The Average Blogger

With Apologies to Veronica

Tomorrow, I'll be kissing my company's paycheck-dispensing ass, but tonight, let me dream of a world without work, a world where I am free.

I miss my life, y'all.

L-7

In the past month:

The YP didn't get into a play he auditioned for.

I didn't get a job I interviewed for.

NYAB and I went to a casino and while we didn't lose all we'd allotted, we didn't come out ahead, either.

But here's the thing.  Doing all that stuff?  Way worth the loss. Sure, a different outcome would have been nice, but things are pretty good as they stand, and the experiences were educational and heartening.  Getting there was more than half the fun.

I'm having a harder time remembering that about the everyday aspects of living, I'm sorry to say.

The kid's school experience is just full of peaks and valleys, but the valleys seem a bit deeper now. We get fewer reports of problems, but what we do hear about is more extreme. Like he saves it all up and lets fly with one really horrible day, as opposed to one or two daily mishaps spread over the course of a few days.

Meanwhile, my job is less volatile, but I think I'm under sea level more than I'm over it these days, and that makes it harder to stomach the really bad things when they pop up out of nowhere. Fortunately, most of those really bad things spring from areas where I have no control and/or the impact on me is minimal, but it's still just more noise to deal with.

And at home? I'm trying to figure out what to do for my birthday. Originally I was supposed to spend my birthday in a leadership training seminar at work, but it got rescheduled. I suppose pretty much anything will be an improvement on that. NYAB had one plan that got a flat refusal from other quarters, and I'm sort of all over the place about it. I understand, but I'm irritated. I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed for NYAB, who basically had his first effort at doing this sort of thing stomped on. I'm probably a little relieved as it lessens the impact of future criticisms from those quarters, but I'm also overreacting in my internal insistence that it'll be more fun without them anyway. So, yeah, I don't know where that lands me overall. Oh, well.

On the plus side, my birthday is also is a harbinger of warmer weather, which considerably brightens moods around here. So glad February is out the door as of this evening!

Blah, Blah, It's Been Said Better Elsewhere

But that doesn't stop me.

I may have mentioned before that I run a department at my place of employ.  One of the perquisites of this vaunted position is that when stuff happens on a weekend, I get to fill in as muscle and tissue on our otherwise skeleton crew. This basically means that from about 5 p.m. Saturday until 5 p.m. Sunday, I was immersed in the news out of Arizona, reading file after file about what it meant for various pieces of legislation, what it meant for Congress, what it meant for ... well, just about everyone except, you know, the people who actually suffered in the event.

 And the theme that kept coming back, over and over -- we should not be surprised that this wackjob opened fire in a grocery store parking lot. Why not? Well, because of the inflamed level of political rhetoric.

 Of course. How foolish of me not to realize.

 Because, see, to me that's about as silly as blaming his parents for bad genetics. Or blaming Giffords for not voting the way he thought she should. Or blaming that 9-year-old girl for being in a bad place at a bad time.

 Don't get me wrong, I do think political discourse has reached some ridiculous extremes. I think the anonymity of the Internet isn't always a good thing. Second only to religion, politics is a case where it is really sickening to read what people will post when they aren't worried about the consequences.

 And I suppose if there is a way to make some good come of this horrific event, this is as acceptable an avenue as any. I'm a big fan of anything that goads our generally savage natures into being a little more civilized and polite. I think we all -- and I do mean all: politicians, my colleagues in the media, and most of all the Great Unwashed Commenting Public -- would get a lot farther in getting things done if we could just say, "Hm. You know, from where I'm sitting that argument doesn't really hang together, and here is why, let's figure out how to fix it," than when we do things like, say, compare our opponents to Hitler, or throw bricks through their windows, or start talking about how such and such a policy is the worst thing since forever and we are all going to die.

 But that's sort of the point. Most people don't throw bricks. Most people don't buy a Glock and rip into a crowd of bystanders. In a face-to-face exchange, only those brimming with vitriol who have zero interest in results bother to bring up Hitler.

