Keep us in your prayers:

So, it's Wednesday - September 24th. Please, keep me and the rest of my team in your prayers the following weeks as we will be short a team member...the senior member of my team is going in for knee surgery this coming Monday! She has two large tears and one small one as well, and they are finally going to fix it after years of problems. We expect her to be out for a minimum of 5 weeks, and possibly longer. I know that we will survive at Target but it will not be easy...I only hope that she will be okay. We all wish she could trade in her family, no one wants to take her to surgery, or bring her home afterwards - check in on her over the next few weeks, etc. I feel like I should get her some home cooked meals for her freezer - maybe I will see if a few of us want to do that for her. The sad thing is her son lives with her - and he is currently jobless, so even though he is mooching off of her for everything...he will not get up off of his butt and help her out when she asks for it! It makes me extremely glad to have a family who would do anything that they can to help me out if I needed it...

Weekend with Mom and Marshall September 12 - 15:

So, my weekend started with me getting out of work at 10, then I went to get two tires on my car (the other two will be next check). After a chat with mom I found that she was staying Friday and Saturday night...we never discussed how long she was staying! Mom made it here by 4:30pm and then Natosha, my mom and I went to the mall. We walked around until we were starving, off to get some dinner (we went to Chic-fil-A), then...dessert! We went for ice cream to Bruster's - so rich and creamy, with a big assortment of flavors (you never know what they will have, if they run out of one flavor up goes a different kind, very cool). Mom got cappuccino, Natosha got a "dirt" cup, and I got mint chocolate chip (I have also had their coconut chocolate chip, and chocolate raspberry truffle, very good!). Jason finally made it home from work and we all retired to bed soon thereafter (midnight).

Saturday was an early day - up by 8am, and off to see Marshall at his football Jamboree! That's a picture of him in his uniforn after the game was over - it was a mere 20 minutes but exciting nonetheless. They are the Giants, but they wear purple and gold (go Vikings!)...they are one of three teams from the Indian Land area, and have three preseason games, and five "real" games. Got Marshall after the game and "surprise" he was spending the night too! I really need to get better at tracking who is spending the night at my house and when...home for lunch (fresh corn n the cob - from mom, cheese stuffed chicken breasts, and mandarin oranges). Later that day mom, Marshall, Jason and myself went out for dinner to Ruby Tuesday's - hungry for salad bar. We came home and got in 2 rounds of "Farkle" - it is a dice game where you roll six dice to try and score 10,000 points in order to win! First time for both Marshall and Jason, and about 12 years since either mom or I had played...

Sunday was a short day with Mom, as she had to run off and see one of her friends before she headed home. We hung out and played "war", "go fish" and I flipped through my quilt block book, as I have fabric but no solid ideas yet. Marshall and I played on the Wii for a little bit and then it was time to take him to Target (so, mamaw could take him home).

Monday was 10 hours at work, ran to Subway for a quick dinner for the house as we had a football game to get to. Natosha and I went to see Marshall's first preseason football game (we won 12-8)...they don't kick point afters - they have to run it in for 2 points. We scored 2 touchdowns, but no point after - and the other team scored 1 touchdown and the 2pt. conversion afterwards. Lots of screaming and yelling, I think it is called cheering? Lots of fun regardless!

Week of pricing hell...

First off a little background: during a normal week it is me and three other women doing pricing at our store we average on a week 15,000 individual SKU's (one style of shirt in one color in one size is one SKU - each style has 4 to 12 colors and each color has 5 sizes - you do the math)!



Monday, September 1st: So, today we had another girl join our team (Natosha, my roommate). She worked out quite well and picked up everything very quick. We did all of Mondays normal work plus most of Tuesdays work as well as we had a huge amount to do Tuesday and needed to get ahead as much as possible. Finally, time to go home we got in at 6am and left at 4:30pm!Needless to say I went home and took a nap, woke up at 10pm had dessert and went back to bed after a shower.



Tuesday, September 2nd: Today we went in at 5am - barely 12 hours after we had left the day before (today we had 6 of us on the team, we were joined by one f our regular helpers). We started in Back-to-School, marking down everything but backpacks and lunchboxes (those will go later this week). Five hours later we were done and headed over to Stationary, to further markdown all the scrapbook items. Just to give you an idea of the enormity of this undertaking - just one style of ruler had 352 units that's 352 stickers - supposedly we should be able to put 120 stickers on in an hour - so just one ruler could've taken 3 hours to ticket (it took less than an hour). We finally got to go home at 3:30pm - that's another 10 1/2 hour shift. Went home took a nap and then got up for some dinner and went back to bed.



Do you see a pattern here? Wednesday was a shorter day we worked 6am to 3pm (our normal schedule is 6am to 2:30pm). Thursday was another long day as we were trying to get as much of Fridays work done early (very big day) - we got out around 4pm. Back in on Friday at 6am and we managed to just make it out before we would've had to gone to lunch (by 11:45am). All told for the week we got time and a half on Monday (for Labor Day), and then on Tuesday we received shift differential an extra $1.25 an hour because we went in so early...we had worked over 42 hours by the time we were done (myself and my original team), the others got close to 25 or 35 hours for their time with us, not including what they worked elsewhere in the store on other days.



We made it through it just fine, and no one killed anyone - an accomplishment for all of us!

Recent Weekend with Marshall and Jason...

So, on Saturday, August 30th I went to Marshall's football practice - it appears as if he will be a right tackle (for those of you who don't know that's 2 positions from the center)...he and the rest of the line will be playing ironman football (that's when you play for both the defense and offense). We went and got some lunch at Subway after practice. Jason (boyfriend, roommate) finally woke up, so we went to the mall as we both needed new shoes for work. We were able to bribe Marshall into going shopping because we promised him that we would all go miniature golfing after we were done. Thank goodness we didn't keep score, all of us cheated and I was losing badly after the first few holes - I did better on the back 9 though.

Sunday, August 31st was another eventful day with Marshall and Jason (this is highly unusual as Jason works the weekends I have Marshall - but he was on vacation this past week). Picked up Marshall before 9am and we went to go grab some breakfast at McDonald's but the drive thru line was backed out into the main road! Burger King it is...it really didn't matter. Hung out at the house watching Cartoon Network waiting for Jason to get up and start his day - we went and put new wiper blades on Jason's Jeep and topped off the fluids in my Saturn! Off to the driving range, what fun! Jason hadn't picked up a club but once in the last 5 years and I hadn't used one since 1992 (senior year), and Marshall had never used a real club before - I'm glad there weren't alot of serious golfers out there :-) Marshall blew through his bucket of balls in half the time that Jason or I did - so I shared with him (the motherly thing to do, I know). Lots of fun...home for a late lunch and then I brought him back home around 5pm. Picked up a few things for dinner and made chicken lasagna (I used cream of chicken soup as my sauce though instead of marinara, or alfredo), came out really good and then off to Waffle House for my weekly Sunday night trip with Jason (just to get out the house and sit around and chat with no distractions - like laundry).