Snippets
This will surprise no one, but since I went back to work I really feel like Carl and I are doing a lot more equal parenting. He’s been simply amazing at taking over some things and it’s really great to watch.
I’m one of those people who tends to get up in the morning full of energy and I get overwhelmed with my mental to-do list as it’s the first thing that hits my brain: everything that has to get done! So it’s pretty good that I get out the door at 7 am first in a whirl of Getting Things Done. Carl, meanwhile, is calm with Noah; they often have a bath or make breakfast, slowly get Noah dressed and get his things together for school, and proceed in a leisurely manner towards his start at school at 8:30.
Then by 4 I’m fried and ready to leave work, so I do, and by then I am just aching to be with Noah, so I find so far that I don’t have a lot of trouble mentally dumping the professional stuff and just hanging out with Noah (and making dinner together, if I didn’t crockpot it). I get to put him to bed, which takes about an hour and is usually very cosy.
Sick day, sort of
I’m working from home today - something I’m supposed to be able to do on a regular basis but have been fearful of actually doing thus far - because I am sick. In two weeks of work I have had two things - the cold with which I started, and then yesterday I popped quite an impressive fever (103.5, once I got home) and a sore throat. I just went to bed with Noah and today I feel a bit better but opted to stay home and not spread the plague.
I still feel at loose ends and hope to email with my boss about it a bit today, or tomorrow. I know that my stuff is probably not being scrutinized in the way that I feel like it must be because I am nervous-new-person but I still feel like every minute wasted is bad news. Add sick to that and it kind of gets a bit crazy in my head.
I know I am sick because of new germs and stress, and that it is my body’s way of informing me that this transition was not well managed (fly around the country, come home, rush about madly, don’t get enough sleep, etc.) I am wondering how I can work some gym time into my schedule. When I was at home I thought I could just go on the way to work, or maybe at lunch (my gym has a branch around the corner), but now that I’ve done a couple of weeks I’ve found that I want all that time to get home as quickly as possible.
Which may not be sustainable and I’m sure there’s balance to be found, but it’s interesting how in my head I had constructed some ideal workplace and a day with more hours in it than average. :)
Office moments
‘”The harder that we love, the deeper we’re gonna feel,” sings Keith Greeninger in a rootsy tune from his Glorious Peasant CD. That’s good advice for you right now, Capricorn, since what you especially need to guide you during this phase of wandering and exploration is ever-deeper and ever-more-nuanced feeling. I’ll add a corollary that may help as well: The softer you love, the smarter your emotions will be. You can love harder and softer at the same time, right?’ - my FreeWill Horoscope this month. http://www.freewillastrology.com/
Two o’clock and mostly, I need to hear back from people before I can do things. This is, as with most office jobs, not one hundred percent true - I could (and probably will) come up with oh, 2 or 3 things to do, that I could then do in a kind of haze of ignorance, and they might or might not be useful. Last week I came up with a web plan for covering an event that, in the end, I can’t actually cover, so this has chilled my enthusiasm a little bit for the “blind planning” thing. I have networked as much as I think I can do without looking just a little too eager. Or a little too lacking in work.
I’d forgotten how much of office life is waiting around for things, especially when one is new and one’s expertise in specific office politics is limited. I want to be cuddling Noah and then taking him out to a park or something. The lack of physical activity is killing me and I still haven’t worked out how to toss gym visits in, unless I am working from home. I’m also sick, again, the second time in two weeks - I’d blame Noah’s daycare but I think Carl brought this one home.
I think I still really like my job, but today is not the day to ask, really. I never do well between projects, and since the site is not only not built, the plan for building it has not yet appeared in my mailbox, things are a little up in the air for me. I might be a planner but I’m not totally a dreamer - give me a dream and I will plan for it, but give me nothing and I tend to sit and… write rambly blog entries. It is tempting to work on my book, since the minute I get home I end up with no time, right now. But that’s a little too slacker for my tastes.
Noah’s daycare is closed this week and he’s at our house with Carl’s mother and my nephew, having a blast from the sounds of it on the phone. I agree that the high-level angst passes; I’m not mired in daily sobs, but good lord I still miss him terribly horribly awfully.
Each weekend, this one involving (wonderful) out of town guests and the last of the birthday parties, seems to bring way too little time. But hiring V. to clean was genius and made a huge difference in my state of mind. It’s a luxury but one worth giving up lunches out for. Maybe even this freaking unused gym membership.
