Glee
Work is sucking up most of my brain right now. We launched! I have to make things happen! Suddenly my phone is ringing off the hook! It’s gift guide season and the PR people are after me!
I’m having a blast. Yes there are daily frustrations, not least of which include being rusty and being exposed all the time. But hey! This is the job I thought I would be doing a year ago! And it’s fun! Right now!
I can predict that eventually it won’t be for various reasons but right now there is nowhere I would rather be. I’m learning a ton working with EditorInChief and I’m just… happy there. If constantly freaking out. On my team right now, constantly freaking out is just taken as a sign that I am one of the gang. It’s nice.
However, having screened four episodes of Ugly Betty last week (purchased as I knew it might get tense as we launched), I do have to say that my workplace has some similarities. And I am the fattest person on either of my teams by about, oh, 3-4 dress sizes. (And I’m a 12. 14. 12. Depends on the cut. Next up: getting to the gym!)
I have to crow about one little professional achievement. Not the measurable kind. But it is this:
I have finally, genuinely, learned to handle - even enjoy - critique.
A few times in the last year, and about a million times in the last two weeks as everything I’ve quietly done for months suddenly is public, I have run up against people in my new company who have, gasp, shock and horror, not thought that all of my prose was deathless, facts were amazingly accurate, arguments exceedingly well rendered, and ideas stellar. No to mention my occasional erratic lack of adherence to my own style guide.
And quite a lot of the time, I shudder to express, they have been right. There was one case where I wrote a funny little piece, shared it with people who also thought it was funny, passed it on to EIC, and she thought it sucked ass, for example.
Not to put too fine a point on it. In retrospect… it was in between, but it was her right to kill it.
And although sometimes I disagree, and occasionally I feel red-faced or stupid, the one thing I have come to realize and embrace is that I don’t need to get wrapped up in the individual pieces/arguments/sentences/phrases. It makes me a thousandfold better editor and writer to approach it openly and thoughtfully and calmly and appreciatively, than it does to be perfect in the first place.
No, really. Because if I were perfect in the first place, I wouldn’t be, if you know what I mean.
Anyways I’ve known this theoretically for at least 5 years. But the last few months I’ve found my first reaction is getting to be appreciation and thought. With the occasional side of consternation of course. As one example, when I get copy edited material back with questions and corrections, I actually think “wow, she did a great job” rather than “I am so embarassed and wait, I like my comma there.”
It is so much easier this way. I wish I could go back in my life and learn this earlier, perhaps even be raised in an environment where mistakes were okay and feedback not fraught. This is the process. Sometimes, I explain something and I “win.” Sometimes, I “lose.” But actually, wait for it - it’s all winning!
Not only is this making my daily life less stressful and my end product better, but I’ve come to realize that the real professionals in the building take that calm willingness as a sign of true mastery. So it makes me look good!
Anyways, it’s good days. Crazy-busy-stressy days. But good.
All will be revealed in time. *
* And why no, I didn’t read this over or revise it. Are you kidding? This is where I get to write badly spelled, poorly expressed stuff WHENEVER I WANT. ‘Cause I still like that too. :)
Someone call Stephen King!
Had a scary experience yesterday. Well and today. But mostly yesterday.
I got off the subway, walked to the car, started the car, drove towards daycare. At the second stop light where I had to stop, I had my foot on the brake when the car lurched forward. The idiot behind me hit me, I thought. No really I did, it’s not just a poor way to build suspense.
Nope. Meanwhile I had to keep my foot on the brake. Huh, thought I, not the swiftest light in the bucket.
Traffic was going pretty quickly so I was just sort of cruising along a bit over the speed limit when I came to another stop light. Took my foot off the gas. The car did not slow down at all. Braked. Had the same jerky problem.
Next leg I didn’t really press on the gas pedal, although I had my foot over it. Got up to 60 km/h no problem. Huh. Had to really press on the brake at the next light, during which I called Carl and told him to pick Noah up (fortunately he was working from home).
