Who Moved My Cheese??

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Well I know you guys are probably wondering what is up with her title. Well the book Who Moved My Cheese is all about change and how well people handle change. My life has been changed upside down since my son arrived and I must say I like it. Prior to my son I was so career focused upwardly moving in my positions and salary. Now I am not that interested. It is great to have income coming into your home but to what do you have to sacrifice to earn that money?

Shortly after giving birth to my son I was laid off. Thanks for all the hard work on these projects Katrina but we don't have a job for you anymore. Wow!! I am talking about I came back June and they laid me off July 2nd with a 1 week notice. I received severance pay and shortly after that lay off I received another job offer. Everything in my sub-conscience, my spirit, and better judgment told me to pass on the offer but I accepted for the benefits and the income. Everything about the interview process was unorganized and just plain ole concerning. Let me just say that my first week I was like WTF!!! My boss kept asking me to...Please come back. In my mind I was like this is not good. Not to mention how rough it was on my son. The job was 27 miles away from my house but with the traffic it would take me 1 hour to 2 hours just to make it to work. My son was in daycare from 6:30 AM to 6:15 PM and it manifested in his spirit. He didn't want me to put him down when I got home. When I went from his sight he would scream. I kept on pushing on until just last week. I put up with a job that was unorganized, no support from management, no accountability, no documentation of anything, and all kind of other drama for about a month. They did me a favor and ended it with a termination because they said the client didn't like my style or technique. WOW! Never heard that one before, but hey I was two seconds from quitting. Thanks for the favor. I won't even include that mess of a job on my resume. Get this when I did a Google search on this company I found over 7 pages of complaints. This is a private company so I couldn't do much research prior to accepting this offer. Maybe I should have taken some more time. Yes! Unfortunately the recruiter and HR Manager were really pushing me to sign and accept the offer as quickly as possible. Now I know why!!

How is my baby doing? Well, I am doing my best to break him from this spoiled state that he is now in. He doesn't want me to put him down at all. He screamed for an hour today because I nor his father would pick him up from the swing. He wasn't wet, hungry, or sleepy. He just wanted us to hold him. I do understand how this happened with him being in daycare from 6:30 AM to 6:15 PM for a month. It was way too much for him. Since birth he has never been there that long before and some may say a child that young doesn't know the difference. I beg to differ!! You can see the children faces when a parent walks in the infant room. That hope it's my mommy or daddy look. My son's face would light up when he saw me now it is get over here now and get me. I really regret taking that job and I am paying for it now.

I never thought I would be here typing this or saying the words out loud. I always thought I would never be able to stay at home with my children. Now that he is here I think differently. No one can teach him better than I can. This change has been really good for my soul. I have this glow about me now. It is about something greater than just money and job status. I thank God that he has enabled my husband to have a job where he is taking care of us well. I continue to look for the right opportunity but it won't be a decision based solely on money. It is about a company that is empathetic to growing families and mothers who are working. The company must have a defined career path for me. I need a company that will appreciate what I have to bring to the table. I need a company that I can retire from. If you know of a company in my area that fits what I am talking about hit me up and let's network.

Just because my cheese changed from Swiss to Baby Swiss it is all good because I can roll with this change. Change is good!

After baby

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It has been a while since I have blogged but I haven't forgotten about you. I have been busy raising a demanding 5 month old, studying for the PMP, started a new job, and still taking new clients. Well after I had CJ I noticed something different about my hairline. It was thinning heavily! BUUUTTT where did the hair go. Well I found out where the hair went. It embedded itself in the locs around my hairline. I am talking about nice size balls of hair that formed a nice little bump in my loc. Check out the pics I snapped. I had to take the locs down and get the excess hair out and start the loc again. The hair is growing back but I was disappointed to see all of that lush hair disappear like that. It was there one minute and the next it was gone.

Transformations

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Ever so often I complete a install that I can really really puff my chest out afterwards. I mean a install that makes my husband go WOOOOOWWWW!!! A Sisterlock install that leaves me feeling extremely satisfied. Today is one of those days. I have a client with 7 inches of natural hair. Yay! Right!? Well she has tri color hair with platinum blond, honey blond, and some brown and black roots. You guys may remember my rant about blond hair color if not cared for properly. Man let me tell you...this woman came into my business on Saturday with plaits. When I took the plaits down I was stunned to find all kinds of matted hair. To add to that the ends where the platinum blond was just crumbled in my hands. I asked here if she trusted me and she replied yes. I then went to work. I had to cut some of the mats out that I couldn't pick apart. I also had to add some leave in conditioner to get my fingers through. It took me an hour to just comb through it. Her install took 18 hours with 1.5 hour worth of breaks. I took 10 hours on Saturday and exactly 8 hours today to finish. So I will say it took me about 17 hours of work to finish. Here are some pics... I am so proud

Do you know what today is 7-15-2010

*Tony Toni Tone * Playing in the background. Do you know what today is? It's my loc-anniversary. I celebrated with a nice layered cut. I LOVE IT!!! I was going to get it colored but the cut made my hair look so great I can go without. Check out the pics

Just curious

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I was just interested to see a comparison of my 1 and 2 month progress reports. See below....

2 month progress report. 8 more to go

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Well, I am still on this weight loss grind. I am jogging again and loving it. I have also gotten back to my walking lunges which I couldn't do last month. I moved on to more weight training to help me sculpt and lose some serious inches. My body responds very well to weight training. I tend to build muscle which will move the scale upwards a bit but the inches will disappear rapidly. Then once the inches are lost the scale will move downwards again. So now I am back in my pre-pregnancy clothes comfortably. I also purchased summer clothes in my pre-pregnancy size 14 and I am in those clothes comfortably. The legs, thighs, and butt are slimming down. The upper body is coming down as well. The waist is also slimming down. I couldn't be more pleased with my results. To celebrate I purchased a new pair of running shoes (Brooks). I needed a new pair anyway since my feet have grown during pregnancy about a half size (boo). I also purchased some inserts as well. Since I purchased running shoes my perfomance while jogging and running has increased. I began a couple of years ago with going to Fleet Feet and getting my feet measured and analyzed. They recommended 3 pairs of shoes and I chose the best one for my feet. We added a supportive insert and it was on from there. I was jogging/running about 15 to 20 miles a week, which is good for a non runner such as myself. Now with my new pair of Brooks I clocked in 2 miles in 26 minutes and another mile with heavy incline in another 15 minutes. I added in 2 sets of 40 walking lunges and that concluded my one hour workout on the 4th of July. I feel great!

Here are my updates for my second month of progress. 8 more to lose and counting.

Nearing my 4 year anniversary

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July is here and guess what that means. That means my hair gains another year of loc growth. This hair is getting so long and lush. I decided to try a braid out and I can say the results were okay. I didn't really give it my all nor did I use any setting lotion. Here are the results. Next time I will try a setting lotion and some rubberbands for the ends.