ACHES AND PAINS

Well I went back to the Dr Wed to see about my knee pain and the blood tests. Apparently my blood work was excellent, every thing normal to excellent. No high cholesterol, no high blood sugar, no kidney malfunctions, no anemia, no thyroid problems. no liver problems. But , much to my surprise and astonishment I had High Blood pressure. That one came as a surprise, seeing as three months ago it was a normal 120/80. Go in for a sore knee come out with high blood pressure! Those two body parts aren't even in the same ballpark! So I now know I have osteoarthritis and high blood pressure to go with depression and IBS. The only one that is a dangerous condition is the blood pressure thing, If I cannot get it under control I could be at risk for heart attack and stroke!! I have already started a Rx for the blood pressure problem, and have lose 10 pounds on the first week of treatment. (It is a diuretic) The Dr. said I only need to loose 5#, but the will be almost impossible because I have weighted the same for years, give or take a few pounds. I gained 10# in the last month to six weeks, and that is when my knees flared up. I guess that was all water weight. I generally neither gain nor loose weight. I need to see him in about 6 weeks. Of course Mom had all kinds of vitamin advice for me. And whatever I do I should never ever touch SUGAR the evil and terrible cause of all sorts of terrible things. BS. I am relieved that I can eat pretty much as I have except be careful with salt, Which I crave. I have been going nuts at work with stress and frustration. The Morris Center, where I now work, will have not students to feed as of Aug 29. The school is closing DT, but no one is sure what the Morris center is going to be doing. The cannon center is being rebuilt, but the old one is still functioning so who knows what will happen. Also the MTC is part of our responsibility also. Plus Cougereat and catering and other dinning services. I could go anywhere. They promise that there will be jobs for everyone. But where will that be? There is one person there that drives me nuts. the notorious FF Lady. She gets excited and nervous about things and tries to do all of it instead of thinking before she starts. The last to weekends I have worked (F or Sat) . Both weeks I have had to stay and fix her mistakes in order to make sure that the orders go out correctly. A week ago Sat( my sixth day in a row working) I had to come in at 6:00 A. M. (This in and of its self is a pain because I usually come in at 11:00) to help get the take-out out. She had started every ting and had breakfast done. Unfortunately, she had not used the correct meats for some of the items. She left at 9:00 A.M. and there was still the breakfast mess to clean up and a few take out orders to finish up. At 10 I was ready to leave, and the receiver that was taking the food to take-out catering asked me if the BBQ Chicken should weight more than the BBQ Ribs. I looked at what the order was and there was supposed to be 50 servings of chicken and 35 servings of pork. That meant that there should have been 13# of chicken, and 9# of ribs. I took them and weighted them and there were 23#! of pork and 10# of chicken. I guess they were wrong. One was 3# short and one was12# too many. Well it was easy to fix the ribs. I just took out 13# of meat and put it in the locker to be used later. However I needed to cook 3# more of the chicken and sauce it before it could go. So out comes a pot , in goes more chicken, cook it, add sauce, put in a new takeout pan. and send it on its way. Then clean the pot again, and the counters. Then go home. Total disgust! This Fri I came in at 8:00. Again she had breakfast done and lunch also, or so she said. She also was working on takeout. Both Fri. and Sat. and was there ever a mess! I saw on look of the kitchen,with eggs from one end of the kitchen to the other, went an asked the manager if I could go home for a couple of hours because I was having intestinal problems, (the IBS) and could I go home for a few hours. I promised I would come back at 11:00 which I did. Things hadn't improved much except that the eggs were cleaned up and lunch was now being served. Many of the orders for Sat were to be sent out cold.(Yum cold refried beans) Well they were so mixed up I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It took me half of the day to figure out where we were. In the middle of it all the hostess came in and asked me where the food was for lunch, they were opening both lines for some groups that were coming in and they didn't have food to open it. How should I know, I didn't have a thing to do with it. She made it and it was done at 8:00 or so she said, unfortunately she made only enough for 100 people and we were supposed to have 250 people, which indeed we did have. She never looked at the updated count list. I am glad that the chef had come in for a meeting that day. It was his July 4Th holiday and he was off. He figured out what to make and made it thank goodness. FF was somewhere, but not watching the line. Right after lunch she went home, leaving me to clean up lunch, figure out the takeout and get it out. It took both me and the chef awhile to figure out what was being cooked, what day it was for and where it was. He then went home, and I got to finish up the mess. This time when takeout came to get the items, they were short one pan of cheese sauce. I had to make 2 more gallons of cheese sauce to go with the chicken cordon bleu. More dirty pans, rushing at the last min. and re cleaning the pots and cabinets. I got out of the kitchen at 5:00. ARGGH! FF wasn't working sat and neither was . I hope I got every thing straightened out of the Sat takeout so that the cooks were able to get there work done in a smooth and timely manner. And I wonder where I got high blood pressure from.!

