When Tornado and Volcano meet Apocalypse

There are no words that can fully describe the level of destruction in my home. I can't even begin to explain my panic and embarrassment at the thought of visitors coming to see us this afternoon. I have no plan to manage the situation, I have no hope if being able to fix it. It's not the end of the world - or is it?

Just a Quiet One

When people have asked me what I'm up to for Easter this year, my response has been - 'just a quiet one at home with the kids' which is actually an oxymoron.
Hoping to get stuck into a to-do list for the weekend, will have to see how it goes...

When Tornado Meets Volcano

Every single room in the house currently looks like the result of a natural disaster, actually you could say it is - a twin disaster zone and I know exactly how overwhelmed Civil Defense feel when they get thrown into the chaos. To be fair, the twins are not the only cause but they certainly do hamper the emergency management effort! The weekends have been a combination of clean-up effort, search and rescue (usually a whole lot of items that went missing during the week) and strategic planning - preparation for the week ahead. My daily morning and evening routine charts seem to have gone out the window this week. Next week needs to be different or I'm not going to be able to cope with the weekends :-(

Passing the Test

It's been a funny old week with having a nasty cold and a few short night's sleep with toddlers not sticking to the sleep routine.  It seems to be some kind of test to see if I can cope with everything on top of my new job.  So far I am hanging in there, taking each day as it comes and hoping for the best.  It's not a great place to be, but what can you do?  I don't want to be a moaner, I am actually a very positive person, so I'm not going to bleat on about it, I'm going to say that I am nailing my job at the moment and that although I'm making mistakes as I go along, I am making a sound contribution and I think I have the ability to really blow them away - once I learn what the heck I'm doing :-)

The Daily Grind

For the first time in over 3 years I am back in paid employment.  I was tempted to write 'back at work' but the reality is that I have been working by butt off the past 3 years, of course that was unpaid employment in the home.  Being a stay at home Mum is extremely hard work, so much so in fact that I decided to take a break and return to the workforce.  I am doing part-time hours, although 30 hours is almost close enough to say full-time when you add in an hour and a quarter per day of commuting and then all the prep work to get out the door.  Then work doesn't really finish at the end of the day it just flows into household responsibilities and before you know it, the day is done and it's time to start preparing for the following day.  I'm glad I only work 30 hours, but my pay reflects that and with daycare for the twins and motoring expenses it hardly seems worthwhile at the moment, but hopefully at some point it will make sense and it will help us to achieve some of our goals.
So far I have enjoyed my new employment experience, I have had a fairly intensive 2 week induction and next week I head into more on-job training which I am looking forward to.  The hard part is getting back into the daily grind, forcing myself to adhere to a new and very structured routine and making everything else work around it.  It has been exhausting using my brain in such a different way and taking in all the new information and processes.  I have met so many new faces and had a whirlwind introduction to the organisational culture and all the diversity of personalities that make a place tick.  It can be very overwhelming but I have been keeping up.
I aim to exceed expectations and make this role everything that I know it can be.  For now, setting myself up for success is key and that means forming a strong support network, building sound relationships - particularly within my team but also across the business, staying organised, streamling processes where I can and keeping on top of the workload.  That should all be no problem :-)