~~~
One thing I am feeling right now is that I do have expertise - not in this publication, yet, and definitely not in how to get a freaking account on the network given the byzantine New HR Processes around here. (My boss returned today and is on the case, thank god.) But I have been on the web a long time, and although I don’t (yet) know all the ins and outs of scripting vblogs, I do know a fair amount about what works. It’s been a nice experience to come in as the seasoned professional and not the new young thing with potential.
Thoughts!
I get so many thoughts at work, but I still have not seen a network policy and I am leery of connecting up to this very-outing URL so I keep not having the time to post them.
But today V., who didn’t mind making a bit of extra money this week, cleaned my house while I was at work, so voila! Blog time! Still not sure I can afford regular cleaning (V. has another PT nanny gig starting so she is not a candidate for that) but this time - wow, good choice for me.
Anyways some random thoughts:
I really like my job so far. Yes there is a lot of corporate-y bullshit and the beginning has been inauspicious and disorganized, because the site before mine in the development stream is going to be late to launch and there is a domino effect going on and blah blah, but honestly? Right now I’m seeing that I may be very happy there. May not, but I’m leaning towards “great match!”
~~~
If only Noah could be say in the room next door.
~~~
I read the Vanity Fair Arthur Miller expose and I am not sure what to say. I agree with a comment I read somewhere that said that the person could not forgive him for being such a shit in 1966 (I paraphrase) but given that he was born in 1915, maybe. I get that. I’m still really - I wouldn’t say shocked, but I just feel complexly emotional for Miller and the incredible loss he and his son suffered because of his blind spot. And I have a little twinge that you know, we took Emily off the ventilator, under expert advice about her quality of life. And - I am glad Vanity Fair assigned and ran the piece.
~~~
I have found myself dragged into two discussions on the ‘net lately. One was about a dispute between a wife (pregnant) and husband. The wife wants a home birth and the husband does not. I am not entirely anti-home-birth - living proof that hospitals do not always make for a safe environment. But I am around the bend annoyed at two things in that discussion.
One person said if people were educated they would choose home births. Well, that is fucking stupid. People can be perfectly educated and decide to be in a hospital.
The second was someone who said that you have an easier labour if you’re relaxed. Well yes and no, in my experience. With Emily I was relaxed, until things went terribly wrong, and no amount of relaxation was going to get the cord off her neck. With Noah I was a basket case and he was very easy to get out. So there, anecdotal discussion.
Also? The husband’s opinion DOES count, sorry; he’s the father.
~~~
The other one is over a popular blogger whom I normally think is really good. No link but lots of you will know who. Said blogger is getting a boob job, and posted a picture of her current boobs, which are fine by most people’s standards but not her own. She also is being treated for depression, anxiety, just finished an unsuccessful IVF cycle, and has twin toddlers.
I don’t really know her and really I have to assume she knows what she’s doing but she is so incredibly, outrageously upset that people thought her boobs were fine that it makes me worry about her. As a multiple, I know a whole lot about really crazy relationships to one’s body, which makes me not at all an expert on someone singular not liking theirs… but watching her flip out has made me tired.
The amount of angst (some) women go through as they age is insane. This blogger insists that she’s doing this for her and that she’s regaining her body after all this infertility and again, I kind of have to take her word for it but… I don’t know. It’s an emotional reading that says more about me than about her, but to me it just feels like when one of us is Hell Bent on something because we have to Fix Something, when really what we need to do is pause and be grateful for how things are.
So that’s where my head’s at, when it’s not buried in web stats and content plans, or circling the question of whether Noah ever will be happy at Montessori.
It should be a national holiday
Today Noah had a doughnut for breakfast. Because it is his second birthday! By the time I get home to post this, he will also have had a party at his daycare (cake provided by me, and they took our camera to take pictures in our absence *sniffle*) and this coming weekend he will have a family party. [edit: the pictures are horrible. see below.]
Noah is starting to like this “biffda” thing, what with the playgroup party on the weekend, including cookies with sprinkles on them, the Thomas the Tank Engine book, playdough, Mr. Potato Head, the Melissa & Doug pizza set, and various other loot.
His present from us was supposed to be his train set, but he’s had that for months. So we got him a drum - handcrafted, third world labour supporting, genuine, drum. He likes it a lot. He’s actually pretty good at finding the beat.
He also likes horses (had his first pony ride at montessori yesterday, which I missed, obviously *sniffle*), his friends, and his teachers. He likes the blocks, the drawing, and lunch.
He does NOT, however, like Suk-ooooool, as he says several times a day to any adult who might possibly intervene on this Sukool thing and might make me, his Ommy, stay hooooMUH, which is where he likes to be. With his Ommy and his Daddeeeee. As he says. Several times a day. He likes nurses. He likes beans. He does not like clothing. He does not like raw tomatoes. He does not like people to put their heads on his pillow.
