This week went from difficult to surreal in many ways.
There are many, many mentions of poop in the first bit of this post so if you are not a parent and/or Do Not Want To Know, I have helpfully divided this post up for you. The first bit has the poop, but if you scan past that to the “dancing” bold part, there is the best fashion tip ever for you.
Noah seemed fine Tuesday and Wednesday. (Well, he was, as far as we could tell.) Wednesday night, though, I went to check on him and as I opened the door it… smelled. Oh no. Oh yes, the poor kid had had diarrhea in his sleep which had overflowed (he still sleeps in a diaper). This was followed by two more episodes in the night and then on Thursday morning, watery diarrhea. Which prompted me to call Telehealth Ontario.
I know that the real goal of Telehealth is to keep people from going to the ER that don’t need to be there. But my god, I love Telehealth. It’s nurses sitting with a major database and a phone. They can’t, obviously, diagnose over the phone. But when you’re sitting there thinking “probably, I don’t need to go. But do I?” or “I know this isn’t an emergency (yet) but what do I do? and when would it be an emergency?” they are this kind (if quite scripted) voice. And one time I had a question the first nurse couldn’t answer and she went and found the master nurse.
Anyways, the Telehealth nurse established that we didn’t have any apocalyptic signs (blood and so on) and reiterated to feed Noah quasi-normal food, keep him hydrated, and that it might last up to two weeks and he can’t go back to daycare until his stools are formed. Which explains why he gets stomach flus because how many parents can really manage two weeks like that for every diarrhea? (This is really Noah’s first, so.)
Dancing
Of course Thursday was the seasonal party for my work. It’s a must-go event; obviously they can’t force you, but not showing up is basically a signal that you don’t take your job that seriously.
I wasn’t sure I was going until the moment I walked out the door though. It was so hard. I really felt like I should be there and that it was kind of gross to leave my child to go to a party. And it was tempting to use that excuse to hide (as I did last year, to be honest). But Carl was here and Noah hadn’t had any ill signs since 10 am and so… I went.
One thing about where I work is that people who create mainstream magazines tend to be the kids I was not in high school – the ones who spent time shopping and trying on makeup together. And who continue to know what to wear when and to look really amazing and blah blah blah.
Sometimes this is a little scary for moi, (former?) geek girl, but I’ve come to appreciate that if people are going to be in charge of advising people, they probably should at least genuinely believe in what they’re presenting. So I’m generally okay with it, even if I occasionally feel like my head will explode. Like getting dressed for the seasonal party.
Fortunately I have a professional crush on two people at work: one is someone who works on the admin/numbers/etc. side who also happens to have published a vampire trilogy. I knew she’d be there, and I knew she’d be wearing something /she/ liked and not that was “the perfect party dress.” (Whereas most people would be wearing something you would see on the pages of… Elle, say. Cough.)
The second, however, is our novelist-cum-beauty-editor who is just amazing, and who has given me the best wardrobe advice ever, which I now pass on to you:
If you don’t know how to dress, dress down, but in classic pieces. So if you don’t know whether jeans would be okay but you think they might be, wear jeans, but pair them with a turtleneck and a pair of boots. Classic, and not overdressed.
So I dressed down in something goth-y-ish, but with blood red bits, and it was fine. I got compliments, although it’s hard to tell, honestly, if they were pity ones or not.
(She also does a hillarious riff on shoes I want to share, except mine were fine this time, and this is long already.)
I had planned to take a few hours to get my hair, makeup, and nails done. One thing I have learned about myself is that I don’t really know how to do all that (I mean ok, I can look fine, but not to the standards of my work) and it is worth outsourcing and then it becomes relaxing. Since I couldn’t do that, I ended up snarling in the bathroom for 30 minutes. But it was fine. And Noah has blood-red nails too, which will make him a hit at the children’s party on Sunday if he’s all better.
The food was not plentiful but good; the drinks were plentiful. What surprised me most was the music. Apparently all the music that I listened to in high school is now totally remixed and the office party soundtrack – even if current remixes of Prince and MC Hammer are a little scary. So I danced and danced. My very sweet 24 yr old coworker was like “Wow! You know all the words!” Um – yes. What can I say?
It was kind of like rewriting high school. I blame the music, in fact, for making me all nostalgic (and the fact that it will be my 20th reunion this year and that I realized that this month of course plays into it). I had to pause in the bathroom, listening to the drunk 20-somethings, to consider that there is a definitely irony that out of all the girls at my school, I’m the one reading and editing 8 beauty and fashion pieces a month. And I am starting to understand them.
So in the cab on the way home I was really having a fantasy where I decided I would throw an anti-reunion party. But then I had to consider what an anti-reunion party would look like? I mean you can’t be standing around talking about yourself. I came up with two ideas:
1. A charity event that involves physical labour, like a Habitat for Humanity day.
2. A showing of The Breakfast Club that involves a LOT of alcohol. But it would have to be in an actual theatre, because in a home you might end up talking, or something.
Not planning either of these, but there you go.
Overall it was a success. The whole thing about office holiday parties? You don’t want people to remember what you did, just that you were there and air kissed them.
Today we kept Noah home again – it was Friday, he was still peaky, and he hasn’t actually produced anything to check for normalcy. I felt lousy, lousy, lousy working from home AGAIN – that makes three times this week, all of them childcare days which means really “do what can’t wait” days.
I hate being the worker that isn’t at the top of her game. But I also think it is probably good for me to live through it. Even in this economy.
