Update from Last Week

     Hi everyone.  I apologize for not blogging last week; however, it was just one of those weeks where I did not have enough hours in the days to get everything done.  Work, needless to say, has been hectic and quite frustrating and stressful.  I will give you the highlights from last week as best I can without writing a novel.

MONDAY:  This was a fairly good day since I took this day off.  I have so much overtime and they only pay back overtime in time off, which is fine by me.  I now have about two days in overtime.  I average about two days of overtime a month due to all the travel I have to do to visit my clients.  Anyway, on Monday I ran some errunds, then took a long walk along one of the park pathways.  It was a beautiful day out.  I enjoyed the leisure time.

TUESDAY:  Back to the grind!!!  As most of you know, once you return to work from time off, there seems to be twice as much work to do than when you left.  This was definately the case with me.  Not only do I have TONS of paperwork to do, but I also have meetings which were set-up prior to me coming to the UK which I now must attend.  The Reviewing Officer was asking me where the meeting was located and I told her I had no clue.  She looked at me like I was crazy.  At which time I explained to her that I only found out about these meetings until this morning, so don't look at me like that!!!!  The meeting did go smoothly, thankfully.

WEDNESDAY:  This was the beginning of the "big slide" for me this week.  You see, there are two different "teams" involved with a mother and her newborn (my and the 0 - 12 year old team) and I have been trying to assist this young mother to get to her newborn's meetings; however, the other team is not telling me that they cancelled a meeting or changed this mother's visitation sites, etc.  Then ,when transportation does not work for the young mother, everyone looks to me as though it's all my fault.  NO!!!
There is a crappy communication system here: when a person"emails" someone with information, they assume that's good enough and the other person will read their emails.  No one picks up a phone around here!!!!  Holy shit -- they do EVERYTHING through computers!!!  Once again, no wonder their system is skrewed up over here.  Anyways, this all happened today and my paperwork keeps piling up.

THURSDAY:  I got to travel to Coventry by train today to meet with two young persons I have as clients.  They are AWESOME!!!  This is only one of two cases where I can just monitor their progress b/c their foster parents are absolutely brilliant.  I got to work at 7:30am because I was trying to finish a report due for tomorrow that my supervisor just gave me to do yesterday at 1:00pm.  Figures.  Well, I was able to finish, so the train ride to/from Coventry was relaxing; although my return train was late, but I didn't mind.  Once back at work, I ran into the same crap as yesterday where this young mother did not get to see her newborn since the transprotation got "fuck-up."  Pardon my French, but I am still this mad because I warned others this would happen due to "to many hand in the pot."  I also had to listen to a mother who wants to see her children but is not permmitted.  After her screaming in my ear, I was able to calm her down but it just added to the building stress I am feeling.

FRIDAY:  This began with a long drive from Reading to Peterborough (northeast from Reading) starting out at 7:00am with two senior people from Children's Social Services.  They are both very nice women, but I felt uncomfortable the entire trip up there (3 hours).  We hit traffic on the M25, which is the motorway around London.  They is always under construction on this road and it backs up traffic for miles.  We were on our way to visit this same young mother who missed her visits for a meeting  - the same meeting for which my report was due.  Anyway, I knew this young mother would chew my ear off since she has a very bad temper, but much to my surprise, she handled herself very well.  The meeting went smoothly - again - and I was able to provide her with some positive news before this long weekend.  The drive back to Reading was much better for me, and I got to know these two senior prople quite well.  Bonus for me!!!  I was so tired when I finally got home at 4:00pm, I had a pizza then went to bed.

     I did wake up at 11:00pm to watch the Pens game live on my computer.  It ended about 2:30am Saturday morning over here, but this is the Stanley Cup playoffs and I'm not going to miss this just for some much-needed sleep.  Okay, I believe I have caught-up on the happenings of this past week.  I am still stressed about money problems, dropping my phone and breaking, piles of paperwork still to do, and very little time for myself.  I will pick -up with today (Saturday) in my next blog.