have on my shoulders. Yes, some of my idiotic thoughts get to placed on here. At this point, I’m looking to get my thoughts out there and leave them out there. If it creates a conversation; great! If it doesn’t, it’s ok. I am here to get my thoughts out and maybe even help someone who feels the same way. If so, you are not alone. If you don’t get it, then, trust me, you are not alone either. Having major depression and anxiety is not easy for someone to understand if they don’t go through it themselves. I’ve gotten the version of “suck it up, buttercup” when speaking with loved ones. I know they are trying to help. And, hey, some days, that is exactly what is needed. You look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself; it’s enough. Enough of felling like crap and it’s time to start sucking it up and keep going. Life is about the journey after all. But, for me, sometimes telling me to suck it up, simply makes me feel worst. Some days, like today, I really wish I could just suck it up and go.
The worst time for me however, is when I have down time. Down time makes me think and be unfocused. I need to be focused in order to be “fine.” I need something that will keep my mind occupied. I simply need a hobby, maybe. One that I can keep up with. This is something that my oldest brother tells me. Well, my hobby right now is to write my thoughts. But I can’t do this all day long. Then, my family wouldn’t see me at all, since I am in my bedroom/office behind a closed door in order to do my blog and concentrate on what I’m doing.
I feel bad doing this blog, since my daughter has already asked me to not be on the computer so much, especially over the weekends. But this is when I have time. But, she wants to play and learn and see me. Which makes me feel loved. But, during the seasons of my deepest depression, all I want is to be in solitude. During these times I listen/watch self help videos on youtube. But during seasons like this, they go in one ear and out the other. I listen to great advise such as: “you are enough” and “today is the best version of me.” Another great advise is to “push yourself,” “be productive” or “quit living in the past.”
I place all of these quotes in my journal. And keep telling my self the same thing everyday including, “I have a great memory.” In reality, my memory is a mess. Same issue from postpartum. I was in the hospital in an induced coma and may have lost some oxygen during this time and my memory took it’s toll. But there is nothing I can do at this point but, just keep looking forward.
This afternoon, I’ve been looking through my books related to museums and artist’s paintings. Not sure why, but looking though these books make me happy when I’m feeling down. I love to see the expression that these painters had in mind when they were painting. Another book I love, if the one from the Isabella Gardner Museum from Boston, Massachusetts. We visited many years ago and I loved it so much that we bought the book they had for sale. It has the collection that Isabella has placed in her home which is now the museum. I look through it at times that I feel down.
Eventually, my medicine does kick in and I am feeling better. I have an extender for my depression medication and it’s helpful. I have to take it throughout the day in order for it to work properly. I need to do this every single day. This is my life now!
These are my thoughts for the weekend. I hope you and your family are doing well during this covid-19 season.

Until next time.
Stay Safe.
Isabel

This week has been one of those weeks where I had some time off to recharge my batteries. I’ve gone to much needed doctors appointments and launched yet another product on one of my sites. Much work to be done and little time to do it all.

Over the weekend we’ve had some tragic news in the family. I’ve tried to figure out, out of the four sisters, which aunt has passed away over the weekend from covid. I’ve tried and tried calling my father’s cell phone, but he is not answering. He probably hasn’t charged the phone. He tends to forget to do that and then the battery is dead and I can’t talk to him. Either that, or he’s placed the phone in one of his pockets and doesn’t know which one he’s left it in. Well, since the extended family is in Portugal, there is nothing much we can do in the States. Over the weekend, I prayed for my aunt and the family and I wish everyone well. I wish I could get in touch with them, because when one person has covid, another may also have it as this awful virus spreads fast. I’m hoping everyone else from the family is ok.
On Sunday I did a bit of self care as my husband and the little one to a trip out to the store this afternoon. I’ve needed to get my hair done for a few months now, so I decided it was time. So I did it myself. It did not turn out the way I wanted it, at all. It came out much lighter than I wanted. I used a level 5 of color and I should have known it wasn’t right. The box stated, light brown. My hair is a darker brown, but I did it anyway, I put the wrong color on my head. And the result wasn’t as anticipated. Good thing I don’t have anywhere to go and show my face. At this point, I don’t look like a clown, but it’s not exactly the color that I should have chosen. Now I know, for next time I will go darker. From my many years of working at the beauty supply store, I understand that going darker is easy. Going lighter is the hard part. You have to make sure the hair doesn’t turn a shade of green or red. If it does there are ways to fix that. But a colorist is always the best way to go.

