Monday, February 15, 2010

A stressful start to the New Year

It’s been two weeks since I last updated my blog. I have lots that I want to write about, but I can’t seem to find the time to sit down and gather my thoughts. It has been a hectic and stressful start to the new year that I have fallen sick twice already since the New Year. I was down with the flu on the 12th of January and I had the flu again on the 8th of February, both lasting for about a week.

Aiman had chicken pox two weeks into the start of the new school year, the same time that I was down with the flu. It was stressful trying to care for him while I too was not in the best of health.

I was glad that my hubby was in good health to care for him during the early start of my flu as I was also worried that he might catch my flu to add on to his chicken pox, but, I am glad that he did not catch the flu, and was quite well behave throughout his `ordeal’, as we were very worried that he might be scratching himself to the bones.

My son had a bad case of eczema just prior to getting the chicken pox and he was scratching so much that part of his skin behind his knees turned almost black from too much scratching, exposing raw skin that could not heal in time.

So, it was almost a miracle that he hardly scratched at all during the time that he was down with chicken pox. I think the antibiotics, the anti-itching medicine and the calamine lotion really works.

At the office front, I find myself suddenly short-handed as early as the 2nd week of January when two of my senior officers left, one to further his studies, while the other one took up a teaching job at a university in Ipoh. To add to that, two of my other officers got transferred to another department without any replacement for someone to take over their jobs.

I am constantly under stress as I run from meetings to meeting, while at the same time, trying to monitor projects, making sure that they are running smoothly. If they are not, reports have to be prepared, and that takes a lot of time when I have no officer to help me prepare the reports.

At the moment I only have one senior officer, when I should be having 3, and I have left most of the outstation travelling to him, but, lately, even he is showing signs of stress as he has started to show signs of falling sick too last week as he takes over some of the tasks usually handled by the other two senior officers who left.

My table is constantly piled high with letters as I can’t seem to get through the letters fast enough before the next pile of letters comes in, as I am in meetings from morning to evenings on most days. I have, of late, started to bring the letters home, so that I can clear them faster, but it tends to take away the time spent with my family, my crafts and the household chores, but, it has to be done. If not, things will pile up even higher, and I will get even more stressful.

I am hoping that this won’t become a habit as I prefer that time at home be time for the family and time to do my crafting, besides doing the household chores.

I just hope that the top management will take action fast enough to fill in all the vacant posts as fast as they expect the reports to submitted to them weekly. I have put in my requests since the beginning of the year, and one month had past with no signs of any action being taken on their part, and they expect us to work efficiently. Uurrghh! Do they think that we are robots? *sigh*

I am looking forward to the long Chinese New Year holiday to catch my breath, taking a break from the stress of work to work on my crafts, besides spending some quality time with my son, to see to his needs. I had to, however, bring back some work home, but I won’t be touching it until after I get to do what I have been meaning to do for the last few weekends when I have had not much of a weekend when things planned ahead never turned out the way it was planned to be.

So, this time, I am not making any big plans, except that I am hoping to find some time to work on some bags (I got a special order for a bag. I will tell more later), start on the door gifts for NNC’s 3rd Anniversary Meet coming up in March, a few exchanges that I have signed up and other crafts that I have been wanting to do.

Let’s hope that I can at least get half of what I intend to do done! LOL!

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