New challenges and challenges met, discovery, Unhappy Maggie

I had both a blessing and a challenge at work this week. One of the ladies in my group who is a very nice person but has never been a strong part of the group gave me her notice of leaving and then moved the departure date up to yesterday. So I am left to fill her post but I have the opportunity to bring someone into my group who could be a better fit. It gives me a small challenge and a good growth opportunity at the same time.

We had a little sending away get together late yesterday. Everyone that was in the office got to say their goodbyes and well wishes and I think she was happy we went to the small extra effort. She was ready to go soon after that. Today I will pick up the pieces and see where tasks need to be moved to cover the areas of her abandoned responsibilities. We will move on and I will begin the interview and hiring process for the umpteenth time. But that is a good thing.

Mama said the guys doing the sheetrock only worked about three hours yesterday. When I got home I looked over what they had done and it was pretty good work. They accomplished in three hours what would have taken me three or four full Saturdays. It is really exciting to see this key piece of the construction getting done. If Mama can find the color she wants we could have the apartment painted by next weekend. This weekend we will get the primer/sealant coat applied; then comes the final color.

Cori reports that Mykenzie has grasped the fact that letters make up names and if names then other words as well. It is always fun to see the light come on in a child’s eyes when the black scribbles on white pages turn into words – just like the ones they are already using in day-to-day speech. Mykenzie can actually read at the very early stages of word recognition and she is very excited about the new power.

She is not as excited as her brother Grant. When he recognized that she had the power to turn the unintelligible markings into words he could understand he got extremely excited and started asking her to read anything he could find that had those markings on it. Mykenzie was quickly frustrated and announced that “she could not read everything yet.” That will come in time and Grant will be right behind her. That is exciting.

I have not gotten an early morning text today so I will assume Maggie was not up at the “crack of stupid” this morning. Aaron flew out of Juneau Monday in the early morning and spent the day in Seattle. Yesterday he flew out of Seattle to some point on the Eastern US – Virginia, I think. Maggie had no kind words about the travel planning abilities of the Coast Guard. Aaron should be home late this week.

Since it is already Wednesday she should be able to hang on until then.