 My husband is fond of saying that we don't write highway laws based solely on the way Gary Busey rides a motorcycle. I'm pretty sure we should not rewrite our mores based solely on the way Jared Loughner might have interpreted something someone said some time.

 Everything I've read about Loughner pretty much tells me that he was every bit as likely to have looked at his bowl of Cheerios that morning and seen dozens of cross hair symbols floating in the milk. 

 Or, you know, maybe the neighbor's dog gave him a gentle nudge toward the Safeway.

 So if you are one of those people who thinks that this shooting never would have happened if Sarah Palin had just left those dang cross hairs off her campaign site, I'm sorry, you are simply part of the problem, looking for a way to advance your own agenda on the back of a terrible situation.

 If you are one of the people who thinks this is what Giffords gets for voting against Pelosi as minority leader, I find you genuinely disturbing.

But if you are someone who thinks this was a terrible thing and that perhaps the blame lies somewhere other than Mean Words, that perhaps we should be trying to figure out how this looly got himself a gun and that we should maybe be a little more cognizent of the general mental state of those around us, well, you're the person I want next to me on the bus.

If you are a rational human being, one of the Rest of Us, someone who thinks the Internet is awesome as long as you don't read any of the comments under the news stories, who always -- always, no matter what is going on -- wants to see this country trying harder to do better than it already is, who chooses to believe that most people in public office aren't in it as some kind of malicious plot to bring down the other side, who cares about your family and who aches when things like this happen, you are the person I want to know. You are the person I want to vote for.  

Blogging While Taciturn...

Doesn't really work.  But that's where I'm at.  Stuff's happened, I'm tired, talking is overrated.

The party was great.  The kids had fun, the laundry room haunted lab was scary but not too scary, the pizza was late but the kids ate it up. Takeaway lesson: Fake blood is a huge hit with the second-grade set -- even the girls, which kind of surprised me. Of course, there was that one kid who barfed when he saw it.  Oh, well. It's not a party til someone gets sick, I guess. I was more dismayed to learn he didn't know his phone number to call his mom to come get him.  (Scuse me while I enjoy this fleeting moment of smug superiority.)

The election ... ran its course.  No partisan speaking here.  The resulting work week seemed generally tolerable for everyone -- except me, which I guess is how it's supposed to go.  I'm not happy about it, and I'd be happier if I had any kind of faith that the solution for next time wouldn't again be "AB works more 40-hour workdays" (yes, literally, 40 hours for one of them -- the rest clocked in anywhere between 10 and 13,)  but for now I'll be happy that it only happens every two years, and that I did find a couple of things to suggest that might make the next time smoother. This week is another stunner, with Veterans Day looking to clock in at 16 hours in the office. Yay. I'm starting to think I need to find a new job. 

In other news, I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping/preparing.  And in two weeks, my good mood will be restored as I haul out all the winter decorations and prettify the house.

Not Your Average Blogger has asked me for my Christmas list.  Here is what I have on it so far: A laptpop and a Swiffer wet jet.  I am pathetic, y'all.  What do you think I should ask for? Give me some better ideas!

Blue meanies, black dogs, blah.

I haven't taken any pictures in ages. I don't know what's come over me, but every time I think about lugging out the camera and doing anything with it, I feel this overwhelming lethargy and desire to switch to Plan B and go back to bed.

Same with blogging here, for the most part.

Maybe it's because I'm busy with the other blog, which is going nowhere, by the way. No comments, no Facebook chatter, no Twitter followers.  I don't know how much longer I'll persist with it. Bleah.

Maybe it's because every time we go out with the kid, there is resulting behavioral drama -- on both sides -- that drives me way more insane than it should. It's hard to want to take pictures of things you'd rather forget.

Anyway, maybe it's time for an attitude adjustment. There's one more week until the kid is out for summer break. That seems like as good a breaking point as any, no?