2+2=

Tonight( at work) I started out with a pork chops with rice and chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes dinner. By the end of the evening it had turned into a turkey with rice and fried chicken with mashed potatoes dinner. Our menu was for 255 people as was the amounts of meat we had for the menu. All the meat comes in on Fri morning for the weekend meals. On Fri evening (unbeknownst to me an e-mail came in informing us that the count for Mon dinner was going to be 350. Well we already had the frozen steaks in the freezer an the pork chops in the frig. Anyway we naturally ran out of both steaks and pork chops. We did have some "Chicken fried Chicken" on hand in the freezer and some fully cooked turkey breasts in the locker. I kept a good lookout and managed to have some of each entree read to be on the line by the time they ran out. I is really annoying when extra mouths to feed are added at the last minute. in as much as we really have to scramble to find substitutes to serve people. I as I usually think, felt like I had not done my job well. Fortunately, the students thought otherwise, and complemented me on getting the food out and keeping the line stocked with food. It was good to hear how well i had done because in my mind I had completely dropped the ball because I didn't have enough food for everyone that was one the menu and I really couldn't do anything more than I did. But I felt like I hadn't done it right Why do I think this way?

BACKFIRE!

Well, I'M here again. I am suffering some backfire from my propensity of trying to get to the bottom of things. A week ago Thurs. I ran into a snag at work.Flip Flop Woman, a fellow cook at Morris has been telling me all these tales about M the head cook. all the time she goes on and on about Ms faults. I admit I kind of like to hear the tales because I don't particularly like her and because I like to talk sometimes. Flip Flop has also told me to my face that I need to get over some of my quirks, such as liking the dish towels we use at work to all be folded neatly and stacked a certain way. I also like the food cooked right, tasting right, and looking right. FF leaves at 4:30. But I stay until close, I am the dinner shift supervisor. Well several times T the manager has not liked the appearance or the taste of the food that FF has made. but by the time T checks it out FF has left and then T asks me what happened and if I tasted the food or checked it out before it went on the line. I have not tasted it on a number of occasions I have to admit I have not. Well I promised that I would check out the food before it goes out. I take my job seriously, maybe too seriously, and I really hate to have the food be wrong. The last straw was when FF had made some Chimichunga sauce. I had not checked it out. It Was like water. I have never seen such a poor example of sauce in my life. Fortunately FF was still there, one of the servers asked me about it, and I knew it wasn't supposed to look like it did. I myself had made it many times and it definitely didn't look like hers. I asked FF about it, but she said it was supposed to be thin, because that is the way thy served at at ***. Well I argued with her that it wasn't how it should be. I finally got T to check it out. I was not acceptable and FF had to fix it, saying I followed the recipe. The next week I came in at my regular time and FF was making it again, and she was not the one assigned to do it, but there she was making it again.She thinks that she has to make every thing on the menu as fast as she can. leaving nothing for anybody else to do. I hate it, because I don't go to work to stand around for 8 hours. she says she just has a good work ethic and she can't slow down just because others might need to work. Well , making the food edible or making it fast are not necessarily the same thing. It is not a good work ethic in the food industry if all you care about is throwing it together as fast as you can. She will go and finish up the food that someone else has started, making that person feel worthless. Well back to the backfire part, FF asked me one day if we had run out of food for dinner the night before. I told her we had not. Then she told me that So an so had been talking about the dinner the night before and how we had run out of food. She then told me that M said "I guess I will have to come in on T,W, and Th evenings to help out then. That really burned me up. I went to So and so (even though I didn't think they had said it.) Well they were mad because they said they had never said that. I told them that I thought they didn't but the cat was out of the bag. They took affront, and I told them that I believed that they hadn't said that. The one that is my helper at night walked out and then said she was going to take the next day off. Well then I went to t and confessed that I had messed something up, and she went and brought a back. T told me the FF doesn't know what she is talking about 3/4 of the time. she just has to talk. I made up with A and we are better friends than ever but I know who the gossip is. We FF and I are not on very good terms now and I feel like an idiot. Every time i try to make things better they blow up in my face and I feel guilty and ashamed for weeks. Why do i do this to myself? By the way FF had actually put two conversations together and turned it into one whopper of a story. The truth of it was So and so were just having a simple conversation about how the day before had gone. M was indeed coming in on T,W,Th evening to help serve on the lines so the hose in the dining room could keep up on their jobs. We are 79 people short of staff. We have 86working (mostly all students and part time) and we need 79 more. No wonder I am tired all the time. Next week , July 4th week, we will be having 2200 people for breakfast and dinner. O goody. That is more than the MTC feeds and they are overstaffed and have a bigger kitchen! Any suggestions on how I can handle such situations should one come up again, and I know one will. I have already found out that FF is a gossip, so I wont listen to her again. but what else can I do? It sounds like you are all in various states of busyness and running around trying to get it all done.

Just a note

I am busy but alive. I had the day off, but I also had a headache, sore throat and my knee is still very sore. Will make another post soon. Love you all

Bees Knees and sore feet

I am back from the Doctors visit. It seems the I have Osteoarthritis in both knees. The advice (What else). Loose weight. That is probably not going to happen. Take ibuprofen, 3 times a day. See if I can get some decent shoes that will give me better support etc. Ray has cellulitus in his foot again. This is the third time he has had it. It is a serious infection of the skin, which can come from a bang on the leg etc. I hope we can get it tamed. I guess I am going to have to start examining him every night, because he never complains about pain, that is if he even pays attention to his body at all. Many a time I have noticed something was wrong, usually after he has been ill for days, if not weeks. I have often got him medical help just under the wire. I don't understand that about him Why?

Phone tag

Now I know why emergency rooms are full of people without emergencies. I tried on Mon morning to make an appointment with the doctor. I was put on hold with a voice interrupting every min or so with "We appreciate your patience, we will be with you as soon as an operator can help you." This went on for 25 min. I finally gave up and got ready for work. On Tues I got a "real person"right away, but none of the Dr. I wanted to see.(there were 3 I liked) were booked up until the first of July!!!!, I finally got an appointment for Friday for both Ray and I. His right foot is swollen and sore and my left knee is almost impossible to use some days. This is not something you need when you are on your feet 8-9 hr a day on tile floors. OWW W! I finally got my Rx in the mail for my antidepressant. It is a good thing since I was on my last one and that is only because I have been rationing them by not taking them on the last two weekends. The antibiotic I am supposed to be taking has not gotten here even though it was"Sent" by mail on May 31st. I have had 2 "overrides" of seven pills each until it comes. I think it was never sent or that it was stolen from my mailbox. We had to put in curbside mailboxes last year, as opposed to having them on our house. Bad idea on the post offices part I think.

HI!!

Hi I will send more (hopefully tomorrow). I am not in the best of moods lately. but if you want me to post something I will try tomarrow!