Today I celebrate, with no fanfare, my longest successful relationship to date. It is my 25 year anniversary with the major telecommunications company I work for.
I am really proud of this accomplishment, it won’t be celebrated, we all work from home now so no party. I could use the party money and go out to dinner but that would be awkward. Me and my boss, my guess is he is hoping I do not opt for that.
Since I have no other outlet I’ll tell you all about my career so far. Not really a career, more of a happy accident.
I was working three jobs, going to school full time and raising three children. A friend of mine asked if I was ready for a real job and I said sure. She brought the application to my apartment and waited while I filled it out.
The next day the head of HR called me and asked me to come in and test. You see she had been the maid of honor in my friends wedding. Nepotism is a beautiful thing and I have no shame.
I took what is called the Telephone Battery Test, at first, due to the questions, I thought that they were trying to see if I was crazy and not hirable. I later realized the test is designed to see if one is crazy enough to work here.
I also took a typing test and word perfect, I passed, they offered me the position of Operations Clerk. I accepted and the rest as they say is history.
That one job allowed me to quit the other three jobs, I finished the semester and we began to have a normal life. God blessed my family immensely with that open door and I will be forever grateful.
More than the financial aspect I have also made lifelong friends in this company. Too many to list individually, some I still work with, some who no longer work for the company.
I have had positions I have loved, I have had positions I have not loved, but through it all I have been grateful.
Grateful for the training I have received that has allowed me to move on to other departments and jobs in the company. Never getting bored, never complacent, never stagnant.
If you’ve stayed with me thus far, thank you, this is my only opportunity to tell anyone about my 25 year relationship.
So I did a thing, a bad thing, so bad that I know God was tuning in and shaking His head and saying she’s gonna learn today. Telling the Angels, stand down, this is a lesson she brought on herself.
I had a bad week this past week, and yes, I know, I am not in a war torn country, I have food and a place to live and a job. I could be so much worse. Now on to my issues that were not so great.
My air conditioning went out, it was Tuesday morning and I realized the fan was running in the house but the unit outside was not. I did what any person would do, I youtube’d it and checked a few things. I had recently changed the filter, recently as in 4 days prior, there was no debris blocking the unit. Then it started talking about electrical stuff and I was completely out.
I called my leasing agent and she was on top of it, they could come the next day, which is a blessing, it wasn’t a week out, it was literally the next day.
The bad thing is Tuesday was hot, it was 85 degrees with no breeze, I do have fans and the house is all tile and wood flooring, so it was fine.
But then came time for bed, as you know I am in full blown menopause and the hot flashes are no joke. I typically keep it at 64 degrees at night. It was 78 degrees in the house, by then a breeze had started and I opened by bedroom windows and had three fans going. My ceiling fan and two floor fans.
I did not realize the temperature was dropping as much as it did. Needless to say I did not sleep well and when I did and woke up it was freezing and I was congested and my ears were blocked up.
The air conditioning man came that afternoon and he was very nice, very professional and had it fixed within 20 minutes.
I thought good, I will get to sleep tonight and it will be glorious. That was not the case, I think I was over tired and sleep was elusive.
So by Thursday I was grumpy and not having fun, top it off with the last call of the day with someone screaming that their service wasn’t working, me talking them down and resolving everything, 30 minutes past the time I was to clock out. I was done, with the week, I did the only thing I could. Retail therapy.
Yes, I took myself to Target and here is where God said let her learn. I allowed Target to tell me what it wanted me to have. Let’s just say I did not do that at Costco the next day.
I have learned a lesson, a costly one, sometimes God allows us to make the mistakes we do in order to learn what He wants us to.
Instead of shopping I should have gotten out my bible and gone to Him to calm my frayed nerves. Lesson learned.
I hope all of you had a much better week and that you do not need to learn a hard lesson the way I did.
As usual, any comments, questions or criticisms can be left here or sent to me at angie@angieworld.com.
I made a discovery that is life changing, or at least health changing, for me. As you may know, or not, I have been battling heartburn, sever heartburn. For the past couple of years I have been downing Nexium like they are tictacs. Three at a time, along with tums, it has not been fun.
About a month ago I saw a video on TikTok, the woman was talking about this miraculous thing she was doing. She added these two things to water and she is seeing blah, blah, blah, then she said heartburn. I sat up, I rewatched the video to pay attention. She was adding a fourth of a teaspoon of baking soda and a fourth of a teaspoon of pink Himalayan salt to her water.
