Well Wishes for CP

It is never a good thing when a child becomes sick, really sick.  It is so much worse when it happens at the holidays.  Unfortunately, this has recently occurred in my family.  My cousin CP has been diagnosed with cancer.  This blog is dedicated to him as well as his parents and his brother.

CP is a few months shy of two years old.  He lives with his Dad (my uncle), his Mom, and his older brother.  From the moment he was born, he was sick.  At first, he was just not a very energetic boy, kept getting respiratory infections, and was not hitting the right developmental goals for his age.  Finally, they diagnosed him with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1).  This condition causes (usually) benign tumors to grow on the nervous system (if you want to learn more about it, here is a link to the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurofibromatosis_type_I).   CP developed tumors on his optic nerves, which caused almost complete blindness.  They have treated him over the past year with a few different chemotherapy drugs, which has further inhibited his growth as well as put stress on his circulatory system.

Last week, CP went to Children’s Hospital to get a battery of tests run to see how his tumors were responding to the treatments.  At first, it was all good news.  His optic gliomas seemed to be stabilized.  His blood pressure was down and his EKG was good.  Then, the final MRI was done, and the bad news began.  He had too much fluid and swelling in the brain.  He also had a new tumor growing on his thalamus.  They performed surgery to insert a shunt to drain the fluid and to do a biopsy of the tumor tissue.  Then, the worst news yet came, the tumor was malignant.  He has a Fibrillary Astrocytoma, WHO Grade II (if you want to learn more about it, here is the link to the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrillary_astrocytoma).  Unfortunately, the treatment options are limited at this point.  His age and the location of the tumor mean surgery and radiation are not options.  The chemotherapy drugs that normally would be used are the same ones that he was already taking to treat the NF1.  The doctors are attempting to get him qualified for a clinical trial on a new chemotherapy drug that has some promise.  They are also working to reduce the fluid buildup and swelling to keep CP as stable as possible while they try to come up with alternative methods of treating the cancer.

Right now, there is not much that friends and family can do.  CP is already receiving the best care he can from the doctors as Children’s Hospital.  The Ronald McDonald House charity is helping the family with living arrangements as they stay there to get CP’s treatment started.  My aunt’s family is caring for CP’s older brother so his parents can focus their attention on CP.  My grandmother and another aunt just went out to offer what support they can as well.  The rest of the family remains very far away geographically, but we are trying to keep them close in our hearts.  I am not much of a praying woman, but my thoughts and hopes are with them this Christmas.  I so very much hope that the doctors can figure out a plan to treat the cancer and clear it from CP’s brain.  This holiday I hope my family can still find the energy to enjoy Christmas with their children and each other despite the circumstances.  Finally, I hope that someday I get the chance to once again hug CP, see his beautiful smile, and enjoy the energy of a little boy who is feeling better.

I encourage you all to hold your family close and treasure every precious moment with them.

See you next week!

A Snapshot in Time

I am considering whether to continue our family portrait tradition next Christmas.  The holiday portrait is something my parents did with my sister and me throughout my childhood.  It was something I was excited to continue once I had my own family.  For the past four years, my husband, stepson, and I have gotten our portraits taken at JC Penney for Christmas.   None of the years has been a particularly good experience, and I am seriously considering discontinuing the practice next year.

Personally, I like having a family photo done every year.  Although I know that it easy to take and print personal photos now with digital cameras and photo-editing websites, I still like having the professional photos done.  I find it hard to get very many quality photos of our family throughout the year.  My stepson is only here part of the time, so we start with limited opportunities to capture the perfect moment.  We do not do many things together as a family (I wish we did, but we do not), so most of the photos I do take are just snapshots around the house.  I am not a very talented photographer, so I seldom take pictures that I actually like enough to share with other people.  Plus, I am almost never in the photos, so that would not work for a holiday family portrait to include in my Christmas cards.  The professional portrait session guarantees I have some quality photos with me actually in them.  I want these photos to keep as a reminder of our family growing throughout the years and to share with my family who we do not see very often.

However, the photo session has become a chore that no one likes to endure.  My stepson is not a very cooperative participant in the process.  Of the four years that we have been doing this, he has only behaved during the photo session once.  The first year he pouted and cried during it, leaving us with only one or two photos that were usable.  The second year he loved the attention and did a great job posing and smiling for us.  We had many cute options to pick for our family photo.  The third year he would not take it seriously, moving around and making funny faces during the photos.  Again, we had a limited selection of usable prints, but the shenanigans did actually produce a couple adorable pictures even if they were not perfectly posed.  This past year was worse than the first year.  He did not want to be there, and we did not end up with a single picture where he did not look angry.  We finally chose the one where my husband and I looked best despite his grumpy presence in it.

