Homing in

Fuck, I can't believe I'm going back to work.

Just like that.

Two weeks left.

I've been shopping for a home for, what, a year now, and haven't taken it very seriously since I hit my third trimester. I've been dabbling in the MLS listings since I gave birth, still not so serious because I thought I wouldn't be going back to work right away. But then I had that meaningful (not) conversation with my boss, and the next day got an email from my real estate agent with THIS GEM.

This link won't work forever, so if it's not working, let me describe it: It's a funky house, not too old, not too big, with the exact things we wanted: two full baths, two-car garage, forced air heat (central air would have been nice, but the ducts will at least allow us to have it easily) and a great school district. And it has things we only dreamed about: a finished game room AND a family room ON TOP OF a living room, very decent-sized rooms and two fireplaces.

The location is awesome. I COULD DIE IN THIS HOUSE.

Knowing this is within my reach if I go back to work, it ain't so bad.

On cue

My boss called me today. It was the first time I had heard from him since a message he left just before Christmas.

His cell phone broke up a lot, so I didn't understand a lot of what he said. He mentioned something about me getting a flat-screen monitor, talked a little about someone new he had hired, and asked if he could sing to me something from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." I said no, but he did anyway. Then he told me to call him next week so we could 'touch base."

It was very bizarre.

I guess I'm going back to work.



Joe's birthday is tomorrow. When he wasn't looking, I went out and acquired $150+ worth of carnations, and while he was sleeping this evening, I made a bunch of arrangements and placed them throughout the house. I wish I could be awake when he saw them, but I'd rather he wake up to a great birthday surprise than satisfy my need for validation.

I think everyone should wake up to a great birthday. Especially when people don't know what the hell to get you.

Long and lost

OK, I promised some dirt on my current work situation. But... I am going to chicken out on providing actual details. I spent all day thinking about what to do, since I have about, hmmmmm, one day to decide. I'm sure that the only people who read this blog, if anyone, are probably ex-boyfriends who like to see me suffer and ex-coworkers who'd like to see me succeed. But I can't take the chance of being shown the door if I decide my medical benefits outweigh the stress.

But I can say this: Have you ever read one of those top ten lists about, say, why you should tell your boss to kiss your ass? Here's a great one from careerbuilder.com via AOL.

I can attest that I experience not three or four or five, but every single one of those, at my place of employment. It was not what I signed up for when I agreed to move 1,000 miles away from my life and friends and Cuban food to live with family and cold weather again.

So, I thought I'd stick to the positive, and try to weigh the pros and cons of the effects on my personal life instead of focusing on the lifeforces who suck up all my sanity and patience for 40 hours of my week. So, here are some things I have to worry about, if I quit:

INCOME
That's the obvious one. I can stop talking about the new car I want, or the new house we need. Not having money will take away a lot of my choices. I recently came into a little windfall that will help me along until I find another job, but who the hell will write me a mortgage if I'm not working? I've been in a hurry to get the big things in order so I can start living happily ever after, and that will have to, again, take a back seat until I find another job. Which I do want to do. Very much. I miss my dogs, who have been staying with others for the past year. And I'm beginning to miss my privacy, with Jacob and all his crap crammed into our bedroom.

TIME
If I quit, I'll have ample time to shop for a job. I won't have to keep asking for afternoons off when I interview, and I won't have to keep making up excuses. It will also give me more time with the kids, and really, when else do you have such a great excuse to interrupt your career for any length of time?

KARMA
I've always been the kind of person who lets things happen to her. I've said no to a lot of things, but saying yes to what I have has been what has gotten me this far. I don't play a very proactive role in my own life... and when I made the big move back to Pittsburgh, I was very proud of if not shocked with myself. I mean, I talked about it for 10 years before I actually did it. And while I have lucked out so far by letting things fall into my lap, I can't guarantee that wonderful life trend will continue.

