davejenbarnes

FlyLady.net: Your personal online coach to help you gain control of your house and home THIS is where the general public needs to go to learn how to take care of what is bothering me tonight. I just got off my shift from Target, yes, at 2 AM!!!!!!!!!!! The general public comes to our brand new store and totally trashes it every day. Do I dare even allow myself to imagine what their houses look like on the inside? What are you teaching your children when you dump items in a random shelf in the store? If we take care of what we own, we ought to take better care of what we do not own, or rather what others own, in this case, Target Corp. owns. The way our store is trashed day after day after day proves the extent of the selfishness of humans. Only thinking of themselves, not of others, sinful beings living in a fallen world proving how much we need Christ. Hopefully I am not crushing anyone out there who could possibly be reading this… Imagine a world where the general public and all humanity lives for others, taking care of others, being responsible for the things that touch their lives and that they themselves touch. Imagine if no one abandoned anything in a store for an entire day but instead put something they did not want back where they got it from. I’m sure everyone at one point in their lives has heard the phrase, put it back where you got it. Well? Has no one learned that lesson? -Jen

Kewl… I didn’t think that would work, but it did! Neat.

We’re currently experiencing frozen stuff in our fridge. For some reason, the milk and apple juice is solid! Our apartment has the fridge right at the end of the kitchen, which is more like a hall-way than a kitchen, and the thermostat is on the wall against the side of the fridge. Since mercury thermostats are notoriously inaccurate, I had placed our digital indoor-outdoor thermometer, with the outdoor wire wrapped around the actual thermometer, on the top of the thermostat. Dave took the thermometer and unwound the outdoor part and … haha … taped it to the inside of the fridge … so the little outdoor wire reaches just a foot or so to get inside the fridge. The current temperatures are 73.1 degrees inside and 40.3 degrees outside. .. ah, I mean inside the fridge! I think Dave just opened the fridge door so it’s not as cold as it is normally, or, at least, as cold as it needs to be to freeze apple juice and milk! -Jen

We’ve officially begun the hunt for a home which will most likely be a longer hunt than we have originally anticipated. We’ve been driving around neighborhoods for about a year now, checking out the area and picking up house-for-sale flyers. So far, the neighborhoods we’ve liked are way out of our price range… come to find out, nearly every house on the market here in the North Austin area is out of our price range. I refuse to live in a mobile home, but some of those are actually affordable! Ha! I can’t believe a lot of the mobile homes around here could be $90-100K! Geez, those must be some niiiice trailer homes! I’m sure I’ll be adding house-hunting into my posts over time. Right now, though, it’s kinda hopeless and I’m kinda depressed over the whole situation! -Jen

So SuperTarget opened tonight. Shhh… it was a secret! So’s the 23-26th! I’m sure it will be packed. My shift was an early one today so I missed VIG night. Yeah, Target doesn’t call shoppers customers — they’re guests! The good thing was that I was feeling pretty bad around the time I needed to go so I cut out of there pretty fast once 4:30 rolled around. It was a beast, though, redoing all the shoes mess that I did on Sunday! 15 hours of wasted time. I’m sure it’s not the first time something like that has happened. The next time I go in, there will be guests in the store. That’s gonna feel so strange. I mean, I’ve been working there for a month and we haven’t had a single guest in there with us. Everything has stayed where we’ve put it and we haven’t had to restock anything … product has been sitting on shelves for 4 weeks without moving. Non-grocery product at least. When I worked shoes Sunday and Monday, I noticed dust had been collecting on the black ones. Now product will be finding new “forever homes” and going to all the rich houses in Cedar Park. Imagine all the hands that a particular item has been passed through. Take a … a package of baby bottles for example. First, it was made, then wrapped, someone or something had to collect them in groups and box them, then the boxes get sent from the maker to a distributor who then ships them out to a SuperTarget near you. From the boxes to the trucks and from one truck to another until it ends up in Receiving who unpacks the boxes (or sometimes puts the entire box of bottles) on to a tub (big orangish-reddish metal cart we use to move product) so just in Receiving, numerous people will handle the items until they get out to the floor and placed on a shelf … by someones hand. Over and over and over again those bottles are touched by people. Sure makes you want to wash your hands more often! Also makes you want to take a look around you at all the product in your own home. All the clutter in the world is available to us… I’m glad I’ve gotten in the habit this past year of limiting the clutter in this tiny apartment, even if some of it DID come from Target. -Jen