In addition to being really upset with his son, my husband was really annoyed with JC Penney over the process.  He was very impatient about the wait during our session.  Over the years, we average about an hour and half from check-in to leaving.  After letting the front desk know you are there, it is usually about a fifteen to twenty minute wait until you go back into the studio.  Then, the actual photo session takes another fifteen or so minutes.  You wait about a half hour until they are ready for you to look at the photos.  Then, we normally take around twenty minutes to look through the photos, make our selection, and order our prints.  I do not feel like the process is too cumbersome, especially considering it is only once a year.  I also recognize that we are there during the holiday season when they are booked full.  Plus, I think much of the delay comes from other customers taking their time with the photo selection and order process.  My husband however thinks it is badly organized and that they are wasting our time by making us wait for so long throughout.

My husband has suggested that we consider using a different studio to take the photos next year, but I am not sure I want to take them at all.  The reason I chose JC Penney in the first place was due to pricing.  We are only buying a couple of traditional portrait sheets each year (3 8x10, 2 5x7, 1 3.5x5, 1 wallets), and JC Penney’s has the cheapest sitting fee and least expensive single prints.  The deal becomes even better if you sign up for the two year membership, which gets you one free upgrade on a photo and essentially makes the sitting fee free for one of the two years.  Plus, we get coupons which makes the traditional photo sheets even less expensive.  We probably would get better quality photos and perhaps a less stressful wait if we went to a higher tier photographer, but we would definitely pay more.  When you add in the difficulties of getting my stepson to cooperate, I just do not think it would be worth the extra money.  Why do I want to pay more for pictures if my family is still going to look miserable in them?

What do you think?  Should I continue to get the cheap JC Penney photos?  Should I pay more for a private studio?  Should I just learn to take better pictures and do them myself through Shutterfly (or the equivalent)?  Should I just forget about getting photos of us each year completely?

At least I look great in this year’s photo.  See you next week!

So Here Is How You Did – The Performance Review

So a few months ago, I wrote about completing my self-evaluation for work.  A couple of week ago, I received my completed performance review from my boss and went to the meeting to go over it all.  I know there was quite a space between that first post and this one.  I guess the company failed at the “within 90 days of anniversary” policy that they have.  My self-evaluation seemed to meet their approval.  The review of my past year went along the lines I was expecting.  The short-term goals that were given to me were mostly predictable.  The long-term career path they provided for me though took me by surprise, and not necessarily a pleasant one.

My self-evaluation seemed to satisfy my boss.  She had no comments to add to my list of tasks and responsibilities.  So apparently, I made no glaring omissions and I did not concern them with an over-extension of my authority in the company.  She had no real comments on my significant accomplishments, except to congratulate me on completing many of the goals that were set for me last year (both by myself and the company).  For the short-term and long-term goals, she just told me that I had set good ones for the company department.  Many of the things I included were very task-specific things that I want my team to complete over the next year or two.  I did not include much in the way of career-oriented/personal growth goals, and she included some of this in the set of objectives she gave me for the upcoming year.

The next section is a list of categories that help the supervisor evaluate the employee’s job performance according to the metrics that are important to the company.  I receive a “grade” in each category and some comments to justify the rating (good or bad).  Then all the categories are averaged together, and I receive an overall “grade” for my year.  This year I received a 2.08 (scale is 1 best to 5 worst), which means I frequently exceed expectations.  This is great considering that I have been in the position for less than a year, and I feel very unconfident in some of the aspects of my job.  My strongest categories according to my boss are corporate policies/procedures, initiative, quality improvement, and company identification (basically I follow the rules well).  My lowest scores were in internal controls, knowledge, problem-solving/judgement/decision-making, planning/organization, and communication skills, which mostly contained comments related back to me being new in the position and still learning.  She identified a strength in managing subordinates, and a weakness in communicating with superiors.