For Noah, at age two, is nothing if not a toddler who knows his own preferences. And what’s his. Today we were flipping through pictures so he could take some to sukool for the montessori birthday traditional look at pictures and walk around the room thing, and he noticed pictures of his Ommy and Daddeeee holding some strange little mutant thing swaddled in blankets. He pointed to Carl and said “Dada,” and he pointed at me and said “Ommy” and then he frowned. He pointed to the mutant and I said on cue, “That’s baby Noah.” “NO!” he said. Then he pointed at me, “MINE!” he said. [Pic is Noah at school and the cake (I made the flag as well!)]
God knows what he will say when he comes across the Emily album.
We are heartily engaged in giving choices to provide a full range of personal expression, of course. They go like this:
[Me, no makeup no coffee; Noah, post-doughnut. The funny smile is because he's learning to smile for the camera, which is - cute and a little weird. The shot above in the kitchen he was actually laughing.] “Would you like your spiderman pyjamas, or the blue pyjamas?”
“No!”
“Would you like daddy to change your bum, or mommy to change your bum?”
“No diaper!”
“Would you like me to put milk in the green cup or the blue cup?”
“I’LL do it.” (Noah uses “I” for “I’ll do it” and “I’ll stir” but third person the rest of the time. Dunno why.)
Noah’s locus of rebellion so far is mostly me. If Carl asks him to do something, he does it. If I ask him to, he runs away, slams the door, comes back, shouts, and then stomps off again. He locked himself in the bathroom yesterday. I said “unlock the door!” and he laughed and said no. I said “Daddy says unlock the door!” and HE DID.
Now I just need to know if it matters whether Carl is physically home or not when I say these things.
Noah also has a wicked sense of humour. He makes tons of jokes. Like putting bowls on his head and proclaiming them hats, or telling me to put his shoes on his elbow. “Shoe, nelbow!” He has some running joke with the cat that I don’t quite get but it involves showing the cat a train and then saying something and laughing.
Ah Noah, you are the best, best, best.
Added later (before posting): the school/cake picture above is bad enough, but in the set there was the one below. This picture is almost enough to make me quit my job, right now. I’m not even joking about it. I’ll think about it over the weekend.
~~~
Edited to add: the rest of the day I would like to record too. Carl picked Noah up early, around 3:30, and I took off at 4, and we met at Chapters to buy Noah a birthday book (this is a tradition, now; last year was Snuggle Puppy and this year was Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus! We sign them and then my mild desire is that Noah will take that set of really good age-appropriate books that first we and later he chose off with him to share with his kids, some day, the birthday set. Anyways. :)). Noah was giddy and happy. Then we had dinner at Mr. Greek, and drove home, and Noah and I had our hour of bedtime cuddles and talks and nursing and he slept.
Today was… kind of balanced actually
My car stalled on the way to work today. Twice. In the Honda this would have been my fault, but my car is an automatic and isn’t supposed to do that.
Last week it hadn’t really been starting up right, despite a battery replacement, and I had actually made an appointment to take it in, but then cancelled it because it conflicted with lunch and then never quite made another appointment, due to new job and eternal optimism. (The service manager, when he heard this excuse, said “oh, you thought you’d bought one of those self-healing cars,” which made me laugh.)
So, staggering in at 7:45, I decided I would have to bite the bullet and leave a new job early in the first week (the service department works until 5.) So I worked hard, got everything urgent done, got everything medium important done, told my tale of woe to a coworker, and slunk out at 1:30. Got to the dealership around 2:15. By 2:30 I was done (verdict: dirty connectors; price: $0.) And then I (& esp. Lyr) picked Noah up early and brought him home and played and hung out and laughed and made dinner in a leisurely fashion.
It was great. If I ever try to negotiate a shorter workweek I think it will be something like that. Noah did cry when I picked him up at school, briefly. And I got the litany “Donlike… sCHOOOOOOL. Like HOOOOOOME.” But he was perky and happy and fun.
It was good.
I know I might pay for it, and it might not be something that’s too repeatable too often but - yah. That was good stuff.
More sound bites
Free coffee actually is a motivator for me. Free coffee that comes in decaff, 50-50, full, hot chocolate, and mocha, in light, medium, and dark blends, is even better. But when all this comes with a cupboard full of mugs and a dishwasher for them along with a sign explaining that the dishwasher disinfects them so please use that, you know you are among either cooks, or women. Or both.
