Overnights and Evenings

Somedays I absolutely love my job. As some of you who read my blog know, I work in home health care as a provider of daily living support to those who are developmentally or physically disabled or both. It's a very challenging and rewarding thing to do. At times, I want to pull my hair out and others, it gives me such a feeling of peace.

I work kind of an odd shift. During the school year, my main client - J - she has sevices before and after school, on weekends and on any day that she doesn't attend school for one reason or another. Giving me a grand total of 30 hours a week. Which is the minimum needed to keep my insurance active and paid for. Well, as a fill in, I've picked up a sepperate shift, a Midnight to Eight am, at the housing development my company owns/opperates. Bringing my weekly hours to a whopping 38. Now - you wouldn't think that 8 extra hours is that big of a deal, but with the fact that if anything goes funky here at J's ... those 8 hours at the House become OVERTIME. And that - is a big deal. It's a rare thing for OT to be approved with this company. So, I take it as a sense of honor that I have a standing "Okay" for OT whenever the weather goes bad or so-and-so just doesn't want to come in one night.

I get to stay up all night, work on whatever I'm reading/doing... watch TV and just.... veg really for 8 hours and get paid to do so. Yes, I have to do hourly spot checks, but all in all, it's cake.

Then there's the added bonus that I get all this done in 3days. Yup - 38 hours in 3 days. 14 hours on Friday, 12 hours on Saturday and the last 12 hours on Sunday. Mind you, sometimes, if J's folks decide to go out or something my Fri and Sat hours increase. If we are doing something special and I need to come in early... well you get the idea. So - I'm back to doing a 40 hour week and I still get Monday and Tuesday off with my Hubby.

So, all told, working overnight and evenings ain't so bad.