Goddess is Great, Beer is Good, and People are Crazy

Ok, that's not exactly how the song goes, but people ARE crazy! How do some people work 10 hours a day, 5 days a week?! And not sleep through the whole weekend? I am working 40 to 45 hours a week at my lifeguarding job. 11am to 8pm on the weekdays, 10am to 8pm on the weekends and holidays! I have Wednesdays and Saturdays off, which I chose since I have riding lessons on Wednesdays and my cleaning chore on Saturdays. And I am exhausted at the end of the day. You wouldn't think sitting in a guard chair is that difficult, but I am sitting in the hot sun. (Covered in 50 spf sunscreen! my fair Irish skin burns quickly) I am happy to be getting so many hours for work, I can certainly use the money to pay for tuition! It's just tiring, and I don't know how other people do it, especially if they're sitting in an office.

Well, back to horses... In addition to the cleaning I do on Saturday mornings, I also exercise one of the horses (Junior, a big bay Thoroughbred). The Heard Health directors of the Equestrian Club are putting all the horses on a type of "rehab" schedule, since many of them are lame. This week... 20 minutes walk! ooooh, exciting! I'm supposed to ride around 8:30 am on Saturdays, and clean whenever, as long as it's before 11. Well last Saturday I had to work because someone else needed the day off (I took Friday instead). And big shame on me I forgot that I had chores to do in the morning! In addition, I was covering someone else's riding, who would normally ride the horse later in the day. Oh man. So, 8:30 rolls around, and I'm getting ready to go to work, making myself some breakfast, and the girl who I'm supposed to ride with (the club has a strict rule that someone must be present when you ride, in this case, they scheduled 2 people to exercise the horse at the same time) calls. Uh-oh. I think my face went white. 15 minutes later I'm there. I felt so terrible for being so late (normally you should be on your horse at 8:30)! You can bet I won't forget again! She had to go to a wedding, too, and I apologized profusely. She was fine with it, and didn't seem angry, but I still feel so bad! *shakes head* Well, we rode (we both had 2 horses that morning), then I cleaned... and ended up 45 minutes late to work! yikes! I didn't get in trouble at work, since it's usually so slow the first hour. I feel pretty bad about forgetting; I know how important it is for the work to be done, and I don't want to leave it to someone else to do! It did get done, so I can't beat myself up too much since there was no harm done to the horses.

Wednesday the riding lesson went well - bareback again, since it was still 20 min walk for the horses. We worked on collecting the horses, some leg yielding, and 2-point bareback! Good thing the lesson time was limited... I gotta get me in shape, too!

Speaking of getting in shape...I have actually been going to the gym regularly! I go with my friend Mallory before work. We have a routine all set up - Monday is upper body, Tuesday is lower body and cardio, Wednesday is cardio, and then we repeat, with Sunday as our day off. I know that I would not have been able to stick to this routine if I wasn't going with Mallory! I could barely get myself out of bed this morning, and especially yesterday morning when we had to go at 7 (so she could go before class). I think we can keep this up, as long as I get enough sleep. I would like to lose a little weight, but especially gain back some strength and endurance that I've lost in the past year. No wonder I'm so tired!

Something happened at work yesterday that really bothered me. To keep track of our hours, the company I work for gives us employee ID numbers, and we clock in and out by calling a 1-888 number and entering our ID (they use caller ID to check where we're calling from). Well, yesterday, my manager said he was running late and asked me to clock him in before he got there, he said he'd be about 10 minutes late. Well, I did that (definitely against the rules), but he ended up being almost an hour and a half late. It felt like I did something so wrong, because he got paid for all that time when he wasn't even there. It was rainy all day, and nobody came to swim at the pool. The guards slowly started leaving in the afternoon, and I left about 6:45. Well, my manager said that I shouldn't clock out, he would clock me out at 8. I told him, no, I'll clock myself out, it was wrong for him to do it for me. He didn't understand why I thought it was wrong, after all, I hadn't had a problem with it that morning, and "who would know?" ( We were the only two left there.) I couldn't let him do it, even though I hadn't really done work all day (since nobody was there at the pool), it would have been being paid for not working. He thought it was so strange. He is from another country (Serbia), but that shouldn't change anything. Why didn't he understand why I thought it was wrong? And am I being hypocritical in seeing a difference between 10 minutes and an hour? They are both against the rules, although that is not why I think it's wrong. Of course, I wouldn't ask him to clock me in when I'm not there (although he did it that Saturday I was late for riding, and I didn't like it). I do feel better for having stuck to my morals and clocked myself out on time, but it bothers me that he didn't understand why I thought it was wrong. I am definitely not going to let him clock me in and out early/late in the future; I can't let it go further than it has. Any thoughts?

[Author's note: the astute reader may notice that I am posting this on Friday, which is not my day off, at a time when I should be at work. The pool was closed because of the rain, and I didn't have work today. Gave me a chance to finally post another blog entry!]