shameless plug

I just started my own Mary Kay business and I need some help getting started!

First of all, if you want to just straight up buy some product, you can go to my web site at:

www.marykay.com/melissamcneil

If you live in the area, I will deliver it. If you do not live in the area, I will ship it to you, free of charge.


Secondly, if you live in the San Antonio area and you have skin and some time this weekend or next week, please call or email me. I would love to give you a free facial. If you have a few people who are interested, we can also set up a skin care class. In either case, you and your friends (as the case my be) will get to try out Mary Kay products and I'll give you some samples to take home. I am just trying to get some practice in my presentations. I absolutely love the Timewise skin care line and think everyone should just get a chance to try it for themselves. Don't worry about buying anything. I just need you and a little bit of time so I can get some more confidence!

Thirdly, if you do not live in the San Antonio area and would like a free catalog with some samples inside, contact me and give me your snail mail address. I'll get you on my list!

I'm excited about this venture! Please help me get off to a perfect start. :)

ta-da!

I am now a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant. You can check out my web site at
www.marykay.com/melissamcneil! You should totally tell your friends. :)

blah blah blah

I have a new job. For the time being at least. The reasons why I can't go into exact detail about it is are complicated so we'll just say that it's a strange combination of The Devil Wears Prada, The Nanny Diaries, and some sort of eccentric rental property management company. But it's not all bad or demeaning or anything like that. Just an endless source of entertainment since the daily tasks are never the same as the day before. I don't know how much I'm making yet, but at this point anything is good. I went a month with no income and that's enough to make it easy to take a job that has a high chance of turning into an awkward situation down the road.

The plan is to work for a month, as many hours as I can, and then go from there. I still have my resume up on monster and I will take any interviews offered my way. Then after the month is up I'll decide if I need to be pursuing another job hardcore or if I can just continue to work where I started this past week. I'm also vaguely hoping to save a bit of money here and there in order to start selling Mary Kay, but I need to talk to a few more people and see what their experiences have been because so far I have one negative one.

My official new weekly schedule has me up at 5 am on Mondays and Wednesdays and 6:30 am on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I was ridiculously tired this past week because I am really thoroughly not used to getting up early in the morning and being active ALL DAY LONG. I figure by the end of this week though, I should be pretty used to it. I really like the idea of having my evenings back. In theory at least. I was pretty bad at staying awake past 9 pm last week. Heh.

it's been a big day!

I am so not used to having all kinds of stuff going on before 3 pm. I had that schedule for quite some time!

Today was my first day of school and I got up right on time at 5 am and managed to leave really close to my planned 5:45 am. Even though that gets me to the campus a little early, I think I need to stick with that time for leaving because I don't want to get stuck in traffic. I still can't believe I actually chose a 6:30 am class, but at the same time it's kind of fantastic to be completely done with my school day by 10:45 am.

Yoga is first. First thing I learned is yoga is not easy. I have some dvds and stuff but I've only done a really half-assed version of things and not consistently at all either. Today we did half of a pre-assessment and then we'll do the same stuff all again at the end of the semester to see how much we've improved. We did this thing that's kind of like push-ups except it focuses on your triceps and shoulders more than your chest and biceps. Yes, it is as icky as it sounds, at least the first time you do it. Then was sitting with no chair with arms straight out in front for as long as you can hold it. Do it. Then try to stay for ten more seconds when your legs start to shake. Then after that, go walk up and down some stairs. Anyway though, my teacher is a delight because she is crazy excited about all things athletic and is good at explaining foreign positions and whatnot without making you feel awkward. I'm excited I actually have my own yoga mat to take with me, I just need to get a bag for it someplace.

Next is Federal Government. Oh, how I adore government. I'm not even kidding, it really and truly fascinates me. I took Texas Government with a teacher who had actually been a Congressman which was awesome and I was kind of disappointed it wasn't going to work out for me to take Fed Govt from him as well. Disappointed until I met this teacher. I think she loves government more than I do which just makes my heart happy. Plus, she had us read this really interesting article about how a country has to have rigor, intelligence, AND creativity to succeed so basically the 21st century is up for grabs right now. I am really looking forward to getting to know her better and to the class in general because I am such a nerdilicious nerd.

