In Honor of a Wonderful Man

Tuesday, I received some of the most heartbreaking news I've ever heard.

Shortly after lunch, I was working on some paperwork when my cell phone rang. Since it was a friend of mine who seldom calls, I answered. Sobbing, she told me that a mutual friend of ours was dying.

Shocked, I didn't even have words to express the emotions flying through me. I remember saying "oh my gosh" a lot. Apparently, he had been rushed into surgery on Tuesday, where he coded twice before losing all brain function. He was on life support for a few hours before his mother, in accordance with his wishes, took him off the ventilator.

Rick was an amazing man. When I met him, he was angry and self destructive. We had those traits in common. We met about 2 years ago in a bar where I was meeting our mutual friend, Jessica. He was dating someone at the time, as was I, so my initial "he's kinda cute" thought never developed into anything more. I'll never forget the way he made all of us laugh that night.

Six months later, both of us single, we met again at Jessica's going away dinner. Jessica took it upon herself to "set us up" shortly thereafter. We spent a lot of time together over the couple of months after Jess left. Both of us being Aries', we tended to have a lot in common and share a lot of the same opinions. We could talk for hours about nothing. Neither of us wanted (or was ready for) a relationship, so we just stayed friends. Our friendship stayed, but communication waned a bit when he started dating again.

I'm not sure what prompted the change in him. I know he had recently lost a good friend, but, one night, we started talking about The O.C. Supertones and how fabulous their music is, and we ended talking about God and the difference He makes in peoples' lives. From that night forward, I noticed a marked and constant change in the Rick I'd once known. In fact, I found myself more attracted to him than I'd ever been.

I realized pretty quickly, though, that Rick and I were only ever meant to be friends. Brother and sister in the Lord. His was a friendship I cherished tremendously. I remember many conversations about what God was doing in Rick's life and the many struggles he faced when he started losing friends because of his faith. He was an inspiration.

The change I saw in him over the past year was amazing. God did a major work in Rick's life.

I'll miss his lunchtime texts that always managed to gross me out and destroy my appetite, I'll miss his goofy jokes about loving the Jonas Bros. and High School Musical. I'll miss the solid wisdom he always gave whenever I needed "guy advice." There are so many things to miss, and even more to celebrate.

While I mourn the loss of my friend, I know without a doubt that I will see him again someday. Rick isn't missing us a bit, he's too busy worshiping his King. He's not in pain any longer, and he's been rewarded for his faithful servitude to the Lord. While the world is a little bit darker place without him, I know I'm not the only person whose life was brightened by Rick's life.

We'll miss you, buddy.

Growth

I am very lazy about many things, but getting my hair trimmed is one thing about which I'm almost disgustingly lazy. I make a concerted effort to remember to get my hair trimmed at least once every six months. This time, though, I'm ashamed to admit, I waited a full 8 months to get my hair trimmed.

I quickly made an appointment with my hairdresser when I realized that, even if I could use my recently gifted Chi straightener to work magic on my obstinately curly hair, I had some serious split ends. Carrie, the wonderfully gifted hairdresser who's been cutting and styling my hair for over a decade, is always good about squeezing me in whenever I call at the last minute.

I have been in the habit, for several years, of having Carrie straighten my hair whenever I go in for a trim. That is also the only time my hair has been straightened.

After getting my hair quickly trimmed and styled on my lunch hour this afternoon, I used my afternoon break to peruse some pictures I'd posted on Facebook over the past year or so. I came across a picture from exactly a year ago, on another occasion when I'd just returned from Carrie's ministrations.

While I'm always shocked at the amount that my hair has grown, I was blown away at the comparison between last year's picture and today's. Of course, that comparison started me thinking: wouldn't it be wonderful if we could gauge personal (emotional, spiritual, etc.) growth in a similar manner?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if one could look in the mirror (or at a picture) and instantly see visible proof of how far he or she had come in life?

I know that I've grown exponentially over the past two years. I know, too, that I am no where near the point of life where I need to slow that growing process even the smallest bit. Similarly to the fact that I couldn't do certain things with my hair when it was shorter than it is now, there are many things in my life that I was in no way ready to handle last year at this time. The biggest hurdle I wasn't ready to tackle last August was a relationship. Sure, I could blame my anti-relationship stance on the harsh breakup I'd gone through just six months previously, but the reality is that I knew I wasn't ready to commit to someone on the level that an adult relationship requires.

