The absence of posts in the last two months can be explained by the adoption of yet another hobby. An attempt to crochet Ms. Boss a scarf of Christmas occupied much of my November and December. The effort failed abysmally. My first attempt yielded something that looked nothing like a scarf whatsoever. My second attempt looked more like a very long piece of rope. The third attempt kind of looked like a scarf but was more of a two-foot long ruffle – think Elizabethan era collar but in red. My fourth attempt was a three-inch by three-inch square when it got abandoned. My fifth attempt – actually started on Christmas Day – started out promising, but ended up being more like trapezoid when I got several rows into it. It was at this point that I put away my crochet hook before someone got hurt.
While my attempt at craft resulted in nothing useful being created, I would not consider the exercise completely pointless. I spent the majority of my lunch breaks working on the project. My employer does not pay me for this half-hour of my day, but more often that not, I continue working for them anyway. (To be fair, this is more my doing than theirs.) I actually enjoyed leaving my desk, going out to my car, getting out my yarn and hook, and doing something else for about twenty minutes. It is, after all, my time. While I’ve set crochet aside, I really should embrace taking my lunch break for me and doing something productive that has nothing to do with my employer, like… I don’t know… writing in my blog.
In a previous job that I worked for almost ten years, I determined that my employer owed me almost a year of time off for all the lunches and breaks that I didn’t take by the time I left.
As an hourly government employee, I enjoy the opportunity to earn time off instead of pay when I work overtime. At one point in my career, I rarely took the time. I always figured that everyone else’s time off would eventually find its way to my paycheck. These days, I wish I could take the time and sometimes I do anyway. Something about having four daughters just doesn’t allow the paycheck to stretch as far as it used to.
I took the time between Christmas and New Year’s off. This was the first time that I’d done so in years. Naturally, I spent almost four days of that time sick in bed.
I used to work some rather strange work schedules. At one point in my career, my workweek started at 7 p.m. on Friday and finished at 7 a.m. Monday morning. Yes, I was working when most of the rest of the world wasn’t, but wasn’t when everyone else was. I miss those days sometimes. If I could work like a dog for a few days followed by a long string of time off, I’d do it. Too bad I don’t have the strength and skill necessary to be firefighter where that schedule comes standard.