That's all folks...

Well, that's it.

My last day with Cummins passed with little fanfare. I got to say goodbye to everyone I worked with at the warehouse, and I was very happy to see that everyone was, for the most part, in a pretty positive mood. It was a little somber to say "Nice working with you. Glad I got to know you. Good luck." knowing most of them I would never see again. I didn't shed any tears until the drive home, and I think that was mostly just letting the stress out.

I guess on the plus side there is no more winter commute. Save gas too. Also, I may have a chance to sleep in for a while. That would be nice. And...no more meetings! Woohoo! Well, that's about all I can think of for the bright side kind of stuff, pretty lame huh?

I truly enjoyed my almost 2 years with Cummins and honestly do not hold any bitter feelings for them letting us go. It is just business after all. I just hope this round of cuts was enough and no one else will have to lose their jobs. That no one else will have to wonder what comes next far sooner than they should have to worry about that.

I have put out some feelers, and have been contacted by a couple of head-hunters, but nothing concrete has come along yet as far as jobs are concerned. I am hopeful about a possibility in Phoenix which is the best lead yet. I am sure I will hear more from them after the holiday, but you never know, right. All that stuff about counting your chickens applies here.

The one thing that will make this a harder transition is that if I am going to have a real chance at finding something quickly, then we will likely be moving again. Very few jobs in my field at my level in Utah, far more in other states. As long as I recognize that I can at least focus my search in the southern lattitudes. It will make it a little less painful on Glynna to at least move where it is warm.

Of course, the first and best plan is to stay put, let the kids finish out school here. This next move will be hardest on them. Glynna and I knew going into it that moving up in my career would likely mean moving, and we are adventurous enough that it is actually something we enjoy. But we have to think of the kids too. For them it will be harder. We have uprooted them enough. God willing, we will stay here.

I have checked most all job boards I can think of, and have even registered with a few pay sites, like The Ladders. (that link should take you to my resume....if you know anyone looking for a logistics manager, feel free to pass it along =) I am pretty confident something will come my way, hopefully before the severance package ends. If not, all we can do is put it in God's hands and trust that he has better things in store for us, whatever they may be.

So goodbye Cummins. I will miss everyone I worked with. It was the best job I have ever had...

...so far!

Merry Christmas 2008

I hope anyone who read my last post knows I was just kidding about the title, "Stop the World, I want to get off!" I know sometimes we all feel like that, but overall, I have a very good life. I have so much to be thankful for. I am married to my best friend. I love being with him. We have alot of fun together. He makes me laugh just about on a daily basis. I am so impressed with how intelligent and witty he is. I hope my children take more after him than me. I did well in school because I worked my butt off, but learning new things does not just come naturally for me. I have to work hard to get information to stick in my brain. That may have something to do with having four children too... (wink).

******

Anyway, I did not get a chance in my last blog to share any info about our Christmas holiday. We had a great Christmas day. Jordan had to go on a scavenger hunt to find his Santa gift and Duncan had to dig through a big box of shredded newspaper to find his. We like to keep things fun...or should I say, Santa likes to keep things fun.

I gave myself a fabulous Christmas present. I did not cook or clean or even get dressed the entire day. It was AWESOME! I went to breakfast at my sister-in-laws in my PJ's and even went to Dennys for Christmas dinner in my PJ's. Ok, I admit, I was a teensy bit embarrassed...but I did it anyway. Ya, I like to live on the wild side now and then. Emily, Duncan, and Annie joined me in my Christmas Pajama Day and they were pretty embarrassed at Dennys too. It was funny. I did feel a little guilty about making people work on Christmas Day.

Well, one of my daycare kids in napping here in the office and I don't want to wake her up so I am going to make this a short post, but later I will get back on and post about my weight loss efforts...they are sad...very, very sad...yurk.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Long time, no blog. How many times can I use "busy" as my excuse for everything? In fact, December 2008 has just been a whirlwind for me. Thanksgiving was here only a moment ago and now the New Year is around the corner. Did Christmas even happen? Well, my photos are proof that it did. I warned all of the Todd family that I had four years of holiday photos to make up. They did bear it, but I can't guarantee they were grinning about it. ;P I will take this opportunity now to thank all of you for being gracious about my photo frenzy over the past several weeks and to thank those of you who found photos to share with me due to my very devastating loss.

