Ups and Downs

Don't ya just love days that start out fine and then turn sour?

Warning: It's a little "rambly"...

Today was my first official day working as an employee for Hallmark. I worked for a total of four hours (11am-3pm), though I wouldn't say I did much working. The first part of the day consisted of doing all the necessary paperwork (tax information, setting up the direct deposit etc...) and then reading the employee manual. Thankfully though, I am not the only new employee at the store. When I called my manager this morning to ask a few questions I received the wonderful news that another girl was hired too. So there was someone to chat with while doing the paperwork. Also, my nerves were quite a bit lessened knowing someone else was going through the process too.

Once we finished all of the "office-y" tasks we spent the rest of the time on the sales floor. The manager told us to roam the store for awhile in order to get familiar with the merchandise. For a good hour we roamed the store and tinkered with the cards, toys, books, jewelery, and other goodies. Later in the day, we did learn a good lesson about how to sort and process cards when the store gets a shipment. The other employee working showed us how to do all of that. It felt good to help get a task accomplished (though I'm sure we newbies slowed the girl down a little- glad she was patient!). The rest of the day was spent observing my manager at the cash register. Oh, I did have to answer the phone once though!

I think tomorrow will be more of a learning experience because the store manager will be around. I'm excited to get going on learning the cashier system. I want to learn it all now!

Ahhh.... Well, it was a good start to my new job. I am praising God for having it! I kept asking Him to give me a positive attitude about it regardless of what I would experience today. Thankfully, I was given patience for that part of the day.

Unfortunately, later this afternoon and evening my irritability set in rather strongly. I blame it all on the hormones that are raging through my body at this point in time. Not that it's an excuse, but I'm not usually this cranky or irritable on a non-hormonal day. With that said, I had to take care of loan entrance counseling this afternoon, which set me off in a bad direction. The thought of going into more debt (Pacific is $600 per grad credit) makes me flustered on any given day but today it just ticked me off even more. After completing the ever-so boring entrance counseling, I had to look over my financial aid "award" letter (ha- why do they call it that?) to see how much loan money I actually need. The good news is that I may be able to get by with the amount of the Subsidized Direct Loan. And there is a possibility of getting a P.E.O. loan at some point, which would have a much better interest rate.... Sooo there is some silver lining in that big black cloud.

The irritation only dragged on when my mom and I had to call about this medical bill we recently received. Turns out there was some miscommunication with my vehicle insurance and Providence-- this was from when I got in the accident almost a year ago. Providence failed to tell us about the whole situation and sent us a decent size bill instead. So now we have to bother the vehicle issuance and get that sorted out... blah blah blah. And we only have a month to get it sorted out because after a year, Providence doesn't allow changes or something. I don't remember what they said now. But it made me irritated, I'll tell you that.

So, here I am now with all these thoughts buzzing through my brain... Truthfully, I am thinking that God has been challenging me. I prayed the words of this Psalm about two nights ago, "May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be pleasing to You, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer" (Psalm 19:14). I need to keep repeating this over and over and over and over...