....Gone are the dark days that had me down.... (can you guess what song this is from?)

I haven't been blogging much.

Or reading very much.

needless to say, I haven't been reviewing much.

a pretty toxic situation at one of my school jobs has kicked my ass.  hard enough that I ended up quitting the job even though I wasn't sure I had another job lined up.

it was that bad.

I realized that things were so bad, I couldn't even enjoy my home life.  I found myself frequently tearing up and thinking of this particularly crazy woman who has made my work life a living hell - in conjunction with one of my supervisors.

So when the head lady called me to tell me that there was a disciplinary action scheduled for me (I can't think of anything I did to deserve a disciplinary action - really)  I let her finish her sentence.  Then I thought for a minute - I thought, what now?  and when will this end?

Then I told her...."NO.  I will not come in for a meeting.  In fact, I won't work for you anymore.  I quit.  You've been on the attack since last year, without ever asking me what was going on.  You've never been supportive and I'm under way too much stress and no job is worth the way you guys make me feel.  I quit."  

she actually had nothing to say to that - just a...."oh.  .....(silence for a minute or two and then...) well, you'll have to put that in writing.

So I gave them a two week notice and spent the last two weeks being ignored by the supervisor, harrassed by the crazy worker (she would tell me at every opportunity that I wasn't working hard enough - I've been working with children since 1996), and relegated to watching the kids outside in 90+ weather with no place to sit down even though my work release paper from the doc says I have to sit every 20 minutes.  So I sat on the play structure, or on a the edge of the enclosure...

I felt so relieved after I quit.... and then I felt a lot of worry about how we were going to pay rent, and how was I going to have insurance NOW?

Thankfully - an old co-worker came through with a job - it's not a lot of pay, but it's more hours in a two day work week than I worked in a five day work week for the day care program.  And no one tells me I'm a shitty worker, or ignores me.

Though at first I was only scheduled for one night a week, things have changed and now I have two regular days scheduled and this week I picked up two extra work days - one of them was a 13 hour day (night).  AND, both of my unemployed sons ended up being hired, so finally we're seeing the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

I feel so much better now.