Blizzard, Birthday, Bailout

You can be a child of God, or a child of rage, but this child of mine is apparently a child of snow.
I've mentioned before the snowstorm the night he was born -- and the worse snowstorm the day he was going to be inducted if he didn't make deadline. 

There was snow for his first birthday, but not a big deal.

There was no snow for his second birthday, but there was also no plumbing. And we had 20 people at our house.

There was heavy snow when he was 3, and we watched as the entire town descended on Chuck E Cheese when we did.

There was some snow and bowling when he was 4, a little snow and a party when he was 5, and no snow, but lots of ice at a hockey game when he was 6.

And then there was 7.  Great goshamighty.

All week the forecasters were sounding klaxons and flashing red lights.  Lock down! Get food! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES AFTER FRIDAY MORNING!

Friday morning, I went to work.  It started snowing juuust as I got on the interstate.  I kept an eye out the window all day. 

Eventually I had to go out.  The Young Prince had requested "White frosting! From a can! Not that stuff you make, the whippy kind!" and I had neglected to get any.  There was also a mixup with some birthday gifts, so I had to do some last-minute shopping on that front too.

It was still really warm -- I left my jacket undone. Snow wasn't sticking yet, and it was early afternoon.  I found the gifts, bought some lunch and headed back to the office.

Without the frosting, of course.

So I went back out at 3, and although the ground was still clear, it was getting colder. Plus, the wind was pretty crazy. You could turn any direction and it was still blowing snow smack into your face. I was unhappy to find that the first drug store only had chocolate frosting. I went to the one across a diagonal block, and bought the Last. Can.  -- blinded the whole way by big fat flakes bashing me in the eyeballs. 

I left work at 4:30 or so.  I got home with McDonald's for the family around 5:40.  This is because the interstate was deserted and the road was quite clear -- but once I got off the interstate the roads were terrible and visibility was quickly decreasing.

Error Number One: I call home and tell Not Your Average Blogger that I'm going to park at the top of the driveway. "Oh, don't do that. The plows will just come by and bury you."  So I park at the bottom, in the usual spot.

Error Number Two: Power outages were predicted.  In a display of hubris, I was sure if I baked the cake Friday night for Sunday consumption, we'd have power galore.

Still Friday night was nice. We watched a movie, I frosted the cake, we all went to bed.

8:30 next morning, we heard "Hum, click-click-click" as our cable and Sleep-Number bed informed us the power had gone out. This was quickly followed up by the YP barging into our room and announcing the lights were out.  Error Two deployed. 

The power magically returned at 11:30.  We scrambled to wash dishes, crank up the heat to 75 so the house will be warmer when the power goes out again, and throw some snow-soggy clothes in the dryer.

Error Number Three: NYAB decides to put pork chops in the crockpot instead of flash-frying them. 

Annnd, the power goes out again at 1:30.  

For whatever reason, NYAB decided to pass the time by reading aloud from the book he's currently working on. About the Donner party.  This was not helpful.  All that cold imagery and descriptions of 30-foot snowdrifts did nothing to warm my soul.

We moved up the kid's birthday celebration to alleviate powerless boredom. Fortunately, none of his gifts required electricity.

After another couple hours, we concluded that huge amounts of food would be ruined if we didn't do something, so we dumped the contents of our fridge on the deck and the contents of the crockpot into a cast-iron pot and threw that in the fireplace. 

Dinner was fantastic, though we took no photos. Error Three corrected.

The cake was a success.

Once it started to get dark, we dragged all our bedding down in front of the fire, lit some candles, told stories, and entertaine ourselves til it was the kid's bedtime. 

We brought in buckets of snow to melt for non-drinking water use, watched as the first snowplow of the night took a first pass at our street, and went to bed. 

Next morning we woke up early and started digging our way out. We only have one snow shovel, so we took turns -- not a huge rush, just to get started on the job.  I went to see if the neighbors had a spare, and was told it might be Tuesday before we had power. 

Well.  I had to be online for work at 4:30 Monday morning. That wasn't going to do.

So after that, we shoveled a bit faster.