Today I got praise from BE (Big Editor) and I was very happy. I also am starting to appreciate that if I stay, if we all do well, I may get to be a part of something kind of fun. Some free swag contributed to this heady feeling, along with potentially getting to cover some exciting, if a little fluffy, stuff.
Despite all this little issues like whether my pantyhose was one shade too dark are starting to haunt me. I thought I was doing well to have more or less passed Girlthings 101 and suddenly I find myself in the honours programme. I realize that in a few months the mask will have vanished and they will have to take me as I am and learn to give warnings if they are going to, god forbid, take my picture (they are going to) or videoblog me (ditto, help!). But in the meantime I’m just trying to pass the midterm, you know?
The scary thing is actually that I do have to learn to appreciate them, like, editorially. Enough to know who to ask.
I picked Noah up today and he was sitting with his teacher, sort of watching things. He didn’t look miserable, but he didn’t look particularly joyful either. When he saw me he made his sad face and ran over, but he didn’t cry - not sure if I think this stalwart thing is a good sign of adjustment or an apocryphal sign that we have messed him and his emotions up Forever. His teachers report that he seems to be doing ok, although again, not a whole lot of the joy after say, noon.
He certainly is learning a mile a minute. He comes home full up of new words and even facts (kanroo HOP) and shares them (another verbal processor, poor Carl). I would say something soothing like “well if he’s learning on his fourth day, he must be feeling pretty comfortable” - except that we always managed to learn a million things while abused and miserable, so, no go there.
The dichotomy is very hard. I have this sense that my personal life is not really completely in line with my values in that I think part time care would be best. And yet my professional life is sort of clicking in this hugely exciting way. What kind of pains me is that it is a small two year old child who hangs in the balance.
I realize people who have made this choice already may tired of my angst and drama about it, but too bad; this is my process. Come back in a month.
And so it began
Dividing this up:
Work
- The beginning has been chaotic - not in terms of actual work, but in terms of not having a desk, phone, network ID, or email address. Can’t print either. I camp out in people’s offices when they are working from home or on vacation, for now. Using my cell phone and my home address. And I can’t print. I don’t think this is corporate policy, but a combination of my team, and that I’m kinda-sorta hired; freelance ’til Nov.
- I’d forgotten the finer points of cubicles, like sound travels. This especially sucked ’cause I started with a cold, which is mercifully going away.
- My direct boss is away ’til late Aug; we had about 2 hrs total together. On my own, I sort of am.
- BigEditor is fabulously smart and I love love love the Sept issue, esp. one story in it that I think would have had trouble being published elsewhere. My writer heart is aflutter. I’m also worried about pissing her off.
- One of the lousy things about a new place is your radar for what is pissing people off is not yet operational.
- One of the members of my team (web) was called an old biddy today, for being 30.
- Harumph.
- I got lost on my first day; went up the wrong staircase (my pass still opened the door) and got turned around. That was kind of sad.
- I have been invited to lunch every day. Everyone packs theirs which is motivating. It is nice to work with food editors.
- It’s a mostly-all female environment. I feel like I’m lost in high school already. I make a bad girl in many ways, and some of the fine details are getting lost on me. Tell me why someone would apologize for eating a boiled egg? It was already cooked & therefore not smelly.
- I think I am going to like most of the work, once I get over the growing pains and the fear. And god, the fear. Today I shared a real idea though… I figured I might as well get fired for outrageous ideas as for not having any.
Noah & family
- Noah is learning at some accelerated pace. I wonder if, like me, he sometimes learns best under pressure. His vocabulary is exploding and he already is doing Montessori routines here, like clearing his plate.
- He learned to say school, for the express purpose of telling Carl and I several times a day that he does not like it.
- He does like playing there and his teacher, according to our inquiries. But he does not like school. Bye bye school. Mommy HOME.
- The school reports he didn’t cry today and seems much happier. But at home, he’s expressing his unhappiness and displeasure and was totally out of coping energy at 6 tonight.
- So, it’s hard.
- Lyria almost had a breakdown today at lunch, in the park, because there was a dad there playing with his son.
- We (no real distinction) did cry today after coming home.
- I sort of feel like this isn’t totally the right thing, on a personal life level. On a professional level it is, and I’m committed now to really giving it a go. But I’m less happy about it than I thought I would be, in that I really fucking miss Noah.
- Carl has really stepped up around daycare drop off and pick up and things, so that’s a good.
Snippet from BigAss
Having learned from the mistakes of others I try not to bitch too much about work on my blog, even if the occasional squawk escapes me.
