Work It

I have made it a point not to write about Eric's job very much on my blog. I hesitate to ever say too much lest the scary people on the Internet figure out everything about us. But the events of last weekend necessitate discussing Eric's job.

He manages a group home for the mentally handicapped. He works for a company that has roughly three dozen homes in the Provo/Orem area. He is also on the "Emergency Squad" (that is not what it's really called) for this company, which means that when he is on call, he may get to go handle a rough situation. (Many of the clients, in addition to being mentally challenged, also have psychiatric disorders which sometimes cause them to be unruly, to say the least.) Usually when he gets called to an emergency situation, it is hardly an emergency, and purely covering a shift for some lame-o who skipped work and that lame-o's manager who didn't pick up the shift himself (or herself). (I feel okay calling them lame-os because Eric has managed two different houses, over a span of something like 5 or 6 years total, and he has NOT ONCE used the crisis team to cover a shift. Ahem. Moving on.)

Sometimes Eric works overnight. It's been that way since before we were married, and it never really bothered me once we got married. It's just the way it is. Once or twice a week, I get the whole bed all to myself, and it's quite wonderful.

Sometimes Eric works upwards of 60 hours per week. Anything above 40 is, of course, overtime. This has been a huge financial blessing for us. And while there have been times when we haven't seen much of each other, they are usually short spans of time, and then we have all that extra money floating around. And you can't go wrong with extra money.

All this brings me to my point. Eric had the most insane schedule the weekend before last. He worked about 70 hours Friday through Tuesday. Plus he worked Monday through Thursday leading up to that Friday and then Wednesday through Friday after his Tuesday shifts. It was crazy. That is all.