Back to Work

Tonight was my first night back at work in four weeks. The management has been fantastic in allowing me to take the time off that I needed to let my knee heal. Of course, the fact that they are supposed to be cutting hours helps! They really didn't need me much, so I suppose the injury came at a pretty good time.

It was an extremely slow night, even though it took me 20 minutes to find a parking spot. Everyone is at the theater and restaurants - they're not shopping. Since I hadn't been in for four weeks, I spent a lot of the time reacquainting myself with the store and getting to know all the new products that have come in over the past month. No customers came into the store after 7pm, so we all folding and cleaned and were completely done with our "after closing" work by 8:30. We were scheduled until 10pm to allow time to clean up after we closed at 9pm, but we were headed home by 9:20.

Once I got home, I realized that I was in a bit more pain than I initially thought, but it's been easily dealt with by sitting on the couch with a heating pad. It will be nice when I can work a shift without any knee pain, but I am so thankful that it has healed itself well enough that I am able to go back to work and avoid surgery (provided I don't re-injure it somehow!).

I didn't really realize how much I enjoy having a night or two each week to go off to a job. I've been going a little stir-crazy at times over the past few weeks and it finally occurred to me tonight once I got to work. It's a nice break from being "mommy". I'm just me and I can have real, adult conversations without little children running around, screaming, and destroying things I just cleaned up - something I couldn't say when I worked at Payless, that's for sure!

The boys seemed almost happy that I was going away to work today. Hmm. They didn't complain when I got ready for work, which is something that almost always happens. And when I said goodbye and told them I was going to work, they just waved and said, "Ok, bye mommy!". Maybe they realized how much they like me working too!

My hours will be very limited. I work again tomorrow to help with inventory, but that was a last minute request by the manager - I wasn't originally scheduled for it. Then I have a regular shift next Saturday. I will probably have just one or two days a week for quite a while and I'm just fine with that.