LOVE
I have no doubt Joe would like to see me quit, if not now, then later. But quitting now would mean that to keep my responsibilities intact, I'd have to marry him now rather than later. We wanted to make a little bit of deal out of it, but on short notice that couldn't happen. I hate the idea of marrying just to secure medical benefits. But you know, we are two peas in a pod: we're both happy with the status quo, and we'd both be happy if and when it changes, but neither of us is ambitious enough to actually find out what the hell we need to do to actually make this marriage thing happen. (Well, that's not true... three months ago I actually bought wedding magazines and promptly hid them under the bed. That's more effort than he's shown!) What if our love survives on this laziness? Who wants to mess with that. If I went back to work, even for a few months, we could buy time and even save a little to follow through with that. Properly.

SOAP OPERAS
I've finally caught up on all of them. And judge shows have come a long way since Wapner went off the air. I have yet to redevelop my addiction to Oprah, and have been holding off. But in all seriousness, I enjoy the domestic life. I have been cooking my ass off. And even cleaning once in a great while. The truth is, I wouldn't mind prolonging it if I were sure I'd be able to find work shortly. If we had established a new home sooner, this decision might have been easier... I would have landed a mortgage and I have enough cash in the bank to cover us for a few months... but it might have been harder, with the pressure of finding a job with at least the same income to cover it all.

I've thought about asking to go back part-time, but that would still leave me with the benefits dilemma. And if I go back, I'm sure the odds are stacked in my favor of not lasting long. The first sign of trouble, I'm likely to see it as my sign of karma, time to haul ass, NOW. And thus, I will have burned a bridge that way. If I plan it right, in a calm manner now, I can leave open a door in case there's no other job out there for me.

Who the hell wants a newspaper designer?

But, I'll think positively. Like... who wouldn't want a former newspaper designer?

It might be a little bit easier -- just a little -- to go back to work if someone in my little intimate department might have thought -- and maybe this is selfish of me -- to whip out two bucks for a card, have all four of them sign it, maybe pass it around to the people I work with in the newsroom, and, I don't know, send it to me after I HAD A BABY. Everyone in Joe's department sent us something, but my department couldn't even be bothered to sign a card or send an email. It's not like I expected a baby shower in the conference room or a bunch of flowers sent to the hospital. I expected nothing except a little bit of acknowledgment, but nothing is what I got.

If I held on to a little bit of hope that I had a little bit of relationship with a little bit of them, I've proved myself wrong.

Who wants to go back to work after that?

I tell myself it's all bigger than that. But in the end, is it??

Take this job and...

All right. I'm down to the wire here.

I have been thinking seriously about quitting my place of employment. It would be the only time in my life I would be consciously abandoning a job with nothing else on the horizon. I've weasled in and out of many jobs, as a matter of fact, without actually quitting them.

A brief synopsis of my work history:

MCDONALD'S: Age 16
After my mom died, my dad insisted that if I ever wanted to drive, I had to get a job to pay for car insurance. I mentioned this to a good high school friend, who happened to be employee of the month at McDonald's every month for the past five months, so he got me in easily, unbeknownst to me, so I felt obligated to start showing up. My time there was marked by earning the coveted drive-thru position (coveted because it consisted largely of making Happy Meal boxes and it was extremely easy to sneak milkshakes into The Hole) and learning the ins and outs of polishing sheet metal with club soda water squirted directly from the soda fountain. The highlight of my time there was when the restaurant was held up at gunpoint. It's the only time in my life I've ever had a real gun pointed at me. But I never quit the job... after I went to college, I came back for winter and spring breaks, with the promise of more. Because I never quit, I still have my uniform. If I ever weigh 115 pounds again, I'll wear it for Halloween.