The final written section is a list of goals she would like me to focus on in the next performance period.  Nothing on here was unexpected, and only one thing concerned me.  I am to take over greater management responsibility for my staff.  Previously, I was managing their daily tasks, but not performing most of the official employee management tasks (on paper they all reported to my manager instead of me).  Now they all report to me officially, and I will be responsible for many of the supervisor tasks such as performance reviews.  She also gave me a list of tasks she would like me to transition from her to me, most of which I already had identified as something I should learn. There was one project in which I need to put some serious effort learning how to manage.  This is something that used to be done by our department but it was taken away due to a material weakness identified by the auditors.  It was not my fault it was taken away in the first place, but it is now my responsibility to spend time with the man who took it over and learn enough that this can be transferred back to our team.  Finally, she indicated I would probably gain some not-yet-identified tasks stemming from the accounting department reorganization which began a few months ago.  The final goal is to take some seminars to gain greater strength in communicating with my superiors.  This is the only goal that makes me really nervous, partly because I do not like communicating with my superiors and partly because it is part of the not-so-pleasant surprise I mentioned earlier.

It is not written anywhere in my official performance evaluation, but in the meeting my boss brought up my long-term career trajectory with the company.  My boss will probably retire in the next 5-10 years, and they are starting to plan for her successor.  They have apparently identified me as one of the potential candidates for her replacement.  I was actually surprised they would see me in that position, especially in that time frame.  I shocked her by not displaying great enthusiasm for the idea and by voicing hesitation in seeing myself in that position.  The idea bothers me for a few reasons.  One, her position does not seem very fun.  She goes to a lot of meetings, she does a lot of research, she acts as a go-between various departments, she makes organizational calls, etc.  I like burying myself in the details and playing with the spreadsheets, not really orchestrating the big picture.  Two, personality-wise I think I am a bad fit for upper-management.  I am rather passive and non-confrontational.  I think I would have a hard time being a voice for the accounting department up against the executive team and other departments.  Third, I do not think they actually want me in that position either, but are just trying to figure out what to do since the girl they were grooming to fill it left the company.  They need to prep somebody to fill that position (or at least do some of the work).  Plus, I think they want me to feel like I have somewhere to grow so that I do not leave too.  At least for now they want me to think I am a potential candidate.  It does not change the fact that I just do not think I want it.

Bonus:  My department participated in a 360 degree performance review for all the managers.  I received my feedback from that review in a separate meeting from my official performance review.  I had a really low response rate (3 out of a potential 63 respondents), but overall I got a 1.15 (again 1 best, 5 worst).  Apparently, my co-workers want me to recognize/reward performance more, consider employee point of view when making decisions, and be more aware of employee developmental needs.

That is it.  My review is done for the year.  I can breathe for a few months before the process starts again.  For now, I will work on my short-term goals, I will think about what my real long-term goals are, and I will resist the efforts to groom me for a position that I do not want.

See you next week!

Happy Turkey Day

I am so glad to be on Thanksgiving break.  Today, I wanted to ponder the Thanksgiving holiday for a few minutes.  My Thanksgivings have changed a lot over the years.  It used to be a much bigger holiday for me, and now it mostly means a few days off work.

When I was younger, Thanksgiving was the equivalent of Christmas in our house.  It was a big deal that was surrounded by family traditions.  I grew up in Pennsylvania, which meant that I usually got an early dismissal on Wednesday and did not have to go back to school until the following Tuesday (Monday is that beloved Pennsylvania state holiday, first day of deer season).  Thursday began with my mom, my sister, and me, eating cinnamon rolls and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  We would watch all the way until Santa made his appearance at the end.  Then, we usually spent the day making our contributions for Thanksgiving dinner and wrapping presents.  Later in the afternoon, we headed over to my grandparents on my father’s side.  In addition to my grandparents, there were two great-uncles and a cousin, all with significant others, and occasionally some extra invitees there as well.  We would all partake in the usual Thanksgiving feast:  turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green beans, corn casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, and more that varied from year to year.  After dinner, my grandparents exchanged presents with us.  My paternal grandparents did not celebrate Christmas, but still wanted to participate in some sort of gift exchange with their children and grandchildren.  So we did all the “Christmas” activities with them on Thanksgiving, and we had the regular Christmas with my mom’s side of the family.

Over the years, my Thanksgivings have become much less exciting.  It was a gradual change over time, not an abrupt stop to tradition.  My grandfather died when I was fourteen.  Grandma kept Thanksgiving going for a couple of years, but it was a much smaller meal.  Then, she stopped it completely, and we started to have Thanksgiving at my mom’s side of the family (big meal, no presents).  Grandma also decided that she was going to celebrate Christmas after all, so the present exchange was moved to Christmas time.  My paternal grandma now comes to my maternal grandma’s house for Christmas, so there is only one big celebration a year.  The biggest change to my holiday probably came when I moved out of Pennsylvania to Virginia though.  I have not gone home for Thanksgiving for a number of years.  It is too expensive and time-consuming to go up there more than a couple of times a year, and Thanksgiving is one of the holidays that got side-lined.  Sometimes I have been able to join some sort of Thanksgiving celebration in Virginia, and other years I have spent on my own.  The past couple of years, I have been with my husband and his family.  They usually have some kind of meal together, but it is a much smaller meal than those with which I grew up and never involve more than just his parents and siblings.  The day is spent much more around the football games on TV than anything else.

