7-Quick Takes

Join Jen and the other Quicktakers over at the Conversion Diary.>

1. From time to time I have young women ask me if they could get into medical transcription so that they can be home with their children and work from home. My answer is mixed.

If you enjoy working at a keyboard and can type quickly and accurately, if you enjoy learning new words and learning about new medical procedures and medications, if you have good grammar and spelling skills, and if you have the patience of Job, then yes, you can transcribe medical reports from home and be there with your children.

You will not get rich doing this. The transcriptionists that I know who have made $30,000 up per year type all. the. time.

In fact, it is the one medical field I know of where the standard of pay is going backwards instead of forwards. Recently, a service I work for sent me this in an e-mail:

We must reduce line rates for some of our medical transcriptionists whose hire date preceded the change in the industry standard.

I went from a whopping 0.085 cents per line to 0.075 cents per line. But as jobs continue to go into Pakistan, India and the Philippines, I’m probably lucky to be getting that- I so need another line of work!

2. LPNs are apparently the other group of medical workers that are under appreciated. See here

3. We are coming to the end of the CYO cross country season. My heart is a bit heavy about this. It used to be that I would pull up in the van and my kids would spill out and I had a runner in each division. This year I had two runners in the oldest division. Next year I will have only one – Izzy- and she isn’t particularly fond of running. The year after that Rosie will start her cross country adventure. So from now on I will only have one runner running and that just feels so odd to me.

4. Noah however, is doing very well and wants to continue. I am thinking of starting a running club for homeschoolers in my area and Noah and I have a goal for him to run one of the big marathons before the end of high school.

5. I have missed most of the last two meets because I had to run wedding rehearsals. At the beginning of the season, CYO came out with the schedule for the meets and I adjusted my wedding obligations around those. The other wedding coordinators worked with me and we were all set. I even started contacting my brides.

Then CYO changed the schedule and I was suddenly stuck doing these Friday night weddings with Thursday rehearsals and missing the cross country meets.

I get that CYO is a volunteer organization, but I really wish that when they set a schedule that they would set it in stone. It really does affect the lives of real working people and their families when they just arbitrarily change things.

6. This week, Izzy’s best friend T asked us to go to her softball game. As I’ve written before, we live in an inner city neighborhood. What makes our street racially diverse is the fact that we live here! So it would follow that the public jr. high school is primarily made up of lower income African American students. T is very proud and happy to be part of this team and I’m happy for her. She is outside running and catching the ball and getting some good exercises as well as being part of a team, and I think all of that is great for her! When we pulled up, I saw the team practicing. There were quite a few overweight kids. There was a lot of dropped catches, and some unimpressive throws, but overall they were having a good time and there seemed to be a lot of camaraderie.

Then the other team arrived.

Outfitted to the T, 13 thin, athletic girls bounded out of the bus and started REALLY practicing. They warmed up by running and then throwing the ball, hard! only to have it easily caught by a participating teammate. It did not bode well for T’s team.

Since T’s team was playing at home, the other team got to bat first. The pitcher was a serious looking girl and she easily tossed the ball to the catcher. That ease didn’t go up a notch when she was pitching to a batter. Most of the pitches hit the ground or went too high. Most of the batters were walked to first. As it turns out, not catching the ball became a big problem too as the other team had no problem stealing, second, third and even home. The first half of that inning blessedly came to an end when they reached the maximum allowed score of 6.

Then the other team pitched. Good Lord! I thought that young lady was a professional the way she whipped that ball around and hurled it towards the batter – whose first inclination was to get out of the way rather than swing! Three easy outs and five minutes later, the away team was batting again and in short order they had their six points and it was time to switch once more.

T got a chance to catch the ball at 3rd and tag out a player, but she lost the ball, fell down and hit the runner with her empty gloved hand. She apologized and the other girl wasn’t hurt. T hurt her wrist though and surprisingly the away team’s coach came over to make sure she could move it and that it wasn’t seriously injured.

I have no idea where T’s coach was. He wasn’t coaching. Another gentleman and I kind of teamed up with loud suggestions.

“Throw it home.” “Catch it.” “RUNNNNN.”

It was hard to watch, so as I had another appointment, we left in the middle of the third inning.

I predicted that we would be able to tell how long the game was by the score, and I was right. When T. got home she told us the score was 24 to 1. at 6 points per inning they obviously played four innings. But what astounded us was that the home team got 1!

7. Earlier this week I was looking at my Facebook newsfeed and found a prayer request – for my son! I’ll tell ya, it’s weird to read about your own kid and be out of the loop! I called him immediately and he explained some of the problems he was having between work and school and getting meeting everyone’s expectations and meeting obligations. My little boy has grown up.

My second son Sam has had a similar situation. His boss at the pizza shop scheduled him to work Saturday night. He NEVER works Saturday night and so he had made plans to take his girlfriend to her homecoming dance. He appealed to his boss, but she had to cover another driver who is off so Sam is stuck with the shift. I guess he’s learning the hard way too.

Luckily, Sam’s younger brother Gabe is able to step up and take Sam’s girlfriend to the dance. When I explained all of this to my sister she said, ” It’s biblical!”

LOL – that’s how we roll I guess.

Please browse my eBay items! Visit my new Amazon Store!