What did you want to BEE when you grew up?

 NaBloPoMo Day Three

Well, once again I waited until I can barely keep my eyes open to try to make a blog post. I must stop doing that. 

I worked today and did a lot of this and that around the house when I got home. I'm tired now and ready for bed, so I was pretty sure this was going to just be a nothing post. I decided to search my phone for some recent photos to see if there was anything worth posting, not even thinking about actually writing something interesting. But then I found this pic and when I was thinking up a title, I decided maybe I COULD make a semi-interesting post.

First of all, the photo is of a bumble bee on a bloom on my Live Forever plant, taken a month ago, Thursday, October 6. The poor thing was cold; I was able to pet it! So, in honor of this bee, I propose a question: When you were a child, what did you want to BEE when you grew up?

The first thing I remember wanting to be was a policewoman. I was about 7 or 8, and I'd checked out a little book in the school library on policemen. I thought that would be a wonderful thing to be until I realized I might have to shoot someone. I knew I could not do that, so I gave up that short-lived dream. 

The next thing I can remember wanting to be (around the same age of 7 or 8) was a "scientist." I don't know what kind of scientist, but definitely a scientist. Again, it was after reading a library book about scientists. I proudly informed my mother that I thought I'd be a scientist when I grew up, but my sister, Barbara, was skeptical. She wanted to know WHY I thought I'd like to be a scientist. I told her it was because they took notes about things and did experiments and kept records of them. I was really charmed by pictures of graphs in the book and pictures of the scientists holding test tubes and making notes in their notebooks. My sister remained skeptical.

I don't remember having any real ambition towards any other vocation until I got closer to high school and discovered I enjoyed writing. I also enjoyed administration. And those are the two areas I studied and went to work in. I worked for a small hometown paper for three years until I married, and I have been an administrative assistant, a comptroller, an office manager, a bookkeeper, and a clerical OCR editor. I have tutored other peoples' children and I have homeschooled my own. I still love to write, and I still love admin. It turned out that my main vocation was to be a wife and mother, and I would never change that.

In a way I AM in the scientific field now, but in a way that I can use my administration and teaching skills as well.

It was only recently while talking to my son, who is a quality supervisor who happily gets up to his elbows in graphs and charts and white board presentations at the company for which he works, that I remembered about wanting to be a scientist. HE thought that was kind of funny as well. But it occurred to me that what had appealed to me in reading about what a scientist does was the WRITING part, the COLLECTING and ORGANIZATION of DATA part, the keeping NEAT RECORDS part. Well, shoot, that makes all the sense in the world!

I am an OCD-card-carrying, chart-creating, record loving, binder-making organizer who loves all the tools needed to keep accurate, neat records for home and for work, and I love training others to use those tools. At work I perform a service -- performing quality newborn hearing screens for congenital hearing loss. I upload those results into our company's database, organize and send that data to our biller, follow-up with patients who don't pass their screens, refer patients to audiologists, organize outpatient appointments, make sure the necessary info is reported to the State of Indiana as the Medical Statistics Reporter for our site, keep our office organized, train new screeners, travel to fill-in for coordinators in other states, make the schedule for my screeners, review my screeners' productivity and the quality of their screens, perform regular audits of screens and billing, and many more things. At home I organize important papers, make a budget, keep track of that budget, pay bills, keep in-depth records of household accounts, insurance, vehicle information, retirement accounts, pet information, books (lol) etc.  (I used to use Microsoft Access to keep a very thorough catalog of my personal library, for goodness' sake!) I participate in a voluntary Bible education ministry where I teach students about the Bible, help them to apply Bible principles to every aspect of their daily lives, and teach them how to help others as well. 

I'm not a scientist, but I do love myself some charts and graphs and notebooks! 

And I guess that's all I have to say about that. I wonder if my sister remembers being skeptical of my "dream" lol!

Bye for now and "hey" to you and yours,

Lori