CONVENIENCE STORE/DELI: Age 17
This was by far the best summer job I've ever had. It didn't pay much, but I got to meet people who gave me all kinds of unsolicited advice throughout college. One old lady told me that if I kept cut onions more than a few days in the fridge, they would poison me. Another told me that while my engagement ring was frighteningly small, it was a "perfect" diamond. (Much later I had it appraised: $400.) I was exposed to all kinds of people, including a lot of trailer trash who had kids out of wedlock, which I have aspired to and become. My boss was a creepy old man who took all the girls back to the office and made them sit on his lap while he told them what a good job they were doing. While I was there I learned what was really in Isaly's chipped ham. UGH. Other perks included sneaking Good Humor out of the ice cream case. Which probably started me on the road to never seeing 115 pounds again.

COLLEGE NEWSPAPER: Age 17
It was a lousy stipend, but I totally fell in love with everything about newspapering there. And I did it all, including photo editor and production editor, and I helped get the paper from paste-up to pagination. My aunt still has on her wall a framed copy of my first published photograph of Light Up Night in Pittsburgh. As ambitious as I might have seemed, I turned down an editor-in-chief offer there. Writing seven inches three times a week would have cut into my Euchre/Boone's time.

AD AGENCY INTERNSHIP: Age 20
The woman who owned this home-based agency was totally psycho -- and once left in the middle of the day to go see a friend who claimed to see the vision of Jesus in the wood-grain paneling in his mobile home. No fucking lie. I think she liked me very much, though, because she had me watch her kid while she left for the afternoon, for what I never knew. Her husband, A PROVOST AT MY UNIVERSITY, would come home before she did and seem puzzled too that I was there watching their kid and supervising the crew pasting wallpaper in the kitchen. I wrote an honest paper about my internship, and I would bet a lot of money that my paper is nowhere to be found in the journalism department's archives.

LOCAL NEWSPAPER INTERNSHIP/JOB: Age 20
It was extremely unremarkable. I remember a lot of bickering among the older employees, some wishing each other were dead out loud. I stayed on after the internship to work part-time. I remember during this time learning how to drive a stick, graduating, and getting married that first time. But I remember very little about the job. Oh, and the fight for parking spots. Most of us had to feed the meter every few hours. I got a lot of tickets during my time there.

FLORIDA NEWSPAPER: Age 22
I spent 10 years in Florida. I said the convenience store was the best job, but really, I didn't have to sit on an old man's lap at my paper in Florida. Even though I couldn't steal Slim Jims from there, I just LOVED my Florida job. When I was looking for employment in Florida, I resisted the paper and went for ad agencies, but they all turned me down. So I grudgingly took the newspaper job after working briefly for a dot.com that failed. I moved through the ranks quickly at the paper, going from glorified secretary to, finally, senior copy editor. I thought I was going to retire in Florida, at that very job. It was just heaven to me. They paid me to read stories! To design shit at my whim! But, obviously, things changed, as things often do. And I was eventually reunited with my homeland.

PENNSYLVANIA NEWSPAPER: Age 32
At the risk of sounding like a lame local news station promo for a lame local news station segment, FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN...

I know it's not safe to talk about work on the internet, but it may be time. Let me think about it.

Please stay tuned.



I wouldn't know where to start.

Moooo

I feel like a beached cow.

It's been two months now since I've given birth. In the first month, I lost every ounce I gained during the pregnancy. I was pleased by how everything just melted off, and I was more pleased to compare the weight loss to the sympathy pounds Joe collected -- and keeps collecting -- around his midsection.

But my body is still a little lumpy, obviously a little more lumpy in the torso area. And in the second month, nothing changed. I am too small for the maternity clothes and too big to get into my favorite jeans. (This is why God invented sweats.)

I thought tonight about how I might start doing a little exercising... but exercising requires a regular shower and... time. I know women actually manage all this baby stuff and the getting in shape stuff, but I'm left wondering how. The boy is so very unpredictable as far as a schedule. And for the life of me, I can't remember taking any extraordinary measures after Zoe.

I do have curves in all the right places again; just a few in the wrong places. And I can feel bones I haven't felt in a few years, and I don't want to risk them getting covered over. But what to do?? How can I find the time?

