The Long Drive from Homestead to Miami Beach

I voice recorded this 1/5/12 driving to work at 6am. It’s now 1/7/12 at 5:30pm. Yeah, my life is very different these days. No time!

My life has been completely insane lately! I am currently in voice recording this as I drive the 45 miles to work from Homestead to Miami Beach. The same as I’ve done everyday this week and for several days in the preceding weeks. It’s a long drive, but if I leave early enough, around 5:45am, I get there with so little [sara lee – what?!] traffic and get there around 6:30am and I relax in the car – and sometimes fall asleep – until 7am when I walk inside.

So this is now my life. Or at least for as long as we live in Homestead. Getting up at 4am – okay, let’s be honest, I don’t get outta bed until about 4:35am – then  shower, make my lunch (as long as I forgot to make it the night before), and get out of the house and on the road by about 5:45am. My very first official week has been ridiculous because I’ve been working from 7am to about 3:30-4pm most days. We have our huge annual event, which I walked right into the tail end of the final planning stages, this coming Sunday the 8th. So, needless to say, the days are very long  with wrapping up everything, thank you’s and tax letters signed and mailed, confirming all the reservations etc. My life has been full immersion in this job with extremely long hours. By the time I typically get home, I’d have been out of the house for 12+ hours.

After the event on Sunday I believe we’re all taking off Monday and then it should be back to a normal schedule of leaving around 2 or 2:30, but I need to check on that. But in the meantime I don’t leave until almost 4 o’clock get home around 5:30-6:00 and stay up for a couple of hours and then try to get to bed by 10. I say try because nothing ever works in my life I turn the television off around 10, get the dishes done and I’m usually in bed by about 10:30. Getting up at 4am, or rather the alarm clock going off at 4am, is just not enough sleep for me. I think once Steve leaves at 9pm to go to work, I should just get my stuff done and go to sleep and not even try waiting until 10. My body does not know what to do with itself as I’m constantly exhausted because these are the longest days I’ve worked in a very long time.

I have no time to get on the internet at work and don’t usually feel like getting online when I get home. I only have a little bit of time to get some stuff done at night, so if I wanted to put a blog post out, I guess this is the only way to do it. Hey I might as well kill the 45 minutes in the car, right? I realize last night that I haven’t posted since last year. Holy smokes it’s 2012… where did 2011 go? I swear it was just January 1st, 2011. This year completely flew by and now we’re on to the next. Who knows, maybe this’ll be the year we start our family! However, at the rate I’m going I’ll be burned out and have absolutely no time to do anything with adoption or even start a plan on having a family. But on the upside we have a look at a couple of houses and hopefully we will be able to rent something within the next month. Hooray!

But back to the job for a second, every day multiple times a day my new boss tells me how happy she is and how much my being there is helping her. That makes me feel really great. The last girl didn’t even bother to work her full 2 weeks notice.. she just decided to leave one day. And right before the huge event. Bad timing!! I am really happy that I took this job and so far I really like my coworkers. I keep meeting new people every single day and it’s a completely different world than I’ve ever known. Everybody is Jewish, obviously, and so nice. The dress code is a little sticky but I’m dealing with it. Take for instance yesterday it was 38 degrees when I left my house which means I had to wear my skirt with leggings, knee socks, and boots underneath and was actually pretty warm.

However I had to go and buy a ball gown for the event. I found one and it is gorgeous! The only problem is I need to find something to wrap around the top of it because well my girls are really big. And in this crowd I might get some really funny looks, but that’s okay. I respect that I have to wear certain things in order to work in this environment. I might have mocked it in the past, but it doesn’t mean I can’t and don’t respect it. At least now I’m learning about a culture that is part of who I am just to much more extreme degree.

I have no plans on going Kosher and respect that the school is kept Kosher. No ham and cheese sandwiches in my lunch! OK, be prepared for another post tomorrow with more exciting news!