Is it Mondays? Or do I really hate my job that much?

Gawd, I know.  I'm beating the dead horse.  Repeatedly.  Even I'm annoyed by my carping but holy hell am I not happy.  I work weekends to try to get ahead in my work, maybe take some of the stress off and come Monday morning (hah - almost typed 'moron'.  Freudian slip perhaps?) I'm faced with 5 voicemails and 17 emails all needing this that or the other released/extended/rejected.  Seriously?  I JUST walked in the door.  I realize that some of you start your workday at 0-dark-thirty but us working moms are constrained by that little thing known as 'daycare' and 'not wanting to wake the children up hours before first light'. 

Then my manager comes to me this morning (whilst fighting with our operating system) and asks why I didn't have any safety observations done last week.  You were here all week, right?  Um no.  No I was not.  I was having surgery last Monday and Tuesday and I left you a voicemail about it AS OUR HR DEPARTMENT HAS INSTRUCTED US TO DO.  Well, can you send me an email instead?  I can't remember voicemails.  Lord, please give me the strength to not take the Mallet of Excellence upside this woman's head.  Then our main operating system went down and has stayed down thereby ensuring that I will be spending a chunk of my weekend here AGAIN catching up.  Plus our scheduling department just went live on some new system which I'm sure won't add any extra work to my load at all because now they have the power to do I don't know what but it can't be good.  I can feel my blood pressure rising and remaining elevated as the events of last week threw the daily inanity into stark relief that this just doesn't matter.  I'm totally blaming the stress for what happened to me.  It's not going to get any better - this place is broken and fixated on the wrong things.  I have no power here, no voice so the only thing left for me to do is to get the hell out.  Which I'm trying to do but have that little thing known as 'responsibility' engaging me in an epic staring contest.  And I wear contacts so of course I need to blink. 

I really want to stop bitching about work.  It's a necessary evil and my family is worth it.  I would like to stop feeling flat and deflated at the end of every day, rushing through dinner and time with the kids to desperately find a bit of myself again before facing it on the morrow.  I'm gonna try to get back to telling the kid stories, they are much more fun and oh!  the pictures!  but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to need to find some balance before I can get back to what I want to write about.

I did do a lot of cooking this weekend so my house smells like meat.  Yummy, yummy roasted meat.  All hail the crockpot and cream of chicken soup!  Seriously,  I think that I used four cans in two meals.  And on that nonsequiter, I'm out.  Until tomorrow when I'm sure I'll more things to complain about. You can't wait, I know it.

Really? More snow? Gah.

As this will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, the east coast got slammed with snow.  Again.  And this time Baltimore took it on the chin.  After being out Monday and Tuesday having surgery, leaving early yesterday to pick Noelle up from daycare as they closed early, I'm stuck at home today as I can't get out of my neighborhood.  Dyl tried to get my car to the top of the street so I could get to work but he got stuck and very nearly wedged my car (and himself) firmly across the the top of the street thereby almost earning us the hatred of everyone on our road.  So now I'm forced to wait for the plow to be able to get out. 

Why should I be upset about this unexpected snow day?  Well, my company is open, others in my department made it in, I was out for 2  days already and I have this bizarre need to be there to support the plant even though I want nothing more than to just say 'eff it'.  This is what having a strong work ethic gets you:  a ridiculous amount of guilt over not being able to work.  How is this healthy?  It isn't.  It can't be.  For Pete's sake, we flavor food, we don't cure cancer.  And yet, I care.  I stress about it.  I'm beyond devastated that this was the first time in 13 years at this company that I have ever called out sick.  How stupid is that? 

So one bitter product development/sensory professional is available for hire who also cooks but tends to prefer brownies to cupcakes.

Knock, knock, um, hi.

Wow, this is awkward.  So I like disappeared for a couple of months.  Okay, it was more like 5 months.  This I am not proud of.  I had lots to say and stories to tell and felt like I was getting the hang of this thing when...life happened.  I've made no secret that I hate my job, it's a dead end, a soul-sucking venture to which I must submit myself every day for the good of my family.  I applied for 5 jobs within my company over the summer and early autumn and was rejected for each one.  Each declination a little bit more of me died, feeling that I would be trapped in this dead-end place forever.  I still feel that way though I'm working on a plan to get the hell out.  Then I had good, scary, and exciting news to share and that was just ripped away, literally and figuratively.  Suffice it to say that this has not been a good 6 months.  But damn it, I'm going to do my best to turn this year around.

