Today is a new day!!

Have you ever realized when you over sleep everything goes wrong? Well, that is how my day started. I overslept by 30 minutes, then Tricia got toothpaste all over her and I had to do a last minute change of her clothes. Then I got out to my car a realized I left my purse in the house. At least I figured that out before I drove 30 miles to work. When I got to work I realized I had left some paperwork I needed for a new client at home.

Luckily my stroke of forgetfulness ended soon after I arrived at my office. I would have been in bad shape if I would have kept that up all day. I have been down in the dumps lately and I felt that way all day. Then I remembered the book I have been reading "Get out of that Pit" by Beth Moore. I am only half way through the book. The first half tells you how you keep getting down in that pit and the second half tells you how to get out and stay out. I think I will read that part about five times so that it sinks in real good!! Anyway, I am going to take myself out of the pit of darkness and try my best to rejoin the living.

So as my title states Today is a new day!! I have lots of reasons to get myself out of that pit but the most important reason is a beautiful little girl who is going through just as much as her mommy right now. So today is a new day and I am off to have some fun with my baby girl!!

Things that make you stronger!

I have always been told that I am a strong person. I never really bought in to that because I just make decisions that are the best for me and my family, or at least I try. Here is some history about me:

I became pregnant at 16 years old and married my high-school boyfriend. Shannon was 18 and had just graduated a few months before we were married. Our daughter Carrie was born six-months after our wedding. She was beautiful. We were happy for almost ten years, then things went bad very fast. I found myself all alone with a daughter to raise bills to pay and a part-time job. I started working two jobs one full-time, one part-time and I put myself through college. I graduated in 2006 with a B.S. degree in Business management/Human Resources from Limestone.

In 2002, I started seeing Billy Joe, it wasn't long before he moved in with me a Carrie. We were married march 27, 2004. I loved him so much, I still love him but I can not be his wife any longer. Billy and I had a beautiful daughter Patricia "Tricia" August 14,2004. She is my world.

Billy and I have had a troubled relationship for a long time because he drinks too much, and he has had some other issues. Things came to a point of no return on Friday Feb. 5, 2010. Billy was out of work again, and had spent the day drinking. Tricia and I came home after 7pm and I had a migraine so, I went to lay down. Sometime after 9pm Billy came into the bedroom and asked me for some money. I told him no. He stormed off. I went into the kitchen and he yelled and asked me again I told him no. Then he came at me choked me and hit me in the face, while my baby watched. She was so scared she went and hid and I had to find her. After I found her I called the police and had Billy locked up for CDV (Criminal Domestic Violence) As of today, he is still in jail.

I am not certain if I want him released or not, because I am not certain that I will be safe if he is released. He was not the man that I have loved and lived with for seven years today. He moved in with me on Valentine's Day 2003. I pray that he will turn his life around because our baby girl misses her daddy, and I hate the thoughts of her growing up without one. We will be getting divorced, but just because parents divorce does not mean they have to walk away from their kids, even if they have to see the child under supervision it is better than not seeing them at all!

I am a little scared of putting this out for the world to see, because I do not want people to treat Tricia and me different. We are still the same people, we just need a lot of prayers right now. In this small town it is only a matter of time before the arrest is published in the Gaffney Ledger and everyone will know it anyway.

Sad Momma

My oldest daughter Carrie Marie, who is the first love of my life. She is now 21 years old and definitely has a mind of her own she moved to the next town over with a friend this past November, quit college and is working at Walgreens. There is nothing wrong with working at Walgreens, I just wanted so much more for her, so is so smart and can do anything she set her mind to. Carrie was my life for most of her life, I remarried when she was 15 and gave her a baby sister when she was 16. She loved it when it was just me and her, we had a great relationship, but things went bad after I remarried and then worse after her little sister was born.

Then in November of 2008, her dad my ex-husband died. It was very sudden and took us all by surprise. It hit her very hard, after his death Carrie changed to the point we can not even have a conversation. I tried my best to remind of the good times and how much her daddy loved her. He always called her "Jackson", not certain where he picked it up, but that was his little name for her.

Anyway, Carrie has recently cut all contact off with me, she has gotten her own cellphone plan and does not want me to have the number. I am not certain of where she is living, I have a pretty good idea but that is all I have. The only way I knew to contact her was through FaceBook and she has deleted me as her friend. So now this momma who only wants to love her daughter, can only pray and LET GO and LET GOD. That is so much easier said then done.

What makes it worse is Carries is really good at picking the wrong kind of friends and letting people use her. I don 't know the people she is living with, but I do know that she moved in with them 18 months ago and they kicked her out after two weeks late at night. Now they want her back. The only thing that adds up to me is they want the little bit of money she received from her dad's estate. It is not much money and I have pleaded for Carrie to pay off her debts and to put the rest in the bank for a nest egg. Instead she is going to Finland, and taking this friend with her. Someone please tell me what is so special about Finland???