At about 1 p.m., we were halfway up our driveway.  The kid came out and rolled some snowballs, but he wasn't a lot of help and we sent him back inside to watch the fire and make sure the house didn't burn down.

At 1:30, some guy with a snowblower showed up and did our neighbor's driveway.  As he was trundling it back down our street, I stopped him.

"How much??"
"To go all the way down?!?"
"Nah, just to where the car is. Halfway down."
"Oh. Twenty bucks?"
"SOLD!"

I gave the guy $30.  And he did in 15 minutes what would have taken us another 3 hours.  Talk about having the right tool for the job -- and he cut a path to our mailbox.  Best $30 I ever spent.

After that, we packed up, buried the food in a bit more snow, inhale a bit more smoke from the fireplace -- the whole house reeks -- and decamped for a hotel. With power. And wifi. And a pool.

And a jacuzzi.  My shoulders were shot last night but they feel muuuuch better today. 

The YP has dubbed this, "the birthday of Lights Out."   I call it, "the Donner Birthday Party." 

Of course, upon arriving here, I heard from a neighbor that our power had come back on a couple hours after we left.  We'll go back today to see if we have cable/internet/etc., or if I will be putting in another early morning shift at the hotel.

Regardless, nobody will be picking up our trash for a while.

Plan ahea....d.

Things I want before the next snowstorm (which will be Tuesday, apparently):

-- a snowblower

-- a drying rack for sopping wet snowy clothes.

-- snow boots

-- a snowblower

-- a generator

-- a snowblower

-- Waterproof pants, jackets, gloves, etc.

-- an extra snowshovel. Or a snowblower. 

Full coverage tomorrow.

Is It Still a Party if Nobody Shows?

I wouldn't know the answer to that actually, since all my hale and hearty neighbors did show up for our annual cookiefest last weekend, but  this is as close as I've ever come to having the game called on account of anything.

What got in the way? Well, first, the Senate decided to be a bunch of prideful twits and convene a jillion weekend sessions.  Then Mother Nature decided to be a prideful twit and dump 2 feet of snow on us.  So between those two things, it's hardly surprising that nobody ventured to make the 40-plus mile drive out on Saturday afternoon.  Even if they had, our road didn't get plowed, so they would have had to walk at least the last half-mile or so.

As it turned out, this was a good thing.  For one thing, I wound up having to do a number of things for work while the poor woman on call tried to get home before the subway closed. Then the YP and NeighborGirl went out and flopped around in the snow for a bit, and then the kid came in and went promptly to bed -- getting out of it only to throw up intermittently, and to come down and wanly say hello to the neighbors when they showed up for the evening portion of our party.   On Sunday he was still barfy, and the house was so, so quiet. It would have been enjoyable if not for the niggling urge every four minutes or so to go up and see if he was still breathing. NYAB and I took advantage of this relative peace to slalom the car up the driveway and to watch a few movies.

Turns out his bug was a doozy -- he was still sick Monday, so NYAB took him to the doctor while I went through another round of Senate votes. Doc said he was dehydrated (really? Go figure!)  and that if he continued to barf he would need to get an IV stuck in him.  NYAB brought him home and we tried to pump him full of Pedialyte, which of course didn't work as I only remembered to go up and tell him to drink every 40 minutes or so.  When he threw up the second time that afternoon, I handed off work to another colleague and went upstairs and monitored so that he took a sip every 5 minutes. That did the trick, he went from cracked and pale to flushed and irritable in a little over an hour.  Meanwhile, his malady ... moved south. Ugh. Still, easier to deal with than barf.

It is now Thursday and he is only now beginning to resemble his normal self. Yesterday he was still somewhat cranky and rather weepy, and wound up crashing for a 6 hour nap at about 4.  Though perhaps he was worn out by the excitement of the Christmas tree trying to commit suicide -- twice -- by toppling over and smashing several lights and ornaments, including some we'd had since I was at least 3, and possibly had been in my -- dad's? mom's? -- family longer than that. Apologies to whichever parental unit's memories just got destroyed.