So I don't know if anyone is still out there or is even interested but I'm slowly coming back. 

And I'll finish Noah's birth story.  I promise.  I just can't do it yet. 

Noah's Birth Story: Part the First

In honor of Noah's first birthday, his birth story in two parts:

Sunday, August 16, 2009 T-minus 0 days
No baby.  HA.  HAHAHAHAHA.  No child of mine shall ever be born before or on his or her due date.  So I just shrugged and waved 'D-Day' good bye in the mirror.

Monday August 17, 2009 T-plus 1 day
My OB had me scheduled for a non-stress test (NST) and ultrasound in the event that the baby was past due.  (HAHAHAHAHA).  So Dyl and I headed off to the St. Joe's Perinatal Center where the boy evidenced his extreme displeasure to being hooked up to the monitor by kicking the ever-loving shit out of me and basically rendering the monitor useless.  The tech told us his heart-rate was strong and he was active.  (Really?  I hadn't noticed.) and my OB was there for the oh-so-fun and thrilling cervix check.  I'm pretty sure that Dyl was squicked out by that.  No contractions, just a party so we're back to waiting.  Did we want to schedule the induction for the next day?  No, no we do not.  Let's give it a bit more time as I saw my sister deal with a useless induction that ate up a week of her life so NO THANK YOU!  Then we headed over to the ultrasound room to check the amniotic fluid level and size.  Fluid level was fine meaning he could continue to hang out for a while longer and the tech asked us if we wanted to know his size.  Sure, amaze me.  So in the hushed tones one uses for delivering bad news, she intones:  "9 pounds, 4 oz".  To which I replied, yeah, that sounds about right.  Probably not the response she was expecting. "And it's a boy".  Again, yeah, I know.  Four sonograms are pretty conclusive so him suddenly sprouting a vagina at this stage of the game would be news indeed.  What can I say?  I was very pregnant.

Back to work we went with everyone giving me a wide berth along with the terror-filled eyes of "please GOD don't go into labor here!"  No worries gang, that ain't happening today.

Then the hospital registration office called me to confirm the induction the next day and I went through that whole thing again.  No thank you, we'll wait and see if he comes by himself.  Everything looks good, no need to rush him, blah blah blah.  They really seem to want the baby out whereas I'm the one who should be storming the hospital in search of a Pitocin drip and yet was strangely content to let him marinate some more.  I finally convinced them that no, I don't want it.  I'll wait, thanks.  To which my coworkers were all, 'DAMN WOMAN,  GET OUT OF HERE!'

Thursday, August 20, 2009 T-plus 4 days
And...the second NST.  No accompanying sonogram though so was a bit disappointed.  I will be honest:  at this point, even Noelle had been born so I was ready to be done and eagerly awaiting the news that we could schedule an induction for the very! next! day!  To which I would have been 'HELL'S YEAH!"  But...no.  The hospital doesn't do Friday inductions?  Or something?  For the love of pants people, I AM DONE!  What a difference three days make.

Friday, August 21, 2009 T-plus 5 days
I just didn't feel like going to work that day.  So I didn't.  And I kept Noelle home with me too so we could have one last Mommy/Daughter only day.  We played, lunched and napped together while I lulled my coworkers into a false sense of security by not being there.  No baby yet beeshes!  I win the pool!

Sunday, August 23, 2009 T-plus 7 days
Seriously considered going down to the Eastern Shore for my cousin's baby shower because hey!  I'm still pregnant.  And a 3 hour car ride is JUST what the doctor recommended for the giant beached whale of a woman.  Luckily, cooler heads (hi honey!) prevailed and convinced me that doing this was a really, really bad idea.  Turns out that a monsoon or something hit so my mom (with whom I would have been riding), was very grateful I was not there as navigating Route 50 in the second coming of the flood with an enormously pregnant daughter next to her might have pushed her over the edge.  Oh, and still no baby.  But!