It's hard to decide when Jacob is actually settled for a nap of any substantial length, and it's even harder to resist taking a nap along with him.

It's also hard to resist mac 'n' cheese, chocolate in any form, ice cream, whipped cream, stuffing, bread, butter, bread with butter, strawberry Quik or Mallo cups.

I can't imagine what my problem is.

Happy two months

Jacob got a round of four shots today. It was painful, for me as much as him.

The rest of the day wasn't much more fun. Mr. Sunshine was way crankier than usual.

It's 2 a.m. and I've plugged him into a bottle, and now I'm waiting for the Tylenol to work. But while I was feeding him.... he was looking all lovingly into my eyes, like there was no where else on earth that he'd rather be than in his mom's arms, so content and peaceful, forgetting momentarily about the throbbing in his needle-ridden thighs. If it were a movie, there would be an instrumental playing in the background and I wouldn't have been looking away from his gaze to watch Conan. Maybe a butterfly would have landed on his head, or soft cartoon hearts would have swelled up between us and drifted off the screen....

And then I burped.

And Jacob spit out his bottle to give me a huge-ass smile.

Such a boy.

Live free or die

"I'm in no hurry,
And I don't know why,
I don't know why anymore."

-- Cum On Feel the Noize, Quiet Riot



I almost forgot about the other gnawing issue from this morning...

Before Joe jumped in the shower (something he has the luxury to fit in every day), he asked me for a check for $150. For the critter people.

Even though I worked hard to scrape up some meager savings so that I could subsist while I was on maternity leave, it didn't piss me off at all that he asked me for money, but that the critter people were going to steal $150 from us!!

We have heard rodents in the walls for a few months now. Joe called the association that rules over the townhomes and they delightfully informed him that it wasn't their problem. We have four other units connected to us in one way or another, and we are not the only ones with this problem. Our neighbors on either side have both mentioned finding mice in their basements, and we have found one in our basement and one in the driveway.

Though the rumble in the walls can be annoying at times -- excessively so when I'm lying to Zoe at bedtime about the party going on in her closet -- they are not exactly running all over my dining room table or pooping in my cabinets. If I had my way, and the time, I would drill holes in the walls and bait and rescue them and nurse them to health and place them in loving homes. But, alas, I have my hands full, and I just want them out. So Joe called the critter people. Who were going to charge us $150 to "scan" the whole width of our 25-foot-wide townhome. Front and back. Outside. Where the house meets the grass. And then tell us how much they were going to charge us for actually doing something. Like putting out poison. Because we are not capable of figuring out such ingenious solutions on our own.

Joe apparently saw nothing wrong with this. He said, "They'll put out poison that won't hurt dogs if you have them." We don't have them.

I can see, say, giving a mechanic a fee for an estimate... he actually has skills (and technology) that a normal human being doesn't possess. But giving a critter killer $150 for taking a drive out to our house?? And unless we convinced our string of four connected neighbors to also treat the common walls, we'd surely fail at getting rid of the ruckus.

It wasn't difficult to convince Joe this was a bad idea as I paced the bedroom floor flailing my arms and ranting like a lunatic. He looked overly concerned and offered to call the place back and cancel, but I was torn because they were actually out on the icy, snowy streets, on their way to our little abode at that moment, braving the weather to squeeze money out of another fool. I mean, the more I thought about it, I realized the genius behind their money-making scheme and was disappointed that I haven't yet thought up my own little rip-off racket to make myself rich.


Luckily, they called to say they couldn't make it up the hill with all the snow.

The mice will live to see another spring. Assuming they stay in the walls and out of my cabinets.

Love in bloom

Here are the flowers I ordered for Joe:



And here is what actually showed up:



What the hell is that????

I made my displeasure known to the folks at ftd.com, so we'll see if I get anything out of it. Their automatically generated courtesy email let me know that it would take up to 48 hours to get back to me.