Meanwhile, it is Christmas Eve and I was up at 5:30 for what I hope will be my last morning of work for a week and a half, and after I update the site one more time tomorrow, I'm done done done.  Since I've worked in some capacity every day for I can't even remember how long at this point -- it feels like Thanksgiving was the last day I didn't touch anything office-related, but that's probably wrong -- I'm ready.  I hate the Senate. I really do.

So tonight I will wrap a jillion presents and go to bed late.  And tomorrow we will get up way early to see what Santa hath wrought.  And the next day we get up before sunrise to go to the airport. And then, weather and travel gods willing, we will wing our way to Hawaii by way of Atlanta and Salt Lake City.  Part of me is sorely tempted to just spend the entire time there sleeping, but I have a feeling once I get there and see vistas with no effing snow, I will perk right up and get moving.

Is it terribly wrong that I am sincerely hoping that the BlackBerry won't work there?

See you in 2010, y'all, when I am tanned and rested.  

My Epitaph:

And The World Kept Spinning

Thursday was by far the worst day I've experienced in my phenomenally lucky and blessedly happy life.

Wanna know what happened? I got promoted to run a department of approx. 10 people, and NYAB was reassigned to a more editing-intensive job.

Counterintuitive, right?

I also saw 30 good friends and colleagues laid off. People I've known for 10 years, people I trusted to babysit the Young Prince when he couldn't even sit up, people I hired, people I mentored, people I am deeply invested in and loved seeing every day. I felt horribly, awfully responsible. It was hard to make eye contact.

I'm not a Kennedy, it seems. It felt like I spent a lot of time crying and trying not to cry and hiding so I could get it together and stop crying. And feeling like an ass for doing it, because there I was, with a shiny new set of keys to the kingdom sitting wrapped in a big red bow on my desk. What right had I to be upset? Such gall. Such unprofessional behavior.

As more details emerged, I was further disappointed. Thursday was the first day I've ever been anything less than proud to say I work where I work.  I trust and believe that the people in charge set up the day's operations in the way they felt was best and caused the least pain. I am sure they chose what they felt was the best of a series of terrible options. And absolutely, there ain't no good layoff and there ain't no good chain gang. But it makes me sad, because I don't think any of the announcements, for those staying or leaving, were made in a particularly humane fashion.  It was swift, it was brutal, and it was over, that is true. Not a single minute of anxiety more than necessary.  But it was also incredibly public, almost ruthlessly impersonal and devastating for a group of people who hail from an extinct company that prided itself on its heart and soul. 

There were strange outbursts. There were lingerers. There was a wake afterward.

And now, those of us left move forward in a new culture, with a new structure and new teams of co-workers, but with the same directive to produce more and better. I'm good with directives. I'm good with teamwork. I'm good when I'm too busy doing to leave time for thinking.

So next week will be different. Next week will be busy.

In the meantime, my kid politely waited until the dust had settled and held off on coming down with a vomitous stomach bug until this morning, so I'll be busy with that til Monday.  And on Monday he will be better, just in time for Grandma and Grandpa to roll into town and serve up free babysitting while I spend almost every waking minute of the next two weeks hacking out underbrush for a new path to success.  

The good news is, I have a great team. The people I kept, the people who folded in under me, they are all star players and proved their worth on Thursday, when all hell was raining down around them and yet one sacrificed her first day of vacation to cover the shift of the person we lost, another signed on early and stayed late, and the rest acquitted themselves with grace and style and zero errors. I'm incredibly excited about the people on the team I'm going to be lucky enough to lead, and where I think we are going to be able to go.

But it's still a hard, hard thing to do -- letting go, moving on, figuring it out. I have a feeling it's going to stay with everyone in that building for a long time to come. And that's going to be the hardest part. Dealing with a group of people whose reactions include survivors' guilt, outrage at betrayal, relief, etc., is going to make it very hard to keep a forward focus. I don't know how we're gonna do it, but I do know that we can if we so choose. Here's hoping everyone does...