thirty one...the first few weeks

Last night as I sat down to dinner with some friends, exasperated by the events of the last two weeks, I said, "I am just not sure how I feel about 31 yet, it hasn't started out all that well". One of my friends at the table gave me a good dose of 'stop your whining' perspective, and responded "Well, with the state of things these days, I am just thankful to have a job and to be able to be here with you all at this nice restaurant, and be able to afford this wonderful dinner". So true, so true. I wasn't sure if I wanted to hug her or smack her. (Ok, that was a joke!!! I would never actually smack someone, especially this girl - she is quite possibly the nicest person I know.)

Seriously though, I agree completely with my friend, however at the same time, I just wanted to vent about the happenings of the last few weeks. Good thing I have a blog, so I can do that!

So...the only question I am pondering right now is where should I begin.

Well, I guess I will start with my leave of absence. It was DENIED! I was called up to the Sheriff's office to speak with him and I could tell right away by his tone that the answer was no. Worse than the fact that he said no, was that he decided it would be a good time to take an interest in me as a person and talk to me about my goals and aspirations. What he didn't know, was that while I was trying to 'take it like a man' (er...woman in this case), I was actually crushed that I would not be allowed to take the leave of absence and would not be going to Spain and that everything was not going to work out how I had planned. The smile I had plastered on my face and the "oh, no problem, I understand" were simply a facade and I really wanted to run out of there, straight to my car so I could drive home where I could bury my face in a pillow and scream for a minute. Ok, maybe that is a little over dramatic, but I did feel like I was on the verge of tears and just wanted to get out of there! But no, he kept me in his office for a good 15 minutes asking me about why I was studying Spanish.

Well, after I realized that the leave of absence was not going to happen, I needed to figure out another plan so I could still get my Spanish degree finished before I go to law school. I decided to talk with my adviser at school. The long and short of it is that even if I leave my job, there is not really any way for me to go to Spain and still finish the degree before next fall. So, right now, I am in the midst of being really pushy with my adviser to get her to try to pull some strings for me to work something out. We will see.

Aside from all of that, there have been some major snafus at work which have had me working on work at home and trying to figure out ways to keep things the way I want them. That is still a work in progress, but I think that I am winning the battle.

To top it off, I have been having some issues with my car. My windshield cracked, so that had to be fixed. It was enough time out of my schedule to get it taken care of in the first place, but after picking it up from the shop, I noticed that there was some damage to my ceiling or 'headliner' as they call it in car world. I had to call the shop and schedule another appointment for them to look at the damage to see if they can repair it. Aside from that issue, my car has just decided not to start sometimes. There have been three days over the past couple of weeks that I have been late to work because my car just doesn't feel like starting. I took it in to get it checked today and $315.00 later, I found out that the reason for the problem was that the computer in my car was rejecting the car key because it didn't recognize it, thought that it was a foreign object and that my car was being stolen. Essentially it was a security system malfunction. Yikes!

Anyway, I am hoping next week will be the kick off of the good days of 31. I am ready to be done with all of these little snags...