Category: Just life

Shopping cart mishaps

I went to Costco last week, I usually don’t have a grocery list with me but this time I was organized and not only wrote a list but also remembered to bring it with me.There were plenty of shopping carts available. I parked my shopping cart and turned to the other aisle to get  a product. I turned around and my shopping cart with my list was gone! I really turned my back for less than a minute.

Yes, I could get another shopping cart but my list is what I really wanted. I started  following people with empty carts to see if they stole my cart. My husband thought I was crazy. But stealing someone’s cart is  a serious offense especially when there is a list in it, what kind of person does that! This is the same offense as walking your dog next to a dog who’s taking care of their business instead of waiting patiently for the business to be done.

I did forget to buy some things and will need to go again, not that anyone has to twist my hand to go to the Costco again as it is one of my favorite places to go.But going to Costco before the Holidays is a little crowded and the samples are gone way too quickly.

So I shall return, hold my cart close to me and put my grocery list on my drive and I shall be watching for all those grocery cart mishaps.

Work quiet

The last couple of weeks before the year ends are usually quiet at work, this year it’s even quieter as a lot of people decided to use the short school time between Thanksgiving and Winter break to take an extended vacatation time with their families.

I stayed at work, I just came back from a 12 day Japan vacation and could not justify taking more time off, tempting as it may. Work is quiet. Quiet for me is not good. Quiet is the enemy and not because I am hearing impaired. Quiet means finding ways to keep yourself busy or as my husband says, quiet me is not a good sign, quiet me becomes antsy . Quiet me looks for things to do.

Looking for things to do requires planning, so I start planning, I do not only plan ahead at work, I plan ahead in life. Some people call it New Year’s resolutions. I don’t call them resolutions, I call them a benchmarks. Every couple of months I check my benchmark to see where I succeded, where I failed and where I need to pivot. Sometimes we just forge ahead because this is what we were taught, but occasionally we do need to re evaluate and change the course.

Pivoting is not easy, changing the course is not easy, but I digress. Being mentally bored or not challenged is not easy either, at least not for me.

QA and Mishaps

I recently ordered a big bag of flour from a manufacturer that I ordered in the past. I got my box delivered, but instead of getting four 4lb’s of gluten free flour I received 4 O Cedar mops. I have nothing against mops or O Cedar, but this obviously  is not what I ordered. Turns out that the manufacturer uses a 3rd party for fulfillment, and this fulfillment company has no quality measures. The box I received said it contained my flour and that the box weighs 18 lbs, but I managed to pick up this box with one hand and despite lifting weights at the gym, this was not the case, the box could not have weighed more than half a pound at most. So not only did the fulfillment company not have QA that checks the label description of containment with what they put inside. They also do not check shipping on the fulfillment side or from the  UPS side.

So now we have 3 companies with no QA and mistake upon mistake as someone definitely paid expensive shipping costs for nothing.

Beyond all these obvious mistakes and lack of QA, everyone has an upset customer. I was really waiting to bake and now I am upset. I immediately contacted the manufacturing company and they responded immediately and issued me an apology and a refund, but alas I am still without my flour. So despite customer service actually doing good I am still left feeling cheated, unhappy and flourless!

Decisions, decisions!

It’s the end of the year and we all have to start making decisions again, health plan for next year, 401k deductions, vacations and many more work decisions. However we can not forget our life outside work decisions as well.

Although the lines between our job and private life were a little blurry these last couple of years of work from home, it is time to put some barriers and allow for real work life balance. And that’s a decision I am willing to make. I wrote before on how I am trying to become a recovering workaholic, and I have to admit it is not an easy one. 

My last 6 months were trials and errors of me trying to disconnect and set some boundaries, some days I succeeded and some I did not, and that’s ok as teaching my brain is a work in progress. I discovered that long walks with my Sagey girl  while listening to podcasts has helped. In the beginning it was podcasts related to strategic thinking and business cycles and evolved to other topics that are the complete opposite of business.

So my decision to continue finding balance will continue in 2023 and possibly find a  hobby like macrame might be in order.

The joy of gluten free finds

I was diagnosed with Celiac back when the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Regular stores had absolutely nothing for me and eating out was impossible. I drove 30 minutes to Mrs. Gooch’s just to find something beyond rice cakes. We have grocery stores on almost every corner in my town so driving 30 minutes seemed like a big hassle even if it was a needed one. My husband found a bakery in Los Angeles and would stop there twice a year to get me some bread. 

I used to walk through our local Costco, crying, feeling like I will never be able to buy anything from a normal grocery store and will be doomed to a life of rice, rice cakes and brown rice, barely edible pasta.

Those days are gone, I don’t know when or where eating gluten  free became fashionable, and even though I am GF by need and not by choice, I am thankful. This created a market full of options and choices for my fellow celiacs and gluten intolerant partners in crime.

This weekend I went grocery shopping with my husband to Costco. I was glad to see many gluten free options, several pizza options, snacks, bread, frozen meals, instant pho and soy sauce. 

Those who have no food restrictions might not understand the feeling of finding ready made food you can eat at a mainstream store and not needing to go to a speciality store anymore.

And even though these gf finds are not the healthiest it is still nice to see them available.

Being hearing impaired is not a choice, being a kind courteous person is!

I am a member of many hearing loss groups on facebook, when I lost my hearing they helped a lot with not feeling alone and finding someone who understood my struggle of dealing with losing my hearing overnight.

Most days I am good and I believe I have adapted mostly to my current situation, but we all have our bad days. Days when the ringing in the ear is so loud that it does not matter what setting your hearing aid is on , you can hear absolutely nothing. Days where you can not figure out what people are saying no matter what. These are very frustrating and depressing days and can throw you into a loop.

During the pandemic and even today in some places, there was masking all around & plastic barriers made it hard to hear for most humans but for those with hearing loss made it absolutely impossible, add to that the ability to read lips was gone as well and sometimes even the ability to read the facial expression was gone.

These days medical facilities still require a mask. I always make a point to tell the reception that I am hard of hearing and if they can make sure to let the people who will call me to either say my name louder or to approach me when it’s my appointment time. A lot of people are nice and say yes, sure. But when it comes to actuality, they all forget. 

The weirdest place I had that issue was at the ENT/Audiologist office. You would think that in these surroundings they will be more accommodating or understanding. But no! Music was loud on the TV in the waiting room, no closed captions and receptionists with shields who talk to the computer instead of lifting their heads when they speak to you.

Who needs to adapt? The customer service industry or the hearing impaired person? For the hearing impaired there is not much adaptation, it’s not like you can wake up one morning and decide today I shall hear. Even with my very expensive aids, there are times that I have no clue what someone is saying and I am not going to hide under a rock just because I can’t hear anything.

Customer service industry needs to adapt and workplaces need more training on how to intercat and integrate people who have disabilities as they are part of society.  Talking to people while facing them and not staring at your phone or computer should be taught early, this is a social skill that is important in any situation. If anyone asks you to repeat a sentence, repeat it and do not say “ oh, it doesn’t matter”.

Being hearing impaired is not a choice, being a kind courteous person is!

Job/ career cushioning – a new term for an old practice

I recently saw an article about Job Cushioning, it sounded interesting and I went to research further and discovered it’s a new term for an old concept. Lately they have been creating new terms for everything. I don’t know if they show up on my feed as I am interested in them more or just because what I follow has the latest trends.

The definition for Job Cushioning is looking for a new job while at your current job. Funny, in the old days we were always told that it is easier to find a new job when you still have a job as how else will you be able to explain the employment gap. Quitting or being fired not connected to company wide layoffs was considered bad on your resume and your prospect of finding a new job was not very good.

One of these articles mentioned that it is unethical to find a new job while still at a current place of employment, to this my response was Ha! As long as you don’t use current employment’s resources for finding a new job I believe it is perfectly ethical, especially if there are impending layoffs as most likely will happen according to all the analysts in the next couple of months.

Our main priority at the end of the day is to able to provide for ourselves and our families and to make sure we have back up plans for our future especially in an unstable market.

Gluten Free trip to Japan – Part 1

I am a Celiac who loves to travel, this is not always easy especially when I travel to countries that love wheat. I returned from a trip to Japan last week and yes, I was hungry. For me being a GF with a mostly vegetarian diet was not easy, I also avoided pork for religious reasons which made my trip a little harder.

