holidailies 2013: episode 9

My job is extremely feast or famine. Due to how things are scheduled by another department, we often run out of work at the end of the month, stretching easily a week into the new month, and then we suddenly get really busy. This month is no exception: I spent last week scrounging for hours (grateful that Thanksgiving weekend's two days of holiday pay will help offset that a little), and then I logged in this morning to find a call for voluntary overtime this week. The punchline is that we're still not that busy, so we need to wait til later in the week to do the overtime hours we've pledged. My problem is that I'm off on Friday (instead of my usual Wednesday, since the quarterly meeting and departmental holiday gathering is this week and in-office events are ALWAYS scheduled on my day off; I went back through two years of calendar events to prove this point to management when they asked what changes could be made to the department) and Saturdays are now ten-hour shifts for me, so I don't really have a ton of time available at the end of this week for extra hours. I know I'll figure it out somehow, like I always do, but it just adds to the stress of what is already a pretty stressful job.

In other news: I really can't wait til mid-January. When I had my eyes tested in October, the optometrist said I had some swelling in my left ocular nerve, and she set me up with a neuro-opthamologist in a somewhat nearby town (neuro-opthamology is apparently a rare specialty and as such there are only a few of these specialists in the metro area). She said it can cause intercranial pressure and that it can likely be treated with medication. She made a point to say I should really have it checked out, which of course concerned me. So that appointment is in January; I had it originally scheduled for the week of Thanksgiving, but I just couldn't take the time away from work that week. I've definitely noticed a difference in vision quality in my left eye, and it always feels like something's stuck in there (like an eyelash I can't get to), so I seriously cannot wait to have it looked at.