Done Diddly Done

Stick a fork in me.  I'm done.

I am officially on summer vacation.

No more nose to the grindstone putting in a solid 8 hours a week. Ha!

I am so glad to have this school year be done.

Let me rewind a little bit.

I started working at my current job in August, 2010.  I had just finished a year at a job that was less than ideal and the job before that one had been downright awful.  I just knew, from day one, that I was going to like this job/school.  I've been working as a speech therapist for long enough and in enough different settings (school, clinic, home health) that I can pretty easily recognize what will make a job good or bad.  And I was right.  I loved my job.  For the entire year.  I seriously didn't have one complaint.  It was the first job that I had found where I could completely picture myself staying long term.  The pay is great, I have my own office that I have to share with 0 other people, the hours are perfect (16 hours at school and 4 hours at home a week), the paperwork is manageable and my co-workers are fabulous.  You really cannot ask for more than that.  But to top it off my office has not 1, but 2, adult only bathrooms close by!

Then, at the end of last year (May 2011) my supervisor took a position at a different school.  And a person that I had "worked" with that year (worked is in quotes because 3 months into the school year she decided she would no longer communicate with anyone in special education) took my supervisor's position for the 2011-2012 year.  And all hell broke lose.  Not just for me, but for every single person my new supervisor came in contact with.  I won't air my list of grievances, but only because the internet doesn't have enough memory for me to type out a complete list.

All I have to tell you is that #1) she was totally incompetent.  She had no clue what she was doing.  And #2) when Elliott was in the hospital, on day 1, when he almost died from sepsis, this person was sending me nasty emails about not being able to find some paperwork from when I was in the hospital on bed rest.  Yep, I was so afraid of this person coming after me and threatening my job security that I actually did work related paperwork in the hospital while on bed rest, hooked up to a catheter and IV magnesium drip.  I read through it later and it was pretty damn good considering the circumstances under which it was created.

I was really not looking forward to going back to work after my maternity leave, specifically because of my supervisor.  She had been pretty rude to my speech aids and she had jacked up a lot of stuff without me there to tell her how to do her job (sad, huh?).  I had been in touch with some other people though and trouble was brewing between her and pretty much the entire campus.  It was a HUGE relief when, 3 weeks after my return, she was put on administrative leave and then fired. I went from having a pit in my stomach every day (even days I wasn't at work) to being easy and carefree.  

My newest supervisor is someone I have worked with for the past 2 years.  She is lovely.  It makes such a big difference when people are just nice. And my wonderful job has gone back to being wonderful.  I'm actually looking forward to next school year.  My hours are being increased for the fall semester because I have a freakish number of evaluations to do.  72% of my caseload needs to be evaluated before winter break.  Yikes.  Thankfully I am keeping one of my speech aids, so I'm only increasing my on campus time from 8 to 12 hours.  My aid will do another 8 on campus and then I'll do 4 hours of paperwork from home.  The plan is that once Elliott turns 1 (and after winter break) I will go back to my regular 16 hours a week on campus.  The thought of being away from him that long makes me sad and a little ill though.  It took me until Spencer was 4 to feel like I could be gone 2 full days. Until then I worked more days and less hours so I didn't have to be away from him for a full day with a sitter (I have a much easier time leaving them with Michael because they are still at home with a parent on that day).  We'll see.  I'm not allowing myself to stress too much about it right now.

My cute kids when I got home today:

Elliott's cute butt: