Day 60

Good day everyone. I was commenting to a friend earlier about the fact that coming into work 2 hours earlier than you used to shouldn't feel that much different. The reality of it is that it does. When the security hours were 8pm to 6am, it almost felt like you had most of the day, and I would come to work as the daytime was winding to a close. Well, the loss of 2 hours to my day before coming in to work was noticeable even when I was off. With having not gotten much sleep at all last night, and by not much I mean we didn't get to bed till 5 or 5:30. I layed there, tired, thinking "If I fall asleep, then in an hour or so when Lex is up I don't know if I will wake up to my alarm to see her out the door."

Well, thankfully Lex got up with her alarm, and when she was ready, she sitting on my side of the bed saying "Daddy, I'm all ready to go." I looked at the time and asked "Did you eat yet?" It was only 6:55, and she said she hadn't. So I said "Go grab some cereal hun." She was like "kay." A little while later I rolled over and saw that it was 7:20, and so I pulled myself out of bed, and as I stumbled from side to side, made my way downstairs rubbing the blurryness out of my eyes. It was raining, and so I didn't leave our little back patio area that is thankfully covered, gave hugs and kisses, told her to be careful when crossing the street, and saw her off.

Then I went back to bed. Just after 9, Erin woke me up, telling me that a cop from Animal Control came knocking on the door. Our dog Teagan is an outside dog. He loves it outside on his run line. We do bring him in the house, and if he is calm and lays down then that is fine. But we can tell if he wants to be outside because he will keep getting up and pacing, or trying to run in the house, and so in those circumstances, we put him back outside so he can run around and play. For his food and water, he has 2 shiny silver metal bowls. I usually feed and water him first thing when we get up, and take him outside, hooking him on his run line so he can go do his business.

Well, Erin was grabbing her work clothes out of the dryer and this animal control cop knocked on the door. First thing she said was that someone complained saying that Teagan was always left outside with no food, water, or shelter from the rain or whatever. Well, the first thing she did, according to what Erin told me this morning, was turn, look at Teagan's fairly nice but plain dog house, his 2 bowls, one right inside the dog house filled with food minus about 1/3 which Teagan had already eaten, and his water bowl mostly full minus what he had already drank. Then she turned back to Erin and said "I see that this claim is not 100% accurate, since I can see that obviously he has food, water, and good shelter from the rain."

Erin told her that Teagan loves it outside, and that is why he is out so much. Otherwise we would have him inside a lot more than we do. She did ask though if Teagan was licenced with the city. He was, but it expired and we haven't gotten him to the vet to get his new shots yet. So she asked if we could do it by monday, and Erin told her we would take care of it and provide them the documents.

We just love how some people like to poke their noses into other people's business, some of them trying to get the others in trouble. Thank God I have always had the habit of giving teagan food and water first thing, and that we have had that nice dog house for him that he can enter from the patio, so he doesn't have to get wet to get in there while it is raining. He comes over onto the porch and then just walks in his house and lays down and eats. He was laying in there and the rain was no where near him.

So, thank God for all that, because had any of that been different the officer might have had more to say, but that's way they say "CYA!" or "Cover your ass!" What that basically means for anyone who doesn't know, is you do the things you need to do, and make sure you have everything in order so that should any unexpected things happen, you are covered. For me at work, covering my own means basically if anything happens, even if it's really minor, if I have even a small inkling that it might be important to document, then I make up an incident report. The way I figure it is, the more documentation you have on everything, the less crap you might accidentally step in. At home, we were covered pretty good because of how Teagan is indeed properly cared for. Even the cop was like "He's a really nice dog!"

So, we have to pay a little extra to be sure to get Teagan in to the vet to get his shots, but then that will be taken care of. So as far as work goes, I was looking at my time sheet. If I work 6 days and possibly am given a break next thursday like Securitas did for me this week, that will be 6 12 hour days which will put me at 72 hours for the week, so basically this week I turned in the time sheet totalling 68 hours, so 28 hours over time (time and a half!), and then from today through next thursday, that would be 32 hours of time and a half. So, being the only guard, although it is tiring as hell on me right now, has it's up sides. I'm definitely feeling the burn out of it. And then you throw in that the time off during the day before coming back in has been reduced by 2 hours and so it feels like "On duty, off, sleep, 2 or 3 hours, back on duty." lol. So, on that very pleasant note, I will call that it for tonight. I will write more for you all tomorrow.

Thanks for being here!

CB