Hello everyone! Today, I wanted to share what’s been going on in my life in April.

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Unlike previous months, I have some fun stuff to share! It really does make a difference when winter fades into spring, and I’m super excited to share what I’ve been up to.

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Favorites

Beauty – Make Up & Skin Care

I have really been enjoying the Estee Lauder Advance Time Zone Cream with SPF 15. I have been a fan of Estee Lauder since I first got into beauty nearly a decade ago. My skin has been crazy lately so I decided to ramp up my skin care routine again and found a pretty sizable pot of this cream in my stash. I’ve been slowly using it up and it’s just really rich and hydrating. I do wish it didn’t have SPF so I could use it as my night cream but I will probably check if there is an SPF free version once I use up my night creams. I really like this one!

I also have been using the Neutrogena Soothing Clear Turmeric Cleanser. I don’t know if it’s a “good” product or not in general but I feel like it gets the job done!

Other

I have to admit, I impulsively bought a little snake plant recently! I named her Sasha the Snake Plant. She’s super cute and little, and I really hope I don’t kill her.

I recently pulled out a pair of leggings I had stashed away for awhile from the Target kid’s brand Cat & Jack. I can fit myself into the girls’ XL size, and I bought a pair of black leggings with sparkles at least a year ago, but they got shoved to the back of my closet. I found them again when I was switching out my winter clothing and put them on. They are SO comfy and warm! I wish I’d discovered them earlier so I could have worn them all winter because they’re fuzzy inside, and even a tad warm in the cool spring. I will have to remember to get more of these leggings if I ever need more pairs because they are so cozy.

Life

Camp Cuddles

This month saw the end of Camp Cuddles: Spring Break unfortunately! Arya was here almost two months this time, and it was lovely. I just loved having her around for snuggles and cuddles. She is a perfect little companion pup, so she was always with me or following me around and I just got so used to her being here. Every time she goes home I miss her terribly as I feel like her little footsteps are missing but I am so happy that she’s back with her mama, my sister, whom she loves dearly.

This time around her visit was fairly uneventful as it was often too cold to take her anywhere except a quick walk around the park. We went on three walks a day (two were just for potty but she insisted on going to the park for potty so they were very much mini-walks), she got plenty of pets, and even spent quality time with her grandparents. When I went to run to the library, for example, she stayed with her grandma or grandpa. And when I went to ballet she’d also hang out with them too. She very clearly had a preference for me, probably because I was the one taking her for walks and she slept in my room, as well as spending the most amount of time with me, but she also loved her grandparents.

Job Hunt

This month was crazy with the job hunt! For one, I almost exclusively switched to only searching for jobs in areas that I want to live in instead of where I’m currently at or from only remote jobs. At the start of the month it was frustrating because I got an email from a company saying that they were only searching within specific states. I had put on the application AT LEAST three times that I was interested in relocating to a specific state that was on the list, but they completely ignored that and then ignored my follow up email reiterating that. So annoying! I think I would have done really well at that job but they didn’t even give me a chance.

Another thing that happened was that I called by a bunch a random and shady sounding companies??? So I think what happened was that I applied to a job and it basically forced me to make a profile on a different job board. I wasn’t really paying attention when I did that as I was trying to rush through it so I’m guessing I accidentally missed some sort of box or something that asked if I wanted the “share” my resume with random companies. I started to get a flood of texts, calls, and emails the next day. I was getting multiple emails from an insurance company, texts from a random marketing company, and calls from who knows where else! One even said it was their “final attempt” to get a hold of me about a position but they’d never reached to me before LOL. I accidentally answered a call from one (thinking it was from a legit job I had applied to earlier in that week) and managed to get it out of the scammy recruiter where they got my information from. They admitted it was from a job application handling site that I’d applied through and I had to go into that profile to change all the settings so that more random companies wouldn’t be able to reach me. I’m sure they’ve already shared my contact information all over the place because even though they slowed down, it’s still periodic emails and calls. I think I managed to block all the more persistent ones though. You might think that’s crazy because I want a job, of course, but not random ones from shady companies! I’ve been job hunting long enough that I can recognize the scammy offers of interviews a mile away and I want to make sure my attention is going only to the jobs I actually want. I decided not to deactivate that profile for a bit though so that the job I applied to can see it if needed. Although I have to be honest, that job had a really annoying application process so I skipped as many fields as I could and I’m pretty sure I won’t get a call from them anyway due to that.