Never had to do anything but brake all the way home because the damn car was accelerating on its own. There is a safety lecture to come but I was about 5 minutes from home and blissfully ignorant of the potential issues. It was a high adrenaline experience though, riding the brake and keeping my hand on the (automatic) clutch to pop it into neutral if necessary. Or turn the ignition off.
Anyways, got home, turned it off. Called dealership. They did not really believe me, but we agreed I would have it towed in.
So this morning the dealership calls me. The car would not start. Because it is, duh, flooded with gas. Apparently the sensor thought it was -30 and decided it needed a lot of gas to keep going. $350 later, we have new sensor, sparkplugs, oil, etc. And the service manager calls me himself ’cause I’d asked him to.
“Is this for sure the problem?” says I, “because I do not want to put my toddler in a carseat in the back seat in the car.” There’s a long pause. He finally says, “I don’t think you understand what the risk was to you. The oil was full of gas. The engine was full of gas. It wouldn’t have taken much for the car to get set on fire.”
!!!! when the service manager tells you your car almost blew up, that’s not a good thing. So I can now strap my child in the back seat in a 5 point harness? Oh yes, it’s fine now. Not sure what I think about this.
He did not charge me any labour, nor did he charge me for all of the parts. I think he was running a little scared, since I’ve had it in a few times for issues that were probably related.
But, PSA, if your car accelerates on its own, don’t be stupid like me. STOP DRIVING. RIGHT THEN.
I am mulling over how much further I want to go with this car. It’s one of those situations where I kind of know that we have been making decisions more to protect our original decision to buy the car than out of what I Would Do If I Did Not Owe $4k On It Still. But I’m thinking it might be time to liquidate some long-term savings investments and buy it out and then trade it in to somewhere that will do diligence on it. Or sell it, since it works fine. Ha ha. Just not sure what I think about the ethics of that.
Anyways, quite the excitement.
P.S. It is a 2001 Volvo V40 1.9 litre turbocharged station wagon, in case anyone wants to know.
Noah moments
More later honest but I am burnt out. My work site is up, yay. My workload became crazy, boo. I was in Montreal, it was fun, yay! The lack of sleep made me very sick, boo.
But some Noah moments I wanted to record:
Career ambitions: “Mummy? When I grow up I want to be astronaut. I fly into space. Rockets have loud engines. I see moon! But I only go ONE night. Then I come home have dinner with you!” [Guess how many nights I was in Montreal?]
Socio-economics: I give Noah a budget of $10 to buy food for people who don’t have any. (I round the prices up and he can add single-digit integers to 10, so it works for us. It is not that 10 is a magic donation number.) He examines the food carefully and finally comes up with granola and soup. “Granola not good for your bones, but good for your tummy. Soup good for your bones. So they grow bones and tummy. They say good bones, good tummy.”
When past experience collides with simple present: “Mummy, why hair grow on your lip?” After a stammered discussion about how some women have facial hair (sigh) and we all have things we don’t like about our bodies (sigh) and we don’t tease people (my personal add-on), I get: Mummy, why hair grow on your head?
Beginning ethics: “Daddy you no tell me no! Daddy, I tell on you!” (pitter patter) “Mummy, Daddy told me no!” “Okay Noah, Daddy told you no.” (pitter patter) “Daddy, I TOLD on you.” (resume game, peacefully.)
Hippy mother / stress and success
I picked Noah up at “camp” Friday. Camp is like school except
1) the kids whose parents want the summer off with them, teachers’ kids, kids with SAHPs, etc., don’t go;
2) Other kids come and go to experience it as a camp, which tends to raise the average age (5 and 6 yr olds off school, esp. the hours are 7:30 am - 6 pm if you need them to be);
3) there are themes each week - first week was shoe week and a trip to the shoe museum; last week was magnets and electricity; and
4) the whole structure is much much more relaxed. Which I like. I think some down time in the summer is good, and so although the Montessori works are available and the teachers are there, they also haul out the “after-school” lego, dress up, etc. toys and let the kids go to. And spend long afternoons in the shaded outdoor playground.
Still on Friday I was met at the door by one of Noah’s favourite teachers who blurted out as soon as I got in “Noah doesn’t watch movies?”