I hope your holidays were happy. Considering the crazy past few weeks we have experienced, our holiday was nice. You have all heard the phrase, "when it rains it pours". Well, boy have I got a CRAZY example of that! It is so crazy I feel more like laughing about it than crying! First of all, at the beginning of the month I lost a family of three kids that I was prepaid for (meaning that I depended on a fairly large sum of money at the beginning of the month which I did not receive), then, Chad's car, which is not even two years old, broke down on our way to a business dinner in Salt Lake, (Chad's parents had to come from Ogden to pick us up that night and then go back the next morning to tow Chad's car back to the dealer for repairs), then Chad was abruptly informed that his facility was closing and all of the employees, including himself, were being let go at the end of the month, then our furnace quit working...HELLO! December...cold..., and then all of our favorite grandpa-and apparently, a favorite for many people-died.

The good ending to this story is that Grandpa and Grandma are reunited...and I got to have all of my siblings and my Mom and Dan, not to mention my cousins, Kyle and Brenda, all in my home at the same time. That part was fabulous...especially listening to Blaine and Bryn sing, smelling Theresa's amazing cooking, and watching Angie harvest crops and blood online...hee hee. (If you want details on the blood thing, you'll have to ask her...hee hee)

I'm not complaining. It has just been a crazy month. As always, my blogs are late at night and I have a lesson to teach tomorrow. Thank goodness next week our church meetings will be starting at one o'clock in the afternoon. Whoo hoo! I love afternoon church. What else can you do on Sunday? Hello! Sleep in! ha ha.

Anyway, Chad has been giving me a photo posting lesson. I was going to post some Christmas photos as well, but we are having a few technical difficulties so Chad will figure out the problems and I will post Christmas photos next time. I will explain the four I did actually upload to the blog.

The first one is of Chad with his crew at the Cummins facility in Salt Lake. The second one is of Bodie being taught to leave no evidence of dessert...cake? What cake? The third is a photo of my mom, sisters, and me.

Love you all!

Hey, while we were all together, why didn't we take a sibling photo?! Poop! (Is that ok to say on the Internet?...HAHAHA), and, thank you, Jesse, for the lovely little goodbye gift on Theresa's rental. Those cute little snowmen did not last though. Shortly after your departure, Chad started using the poor little guys as snowballs. Aaaaah...

Other things to think about...a positive note and the start of my cancer story (so Cancer Part 1, I guess)

I was just thinking about things that are happening to us right now, and it got me reminiscing, which made me think of something I have not posted about yet: 2008 is the 10 year mark for my cancer diagnosis. 10 years is quite the milestone for cancer survivors. The 5-year mark is kind of the pinnacle of cancer survival, since at that point it basically means you have the same chance of a cancer recurrence as anyone else has of developing cancer. So 10 years is special as it means I have doubled that time. Not bad considering my doctor initially gave me less than a 15% chance of beating it to begin with.

10 years. Wow.

In October 1998 we received the news that I had osteosarcoma (bone cancer).

I had been having pain in my upper back, neck, and down my left arm for some time in late 1997 and early 1998, but I was nearing the end of my college coursework and was too caught up in graduating to get it checked out. I finally, just before graduation, went to my boss at work since I thought it might be work-related having been in production for several years. They sent me to a therapist who recommended and electromyogram. Here is the key point of this test:

The skin over the areas to be tested is cleaned with a special soap. A needle electrode that is attached by wires to a recording machine is inserted into a specific muscle.

So the point is they stick a needle into a muscle to find a nerve and then shock it so they can see on a machine hooked up to your hand if the nerve is blocked or not. Got that? Needle in muscle to shock the be-jeebers out of a nerve, ON PURPOSE!

Can you say "ouch"?