This was part of an organized group tour so I did not have an option to cook for myself. Thankfully, all the hotels had a refrigerator so I had somewhere to keep yogurt and fresh produce that I bought at the convenience stores.

Japan loves gluten, gluten is in many products. The hotels we stayed at (3 star budget hotels) all had their breakfast clearly labeled with all allergens which helped immensely. As I mentioned before, Japan loves gluten, which is why I could not even eat the eggs at breakfast as they had gluten in them as well, still for the life of me I can’t figure that out.

I researched my food options before we left and knew what to expect mostly. There is an excellent group on Facebook called Gluten- Free Expats Japan. The group has many posts and tricks on how to figure out what and where is safe to eat and has a list of restaurants and recommendations that were extremely useful. I also carried a GF card and used google translate during the trips as many Japanese did not speak English.

In the suitcase I took bread with me, several GF brands like Schar and BFree have vacuum sealed smaller bread packaging and GF instant oatmeal, granola bars, GF soy sauce packets and my favorite chocolate covered rice cakes from Sprouts (trust me, they are so good it’s scary). Convenience stores are on every block in Japan, this is also excellent as they all have clean bathrooms and trash cans, there are no public trash cans anywhere on the streets and you need to carry the trash with you. 7-11, Lawson’s and Family mart are everywhere. In them I bought drinkable yogurt, rice snacks and onigiri. I did research beforehand what onigiri I can eat and went to our local Mitsuwa ahead of time to get familiarized. In Japan, packaging is labeled with all allergens, however not always in English and you need to recognize the Japanese symbol for wheat. Most of the 7- 11 rice and potato snacks had English wording and that made it easy for me and now I am addicted to the waffle potato ones, they are so good and not greasy.

The only reason I did not starve completely was the many Indian and Nepalese restaurants we found, we always found an English speaker in them so my allergies were easy to explain and for me this food is mostly safe and usually Halal so pork free. Using the restaurant lists we also found a great ramen place with gf ramen in Tokyo Station, Soranoiro Ramen. This was a complete joy for me as all my group could eat together and not look at my sad eyes while they ate dinner and I was stuck with plain rice and edamame.

The dreaded feeling of returning to work after vacation.

Vacations are good, in fact vacations are great. Most of us had a couple of days off for Thanksgiving last month, some of us even extended to add a couple more days to get a longer vacation and soon enough we will have, at least in the USA, our winter break.

The vacation part is great, the problem is when we get back to the office after this vacation. A million emails, problems that occurred while we were gone and god knows what fires that need to be put out when we get back.

Some of us hate going on vacation or avoid the vacation for exactly this reason – the returning to work anxiety. Is this normal? Apparently it is and even has a name – Post Holiday Syndrome. A Zapier/ Harris poll from August 2020 found that 87% of us have this issue. This is not just post vacation depression, this has to do with catching up on missed work, tons of emails and phone calls we will need to tackle when we are back, fixing other peoples mistakes when we were away and for some of us it simply means that we really hate our jobs.

The internet is full of suggestions on how to deal with this and I have not seen one that said do not go on vacation, so I guess this is part of being an employed adult even if it is an unfortunate one.

Conquering my own mountain

My life started as a complication. I guess my husband was right when he called me complicated when we started dating. Mind you we have known each other for years before we started dating so truthfully me being complicated should not have been a big surprise.

I was born complicated as I started my life with Spina Bifida and back in the ancient world when where I was born that did not mean an easy future and my parents were worried about all the complications that can affect the quality of my life.

Thankfully they raised my like any other normal child and never told me that I can’t do this or I can’t do that and I learned at a very young age to explain my condition. As I grew older the Dr’s continued to tell me of all the issues I would endure, got many warnings with no positive options. But I am a fighter and every time someone told me I will not be able to do something, I just did! It was not always easy and yes required effort on my part and sometimes Costco sized pain medication but I endured anyways. I even gave up and started again a couple of times and I learned to forgive myself during this process and not see these as failures but rather as a challenge to conquer. The last couple of years have been medically challenging but I will continue fighting, and as the Sound of Music song goes “Climb every mountain” I will continue to climb physically and mentally . Last week I made it to Mt. Fuji! There will be more mountains and that’s ok- I will conquer them one mountain and one peak at a time.