I laughed and said “oh was there a movie today?” Because, in fact, Noah has decided that movies are scary. Including The Poppins. He’ll watch select TV DVDs (whoever suggested the PMK DVDs, I adore ye) from shows he already knows. He’ll watch Lego Star Wars clips on YouTube (*cough* although really I blame my nephew). But anything that is “a movie” is verbotten. Which I vaguely explained, but Noah interrupted with:
“That movie scared me!”
So I said, “What did you do?” And he and his teacher explained together that he had told her right away that he was scared and so she took him in the other room and he (in his words) got to do his activities. Which is fine with me, all of it. If they want to show a G-rated movie on Friday afternoon in the summer, that’s fine with me, but if my son doesn’t want to watch it I don’t want him to have to be in the room.
(The other issue is Noah’s hearing; he watches everything on a sound level where I can hardly make it out, because his hearing is so sensitive. So a regular volume tv is really loud to him.)
There were some other parents there and there was suddenly a kind of lively discussion about our viewing habits, that little rush of parents wondering (I think) if I was judging them about their movies and Noah informed everyone that we only watch ONE show a day and I was sort of smoothing it over. Because although that’s true, that’s how we manage it (unless Noah is sick or we both have weekend crises at work in which case, bring on the endless loop!) I am not really an anti-tv evangelist. It’s just our preference.
So in the middle of this Noah pipes up again indignantly, “And mummy there was only CANDY for snack. You bring my snack toMORrow.” Because candy is not a snack and apparently the parent who brought snack on Friday brought… candy.
I gave up. Okay I AM the hippy mother who sends whole-grain muffins and organic cheese for snack. What can I do?
With almost three year olds you can hide nothing. Then I almost left with Noah in his indoor shoes and he said loudly in front of all the parents, “OH MY GOD, mummy!”
:-)
~~
However it wasn’t until I got home that the full significance of the whole movie episode hit me.
I was sort of pondering whether I do in fact care about the movie (and I had found out that it was a child’s High School Musical she had brought to share, which I have not seen but does not actually sound like a good choice). And spiralling down the guilt path that I LEAVE my child’s INNOCENT MIND to others and then he is forced to navigate his way through his tastes with other people who may or may not understand that he really does not like movies. (And who will then be so curious as to ask why not.)
But then I realized that my son was upset, he communicated it with the expectation that he would be listened to, he was, and his needs were met.
I don’t remember being 3, but I do remember the fall I was 4. My mother worked teaching part-time in the afternoons, and for the period between about 11 when she had to leave, and 1, when school started, I went to a neighbour’s house “for lunch,” although said neighbour wouldn’t feed my lunch and I brought my own. She had three boys who tormented me - pulling my skirt down, dumping dirt in my hair, slamming doors in my face and whatever else. I remember eating in a separate room with the shades down. I remember their father, a policeman, coming home and finding out “what they did” and beating them in front of me, although he never touched me.
It never occured to me, that I remember, to complain. Certainly I think my mother would have changed the arrangement if I had.
Stage fright
My work site launches this month, hence the quiet. Oh heck, stalker people take note: it launches next week. So I am mostly working, or being nervous about work, or else totally forgetting about work completely.
If this doesn’t work out well though, I have a plan B which is to let Lyria run one of these, but in Toronto. I think it would do well. I’m not even really completely joking, although I don’t know how much street permits cost.
House of plague!
Quick update: Well now I’m Really Sick, according to the doctor at the clinic. It’s not just Noah who can get strep, an ear infection, and a sinus infection all at once and ignore it until it’s quite bad! Do you think I can blame genetics now?
Work is about to move quickly into the Real Job which will be a crazy transition, but ultimately very good. Of course this is when I get sick.
It’s always something…
So today I had booked to work from home, in part because I have to go to the Dreaded Dentist at 3 and this still, even after years of therapy, makes me fuzzy and uncoordinated. It seemed like an almost perfect set up; time to get most of my work done, go, and then pick Noah up.
Except at 4 am this morning: “Mummy, I pooed.”