Actually it was more like "HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL STOP STICKING THAT PIN IN MY ARM YOU SADISTIC..." well you get the idea. =)

The doctor stuck that thing in my hand and arm about every 6 inches (back of my hand, just past my wrist, middle of forearm, at the elbow - that was fun, shocking the crap out of my funny-bone, hah hah hah, see me laughing - etc.). Then I find out the test told them nothing. Greeeaaat!

That prompted an MRI. They were pretty concerned so I actually got my MRI on July 4th if you can imagine that. That was also, incidentally, the day of my last paid haircut. I have not been to a barber of any kind since then.

I went in that afternoon for my MRI. They gave me a Valium to help me relax and then they strapped me into the MRI table. [note: the Valium basically did nothing...I would come to find after 8 years of various kinds of treatments and surgeries, and probably thousands of percocet, lortab, codeine, etc. that I have a VERY high tolerance for narcotics of all kinds.]

I had a cage bolted over my head holding my head in place and pressing on my chest so I would not move at all during the test. That ended up being a bad thing, since it only exacerbated the feeling of being trapped while I was, well, trapped in the machine. In the middle of the MRI they stopped. They told me they had to have someone come look at the images and that they needed to take another image. All this time I am in this tube that could barely hold me and my gut. I started begging them to let me out, but they said they did not want to mess up the orientation. It was a bad experience at the time and made it so I can now only do an MRI if sedated.

Anyway, I found out what made them do that. They wanted to be absolutely certain of what they had to report, to make sure they were really seeing what they thought they were. Unfortunately, it was exactly what they thought it was.

When they finally unstrapped me, they had me wait around to talk to my doctor. I kind of guessed at that point that it was not going to be to invite me over for punch and cookies. On the phone the neurologist who ordered the test told me they found a mass in my upper back and neck (technically the brachial plexus area). It was about the size of a large orange or my fist and was nestled under my shoulder-blade, up against the top of my rib cage and under my colar bone. Later we would find out it encroached on the spine as well. The sharp shooting pains I had been experiencing in my left arm and neck were a result of the tumor pressing on and pinching my ulnar nerve against my colar bone - in essence I had the feeling of having smacked my funny bone good and hard all the time.

My doctor actually did say "tumor" at the end of our discussion. "Mass" sounded better.

I then called Glynna and my mom and dad and told them they had found a tumor. I was sick and numb all at the same time. But I had no idea what was to come, and maybe that was a good thing.

I will say I have had more enjoyable Independence Days.

A fine Merry Christmas to me...more bad news

I hate to keep posting bad news, but this last week was a doozy. My boss and our HR rep came out last Monday from Kentucky, unannounced. I had a phone call scheduled with him on Monday, but had no clue he was coming here until he literally walked into my office. I figured that can't be a good thing...and unfortunately I was right.

They told me that Cummins was trying to be proactive about the current economic environment. We already had seen our daily shipping volume decrease by about 20%, which necessitated dropping 5 people from our work force. The decision now was that they need to consolidate operations within markets, meaning they only want one distribution center in North America. So they are shutting us down and we are all being laid off. Our last official working day is December 30th.

Some Merry Christmas, huh?

I am a little worried about finding a new job. We have a neighbor who has been out of work for 9 months. I hear about more people losing their jobs and not being able to find anything. It is somewhat scary. I am hopeful, however, and I think I have a good background to get into something else relatively soon. It will probably pay off that I have experience in many fields and have worn many hats in my career. I hope it will anyway.

I guess come January I will have some more time to blog. I do get a 3 month severance package, so that will help. I am also going to get certified in daycare so we can take on more kids in Glynna's daycare, Kiddlywinks. I guess that was pretty good forsight, huh? We can effectively double her income, and my mom is thinking about joining us instead of her current job, which will help even more. Of course we may be driven nuts with that many kids running around the house, but I hear that duct tape can work wonders! =)

I will use this space to keep everyone updated on my job hunt. I am also considering putting together a "resume blog" with the hope of luring in potential employers.

You can also check out my profile on LinkedIn.

I guess that is about it for now.