Monday, August 24, 2009 T-plus 8 days
Now it had gotten beyond ridiculous but luckily we had ANOTHER NST scheduled for that morning so off we went to the perinatal center again.  I offered to buy Starbucks but Dyl was not in a good mood after dropping Noelle off at daycare.  I, however, needed something to get me going as I only got about 3 hours of sleep the previous night.  While hooked up to the machine, I started fantasizing about my OB taking one look at the screen and hollering, get her to L&D STAT!!!!  Alas, no, though he did ask me if I was feeling contractions to which I replied, not really, I mean, I feel Braxton Hicks up here (indicates fundus) and a weird pressure in my lower abdomen but the 'contraction' contractions.  To which he informed me at this point they were ALL contractions.  The only thing that was missing was the eye roll with 'Bitch, please.'  Yes, things were progressing and we all decided to bring this exciting adventure to an end by the next day if he didn't vacate the premises voluntarily.  So we packed up and back to work Dyl and I went.  I seriously walked into the office and people looked at me with uncomprehending eyes:  'What the hell?  Why are you still here?'  My office mate even asked me that and really, I came in because I wanted to finish up those last minute details, let people know that one way or the other it was my last day for a while and most importantly, I would have gone absolutely stir crazy at home.

12:00 pm - I had lunch which consisted of leftover pasta and sausage; in hindsight, perhaps not a stellar choice.
3:00 pm - Stacey was getting ready to go and we were saying our goodbyes, getting contact information, all that jazz.
3:20 pm - 'POP'!  And all holy hell broke loose...

To be continued...

I have seen the future and she is walking away from me

Have you ever just been standing somewhere and the feeling of absolute certainty comes over you that you are seeing the future?  I had an experience like that this morning.

Today was a big day in our house.  Noelle is starting in a new preschool classroom today, the 3/4s which, ironically enough, coincided with the first day of school in our state.  We have been talking up the switch to the new classroom for a while now; you'll be with your friends again!  New toys to play with!  New things to learn!  More freedom in art projects!  So all weekend she has been telling us that she goes to the 3/4 classroom today because she is a Big Girl. 

She wakes up this morning literally bouncing out of bed.  We have our morning cuddles but she is alert and telling us where she is going today, "I go to 3/4s today Mommy!".  She does her morning business and gets dressed with no tantrums.  At all.  This is, indeed, a watershed moment.  I explained to her that we'll go to her new room first and put her things away then go back to her old classroom to wait for her new teacher Ms. Lisa to come get them.  Well, we were very late as apparently every idiot in the greater Baltimore area decided that this would be the perfect morning to turn 695 into a parking lot thereby making my (wonderful, sainted) mother-in-law late in getting to the house to watch Noah. 

We finally made it to her school and as we were walking down the hall, Ms. Lisa comes out of the classroom going to get the rest of the kids.  Since herding 20 or so preschoolers is even more difficult than wrangling cats, she recommended that I bring Noelle back to the other room as it could take a while.  We located her cubby and unpacked her lunch then headed back down the hall where the wrangling had taken a record time to perform.  Noelle joined the end of the line and we had hugs and kisses and "I love you"s.  Then we walked apart, her one way to a new learning experience and I the other to the door and the responsibilities of a job.  But I watched her little figure walk down the hall and every few feet she would turn around, wave, smile and blow kisses.  I finally stopped and just watched her, waving and smiling back as she reached the classroom door and gave me one last smile, wave and kiss before disappearing inside. 

It was then that I shivered, knowing that I was seeing a sequence of events that was happening right then in elementary schools everywhere as mothers took their children to kindergarten for the first time.  Knowing that in two years, the scene would play out again for us; her smiling, waving and blowing kisses and me smiling, waving and blowing kisses back to her as she disappeared into her classroom.  And, like today, with tears running down my cheeks. 

Yes, they really do listen to what you say

For a while I've been convinced that talking to the wall or my shoes would be of bigger impact than talking to Noelle.  It feels like I tell her fifty times a day 1) don't pull your brother down  2) don't grab things from him  3) be gentle, don't squish him 4) don't hit your brother, that's not nice and 5) if you have an accident I'm going to be very upset with you.  Before anyone thinks I'm punishing her for having an accident, it's in the context of accidents that happen outside of nap time.  When she knows full well she needs to use the potty but can't be bothered to stop what she's doing to go.  Still, not my finest moment of parenting saying that....  Well, this weekend I got confirmation that while she was listening, she had no intention of actually following my directions. 