I mean, really, what the hell is that???


We had another snow day today. I wish it had been as fun as yesterday, but I battled a cranky infant all morning and worked hard at getting in a nap for most of the afternoon... with no success. I was so glad when Joe got home. I hit the couch while he watched the kids and the Penguins game. I think he watched the kids anyway... they were still around when I woke up.

There's something that changed in him after all the talking we did over last weekend. He's more relaxed, more involved. This morning after he discovered all my hearts pasted around the house and the hidden cards, he was a little on the emotional side.

I hope it lasts. Forever.

Stormy weather

Today was the first day since I moved back to Pittsburgh that I heard snow plows.

I've seen and heard plenty of salt trucks spreading their bounty since I've been here, but I've never heard the grating sound of metal on asphalt over my two winters here until this morning. At 6 a.m., Joe woke me to tell me there was no school. It would have been nicer of him to just turn off my alarm and let me sleep, but it wouldn't have mattered with all the plow traffic outside.

We live on a cul-de-sac of sorts... it is its own little community of townhomes, and the only traffic up here besides people who live here are deliveries. In other words, the only way out of the neighborhood is the way you came in. I was surprised that the county paid as much attention to clearing our roads as they did. With all the noisy traffic, though, there was little napping for me.

There was little napping, too, because of the baby and Zoe home from school. We cleaned the hell out of Zoe's room today. With another snow day tomorrow, I'll have to find another constructive way to spend our afternoon.

The snow made a grand entrance today hours earlier than they predicted, and turned to ice in time for rush hour. I paid a few kids to shovel the driveway, and it's nothing but a sheet of ice now. I am so glad I have this time off work; even if I do go back, I will have managed to avoid driving during the worst part of this winter.

We have a great view from the back of the house: We can see about five or six communities -- and two interstates. About a fifth of our view tonight is dark... one of the neighborhoods on the next hill over is without power. All I can think of is: How on earth are they staying warm tonight??


Icicles drip from the back deck.

Speaking of warm, tomorrow is Valentine's Day! Joe had tulips delivered today, so I guess that's what I'm getting. I ordered him a huge bouquet to be delivered at his office tomorrow. I've also hidden cards all around the house, and I made paper hearts and pasted them up everywhere. Awwwwwwwwwwwww.

Happy Valentine's Day. I hope it is a happy one for everyone.

Acceptance

"Can't stop now,
I've traveled so far
to change this lonely life."

-- I Wanna Know What Love Is, Foreigner



There's something so unspeakably incredible about a baby's gaze. Now that Jacob is crying less and sleeping better, we've been seeing a lot more of his good side... smiling and cooing and gazing.

He's so unafraid of staring holes through us with pure love. It's amazing.

It's supposed to snow like mad here starting tomorrow. I made sure I stocked up on shit so I didn't have to go out in the next few days. As if I would have anyway. I think I got out of my pajamas once in the past two weeks. The most actual contact I've had with outside life lately includes waving at Zoe's bus driver and greeting the CVS clerk -- both in my jammies. So, this week is now guaranteed to be no different.

And as much as I'd like to get the hell out of the house, I'm pretty sure I'm quitting my job. I know I haven't talked about my job much on the blog, but I assure you, I hate it. There is nothing at all that I like about it beyond the physical task of the work itself. The people, the philosophy, the mission... the company long ago dropped off my list of favorite things.

So it wasn't hard to start thinking in this direction.

Beyond my dislike of the job, I just don't think I'm ready to go back. I don't think I've got full handle of this parenting thing, and I don't want my super-cranky baby in day care just yet. I've thought about part-time or freelance work, and that might work for me right now. In fact, it's the only thing that would possibly keep me sane while earning an income.

The problem is the lack of health benefits. Joe can put Jacob on his insurance, but Zoe and I would be left without.

Unless Joe and I married.


I've heard from friends who think it is a horrible idea to marry him if there's even a blip in our relationship radar. And I've heard from friends who say marry him just to get the financial stability in the event we split.