Now this momma is sad because all I want is for my big baby, my Carebear to be here in my arms, and let her momma love her, instead of crying myself to sleep and wondering if she is okay.

Hello Again!

Not certain yet what to call this post. It has been a while since I posted anything on my blog. I have been busy with children, Internet classes, dance classes, soccer practice, and being sick from allergies that I have not found the time to blog. Did I mention I also work full-time as an insurance agent. So, as you can see I am a busy working mommy. As the old commercial use to say I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never ever let him forget he is a man. lol

I have spent the weekend feeling like crap because of my allergies. I did manage to make it to church for Sunday School. It is hard to be out when I am the teacher, and I so love the ladies in my class. I teach the 70 and up ladies class at my church. They are a sweet bunch of ladies, that are very caring and sweet.

Now as I lay across my bed typing this my 4 year-old daughter is informing me of the color of her latest poop. What a life I live, where the highlight of my day off is the color of her poop. I have to end now, to go play princess with my little one. Hopefully, I will be blogging again soon!!

Why I Hate Social Networking

Don't get me wrong I love Twitter and Facebook. I even had a MySpace page for a while, but there is also the side of me that hates social networking. See it all started when I owned my first computer in 1997. I was still married to my first husband Shannon at that time.

He found a friend Candee in a chat room and had an affair that lead to the end of our marriage. I came close to having a nervous breakdown at the time. I just didn't have time for one. My husband left me with a 9 year old child to raise and all of the bills and I only had a part-time job. So, I had to put off my nervous breakdown to work two jobs. I think the work is what kept me sane while my life was falling apart around me.

After a few years of working and putting my self through school I received my degree and was able to only have work one job. I remarried, his name is Billy Joe. We had a beautiful little girl together, but all is not fine in this relationship. See he has found an old girlfriend on Facebook. They are texting and talking to each other secretly. This concerns me because since I have had our daughter I have gained a lot of weight and I already feel like my husband is ashamed to be seen with me.

He claims he loves me and that there is nothing between them, but see I have been down this road before. The only difference this time is I make more money than him, everything is in my name so I have nothing financially to lose. I just have to deal with a broken heart.

I wish I could trust my husband about this girl but it is hard to trust when has been lying to me about who he is talking to on the phone and who has been texting him. I have already went through a lot in our relationship that I know I will someday write about, but today my subject is the fact that I think married men should not secretly talk or text an exgirlfriend or anybody else they meet online.

Managing Debt- Debt Free in Ten Years

Debt is a subject that is close to everyone’s heart these days. There is not one day that the news is not focused on some sort of problem associated with debt. Now I would like to focus on how to manage household debt and to pay off your debt in ten years. Wow, how nice it will be when you can get your paycheck and know that you have enough to live on until the next payday, to know that you will not have to struggle to pay all your bills. Now let’s get started on how we are going to achieve this goal.

First we have to start with making a budget. In order to get the budget that is right for you I want you to keep a record for two weeks of every penny you spend. This will help you to see where your money is going. After we see where your money is going we can decide how to budget for gas, food, entertainment, and eating out. Your bills will be the easiest part of the budget to plan because they are reoccurring so we can look back over the last year and average out the bills that are not the same every month.

Back to your spending habits there are ways you can still have some family fun without spending much money. For instance you can rent movies for free from the public library. This will save you money on your entertainment budget. You can clip coupons for items that you use to save money on your grocery budget. Start a family game night and play boards games with your children this will be fun and save you money.

If you will take your lunch three days a week you can save about $96 a month on your budget. At the grocery store buy the larger sizes of Chicken, hamburger, & pork chops the price by the pound is better on the larger sizes and you can separate out into serving sizes for your family and then freeze. One other way to save some money is to buy the store brands instead of the name brands. In most cases you are only paying extra for the name on the label.

Now that we have come up with ways to cut your spending let’s talk about savings. You should have at least three (3) months salary in a savings account for emergencies at all times. You need to either start a savings account or start to contribute to your current saving until you reach your goal of three (3) months salary. You might be sayings where am I going to come up with extra money to save. You are going to find it by using the ideas previously mentioned to save money. You will also start coming up with your own ways to add to your savings plan.
The third thing we need to do is look at your credit card debt. We need to see how to budget so that you can get your credit cards paid off in the next two years. Our over debt free goal is ten years but the goal for the cards is two years. If your credit card debt is more than $5000 it may take longer than the two year goal.