Also this month, I had/have three interviews! One was a phone interview for a job out in Texas, during which I was told that a regional manager would call me the next week except… they didn’t! I was so annoyed because I had been so excited about that job. I thought I’d done rather well too! The only thing the manager I spoke with seemed to have questions about was the fact that I wasn’t already living in Texas. She asked if I had family or something in the area and I said no, but I was very eager to relocate. She seemed to be confused so I elaborated that I had been sent to Texas a few times for work and really loved it, so that’s why I picked that state for my next home. She then seemed to like that answer and even said that the other candidate was in New Mexico, so either way, someone had to relocate. But… then I never got the call to set up the next interview. Now, I mentioned this to a friend who then said I should have just said I had family in the area as that is just going to be a more acceptable answer, so maybe I’ll just stick to that in the future.

Then I had a phone interview for a remote position and I have a Zoom interview with them in the near future. I don’t want to say too much about this one because it’s still an ongoing process. I already have lots to say about it so I’ll share in next month’s update. Wish me luck!

Book Club

Book club this month was fun! We read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. This book was all about the Dust Bowl in the American Great Plains during the Great Depression. It was a rough book! It was only about 300 pages long, and normally we have a really easy time getting through books of that length. But the issue with this one was that it’s a really heavy book so many of us kept having to take breaks from it. Out of the five people on this call, only two of us fully read it (myself and the librarian), and the other three got about halfway. We all acknowledged that we had known so little about the Dust Bowl that it was quite shameful, considering it is our own country’s history. I probably had the most knowledge of it going in as I do remember a teacher in middle school talking about it but even I didn’t realize the scope of it.

We also had quite a chat about sustainability because even though this was almost a century ago, the Plains have not yet fully recovered due to the human actions of plowing up the grasses on the Plains for farm land. Even now the land can’t really be farmed too well and it’s just devastating to think of the almost irreversible damage that was done.

The next book we picked is on World War II so I’m sure that one will also be hard to get through but it’ll be interesting to read. Our librarian does an amazing job of picking 5-6 options each month and this one was, by far, the toughest yet! All the books sounded so good that everyone picked completely different options but all said that they all sounded amazing. One person even said that she couldn’t pick out of all of them because they all interested her. Hopefully this book is a good one!

I GOT THE VACCINE!!!!

Well, I got the first dose anyway! So in my state (Illinois) the restrictions on the vaccine were lifted April 12th so that anyone over 16 could get the vaccine. I was signed up on the state’s website to be notified when there were appointments but I never saw any notifications. Eventually a neighbor gave me a tip to check a different site and I was able to find appointments! I was on the Walgreens website for about an hour or so and got myself an appointment as well as two more for my parents.

Our appointments were within the next five days, so that was really cool that we got in so quickly. It was a bit hard to get though. I basically had to keep refreshing constantly, searching different area codes in our area, and then grab the first appointments that came up. All of us ended up getting appointments that would require us to drive at least 45 minutes away from home to get to our appointments when my day came, I got nervous driving almost an hour away for my vaccine. There was snow in the forecast and I hate driving in snow. I signed in and tried to find a closer appointment or one for a different day so I wouldn’t have to cancel. Luckily I got one at a location 20 minutes away! I felt much better about that location so I changed my appointment and didn’t have to delay my first dose thank goodness.

Unfortunately, the location I picked was poorly organized! I got to my appointment early and this guy was standing at the window for FIFTEEN minutes. Just standing there. As far as I could tell they weren’t checking him in or anything but he wouldn’t move and the person checking him in wouldn’t ask him to step aside so they could get the line moving. I finally managed to get to the window by explaining that my appointment had been over half an hour earlier (there was a line before me as we were all delayed by the guy) but then when I went to sit down to wait there were no empty chairs. I didn’t care about sitting down, but it was so frustrating that we got appointments specifically so we wouldn’t have to be in crowded areas for long but yet the place was packed. When I finally got my vaccine I went off to the furthest corner of the store to wait my fifteen minutes. I was floored at how long it took though. What should have been a one hour task, at most, ended up being almost two hours. I can’t imagine if I had been in the middle of a workday, telling my boss I would be gone about an hour, and then held up for that long. Hopefully the second dose goes more smoothly.

I know it’s only my first dose but I still feel such a peace of mind. Oh! I got the Pfizer vaccine by the way!

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So that’s how my April went. I think it was pretty exciting actually, especially considering the vaccine!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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