It’s Monday and I have the day off today from work. I’m using this day as one of my vacation days. I still have a few left and I need to decide which days to take off. Working from home and not going anywhere due to covid, there isn’t much to do besides being at home. Maybe I’ll read a book or write more blogs. Maybe read to my little one or having her read her books online. Meanwhile, I’m continuing to look for courses online for being a BA. I’ve also found there is a job posting for a Sr. Specialist in marketing for a different department in my company. I’ve advertised this on my linkedin profile. If anyone is interested, please, feel free to contact me via here, linkedin or anywhere. I can send your resume directly to the HR department. Having a resume go in through an employee will most likely get their packet seen by the HR department sooner than if it comes from the outside. Let me know if you or someone you know is interested, good luck!
As for today, I’ve decided to sleep in my little one is off as well for the holiday, columbus day or indigenous peoples day, whichever you choose. The school calendar states columbus, but we all know it’s right for our indigenous people to be recognized. After I woke up, I turned on netflix and watched Emily, In Paris. I’ve heard that it’s like the show Sex in the City, fashion wise. My take; it’s ok. It’s cute. And the fashion is just right. They do speak French on the show and it’s setting is in Paris. I’ve taken French all throughout high school. And I need to read the subtitles. They speak very fast. On the show, we get to see the sights and see the fashion and the way they live over in Paris. But it doesn’t get to the nitty gritty of Emily’s life. For example, she doesn’t speak French, but the taxi knows exactly where she needs to go. I would have loved to see the interaction of the struggle for her to get where she is supposed to go. Also, everyone speaks English, which is probably correct. English has become a second language in most European countries. I know this because most of my cousins in Portugal and throughout the world can speak and understand English. However, I do like that Emily made a friend with someone who is a nanny and speaks multiple languages. The nanny is fluent in French, English and Mandarin. I will most likely continue to watch it, though. At this point, Emily has broken up with her American boyfriend and now she is a single lady in the city of lights. She is also a social media maven and I would love to be able to do that. I want to see what comes next and will definitely continue to watch it. Like I mentioned, it is cute and it’s getting better as the show progresses.
After watching a few episodes, my little one is up and ready for breakfast. Grandma is ready to get her waffles with nutella and a cup of milk. I am having my second cup of coffee for the day and having some home made bread. My husband is the one that is the scientist and chef. He mixes all of the ingredients together and places them in the breadmaker so we have fresh bread every morning.
Today is the day that I get to make all of the health care phone calls that I need. Making appointments for my husband, calling for health care credit cards and calling all of the other places that were closed on the weekends.
Unfortunately, it is raining today. I can’t get outside and do yard work. This is normal for me. Whenever I take off from work it always rains. And when it rains, I have trouble breathing. With my having my lungs collapse right after daughter was born, I’m feeling overwhelmed with life. The fact that I’m having a tough time breathing always brings me back to a terrible time when I was in the hospital and couldn’t breath then. I hate still having this feeling years after it happened. But I’m guessing, it’s like breaking a bone. When it rains or the weather changes, you feel it. Like the muscle has a memory and it remembers the time it was once not whole.

It’s Tuesday and it’s doctor day. I’m going to the eye doctor and then to the rheumatoid doctor. The eye doctor takes forever. Checking out which new pair of glasses I want is what takes the longest. Everyone was wearing masks and at the office and there were partitions, but everyone was all over the place, a little scary during covid season. I got my eyes checked and need a higher script for my eyes. I’ve also gotten reflective eye protection for the laptop monitor. I hear it’s better for the eyes. As for the rheumatoid doctor. I was the only one in the office so it was easy not to be near anyone. The doctor checked my joints and I will need to go back for bloodwork. I’ve had a false positive for lupus and we need to check the blood to see if anything has changed. I’m hoping for no changes.
In the evening, we do homework with the little one. There is always a lot to do. And, now we are learning the common core math. It’s not difficult, but there sure is a lot of work to show. Kids can’t just guess or know the answer off the top of their head. They have to show the work and how they reached that conclusion.

It’s Wednesday and I have a whole lot of emails that I need to get to for work. I was gone for two days and the email list keeps on growing as the time ticks on. I started with about 200 emails. It’s 10AM and I’ve received about 15 more. I also have a product launch coming up on Friday and I need to get my behind moving on getting all of the content on the site. A little overwhelming with all of the work that I need to do. This always happens when days are taken off. But, I needed those days off. To recharge the old batteries and to see doctors. These doctors are difficult to see especially after office work hours. So back to work I go and I am concentrating on getting everything done. I have another day to get all of my launch items prepared so I finish with my day at 6PM. A little later than I wanted, but the work has to be done.

