Exhaustion.

The last two weeks have been very rough. Two weeks ago today it started innocently. I was talking to my buddy in Illinois. He doesn't have a computer and during our conversations he will ask something and I'll look up the answer. While I was doing that I got the blue screen of terminally ill. It said if this is the first time you have seen this screen shut your computer down and restart it. After I ended our conversation I did that and got that screen again. I had not added any new programs, but I decided to reset my computer to the previous save point. I opened it in safe mode, set it for that point, restarted the computer, and was greeted by that wonderful blue screen again. After that failure, my only two options were try to get it fixed or buy a new computer. My inner Jack Benny said, try to get it fixed. I took it to a repairman and went to bed. Tuesday I called and was told that that they could fix it and it would cost me $75, but it wouldn't be ready until Wednesday. Fair enough. Wednesday I received a call and there was a problem, which was the computer could not be fixed. They had tried to save what I had on the computer, but could not. The hard drive had to be replaced. Once again, my inner Jack Benny took over. Replacing the hard drive was an additional $75, versus a new one that I had looked at for $400. Any guesses on what I did? A new hard drive meant totally starting over. The only thing that I regret losing was my personal pictures. I have a Photobucket account, but I hadn't uploaded them there. That won't happen again.

Getting my computer reset wasn't bad, in fact I enjoyed it. The last time I had a new computer She Who Left In The Middle Of The Night was the one who set everything up. It was fun figuring things out. Things were going fairly smoothly, then came Saturday night at work. The truck that came in was the largest that I have dealt with in five years of doing this. I was not told exactly how many pieces were on it, but they do give you a stocking time based on putting out so many cases in an hour. Again, they do not give us that figure, but I had 19 hours of stocking time. I was given 2 helpers. There were 10 pallets of merchandise to go through, a lot of which was multiple cases which go in the end doors, and all of that had to be sorted. With my helpers we got through every bit of it, but I was exhausted when I went home. I went to work Sunday night still exhausted. I made it through the night but I did not stock as fast as I usually do.

Monday nights I usually work in frozen foods, but our guy who works in dairy was sick so I worked there. The truck itself was not bad, but Monday is one of the nights we get milk delivered. My job is to check it in, but that is actually a boring job. I stand there while the milk driver pulls the pallets off the truck, I make sure that everything that is supposed to be there is, then the driver takes the milk into the cooler. The milk cooler is supposed to be ready for delivery, but 5 pallets from the previous nights truck was still there. That had to be stacked down. Each pallet has 9 stacks of milk, each stack with 6 crates, 24 gallons per stack. They have to be physically unloaded. Since I still wasn't at full strength, that wore me down even more. On my two days off I did not do anything.

This past week has been extremely busy and I don't feel like I am getting any rest. Fortunately I just have to work tonight, off Tuesday and Wednesday, work Thursday and Friday, then I have a five day vacation. I am so ready for that. When I get back I am going to push even harder to get out of frozen and dairy. I really am getting too old for the physical demands of the job. Right now I can still do the job, but if I don't slow down soon I won't be able to.