Week 7 - Little Ms. Grumpy Fuss, and Radiation

Fact: babies love being held.  They really do.  Ours also seems to hate not being held recently.  These past few days, any time we put her down, she gets angry, unless she's asleep.  Fact part two, it's getting really hard to stay awake with her.  This is mostly due to the new job that I have, which is awesome, but leaves me ridiculously tired.  I'll get to that later.  Because of the job, I have already been getting less sleep than when I just had school.  I didn't realize how much this was hitting me until this morning, actually. 

When I feed the baby, I sit with my back against the arm of the sofa, with my feet pointing toward the other arm.  Then, I raise my knees, and sit the baby with her back resting on my lap so that she's leaning back a little.  This puts her in a sort of sitting position so I can have the bottle horizontal and she's not getting too much formula at a time.  Well, this morning, I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.  During the feeding, I fell asleep, and when I did, my head fell back.  I was very suddenly woken up by the back of my head hitting the arm of the sofa...twice.  Ouch.  

Also what was difficult this morning was that the baby decided to spit out the bottle when she was about half done.  This wouldn't have been a problem if she didn't start immediately crying when she realized the bottle was no longer in her mouth.  I tried to put the bottle back in her mouth, and she fed for a few seconds, then the whole process repeated a few times.  Needless to say, that got a little frustrating.  Eventually she calmed down, which was nice.  

So, this entry is going to be more about me than about the baby.  

A few weeks ago, I posted on my facebook asking what my friends would like to read about in the blog.  I got a few responses asking me to talk about the job, so I'll do that.  

One of the worst feelings was not being necessarily able to really support the baby these past few weeks.  See, I'd been unemployed since before the baby was born.  Let's see, we're about fourteen weeks into the semester, so for eleven weeks I was unemployed, starting when the project I was supposed to work on for my last job got put on hold, and then was started back up with a schedule that didn't fit my school schedule.  I applied at a few different places, even a place where they would "hire just about anyone" but couldn't find anything.  Then my father told me about Cardinal Health, who someone he knows works for.  I ignored it at first, but then, just out of the thought of "well, noone else is hiring, might as well apply," I did so, and got an interview.  

Most of the interview was us trying to hammer out what would be my schedule, which was weird.  

Then, a couple weeks later, I got the call from an HR representative at Cardinal.  Her words were "Well, we'd like to offer you the [official name of position] position at the [pharmacy  location]."  

I'm not a big crier.  The last time I had cried before that call is when I had found out I was going to be a father, and before that, uh..... good question.  But when I realized I had gotten the job, I teared up, both from joy and relief.  For once, I was going to actually be doing something.  

About two weeks later, after I did all the pre-employment stuff, I had my first day.  And I loved it.  

So, to those that want to know exactly what I do, I'm a courier for Cardinal Health.  They're a medical supply company.  The pharmacy I work at specifically manufactures and distributes nuclcear isotopes for imaging in hospitals.  I'm the person that takes the isotopes and drives them to different hospitals in the San Antonio area, takes them to their hot labs, and takes their finished doses back.  Then, with any down time I have at the lab, I break down and clean up the lead tubes (called "pigs"), dumping the syringe into lead barrels.  

For those that know me and would worry about it, don't do that because the exposure I deal with is less than walking out into the sunlight.  The company has very strict safety policies regarding our materials.  

The part of this job that I both love, and hate, is that I work weekends, and weekend shifts begin at 4:30 in the morning, ending at 1:00 in the afternoon.  On one hand, this is great, because I'm done with work really early and have the rest of the day to do with whatever I want.  On the other hand, If I'm not in bed by 8:30-9:00 p.m. the night before, I'll have to load up on caffeine pretty early.  Also, I get super tired pretty early on in the day.  For example, last Saturday was my birthday.  I had promised a few friends I would hang out with them later in the day.  That ended up not happening because by about 6:00pm, I was too tired and groggy to go out.  So I stayed home and played Halo 4 (not complaining, that game is incredible).  This is sort of a regular occurance for the morning shift.  But, overall, I love it.  The job is fantastic, the pay is good, and hell, just having something to do again is glorious.  

But, that's it for today folks.  Enjoy your day/night/weekend/holiday/whenever the heck you read this.  Good night!

-Jack, the Dude Dad