Err, did he ever. And again at 6:30. Stomach ailment alert! In point of fact it is now 10 and we don’t have more runny poo yet but… one of the rules of daycare to which I wish all parents could adhere is “if you suspect your child has a stomach flu, STAY HOME.”
So now I’m doing the juggling act, aided by Carl who was paged around the 6:30 event and hasn’t yet surfaced from fixing things, but will in time for the dentist. And I am working in front of Signing Time with the boy on my lap as I type this.
I’m not feeling very competent lately, work wise. A lot of this is due to the slow progress over which I have no control. But meanwhile my capacity to be upbeat and on top of things is eroding. I am hoping it comes back as soon as we can actually launch. But the side effect of this feeling of general incompetence is that I feel panicked all the time that I will be revealed as a poseur. It’s like an imposter syndrome.
I don’t think I need to lean on my years of therapy to point out that it taps pretty deeply in the multiple and abuse thing - that my WHOLE LIFE I have largely had to present as someone I am not, going through things I am not, to the point that I really have to work to feel anything else. It has handicapped me in a lot of ways that I still experience and lately I have kind of despaired that it will ever get any better than this. Not that this is terrible. But it is not peaceful, either.
That extra little tip of the scales - dentist, sick toddler - puts me in a tizzy in my head and heart, still.
I wish things could be a little easier sometimes. These are all normal everyday events, but I seem to feel them more than others. And then I think and you want another child in all this?
Any thoughts?
Small changes, big dreams
I recently have shaken up my commuting routine. For the last almost-year I have been driving to work and back, all by myself, in my Volvo. I’ve looked for buddies to drive with, but no one wanted to work my 8-4. And I tried all the transit permutations* and the best of the bunch in the cost-time analysis takes 1 hr 15 min, as opposed to a 45-min drive.
However, the costs have really been getting to me - parking primarily, but gas has been catching up. Not to mention the guilt about, you know, killing the planet (although right now, 15-30 min of Noah time seems worth it, in that myopic way that doesn’t connect this to us all breathing).
Now that Noah seems pretty comfortable at daycare and can express himself reasonably well, it seemed like an okay time to be a bit later (5:15 instead of somewhere between 4:45 and 5) and to take the risk of delay.
So, now I drive to the nearest subway station, about 15 min, park and get onto the platform and then take two trains. This should save me at least $200/mo.
But it’s also suddenly, miraculously, provided reading and writing time in my day. I’m enjoying this a lot. It’s like suddenly rediscovering a limb, or something. Because mostly at home I am Doing Something and not sitting thinking or reading or scribbling away.
~~
I think I would like to get pregnant. There, I said it. In fact, we have been trying and it has not been going so well. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given our reproductive history, but after Noah’s conception and birth I guess I was back to thinking that sex makes babies, ones that survive beyond the first trimester and all.
I have mixed feelings about - well, everything. Pregnancy itself, esp. with Noah around, scares me to death, although we’ve already gotten through one miscarriage. I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle two kids and have no idea how we would pay for daycare for two really.
And yet, I’m still pretty sure that’s what I would like, and Carl definitely is on board. Like the subway thing, this kind of seems like a daring return to the Way Life Used To Be - having some hope in life, or something.
~~
Time is so, so different when you have to get a child in bed for 7:30. I bet it’s even worse with two.
* For GTA-dwellers, here’s what I tried:
Fastest transit by far is to drive to GO bus stop, take GO bus. Cost was $9.something a day though and parking was an issue.
Go Train + Yonge line - marginally faster, esp as the GO is closer to my house (but I have to leave a little extra time so as not to miss the train), but the cost of transit passes was $260/mo, effectively wiping out 90% of the savings, so adding the stress on my day without real benefit except carbon footprint stuff (definitely a good thing, but not enough to shake me up.)
Bus + bus + Sheppard line - never was under 1 hr 20 min and was 2 hrs on two occasions out of 5 trial runs
Park at RT, take express bus from Scarb Centre to Don Mills and then across - was 1 hr 20 and dependent on when express buses ran
Park at Kennedy, subway all the way; parking comes with $109 pass, woo hoo.