But for today, my last official day of work (although I still have some articles to get in which is fine), I share the following conversation. I had lunch with the coworkers I’ll miss, and dropped into the office… since none of my bosses, etc., bothered to set anything up. I know when people leave it is not necessary, but most places I have worked, bosses have had a last day… something. Because people still work in the same industry, you see, and become contacts.
Me, to CEO: … well, it was a really tough decision after nine years here but it’s not like I’ll be completely gone, after all we’re not direct competitors but we’ll be in the same pond
BA (who is, by the way, wearing a shirt that has a phrase containing the word “shit” printed on it): Of course we’re direct competitors! (we’re not) [Long critique of what my new, very successful company, is doing completely wrong.] And you picked a terrible time to leave, we’re going to have all kinds of opportunities here because we have [closed medium sized deal] and really it just shows you have no sense of advancement. (Well, after the Xmas party where you got drunk and told me that within the year it would be “all free content” and I’m your sole staff writer…. I kind of figured the chances of advancement were slim. Of course if you wanted to keep me, you could have also asked and offered me, say, my old job back, with say, a salary.)
By the way, my first quarter freelance budget is, well, I’d say some figure times what it used to be, except it used to be about zero.
And P.S., yes, yes, your dick is bigger than mine - but only because I don’t actually have one.
I am woman, hear me roar…
Is that really the feminist anthem?
Anyways, things have begun to sort out (Lyr will prob post tomorrow or Sat). Wednesday Noah did not go to daycare for a reason that disturbs me a little - they were going on a field trip in a bus without toddler sized restraints. I talked to the directress at length and I think I am satisfied that her blind faith in this system is an abberation and not an indication about a lack of safety overall, but Noah’s going was therefore not possible. Because what. the. fuck. taking toddlers on a bus? I could have taken him myself (and will probably do that in the future, if Carl and I can swing the hours) but given that he just spent a week in the car, I decided it was just as well to skip the field trip.
I hoped for a leisurely day the two of us, but it turned into a frantic errand running day. But it was still cosy.
Over the course of the day I started to get my feminist hackles up - maybe as a defense mechanism; maybe just because lots of people have felt free to comment on various rifts on the theme of “poor you, not raising your child any more” and also sorting out really why this is important to me, and I finally just kind of hit a wall about it. And that wall sort of is that this really is right for me, and I think it is okay-enough for Noah and I want to know why it is not Carl who is getting shit for not going to 50 per cent work or something.
Anyways, today was the big meeting at my work - by happy coincidence they were having a huge consultant meeting/brainstorming deal today and I could go. It actually was good information - probably 50 per cent of it was not new to me, and 25 per cent not really relevant, but the final 25 per cent was good. I did have to tread lightly over the question of “who here has a personal blog?” and stuff.
I had a very age 36 moment. All the other web editors - 7 in total not on vacation; this means peers! and one talked to me about, you know, being a writer! somehow it did not occur to me that I get to work with a bunch of professional writers - and all of them, I hazard a guess, under 26. Young and beautiful and very sure of everything. I think I’m going to enjoy it and they seem overall like a pretty smart, hard working bunch (of course they would, in this meeting, but still). But it was one of those moments of sighing a bit inside about having spent my 20s working (thank god) but also in therapy and flitting about and all that. I could have been flitting about editorially! Also they’re not going to get it when I have to go get Noah, but that’s ok.
I continue to really really like my direct boss. She was really thoughtful and warm in the best ways - reminds me of starting with S. It was also really nice to be in a meeting talking about making money where editorial was seen as an advantage and not some stupid liability that doesn’t count.
Coming home was brutal though: not the traffic, although that got worse, but I got a weird headache (stress? lighting? lack of air?) that turned into a sort of a migraine - I say sort of ’cause it was so short lived but I had to stop to be sick twice. It was gross. I hope it’s not something in the building (I doubt it, but I guess I’ll find out Monday).
I got home (Carl picked Noah up) and I was soooo glad to see my boy. Carl reported that the school said Noah had a much better day, although drop off was harder. Noah told me ’school’ quite carefully, like he’d practiced, and after some fuss about the amazing verbal skills, he told me “noah donLIKE school.” A sigh for the sentiment, but hurrah for the talking. It did make me a little sad but I told him first days are hard and we’ll see what he thinks in a week or two. I don’t know what he gets out of that, but then he clung to me and we had dinner and snuggly bedtime and then he went to sleep, so.
Thank you all for your comments! I have read them all and have thoughts but this was about all I could manage tonight. More tomorrow/the weekend. :)