Day 2 Back at Work

I started back at work yesterday. I figured taking off 6 - 8 weeks for a maternity leave should be adequate, and it was just about 7 weeks. I didn't want to wait until next week and start during Chanuka. Especially since I'll have to take off on Thursday next week since all of the kids are off from school/playgroup.

Hadassah M. is under the care of her Bubby 2 days a week, and her Aunt Janice the other 2 days while I am at work.

Anyway, yesterday I came back to work. I set up my workstation and get ready to log in. My attempt ends with the following message: "You account has expired." My manager was not in yesterday, but I didn't know if he could help anyway. I called the helpdesk. The helpdesk guy confirmed that, yes, indeed, my account had expired. On Dec. 5. According to him, accounts expire annually and managers have to go into the system and request an extension for the next year. I called my manager's cell phone -- he was in Los Angeles packing up for his return flight to Baltimore (although he actually took a flight to Philadelphia and told me that his plane was heading for Tel Aviv next and he saw a lot of frum ppl on his flight from LA) -- so he couldn't really do much about the problem. So I called the guy in LA who is my manager on paper, but I didn't get through to him, just left a voicemail which he apparently didn't think was real important to respond to. So, in the end, yesterday was pretty much a wasted workday as far as I was concerned.

And, based on the fact that I'm blogging instead of working right now, you can infer that things have still not been fixed yet today. My manager is here today, and he called my LA manager to let him know that this has to be taken care of. LA manager told him to call his AA and get her to take care of whatever it is that he has to do to make things work again. But we tried calling her and she didn't pick up. Left her a voicemail and have yet to hear back. At least I have access to the internet so I'm not just staring into space all day.

As for other news, Tuesday afternoon saw all of us, except Yosef, at the dentist's for our semi-annual cleaning. Yanky, Tzvi, Sara, and I all get our checkups, while Shifra and Hadassah were just there as spectators. Everything went fine until the dentist was busy when we were ready to be checked after the hygenists did their thing. We waited around way too long. The kids were not so happy about it. And after the dentist checked us out, the 3 kids still had to get their fluoride. Yanky said he didn't want the kind that they paint on, so Tzvi and Sara echoed his sentiments. Yanky elected to do the fluoride rinse instead and got that over with. But T and S didn't even want to do that. In the end, Tzvi let them to the painting on kind while he just stood out in the hallway. Sara got that kind too while sitting on my lap with me pinning her hands down and after some tears. Parenting just feels so cruel sometimes. B"H, no cavities to take care of though, and the kids got to go to the pizza shop after the ordeal.

Lisa