Although I have had some rather subdued Thanksgivings in the past decade, this year I am looking at one of my quietest.  My husband and I are not going anywhere.  We are not having anyone come over for the day.  We are not preparing any kind of Thanksgiving-style meal.  The plan is to just stay home, watch football (although that will likely be my husband more than me), and eat pizza.  We were invited to his uncle’s house to have dinner with his uncle, his uncle’s wife, and his parents, but he does not want to go.  I was willing to make a Thanksgiving meal for us here to enjoy, but he did not want to do that either.  I may still watch the Macy’s day parade if I can wrestle the TV away from him for a while.  However, it looks like this will just be a restful four day weekend for me, rather than much of a holiday.  In some ways that sounds kind of nice, but somehow I cannot help but feel we are missing out on something special.

Regardless of whether you are enjoying a quiet day on your own, having a big blowout with the family, or something in between, enjoy this year’s turkey day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

See you next week!

A World So Intolerant

I do not like to watch the news.  Sometimes it feels like nothing good ever happens any more.  We have one story of death and destruction after another dominating the headlines.  It makes me depressed to think about it for too long.  I prefer to tuck my head back into my shell so I can pretend that everything is well in the world.  This week though has had several rather horrific news stories push their way onto my radar, so I feel the need to poke out of my protective cover for a minute and put some thoughts down.

Why are we so intolerant of each other?  There are so many people on this planet.  I would like to think that most of us are generally good.  However, it is hard to ignore the evidence, both big and small, that tells me every day that we are not as nice as we seem.  It seems like we go out of our way to hurt anyone who is different from us, who does not believe the same things as us, who takes a different path in life from us.  It does not matter if we are talking about terrorist attacks like those in Beirut on November 12, 2015, or hate crimes like the attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, or children driven to suicide because of bullying in the schools.  It is all horrible stuff that I do not want to see in my newsfeed.

The aftermath of these events is almost as bad.  People pick certain stories and run wild with them on social media, claiming support but not really understanding what happened or doing anything to make changes around them.  Political activists use the incidents to promote social policies that would have little effect on the root cause of the problem.  Groups organize to seek revenge against the original perpetrators and often expand to a hateful outcry against whole groups of people who only superficially resemble those responsible.  People point fingers at each other, but no one does anything to fix the problem.  Even if one or two people do actually step up to try to make an actual difference for the better, they are drowned out by the bullshit around them.

Why cannot we just learn to live with each other?  I certainly do not like everyone that I meet, that I work with, that I am related to, etc.  I doubt most of the people I dislike even know it though, because I do not advertise the fact.  I am not talking about letting other people hurt me in any way, but just stepping back when they come into disagreement with me.   Just because they have opposing political views from me, or believe a different religion than me, or are of a culture I do not like being around, does not mean they do not have the right to be who they are.  As long as they are not infringing on my right to be myself, then I have no reason to infringe on their right to be themselves.  I am definitely not perfect, but I do my best to stay out of other people’s personal freedoms.

I just want us all to stop being so intolerant of people who are different than us.  I understand I probably cannot have much impact on international terrorism, but I can certainly treat those around me with respect and understanding.  If we all start giving each other a little courtesy in our day to day interactions, and stop focusing on trying to change people who are different than us, then maybe we eventually can stop seeing so much hatred pour forth from the media.  Then, it will not be so depressing to hear the news.

See you next week!

Fall Favorites Tag

There has been a Fall Favorites Tag going around the Youtube community.  It brought back fond memories of my Myspace days (who remembers that?).  I used to get tagged in questionnaires all the time, and I loved filling them out in my blog.  I do not have a Youtube channel, but I still wanted to participate in the fun.  So here are my fall favorites.

Favorite Candle:  I have not been much of a candle burner in recent years.  It just never crosses my mind to light the ones I have.  I recently purchased two from Bath and Body Works though.  One of them counts as a fall scent, Feast - Maple Sugar Brittle.  I guess by default this becomes my fall favorite for this year.

Favorite Lip Product:  I tend toward more neutral lips in the fall since I am not very comfortable in the trendy bold colors.  They just do not seem appropriate in the workplace, and that is where I wear most of my makeup.  My favorite ones are Maybelline Warm Me Up and Revlon Pink Truffle.

Favorite Blush:  I do not own that many blushes, so I do not change them for the season.  Lately, I have been wearing Milani Romantic Rose or Benefit Dandelion.

Favorite Drink:  My favorite fall drink is definitely hot chocolate.  I love that it is finally cool enough to sip hot drinks while cozying up with a good book under the blankets.

Favorite Clothing Item:  I love wearing boots.  I have several pairs, all different heights and styles, so I am ready to go no matter what the occasion.

Favorite Fall Movie:  Since there are not really fall movies, I guess this means more Halloween movie.  As an adult, I actually avoid Halloween and scary movies.  As a child, I loved the movie The Canterville Ghost (the 1985 version with Richard Kiley as Sir Simon de Canterville).

Favorite Fall Show:  For seasonal specials, I pick the classic Peanut specials, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  When I was a child, I also really liked the TV special Molly’s Pilgrim.

Favorite Thanksgiving Food:  Thanksgiving is a meal I definitely enjoy.  I want to eat it all in large quantities.  If I had to pick my favorites from it, I would choose sweet potato casserole and canned cranberry sauce.

Favorite Costume:  My favorite costume from when I was a child was Celia Hamilton from the Mandie mystery series.  My cousin went as Mandie.  I loved these books when I was younger.  I loved wearing the old dress and bonnet and pretending that I was going on an adventure.  As an adult, I have not dressed up in a number of years because I do not go to Halloween parties.  However, I intend to be a flapper if I ever get invited to one in the future.

I hope you had fun reading my fall favorites.  Tag, you are it.  Share your favorites with me in the comments.

See you next week!

It Has Been Six Months!

I have completed six full months of blog posts.  My first post went live on May 6, 2015.  Since then I have posted twenty-six articles to my site.  I thought it would be fitting to do an assessment of my project at this milestone.  I want to acknowledge what I have done so far, and to share what I want to do next.

Looking back at my initial post, I outlined three reasons for beginning this blog.  So how am I doing at fulfilling those goals?  The first reason I gave was to practice writing, to improve the amount of time I spent doing it and to improve my quality.  I definitely write more because I am forced to do it every week so I can post something.  I have not missed a week yet, although there have been a couple rather short blogs.  I have not been very successful in writing more outside of the blog though.  I have a couple pages written of a novel, but I just cannot seem to get the time and motivation lined up to work on it consistently.  As far as quality goes, I probably am not the best judge of my own work and I have received no outside feedback on anything posted.  However, I can say that there are blogs I like and blogs that I think were not very well done.

The second reason I gave was to use this space as a way to work through my life.  I do not think I have accomplished much in this aspect of the project.  Although some of my blogs border on introspective, more of them are observational about life happening around me.  There are two main reasons I have not followed through with more journal-like entries.  First, I am a little timid about putting too many personal details out there.  I am afraid of the consequences if people I know are not thrilled with some of the things I think.  The other reason is that I am avoiding answering the questions inside myself.  There are many things in my life that I need to examine and change if I am going to be happy, but I do not have the confidence to do so.  While I still leave my blog designated as a place to work through my issues, it might not be as often or as open as I originally envisioned.

The last reason was to entertain others.  Although I cannot know for sure, my guess is that I have not accomplished this goal at all.  My blog posts all have two to four views, and I am fairly certain these are Googlebots archiving the information.  I have no followers, no shares, no comments, no indication that anyone real has actually read anything I have written.  I have not told anyone I am writing a blog, and I have not marketed myself online in any way.  Therefore, I am relying on someone randomly stumbling upon the blog.  The chances of that happening are fairly slim, so I know that I currently have little chance of fulfilling this goal.  If I truly want some readers, then I am going to need the confidence to actually put myself out there and let people know that I have written something.

Where do I go from here?  For now, I think the important thing is to keep writing.  While I might not be well-read, I am a published writer and that is more than I used to be.  I want to try to do better about giving my blogs the time they deserve, so that I am truly proud of all of them.  Additionally, I want to focus on learning more about the Blogger site and what it can do.  I have done little to explore the available features and use them to make my blogs unique.  I also want to set up my Google+ profile, so that there is actually a real prolife attached to the name posted to my blogs.  Maybe, if I am feeling adventurous, I will even take the first steps in letting others know there is a blog out there that they can read.

Blog 27 is done.  Here is to another six months.  See you next week!