I thought to myself I have those things in my pantry. I could not go fast enough to the kitchen. Within two weeks I had been able to lower the Nexium to onice a day. I was still drinking coffee and that causes heartburn due to the acidity.
I’m not giving up coffee, then I saw another video of how someone added a pinch of baking soda to their coffee and it cut the acid.
So I tried it, my heartburn has improved 90% after doing that. I am down to having to take a tums every once in a while. I am amazed!
I have not felt this good in a long time, in regards to the heartburn.
I am not a doctor and I am not giving medical advice, I am just telling you what worked for me.
If you give it a try be sure and tell me if it worked for you.
I haven’t written in a while and I have a lot to get out, about a lot of different things, so let’s get started.
First, my hair, I have had it cut, to my shoulders, it was a major cut, I do this once in a while, I will have it cut shorter to get all of the dead ends off. I feel so much lighter and I feel it makes me look younger as well. It’s still purple, I love it so much, I cannot express how much I love my hair. It is actually a combination of crimson and purple. My two favorite colors in the world, I know I am old for this trend and I do not care. I want what I want and I am old enough to do it.
Most women my age are greying, I tell them I am as well, I don’t know why, maybe to try and fit in, but I’m not. I know what you are thinking, why would I do that, I have no good answer, and is that true. It is, my stylist looks for gray every time she does my hair and can find none. Sometimes I find a gray eyebrow hair, my grandmother did not start graying until she was in her ninties, it irritated her, she was often asked if she dyed it, well that was a high insult to someone her age. Only bad women dyed their hair in her day, so to ask that was insinuating she was bad, which she might have been, I’ve heard a lot of rumors. But she did not dye her hair, I do, not because I’m bad, but because I can.
I started dying my hair when I was sixteen, much to my parents chagrin, I was trying to achieve Jamie Finnell red, if you are from Owasso and my age range you know exactly what I am talking about. I have never been able to achieve that look, which is probably for the best, my skin tone was not really meant for red hair. Red haired girls have porcelain skin, I have ruddy skin, which means I have a red undertone.
Next up television shows, let’s talk Dharma and Greg, I have rewatched that recently and am so mad at how it ended. Can we get another season to tie things up? I know it is years late, but seriously, how could ABC do that to us? I forgot how angry and maddening that ending was, so disrespectful to the fans. Also Bless this Mess, how dare you end that show where you did, I was really mad about that one.
Next on the list for discussion is gardening, I have planted some vegetables, tomatoes, jalapeños, potatoes, baby bell peppers, red onions, yellow onions, garlic and broccoli. I have started zucchini and regular bell peppers, we will see how they take.
I grew up with planters so it makes sense I would go to that as I age. Plus with the cost of groceries it only makes sense to grow our own. I highly suggest everyone start a garden, become as self sufficient as you can. You can make fun of me if you want but the writing is on the wall, you have to do what you can to protect your families well being.
And lastly, here is my advice for those of you calling into tech support. If you call in screaming, cursing, yelling and generally making a fool of yourself, then tell me at the end of the call that you are a Christian, I will not believe you. I will pray for your soul because, and I want you to pay attention, God can see you and hear you when you are on the phone with one of us. I firmly believe if you want to really know someone, unplug their router, see what happens. I will tell you that I have lost it a few times with a first level tech support person. Like the time I knew that the issue was outside and finally convinced the person to schedule a tech. Then a day later they call me and tell me that they have sent a signal to my router and it is working. I completely lost my mind, because the router was not getting a signal and I know that, how, because this is my job.
When the tech finally got out there, he discovered that my neighbors moved and instead of disconnecting their service at the terminal, they disconnected my line. He was there a total of 10 minutes, from the time he knocked on the door to the time he fixed it and waited for my service to come back up.
If you need to call tech support and you get to my level, we already know how much you have been through. There is no need to scream at us, there is no need to call us names, I, myself, have been called the C word. And no, that was not for Christian, know that we do have run fresh tests so we can see what the line looks like right in that moment. So, take a step back, a deep breath, and calm down, we will help you.
I have a lot more, but I’ll save that for later because what is left deserves it’s own discussion with nothing else.
As usual, any comments, questions or criticisms can be left here or sent to me at angie@angieworld.com.
Angie World 