The next thing that needs to be addressed is car payments. If you have car payments then let’s come up with a plan to add additional principal to your payments. Another goal would be to start additional savings for maintenance and for a replacement car to keep from having to go in debt again for a vehicle. You should also think about the depreciation of a car before you decide to buy another car. It is a lot cheaper to purchase a late model used car that is in good condition then to have to go into debt for the next 5 years for a vehicle that you may not be able to afford.

The Paperless Office

The purpose of this paper is to inform you on how to set-up a paperless office. The set-up will include the evaluation and planning of the paperless office. I will use an insurance office for my paper. I want to show you why insurance office should scan their documents and keep their files electronically instead of the old fashion paper file.
Evaluation:
This is the stage where you will look at your current resources such as your agency management system, hardware, duel monitors, and the type of scanning that you will what to do in your office. There are three options as to when items can be scanned: 1-When paper is received; 2- as the paper is worked, 3- and after the paper is worked.
For this paper we will only talk about Front-end scanning- this type of scanning is when all mail is scanned into the system in the mail room and distributed electronically to the Staff. Since the greatest benefit of Front-end scanning is that no mail can be over looked because it is being scanned as it is received by the agency in the mailroom. This will protect the agency from missing any items. It will also help the workflows of the agency because the items will be easier to process if they are already scanned to the staff.
Planning Stage:
The planning stage is when you look at the different software programs that can help your office to process the mail electronically, you want to make certain that the system you choose is ser friendly, easy to integrate into your management system, and easy for your employees to retrieve information from.
This is also the stage when you will set-up the time frame to take your entire office paperless. It is easier to take the office paperless if you start with one department at a time. The easy department from my experience to start with is the Personal Lines Department because most of their policies are usually received electronically through a download, so this department is usually almost paperless when you begin this process.
You will also want to get dual monitors for all of your Staffs this way they can run their agency management system on one monitor while they have the paperless system running in the other monitor. Studies have shown that the implantation of dual monitors alone can raise productivity by 30percent in most offices.[i]
Remember for change to be effective it must be complete. You must be committed to the change. If you believe that there is room to hedge, cheat, or otherwise hang on to the past, the change will not succeed. This is an important to teach to everyone in your office start in the planning stage teaching that change is a good thing and it will help the transition to the paperless system.
Scanning can help bring productivity up by eliminating the need for staff to leave their desk to access information. With a conservative estimate that every trip away from a desk results in a loss of seven (7) minutes due to inevitable small talk with peers, coffee refill, bathroom and/or smoke breaks, mailroom stop, and any of the other myriad of possible distractions, these trips add up quickly.[ii]
Implementation stage:
The first thing you should do in this stage is to teach your staff to think paperless. This will help them to learn to process their mail in the new paperless workflow system. You want to stress to them that they still have the paper it is just digital now. The best way to start your staff into thinking paperless is to not give them any paper copies. If they have to access the paperless system to retrieve their mail and to process it they will start to embrace the paperless thinking a lot quicker.
Another way to start your staff into thinking paperless is to stop buying them paperless calendars. In learning to use the electronic calendar such as Outlook, the staff will learn to utilize more of the paperless technology that they already have at their disposal. You can also make a shared office calendar, to post vacations, birthdays, important staff meeting and etc.
One of the most important thing you need to do in this stage is to decide who will be your point person for the office, this person will be in charge of training employees and will be there to assist with questions. This person should not only be your troubleshooter, they should also be the person to work out the workflows so that everyone on your staff use the same workflows to process their mail. One of the most important things you will teach your staff is to be consistent.
Go Live Stage:
After you have taken your staff live on the paperless system, make certain that you have bins that your scanning operator can put the mail in everyday after it has been scanned. The mail should be kept 60 days at first the shredded. You can revise the amount of days that you are going to keep the scanned mail after about six (6) months. Make certain that you put all the scanning guidelines into your office workflow manual, this way all of the staff will know all the guidelines for your new paperless way of thinking and working.
Auditing stage:
You should start to audit your staff after they have been working in the paperless system for about 30 days. Randomly pick accounts for each staff member to make certain that they understand the new way to process. You will also want to start running reports starting after the first week of all the incoming mail and what they have processed this way you can track to see if the system is helping your staff to work more efficiently. The reports will also help you to keep track of what staff members are able to complete all of their job duties and the ones who need additional help or training.
Feedback stage:
This will be an ongoing stage that will help you to refine your workflows based on staff feedback. This stage will help you to know what workflows have to be reworked so that the staff can process more efficiently. It will also help you to know if you need to refine your processes for any internal audits.

[i] The Paperless Office By: Robert E Dunn III page 15

[ii] The Paperless Office By: Robert E Dunn III page 18