While she was using the potty, she said to me in all seriousness "Mommy, I no have an accident."  "That's great sweetie, I'm really proud of you."  "Mommy, if you have an accident, I'll be so mad at you!"  *Insert mental cringing here* "If I have an accident baby, you have every right to be mad at me."  Man, I felt bad.  Now every time she goes to the potty, she tells me that she didn't have an accident.  I'm really proud of her but man, what have I done?  I know that it happens and when I said it I was frustrated as it was her second accident in 4 hours but the last thing that I wanted her to do was fixate on it.  I only wanted her to be more aware.  I'm so glad that I didn't say anything to put her down or make her feel bad, just expressed disappointment and she doesn't seem to be too traumatized by it though I'm sure the therapy bills in the years to come will be huge. 

She's also been giving me advice on how to take care of a baby.  "Mommy, you don't hit the baby.  You can kiss the baby.  You can cuddle the baby.  You can pet the baby but you don't hit the baby.  If you hit the baby, I'll be so mad at you!"  And I agree with her wholeheartedly "You are so right baby, we never hit a baby.  If anyone ever hits a baby you should be mad at them!"  Though so far this maternal concern has only applied to her baby doll.  We've yet to see this sentiment applied to her little brother who has, fortunately and unfortunately, reached the age where Yay! he can play somewhat now and Crap, he can get into her business and really piss her off. 

Tangent 1:  the music table just decided to start playing by itself.  That's not scary at all.  Good thing I had peed already as I would have had an accident and incurred the sanctimonious wrath of a 3 going on 13 year old. 

Tangent 2:  for the past two nights, she has been sleeping in her sleeping bag.  On the floor.  No particular reason other than she saw it in her closet and wanted to sleep in it.  Indulgent parenting or wise selection of battles? Discuss.

Thankfully she shows that she listens in other less guilt-inducing ways.  She clears her plate off the table now and puts it in the sink, she almost always says 'please' and 'thank you' and even once when I took her with me to get a new bathing suit, she said to me while I was changing, "Mommy, you are so pretty."  Yeah, I think I'll keep her.  And watch my mouth since I know now she's listening.

I passed, but I failed. Yeah!*

So you remember the job that I didn't get?  The one that would have springboarded me from the 9th circle of hell to oh, the 3rd or 4th?  At least?  Yeah, that one.  I received this morning one of the most bizarre phone calls  that I have ever received in my life (ranking up there with the guy who asked me to go out with him in 7th grade to whom I replied in all seriousness:  go where?).  It was, no joke, the hiring manager wanting to explain things to me.

This went down at 8 this morning after I had already been A) up at 4 to B) get to work by 6 so I was C) very tired and still really bummed but D) put on my happy professional voice to take her call even though I had not had enough coffee yet.  She was very impressed with my resume and interview and thought I was an excellent candidate and would be holding onto to my resume for future reference.  The only thing that the 'winner' had that I did not was packaging experience and in their succession planning, the only person who had that type of experience would be retiring within a few years.  But she stated over and over again how impressed she was with me and how it had been such a great career move on my part to apply for the job as it raised my visibility within the company since plant personnel tend to be invisible and overlooked in talent reviews and succession planning.  How did this raise my visibility?  She personally handed my resume to the CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT OF QUALITY...and HE was impressed by my experience and qualifications!  Holy. Effen. Cow.

The timing could not have been better as they are beginning their quarterly talent review for succession planning and now HERE I AM BITCHES; NOBODY PUTS ME IN THE CORNER!  The icing would have been getting the job but you know, being on the radar of the Corporate Vice President isn't such a bad silver medal all things considered.  I guess I can tough it out here for a while longer.  This probably means I should get my butt in gear with the starting of the MS in Quality Assurance.  So I'm in a much better place mentally now though the 4 cups of coffee I've had this morning haven't hurt. 

So thank you for putting up with my pity party the other day (in which I actually did not knock back a beer.  Or three)..  This is one of the reasons I love the Internets and blogging  - you can dump your feelings, work through them and no one (for the most part) is judgemental.  At least not to me yet but I'm a newbie. 

*I'm feeling a need to watch Real Genius tonight....