And finally, Social Psychology. The only thing that makes my heart happier in school than government is a psychology professor who is a little wacky but also tremendously smart and wants you to be able to learn as much as possible so you can apply it on a daily basis without having to think about it too much. It seems like a good group of people, except the one guy who was drifting off and borderline snoring. It's the first day dude, maybe you should drop. Although no one will get any sympathy from me about having an early morning if that's their first class since it's my third. My teacher is currently writing her doctoral thesis. I hope I can get the courage up quickly to ask her about it because I'm just impressed with her pursuing it and am sure to be blown away by the research.

At the end of the semester I am going to be at least closer to being a hottie if not just already one (the combination of Weight Watchers and Yoga twice a week should kick my ass in a really great way), be able to inform anyone who will listen the virtues of our government along with fascinating facts like how Steve Jobs used a course he took at Stanford in Calligraphy to create the computer icons we know and love today, and have fallen even more in love with psychology than I already have.

After school (and stopping by my parent's house to mooch some food--don't worry I told them), I had another job interview! Or another part of the job interview process at least. It went well so I get to proceed to the next step which is a phone interview. Then I checked my voice mail and had a call wanting to set up another interview with the other place I had applied and interviewed at last week. My stress level is already decreasing with the start of school, but it will even more so once I've got a job and am earning a real paycheck. Please pray or keep your fingers crossed or think good thoughts!

the job dilemia

I currently work 3 pm to 11 pm at a hospital as a secretary. Sometimes I really like it because I learn random medical kinds of things and some of the people I work with are really fantastic. Sometimes I hate it because I do not get credit for most of what I do, doctors can be cruel, and nurses have high stress jobs that sometimes mean they take things out on people that have nothing to do with what is causing their headaches. The hours are alright. I like being able to sleep in a little bit and I never have to deal with traffic. It is a little hard to have a social life because almost everyone else has to get up earlier than I do which means they go to bed earlier too. Family time is relegated to weekends.

A friend mentioned the possibility of there being an opening I'm qualified for at the place where she works. I went ahead and emailed the contact she gave me just to get more information and I'll just kind of see what happens. I haven't even heard back but it kind of has me thinking. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to find something in the 8 am to 5 pm realm. I don't think it would be that hard to find the same pay rate I currently have if not actually a higher wage. I definitely need health insurance that isn't going to drain my checking account but that's the biggest thing I'd have questions about.

So what do I do? How do I decide? I have a perfectly decent job and I know the demons I have to deal with. I had a bad day last week and one of my co-workers told me I didn't really have it all that bad. I guess she's right but sometimes I really don't think they understand all the stuff I have to do that is surrounded by attitudes and general grumpiness. But is that really going to be different at any other job?

Maybe I'm dissatisfied because I've been there for awhile and I'm bored. I've had a strong case of wanderlust for a long time and since I haven't moved, maybe that has transferred itself into my job. I think it would be truly awesome if I could just quit and go to school full-time. But I do believe that opportunity has completely passed me by.

a 10 hour saturday at work

Yesterday I worked a 10 hour shift. I don't know exactly how this happened or what I was thinking when I said it'd be fine because last night I was seriously exhausted. Luckily it wasn't a very busy day, just lots of cleaning and wiping people's butts because I was part secretary but mostly nurse's aide. I seriously love the two nurses that I worked with yesterday. I don't think I could work on a Saturday with the other set of nurses that work on the weekends together, but anytime these two needed me, I'd do it again. Even knowing how ridiculously tired I will be at the end of the night.

There was one patient who was this sweet old lady who was getting a blood transfusion. She was a little bit confused, but not completely out of it. Her brother actually brought her in for the transfusion and we got her all comfortable in a recliner with the tv on in a spot right by the nurse's station in case she got extra confused and needed a little more attention. I had to take vital signs every hour and every time she had something new to tell me that made giggle a little bit. One time I went to start getting her blood pressure and she said "Well, Kennedy is resting comfortably, let's hope the rest of us are." It was kind of an astute observation. Then the patient in the slot next to hers starting moaning again because he was in pain (and to be honest, a bit of a drama queen), and she frowned and then said "Well, Kennedy is resting comfortably, let's hope the rest of us are." This made me want to laugh like crazy, but I just smiled and asked her if I could get her anything at all.

Later on I went to take her vital signs and realized her pants were hanging over the little garbage can. I have no idea when exactly it happened, but she had an accident and just took her pants off and laid them in the trash can. She was still sitting in her recliner and had a towel daintly draped across her crossed legs. At first glance, it seemed like she had just gotten cold, but it was definitely her pants in the trash can. I got her some scrub pants and gathered some wipes and stuff and went into her room.

