Blog Goodness

My delicious friend Bev just awarded me a Blog Award - my first!  I am excited to be included in such wonderful company.

There is very little I wouldn't do for Bev. She's just that kind of upbeat, fun, and warm kind of person.  And she happens to also be MY top commenter.

So to go along with her request, I am answering the ten questions she posed (besides I just dig this sort of thing):

1. What is your most embarrassing moment of all time?
I agreed to participate in a skit in front of the whole High School that was unrehearsed and did NOT go as planned. And a picture ended up in the yearbook.
2. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Chocolate
3. How old were you when you had your first kiss?
1st grade. 6? Real one? Junior High
4. What is your browser's home page?
Google
5. What color do you never, ever wear?
Orange
6. Are you a nature-lover or a city-slicker?
Nature lover
7. If you were granted 3 wishes, what would they be? (none of that "more wishes" crap!)
To live long enough to see my daughter have children
To stay healthy
To one day have a little place of my own again
8. Do you have any scars? How'd you get them?
Hell yes. Lots of little ones from dumb accidents and mishaps and a C-section scar that has actually faded nicely
9. Ever seen a ghost?
No, but plenty of monsters
10. What is your dream job?
Getting paid (a lot) to write creatively

There we have it. What kinds of things to you always want to ask?

Adapting

I am so grateful to have a job. I want to start with that, because I don’t want to sound like a whiner for saying that I am soooo tired. I always take a while to adjust to change, whether it be daylight savings time, road construction, or completely changing your daily routine and taking on a whole new set of responsibilities.

Oh, and M’s dad has informed me that he is looking for work in Colorado.

I feel like taking a long nap. Experience tells me that all of it will shake out in time, even the PainInTheAss Ex, but right at this moment, I just want to find the remote for my life and hit the button that lowers the volume.

It’s good to be back at work, though. This new job has some freaky parallels with my last job, including a few people who are scarily accurate copies of one another. The job itself is similar to what I was doing before, but with an important difference. My last job was tied to the government, and many of the processes and the people where so used to the (slow) pace and the layers of bureaucracy that it was hard to get things done sometimes. I remember wishing I worked at a “commercial” shop, and now I do. Where I am now is a small-ish company that is growing fast. We’ll see how that compares over time.

I haven’t been paid yet, and I really appreciate my friend stepping in and offering a short term loan to help me bridge the gap. By the end of summer I should be back on track financially, and that is a really good feeling. I’ve worked so hard on my finances for the past ten years, and it is kind of discouraging to realize the impact that this move had on my Net Worth, but I know how good this was for our Mental Health, so I can live with the hit on my balance sheet. Still, I was thrilled to get a job with a company that is still contributing to 401k matches.

It is raining hard right now, and it is cold and grey outside as M gets ready for bed. This has been such a weird Spring; the weather has been all over the place. It is supposed to snow tomorrow, and this area is supposed to get around a foot of snow. Of course, the weather predictions can be completely wrong, but this feels very possible right at the moment. It has kept me hiding indoors, though, just when I feel like I could really use more time outside.

My daughter’s teacher had a baby a couple weeks ago, and so for the last month of school she’s got a substitute who is a terrible battle axe. I’ve talked to her several times, and her manner is aggressive and she had made up her mind about each of the kids after one day, labeling them all with negative remarks and dire predictions, and I hate her already. She starts every conversation with how she taught first grade for so many years, and she’s seen all this before, blah, blah, blah. In the meantime, the structure of the classroom has apparently gone all to hell, and I haven’t seen a homework folder for a while, and there is nothing coming home in the daily folder. It is sad that the last month of M's first school year is ending on such a flat note.
Happily, she will soon be in the Summer SAE program, and she knows the staff and most of the kids already, and they have tons of fun activities planned. It means extra driving for me for three months, as the drop off is farther away from our school, but I’m in Adjustment Mode, so I will manage. I think.

Midweek Update

This will be brief, because I haven’t caught up with myself yet, having started the new JOB on Monday. However, it is amazing the amount of time and energy I am made to spend finding a route into and out of my workplace. Commuting is something I’ve become far too familiar with, and I am happy to report that my current commute is half what my last one was.
Still, the most direct path to my new place of employment was derailed by an 18 month Transportation project that started mere weeks before I was hired. I think sometimes that the gods enjoy fucking with me. I am willing to play along to a certain extent, but yesterday I was caught in the worst traffic snarl and I committed the Faux Pas of Daycare – I was late picking up my child. Okay, I was only late by 3 minutes, but that was the WORST drive home, and for the last part of it I was a total wreck because I could see that I wasn’t going to make it. I have never been late before. Ever.
It turns out that it is critical NOT to leave the Tech Center at 5 o’clock. Something evil happens right at 5, and the collective consciousness goes into some kind of alternate universe. I made the crucial mistake of getting into the Wrong Lane, and this misstep resulted in a critical loss of 15-20 minutes.
I consulted with my new coworkers, because I am nothing if not a consulter and collaborator on Shared Wisdom, and it turns out that it is Common Knowledge that you do NOT take the route out that we take in. I was told about the much better alternative, and today I sailed into Daycare to pick up M at the correct time. Thank you, my new work friend!
Which brings me to the part where I relate how there are some very nice people at my new JOB, and some of them go walking at lunchtime (something I enjoy very much), and I was invited to go along! The Tech Center has Downtown beat on scenery, hands down. There are miles of marvelously wide sidewalks among lovely landscaped office buildings, just suited for walking or riding bikes. I am able to get out of the building and use my lunch time to get some fresh air and exercise, and that makes me happy.
There is a lot to absorb, a lot to adjust to, and I am behind on all my “stuff” here at home because any change, especially a big one like this, sends me into a bit of a flutter trying to get into a new routine. But I will. I am looking forward to settling in. Oh, and getting paid. That too.