Have you ever worked for eight hours on something that you know will just be re-done? I have. Today I “flexed” the women’s shoes of the new Super Target. Since we’re opening in 2 days and still have not received all of our shoe shipments, there are empty spots on the shoe racks which needed to be filled. I got to use the big scanner gun (PDT) and essentially fill in the gaps with extra shoes from surrounding styles. If we don’t receive shipments, the empty spots are filled, but if we DO receive shipments, all of the “flex” work I just did will have to be put back in the store-room (backstock) the new shoes will have to be brought out (pushed) and put in the right place on the shoe racks. I was going to make new labels for the extra shoes I brought out, but the labels printed the wrong way with the prices on them instead of the sizes on them. That will be my assignment tomorrow. In less than 12 hours. Oo I need to get to bed! -Jen

Yesterday was a beautiful “wedding day.” A little on the hot side, so all of the events took place indoors. (Anyone in central Texas who plans a July wedding outside should be shot, or at least told how ridiculously insane they are.) This was the wedding of our friends Josh and Daphne. Daphne was beautiful the entire day and had a wonderful time, and Josh didn’t look half bad either! Their reception had a beautiful view of the hills around Austin. David and I saw houses that we can only dream of visiting… let alone afford. Thanks, Jer, for the pictures on your gallery. -Jen

Can’t believe it’s almost Wednesday. I mean, I was scheduled for 16 hours at Target already and I haven’t put in a single minute of it due to this bacteria growing in my throat, that already going away. Amazing, this fear of getting strep throat. The fever was the worst part, well, that and looking at my throat with a mag lite. It looked infinitely more disgusting than those pictures. Let me tell you. My throat was grey and 100% white… nastiness!! Good thing it looks normal now. Just a little pink. The fever was also the first part of the whole ordeal to go away. I will go in for lessons tomorrow, although it’s the first time I haven’t called parents to remind them of their times. Dave has had interesting results in not reminding parents of times… we will see if I have similar results. I would look forward to kids not showing up, to give me time to practice. Anyhow… a full day spent in a sound-proof room with a middle schooler and two clarinets for $30/hr is not bad, but I would hate to do it for 40 hours a week. I just wish the private lesson program at LISD had health benefits…. which is the only reason to work for Target. How’s that for links? I’ve had fun grossing you guys out for tonight, so I will say farewell and wish everyone a happy Wednesday! -Jen

For those of you wondering how I am doing with my strep throat infection… I feel great, but I know it’s the drugs working in my body. When I check out the progress of my throat with a flashlight and mirror, I know the battle is far from over, but I feel fine. It’s very strange to feel so great but to see such nastiness in your throat. I still have one day of forced rest so I’ll be missing my second shift in a row at Target, but I have a note from the Doctor to back me up on that account. I spent all of today (about 8 hours) online playing PSO and I levelled 6 times, which is a lot considering it was from 114 to 120! Two more levels and I will be able to equip my electro frame! Sounds so silly, but David didn’t want me doing housework and playing video games is as close to resting as I could get today. I talked with some of my private lessons parents and they were very encouraging in keeping lessons on Wednesday. It seems that their children are sent back to school after being on antibiotics for 24 hours even with strep throat so they were fine with my 3-day long wait period and all feel safe about me seeing their children on Wednesday. I pray that God does not allow any of those children to get sick! Dinner is home-made chicken-wing soup courtesy of Dave, my loving chef so I leave you now to go eat some of that yummy dinner waiting for me in the kitchen! -Jen