"Mrs. R, do you need some clean pants?"

She took a peek under the towel and said "Why, I don't have any on, so I guess I do!"

I cleaned her all up, got her in the scrub pants, cleaned up the recliner and got her a fresh sheet and pillow. I told her to just let me know if she needed anything at all and she put her little hand on my arm and said "You're a good man, Charlie Brown."

Seriously, it's things like this that make me want to stay in the medical field forever. Little touches of compassion and patience go such a long way and it just makes me feel good to do something nice for someone, even if I know they probably won't even remember it tomorrow.

I definitely like days like yesterday better than the ones spent answering the phone with rude doctors on the other end who would like to know why I haven't read their minds yet.

venting

Last week was particularly difficult for me at work. I feel like that's all I say when I talk about work and that it's been that way since sometime in December. We've been really busy and I've been feeling crushed on both sides. The hospital is full so beds aren't being assigned and then administrators are coming by and asking us to do things I'm sure they feel are simple but they just are not. Patients and family members are worried and nervous and not in the best of moods or very understanding when it comes to not getting the answers they would like. Doctors are frustrated because they aren't getting satisfying answers as to why their patients have to wait for a bed. And then finally, I absolutely know they don't mean it, but the nurses I work with dump on me as much as everyone else sometimes.

One of the nurses is someone I always enjoy talking to because she has a way of either making me laugh at myself or helping me understand the bigger picture without being condescending. I like talking to her about everything really and she's shown me the most about my job by far too. I told her on Thursday that I had just had it. I was sick of being talked to like I'm an idiot or like I'm someone intentionally trying to piss doctors off. I'm sick of people expecting me to pull things out of my ass for them to do their job when they are the ones who forgot whatever it is they need in the first place. I'm sick of getting dumped on by everyone, whether they mean it or not. She just laughed and said I shouldn't care so much. I know. I do. There are times when it doesn't bother me at all. I can let it slide off my back and barely give it another thought. There wasn't any one thing that was such a ridiculous event during the entire week that it wrecked everything. Rather, it was the culmination of events. It was the mulitple comments and complaints, the irritation I fielded, the general piss poor attitudes of those around me.

I am finding myself slipping into a mode where I expect everyone to realize I am a person with genuine feelings and emotions and unfortuantely I feel that as a secretary that is really dangerous. It's not going to happen. For good or bad, most of the time I am the voice on the other end of the phone and I am the body that sits in the chair that is supposed to know everything about anything happening in the unit and most of the rest of the hospital. It has nothing to do with 27 year old Melissa who dreams of a degree in psychology, being married and having babies, and living in a place where it snows in the winter.

On the flip side of that though, I need to realize that the angry doctor in front of me could be angry because one of his favorite patients died yesterday and he couldn't do anything to stop it. The nurse delegating everything she possibly can to me might be having a hard time concentrating because something happend with her kids that morning and she wants to make sure the patients don't feel the reprecussions of it. I don't really think everyone is being bitchy just because they feel like it so I need to stop acting like everything is personal.

Easier said than done.

But I finally feel like the rest of my life is going pretty well again and maybe that can carry me through rough days at work. I'm losing weight and feeling really good about it, money is going pretty well, I get to pick another apartment to live in and go through all my stuff and par down and that's always good, and no matter what happens during the week I get to spend most of the weekend with the love of my life and not much else makes me happier than that.

a tip from me to you

There's a big difference between a patient being arrested and a patient who arrested. It is important to understand the difference or at least listen carefully if you are going to try to tell someone about it later. It saves you from looking super dumb.

and on friday i wasn't even wearing makeup

I work in a kind of holding area of the hospital. People go to the doctor and their doctor tells them they need to go to the hospital for labwork, a blood or platelet transfusion, or to be admitted. Sometimes when they get to the hospital a bed (room) is ready for them, but most of the time they have to wait a little bit. They come to my area to start treatment and be a little more comfortable. We have 9 stretchers (that look like beds) and they are seperated from eachother by partitions and the famous huge hospital curtains. My desk is right by the door. There are two stretchers right across from me.

And this is all I want to say: What is the deal with putting patients in stretchers 1 and 2 that would rather stare at me than watch their little tvs or sleep or talk on the phone or do anything besides creep me out for hours at a time? One on Friday and one today (technically yesterday I guess). Not. Cool.