Rest in Peace?

3:46pm.

My eyes slowly lift from a sound sleep.

My ears hone in on a desperate whine coming from the living room.

I usually don't hear such things.

Either the noises aren't made or the fan I use for white noise works.

I didn't turn on the fan today.

I get up to see what's wrong. The noise is coming from Jack. It's a much different whine than I'm used to. His head is slightly down, tail wagging. I suddenly remember both dogs ate a bowl of food right before I went to bed. So this must be an EPC, emergency poot cry.

I begrudgingly throw on a coat and take the dogs outside. The sun is bright and I wish I had grabbed sunglasses. I walk around the backyard with Jack on a leash, leaving Bug to his own accord. Jack trots around and Bug is the one who ends up pooting. This, of course, does not make me happy since Jack started the whole thing.

We go back in the house. I declare "no treats!" because I'm so irritated with the whole disturbance, and I lie down again. A few minutes later, I realize I too must go to the bathroom. I get up and take care of that, then lie down. Again.

A few minutes later, I hear thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Sounds like someone is pounding a hammer on a roof. But no one would start working on a roof at 4pm on a Friday. Then I put 2 and 2 together: weekend + plus warmer temperatures = basketball kid. He's a teenager two doors down from us who's almost always out pounding the pavement when it's warm. A few expletives run through my head and under my breath I murmur, effing basketball kid. I finally give up the fight and retreat to the living room.

****I don't sleep as long on Fridays so I can attempt to sleep through the night. So I was going to get up in an hour or so anyway. But it's still annoying. Soon, Pmo will be home. I'll have to put on my happy face and gear up for dinner. Maybe he can talk me out of getting up at 3:30am Saturday morning to play basketball in front of my neighbor's house.****

Routine Maintenance

I know all I've blogged about lately is being on night shift and producing the morning show. But it's all I know right now. So here we go.

Today, tonight, whatever... I tried to establish a bit of a routine. At least during the week. Weekends don't count. You pretty much have to get through them the best you can. And still try to enjoy yourself. Anyway, today I got 8 hours of sleep from 11am-7pm, yay! Okay, I woke up a few times, but the point is I was able to fall back to sleep, which I feel is the hardest part about day snoozing. I still credit the melatonin for keeping my brain in a coma. To keep me alert after I woke up, I started drinking coffee around 7:30pm. With French Vanilla Coffeemate, my new friend.

Then I caught up on work email, Facebook, etc. I used to go through work email just to weed out all of the stuff I didn't need. Now I need to catch up on things and see what's going on before I go into the newsroom. I have to pay a lot of attention and save more emails than I used to.

After that, I got out my yoga mat and did several poses while Pmo watched American Pickers and Pawn Stars. I feel the need to stretch now more than ever because I sit for even longer periods of time at work. Especially this morning. 2 and 1/2 hours in the producer booth is hard on the bottom. I also have trouble walking at first when I get out of the chair. Is that bad? :)

Finally, it was time to eat. I fixed a ham and cheese sandwich with cheesy poofs and had a Diet Coke. Pmo was glad I finally settled down. But think about it. I really can't get up at 7pm and just relax all night because I'll get tired all over again. And I don't have a lot of energy in the morning after I get home from work to do these things. Except this morning I did do the dishes and cleaned the kitchen and bathroom countertops. And had pizza, salad and chocolate milk for breakfast :)

Now it's almost time to get in the shower and schlep into work. That's another routine that gets thrown off on the weekend, my showers. Don't worry, I still take them. They're just at odd times and spaced out more than usual.

I hope I can keep up this new routine. So does Jack. You know that commercial on TV where the dog is doing yoga with his owner? When I get on the floor, Jack seizes a golden opportunity:

Weekend Outlook

My weekend started around 8:30am this morning. Probably around the time your work day began. That's the big plus of working night shift.

I just finished my second week on the morning show. I feel a bit more "with it" but I have a long way to go. There are kinks to be worked out, conversation to be had, lessons to be learned. It's really a trial and error process. For all of us. I'll be glad when I get to a point where I've got it all figured out, or at least I think I do. I'd like to have a better grip on things. There are lots of logistics to mull over. Many sources to check again and again. Planning ahead day to day. Things I can do, I'm just not used to it. It's tiring. I still feel scatterbrained and unorganized, but I'm chipping away at that as well with my notes and such.

That being said, I'm going to relax this weekend. I'm having lunch with a co-worker in a few hours. Pmo and I might take in a movie tomorrow. We had talked about going to a winery but the snow changed that plan.

My weekend will end around 12am Monday morning. Or Sunday at midnight, depending on how you look at it. That's the bitch about being on night shift. But I won't think about that now. I'll think about that on Sunday when I have to go to bed at 6pm ;)

Hell Week

On Monday, I started a new role at work as executive producer of the morning show. Now that I have the first week under my belt, my survival story of Sunrise Boot Camp can be told.

The first step was adjusting from 2nd shift to 3rd shift. Not easy. I only slept 5 to 6 hours a day at the most. The dogs were confused and wondered why I was at home but not in the living room with them. I started drinking coffee and used sleep aids at times. I even bought some melatonin for future naps.

The second step was learning how the show currently operates. I have produced a 1/2 hour show, and at times 2 separate 1/2 hour shows, for the past 7 years. Sunrise is a 2 and 1/2 hour show. It's a totally different dynamic, a whole new crew of people and a lot of content responsibility compared to the evening shows.

The third step was adapting my way of producing to the show. I'm sharing duties with another producer for the first time. I use different elements and tools than what the crew is used to incorporating. The director and I are in the process of coming to an understanding in terms of what I expect and what he can do. In fact, he's teaching me things I didn't know we could do.

The fourth step was moving the show into a new direction. A series of meetings took place in the latter half of the week that introduced new elements, strategies and goals into my brain. At this point, I had a breakdown. I think it was Wednesday. I woke up from a nap, came into the kitchen and just started crying on Pmo's shoulder. The whole week was one big roller coaster of emotions. There were times when I wondered why the hell I decided to do this, and could I really do what upper management was asking of me? There were times when I had ideas of how to make the show better. Too many ideas that clouded my mind and made it difficult to close my eyes when I needed to sleep. There were times when I just missed my former life I left behind less than a week ago. 11 hours of overtime didn't help either.


I think my biggest problem, besides the poor sleep and eating habits, was the chaos of clutter. I don't deal well with being unorganized. I am not usually scatterbrained. I've been taking notes all week which are randomly placed on loose pieces of paper, in a notebook, in emails and in my mind. I need to cohesively bring all that together in one place in a specific order or I'll go insane. I need to decide what to tackle first and how to execute it. It's like coming home to a dirty house. I can't relax or settle in until I've put all the dishes away, cleared the countertops, made the bed and filled the dog bowls.


I'm calling it boot camp/hell week in the hopes that the worst is behind me. It can only get better from here, right? I was thrown into the fire, to the wolves, what have you, right from the get go and I'm coming out the other side. I have to retrain my brain and change my mentality. I think of it like building a truck on an assembly line. For years, you've done it the same way with the same parts and the same people. And you were pretty confident and comfortable in your abilities. But then the boss moves you to an SUV. You not only have to learn how to build this particular SUV, but build it like it has never been built before using new tools and parts. And make it bigger. Much, much bigger.


Kudos to my husband who has beared with me and been my rock through this first week. He's made dinner, packed my midnight snacks, cleared snow off my car, kept the dogs quiet while I slept, washed the dishes, made me coffee, sent me articles on staying healthy on night shift... the list never ends. God bless you, St. Pmo :)