Hair

Gimme head with hair; Long beautiful hair; Shining, gleaming; Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Traditionally I keep my hair short, like really short. I like to be able to just run my fingers through it after a shower and go. When my hair is long it gets in my eyes, shoots out in funny directions, or just looks dry. So when Mom was going to loose her hair 2 years ago during treatment I was all for shaving our heads. Why not? It was short anyway.

Well this time around I decided to grow my hair out and donate it. No, I am not saying that Mom's cancer is back, but we were told 2-5 years and it has been 2 now. Since my hair is so short it could take 2 years to grow out; plus I bleached it blonde for Joseph, so that has to grow out and be cut off too.

Since this is so buggy to me (the long hair thing) I came up with a plan to motivate me. Of course the fact that donated hair is made into wigs for children with cancer is motivating; I mean come on, how great is that? I have talked with my hair dresser about my desire and I can have it trimmed every 2-3 months to keep it healthy which will be great for me mentally. BUT the big motivation is this: I cannot cut my hair until I have lost 'X' amount of weight. I have shared this number with my hair dresser and in 2 years this would be a healthy weight loss. So not only do I feel motivated to do this for a kid or kids with cancer but now I feel motivated to do it for me!!

Why blog about this? Well two fold: I know my readers live and die for a post from me (ha) and second there might come a time when I want to cut my hair... do not let this happen for at least 2 more years!

Oh Crap!

My Sister is amazing, she is talented and has a wonderful sense of humor. Girl is a hero of mine in many ways (the rest of the time I am her hero, you know it is true!) As mentioned in a previous post I had her daughter Mac for the last 2 weekends while they were on vacation. I missed a lot of sleep, but loved a lot of cuddles. So Sister, with her wonderful sense of humor, brought me a present as a thank you for watching her kid. It is a notebook made by this company: PooPooPaper. Just as the name suggests it is a notebook made from recycled elephant poo. She said it was to remind me always of the bonding Mac and I shared for the weekend; funny right?

Alright, so here is the deal. Funny? Absolutely. Gross? Absolutely. I would say 10% funny 90% gross, but she thought it was more like 90% funny and 10% gross. Bless your heart Sister!! The more I think of it the more I smile. I honestly, though, do not know if I have grown enough as a person to play with poo paper. I did find it a mark of our friendship that she knew I cared enough about the environment to use recycled products ... I am not sure the environment and I are friends enough for me to write on poo paper ... but who knows what will happen in a day or two when I have had time to digest (pun intended) having a notebook made out of poo.

Now to be fair, the paper is not actually made up of poo. Just the undigested grassy products that the elephants eat which are then washed and made into paper. For some reason that does not make it sound more sanitary to me ...

Love you Sister! And thanks for the 'crappy' present! (Ha, now that was 90% funny!)

The long and the short of it...

Posing an interesting situation to the masses here that we are talking about in HR class right now:

The basics of the scenario are thus: You are having trouble with a coworker right now. This particular coworker is not fully doing his or her job and it affects you directly. Let's pick something small: The receptionist leaves the front desk for about an hour a day and does not get someone to cover it leaving the phones unanswered. Since you hear the phones ringing, you answer to help out. This takes time away from you doing your work so you do not fully complete your job load. Basic scenario, but a realistic one.

Now the questions that are being posed in class are these:

• Who do you talk to about this situation?
• What are your expectations in this situation?
• Do you have the right to make demands in this situation?
• How do you react if nothing is done about this situation?

I work for a company where nothing would be done about this particular situation unless it directly affected the boss. Since it does not, I would have little recourse except get mad and lash out at the employee. But it really has made me think about effective human resource management. In an ideal world I would have a HRM to talk to about this and have the employee told that he or she has been hired to do a certain job and that the company expects him or her to stay at the desk to answer phones at all times (with very obvious exceptions!) Further I would expect that HRM could explain to this employee that disciplinary actions could be taken if the phone are left unanswered in the future. I do believe that the employee making the complaint can suggest helpful ways to fix the situation, but I do not believe the employee can make demands (one guy in class said he would demand the boss pay him per phone he had to answer, um no...)

I know exactly how I would react if the situation went unchecked. I would say something to the boss, then I would say something to the employee, then I would cry to my mom because no one was fixing it, and then I might have some chocolate. The thing about studying to be a Human Resource Manager is I see why it is so important. I am sad we do not have one in our office (yes I know technically it is me, but all I have the authority to do is cut the paychecks and pay the taxes.) I sometimes wish I had a Toby in my office.

My New Pet Peeve

I have a new pet peeve; and it goes something like this:

Red Cups

+

Wire Fences

=

My New Pet Peeve

I hate driving under those freeway underpasses where someone has decided to litter red cups by putting them in a wire fence. The Elder coming home from his mission does not need this welcome home. This is no way to tell someone you love them; it certainly is not a way to propose marriage. Want someone to get well soon? Make them some soup.

This is not cute, this is littering. And it is my new pet peeve!

The Issues

I love election time, but I am not loving this year's lead up to election day. This year I just do not think the candidates get it. The issues I hear them talking about are not the issues I really care about. The one issue I am fed up with and would like the candidates to shut up about: partisan lines. Enough is enough. I would like to hear a debate about real issues, not a debate about which side is right. Not one side has all of the answers, not one side is right while the other is wrong all the time. There are some real issues to talk about and finger point is not the solution.