But the truth is... I love the hell out of this guy. Sometimes I come close to talking myself out of loving him, but I almost always wake up the next morning (or in a few days) all gooey and in love with him again. No matter how mad I get at him, I can't hang on to any anger for him for long.

Maybe I'm getting older and more mature, or maybe I'm settling, or maybe I'm realizing I have very exaggerated faults in the relationship field, or maybe I'm too quick to think our young and complicated pairing should be easy, or maybe I have a horrible psychological problem that prevents me from seeing that I'm feeding myself a load of crap right now...

Or maybe I have just never been in real love before now. Maybe my stubborn, controlling self has met her match, someone who will stick around even when I get stupid and try to sabotage a good thing.

But I just feel all kinds of good when I am with him. Because I am with him.

And he has never hesitated in his desire to marry me. He's wanted to throw me out of the house, but he's wanted to get hitched nonetheless. :)

We are still in negotiations about all of this... and I am the one hesitating... I will peel back all my layers of self-esteem before I'm convinced...

But I admit I am feeling more sound and happy -- and almost giddy -- about finally accepting being in love for the rest of my life.


"I've got nowhere left to hide;
It looks like love has finally found me."
-- Foreigner

Brrrrrrrrr

It is so cold (how cold is it?) that the cable is going out.

There's no ice storm, no high winds, not even snow. It's just fucking cold!

Last night before I went to bed, Zoe's school web site said there was a two-hour delay. I got to sleep in! Well, if you can call having two kids crawling all over me in bed, instead of one, sleeping in. I drove Zoe to school when the bus didn't come only to find the sign outside said NO SCHOOL.

No school again tomorrow. I remember snow days, but cold days?

It was cold last week... and then on Friday it hit 35. It was balmy! I could actually go outside in my regular clothes, no coat, for a short time and not be chilled. It's funny how I became acclimated to this weather so quickly after being in Florida for so long. But the temps went downhill from there; I think today it hit 8. With wind chill, it was close to -20. Pittsburgh weather is absolutely nuts.

We did get in some sledriding Saturday. I didn't last long outside, but Uncle Rob and Zoe endured about a half hour of up and down the hill.



Jacob is doing better. He's crying a lot less since I relented and started giving him cereal. He's six weeks old now, and normally too young for it, but after several friends and relatives suggested it and claimed to have done it with their own kids, I gave it a shot. And it worked. He gets just a little before bedtime, and it's been sweet dreams for me by 2 a.m. instead of 5 a.m. And minimal crying.

Vital statistic

Joe doesn't ask me to pay any bills on a regular basis. In fact, we got on a family cell phone plan and I've eliminated that bill for myself. The only shared bill I fork out bucks for is food... groceries and dining out. So every once in a while, if only for my conscience's sake, I take a peek at the stack of bills while Joe is sleeping and pay a few of them here and there.

While snooping through the pile tonight I found an envelope with the return address of "Vital Statistics." It was Jacob's birth certificate, with his Social Security card tucked inside. I gave Joe the SS card when it came and made a big deal out of it... the kid has a number! But I never knew about the birth certificate. Joe stashed it away, as if the kid's mom had no interest in seeing it.

I find it kind of odd.

And I'm a little perturbed.

Actually, I'm quite pissed.

Why would he keep something like that from me? I mean, it's not like he has hidden it in a safe or anything, and he knows I go through that pile of bills from time to time, so maybe he wasn't intentionally hiding it. But I'm here every evening, in his presence, when he opens the mail, and one would think he might mention that the boy's birth certificate had arrived instead of running it upstairs and inserting it into a to-do pile.

I've never said this to Joe, but I somewhat regret giving Jacob his last name. There's a form on the back of the birth certificate to make changes. And it doesn't appear I need both parents' signatures. Could he be worried about that?

God, I love Joe, but it feels like I have to always be on my fucking toes with him.