It’s Thursday and I continue to work on the product launch. I initially didn’t realize there was this much content to post. There are five full pages of content to attach plus an excel spreadsheet with brand new content. Including everything else that I need to post on the sites that I am responsible for. As well as troubleshoot problems. Looks like it’s going to be another late night for me tonight.
As for my little one, she has more meetings than me today. Her morning check in, her afternoon check-ins plus another conference call for her other teacher. This is on top of all the other work that needs to be done.
This afternoon, I need to do a presentation to the developers on a new bulk upload request for one of the sites I work on. I am seriously nervous. I’m afraid they will ask questions that I don’t have the answers to. Also, the boss is going to be on the call. I don’t want to look or sound dumb to the boss. Pray for me. I’ll let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, I am listening to some melodic music, trying to see if I can calm my spirits. Youtube calls it 1AM study secession. It has some hip hop sounds and some piano mixed in. It is soothing and simply background noise. As for the meeting with the boss and the developers, this one went ok, just ok. There were a bunch of pieces of the conversation that I was completely lost in. I had to ask a few times what things meant and what they were looking for me to ask of the business. And, at one point I got all sorts of confused and needed for the boss to repeat what was needed of me to do. After a while, I think I got it.
In the evening, we were studying with my little one on how to do common core math and writing sentences. She is learning how to add with the number line and understanding the structure of a sentence. Capital letters and punctuations. We are at this as a family until about 10PM. We’ve been doing homework with her until late at night almost every night and it’s getting to be exhausting, for all of us. Especially grandma as she is with her all day long, on meetings and teaching her as well as going over everything the teacher sends to do. There has got to be an easier way to get all of this work done. As for me, I get to bed and look at my instagram feed for about 15 minutes before I am ridden with sleep. I turn the phone off and to sleep I go. It’s terrible that I use the phone to lull me to sleep, the blue lighting usually keeps a person awake, but looking at my instagram feed makes me happy. I have mainly things that are uplifting, no drama whatsoever. If anyone on the feed gives me drama, anxiety or a feeling of sadness, I remove them from my feed right away. Good vibes only. I mainly have home items on the feed. Like decorations and century old homes. Before and after’s on homes. Mainly houses and rooms as well as positive messaging. It’s good for me to go to sleep with good thoughts.

It’s Friday and my bed is nice and warm and I do not feel like moving. The window is cracked open as it must have been warm last night. My husband is the one who usually opens up the window if he feels warm. Tonight must have been one of those nights. I don’t feel cold or anything like that, as I always sleep with a blanket. I like the feel of something a little heavy, like one of those gravity blankets. The weight of a blanket, even if it is light, always helps me to fall asleep. Even during the summer, I always have something to cover me. During those really hot days, I have the bed sheet over me when I am sleeping. A little something always helps me to keep on resting.
This morning we launched a new product the imageRUNNER ADVANCED DX 717iF. This product has so much content to post it’s not even funny. But I’ve gotten it all done yesterday.
Since I did so much work yesterday, today I am feeling procrastination. I’m watching a video by Marisa Peer, on How to stop procrastination. It’s a short video and it’s very inspiring. She tells her audience to tell yourself that you “love” to do whatever it is that you are procrastinating about. Another thing I learned about procrastination, according to Peer, is part of rejection. I can relate. I’m absolutely not a fan of rejection. As I’m sure a lot of people feel the same. I’m sure you’re also not a fan of rejection. It makes me feel dumb. I don’t like feeling dumb, it really bums me out.
This afternoon I am listening to a webinar called “Empowering Leadership: Managing Projects” at my company. We are listening to an interview of a person who is well rounded and knows a lot about the business world including managing projects. He says that at times, you may be thrown into a project management position. You’ll have to manage something and all of a sudden it’s a project and voila; project manager, you are. The guest was asked “What leadership qualities does one need for a project manager? ” The answer he gave is “influencing without power.” Boy, do I know about this one. When I was a lower level at my job, I wouldn’t get answers from people for a long time or at all. I would have to get my boss to send out the message again in order to get an answer. I at one point started to send more and more messages to the same person to get answers. Was I being annoying? Maybe. But after a while, they realized I was serious about the questions and they would eventually answer me back. I had to get a relationship with that person in order for them to get back to me. Also, I started becoming friendly with their boss. This got their attention. And for sure they started to get back to me in a more frequent matter. Hey, you need to do what you need to do. In the interview he also said that as a project manager, you can’t be a pushover. There is a delicate balance. A project manager should be nice as well as persuasive. And always explain to the subject mater experts and others involved in the project; how we’re invested on this together. Also, being firm and at times, pushing back, is also something that a project manager needs to do. It was an interesting conversation. In the end a question came up; what if you’re an expert in marketing and you’re tasked to do a project on rocket ships? The interviewee mentioned to be calm and to learn as much as possible and if necessary to get outside help, like vendors. This was something that I definitely needed to hear. I am currently in a position where I need to understand backend systems, which I do not, and will most likely need to have outside help in order to understand all of the work that I need to accomplish.
At the end of the work day one of the business analysts and I had a meeting regarding an item that was not working for one of my sites. And, thank the Lord, it wasn’t something that I did wrong. There is a break/fix that we will be working on with our developers.
I continue to try and figure out if there is a course for Business Analysts. I’ve reached out to one of my colleagues who is also in this rollercoaster ride of being a BA, as he was also given the opportunity of being a BA and seeing if he knows of any courses that we can take to learn more about this subject. So far nothing. If we could find something during the workweek, that would be fantastic. I’ve reached out to NYIT as they sent me an email today about graduate school. I sent a request back to them to provide information, if any, on being a BA. We will see what kind of information they come back with. Probably nothing as I’ve already checked out their curriculum and everything that they offer. No BA. I will keep on researching.

Until next time.
Stay safe
Best,
Isabel