Fast-forward to August 2010 and I'm struggling through my first "real" relationship (with the man with whom I hope to spend the rest of my life). I am forever grateful to my friends who have been in my shoes before and have been an endless source of advice and encouragement. Like my hair, my ability to commit (among many other things) has grown to astounding lengths.

I am not naive, I know myself well enough to know that being in a relationship (not to mention life in general) will remain an almost constant struggle as I fight against the growth I know I need but do not want.

W-O-R-K is the nastiest 4-letter word in my vocabulary

Sometimes, I wish I had the energy of a five year old.

I get home from work, completely exhausted, and am instantly worn out by just watching The Munchkin twirl around the living room, irritating her daddy and making a mess. This is repeated every Monday through Thursday night. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I'm usually so tired by the time that The Boy and Munchkin are gone for the night that I can barely muster the energy to change for bed, let alone get any work done around the house.

Monday and Tuesday nights are usually a battle of wills between The Boy and myself to determine who will be getting dinner for the three of us. I maintain that he should be responsible since I work on Mondays and Tuesdays and he doesn't.

I think the job is really what is killing me right now. Even though my stress levels have decreased exponentially since the retirement of the supervisor from hell, I still find myself exhausted every day. I can wake up full of energy and become immensely tired by the just the thought of going to work. You can only imaging what happens once I get there and attempt to make it through the day. By the time I make my way to the end of the work week, I typically need at least one full day of nothing in order to recover enough energy to do anything semi-productive for the rest of the weekend.

I'm hoping that some of the exhaustion and lethargy is weight-related and will vanish once I've lost some weight, but, meanwhile, I'm stuck in this endless cycle of utter exhaustion. I drag myself out of sleep every morning to the blaring of my alarm (on which I've probably pressed the "snooze" button more than a few times); I drag myself to work after the briefest morning routine I can manage. I have my work preparation down to a science. I can wake up at 0600 and leave my house by 0625 (0630 if I have to wash my hair or shave my legs). I have all but given up on wearing makeup, and I throw on the nearest articles of clothing, with little to no thought to whether or not they match. Once at work, I trudge from my desk to the nearest  available coffee. By the time I trudge back to my desk, my computer is ready for me to actually sign on. I have an hour (give or take) until my first appointment of the morning shows up. Sometimes, I get lucky and I don't have a morning appointment until 0900 or 1000. Mostly, though, my life is a circus of appointments with my clients (yes, I have clients who make appointments simply because they got a letter in the mail with my name on it and the clients want to meet me in person) and my futile attempts to meet the completely unreasonable expectations set forth by the upper management in our department (none of whom can even navigate the computer system, let alone mange a caseload).

A year and a half ago, my caseload was hovering around 300-350, and we hadn't separated the homeless cases from the rest of the Food Stamps cases. Now, each Food Stamps worker carries a caseload of between 500-550, and the homeless/elderly cases are in a completely separate unit (those cases number in the 3,000s). So now, instead of 2,400-2,800 cases divided amongst 10 workers, we have almost 7,000 cases divided amongst 9. The increase we have seen in our workloads alone is unreal.

One thing I am currently thankful for is the fact that we now have a supervisor who understands the fact that there is no physically possible way to accomplish everything we're supposed to do within the time frames allotted. His motto is "do your best." It's nice to know that I'm not going to get written up for doing my best and still falling short.

I'm not a math person, and have never attempted to figure how much time is actually required to do my job (I simply know that 80 hours every two weeks is not sufficient), but my supervisor has, apparently. He told a coworker that we would need a minimum of 200 hours a month in order to meet the minimum requirements. My perfectionist self would probably need closer to 300 hours a month to make my caseload look the way it did a little over a year ago.

I don't think anyone will ever be caught up again. We work in quicksand. The more we struggle to dig ourselves out of the pit, the deeper we sink (and it doesn't help that upper management is dumping more on top of us by the truckload).

I really hope I find a way out soon. There has been a rash of retirements lately (Gee, I wonder why?), and I was talking about retirement time frames with some of my coworkers. I realized that, if I stayed with this department, I would have 30 years of service by the time I'm 50 years old. The only problem is that I don't know if I will live to see my 50th birthday if I continue working for this county, let alone this department.