So what are the real issues you care about?

The issues I feel that are most important are education, the economy, and job growth. I have often thought that our public schools are woefully underfunded, our teachers are not paid enough, the classes are oversized and the kids do not get enough one on one teacher time. So let's get rid of the bad teachers, pay the good ones more, get our test scores up, and educate our children. I might be one of the few, but if it would go to education, I would not mind a tax increase for that purpose. The economy - can I just say that our failed economy is not a party fight? Neither the Republican or Democrat parties broke our economy. Not one person is to blame. So show me a plan to help fix it, and that person will get my vote. On the same lines as that is the job market. Where is the plan to grow the job market? That person will get my vote.

Not one party is right while the other is wrong. So how about putting aside party lines and working on one line? The line to fix what has been broken. So says this liberal-Mormon-conservative-Democrat!

Single Mom Respect

My cute Sister and her family are currently on vacation with my folks. They have been planning it for weeks. What they did not plan on was the little one being sick. So Sister made a really hard decision to leave the little one home with some very loving family members. So Mac lived with me this weekend, she is at the Aunts this week, and I will have her again starting Friday. Come on, she is 1, she will not even know she missed sitting in your stroller all week while everyone else rides the rides and sees the fish. Some things I have learned as a single aunt this weekend:

• Kid with ear infection likes to cuddle
• Kid with ear infection does not like medication
• Kid with ear infection does not sleep a normal schedule
• Kid with ear infection has a little ADD, one moment she is fine and the next she is not
• Kid with ear infection can scream
• Kid with ear infection will only eat mashed potatoes (results not typical)
• Single aunt got sleep deprived pretty easily because she is used to being pampered with a full 8 hours of sleep
• Single aunt loves to cuddle little ones all day even if her dishes are not done
• Single aunt loves it when other favorite married aunt comes to teach her how to give medication
• Single aunt would not trade time with sick niece for anything, including sleep

I have a new respect for all parents now, I only had to do it for 2 days. I especially have respect for those parents who do it alone. This is what I learned this weekend.

Controlist

Finn: Rachel is what you'd call a controlist.
Rachel: I'm controlling. Controlist isn't a word.

I am here to make it a word. I am a controlist. I do not like being called a 'control freak' so I adopt 'controlist'. I do not think needing to be in control is a bad thing always, especially if the person in control is me .... just kidding I was actually going to say 'is correct.' Now I understand there is a fine line between right and wrong. I also think there is a line between being right and being obnoxious about it. I also know that sometimes being a controlist makes me a crazy person (or cra-cra as Sister says.) I fully accept that my need to drive a car instead of letting others drive is crazy controlling. I like to be in control in a vehicle, which is why I have some anxiety when I fly. (The flight to Europe was interesting!) I know that when someone comes into my office and just throws something on my desk instead of putting in my inbox and I feel anger, that is crazy. I can see the crazy versus the 'I am just right about that' issues.

I am also a Phoenix. I am getting a Certificate of Human Resource Management through the University of Phoenix. Last night I had a group final due. It needed to be posted by 1:00 a.m. MST which is midnight in Arizona. For those who do not know UoP is team based learning. About half of our work is individual, the other half is group work. We are assigned teams usually of 4-6 people to do team projects with. This particular class only had me and one other student enrolled, so we were the team. I had my portion of the paper posted the day before it was due and waited for my teammate to post her portion. At 5:00 p.m. yesterday I was told she was 30 minutes from posting. Fine that gave us time to compile and edit. At 8 I was still waiting, so I asked her if I could help with anything. Nothing. At 9:30 she posted a rough draft of her work. I saw many formatting issues and her references were all wrong. So I started getting that all put together right while she finished her draft. And waited. And waited. At 11 she posted her final draft which was completely different from what I had just edited. So I compiled the papers, fixed the format again, correctly cited all quotes and references, checked word count, and we posted the paper at 11:45. I did not have time to edit for content. I did not have time to run the paper through the WritePoint and Plagiarism Checker because that takes sometimes 3 hours.

Now as an admitted controlist, you can only imagine how much anxiety I had yesterday. My grade was in the hands of someone else. It was not my best effort because it was not her best effort. I had no control over last night at school. I was helpless and I hate that feeling.

I am a controlist. I now am of the opinion that a controlist does not make a good Phoenix.

Bean Shop

My very cool sister, Colleen, who I am sure I brag about all too often, just got another feature up on her sewing website: The Busy Bean.

(AH!! She just found a new purse she is going to try, I cannot wait to buy the test unit!! not what the post is about, it pays to have a Sister who sews!) Anyway, there are a few new features on her site that include recipes, a shop to buy already made items, and a custom order form link for those items to be made to fit you personally.

Some of my new favs in her shop are this owl hat

And this dress is so great!

If I did not love her so much I would be so very jealous of her crafty ability and hate her just a little... good thing I love her so much! You should see the cute doll she made for Mac's bday. The skirt she made me for a wedding recently was so beautiful!

Anyway, proud sister post is done! Check out her stuff ... or not!