Archives for November 2005

Yesterday, I had lunch with my boss (ex-boss, soon-to-be-ex-boss? – I don’t really know). I hadn’t seen her since early August, when Pumpkin was two weeks old and I took the girls to my office to visit my co-workers. Since then, I have gone to part-time at home, my boss has moved to North Carolina, a memo went out saying my pregnant co-worker wasn’t returning after maternity leave (which she never said, or agreed to). It has just been shady business all around at work.

Now, I realize I’m blessed – I can work from home several hours per week (I’m currently working 20 hours per week), and I get to work around my life and my schedule, and I get lots of time with my girls – this is a blessing. Despite the fact that if I had opted to return to work full time, I’d have been laid off probably within weeks (as they gave my job away!), I know that I got an okay deal, I’ve still been somewhat bent out of shape about how things had transpired. I was pretty hurt – I’ve worked side by side with most of these people for four years, and to have my boss MOVE TO ANOTHER STATE, and I didn’t find out til after the fact? It was hurtful.

She was in town this week, and we sat down over lunch to discuss what had happened. She was pretty candid about it, which I appreciated – said that a lot of what was said and done was without her knowledge – that she found out in the same memo that the rest of the company did! We talked about work, and how things were going.

After nearly 90 minutes with her, I have to say I feel better about this than I have until this point. Yes, I still get so frustrated about the way things happened. I would have preferred the powers-that-be having the decency to be honest, and more upfront about it all… But… I’m with my kids. AND I’m working. Somehow, for now, I really do have the best of both worlds (and talk about a great work dress code – it doesn’t get more “business casual” than getting to work in your pj’s!).

Life goes on.

Halloween. I hate it. I didn’t care for it a whole lot as a kid (except the candy part, because, hey, who doesn’t love getting a bag full of chocolate?), and as a mom, I really really don’t like it.

We started Halloween on Friday. That’s when The Princess had Halloween at daycare. I went for the class Halloween party, and when I went to leave, she started crying, “I wanna go home! I wanna go home!” She would not let up. She was clinging to me and crying so hard that she was slobbering and her nose was just oozing. After about 15 minutes of trying to be strong, I caved and took her home with me. Almost immediately, when we got home she asked for some candy from the huge bag of candy her teacher gave all the kids. I said no, as it was too early, and we hadn’t had lunch yet. So she says to me, “But Moooom! Miss Stacy said we couldn’t have our candy til we got home! And we’re home!” And it all became clear – she wanted to come home just so she could have Halloween candy. Isn’t that special?

Because of that Halloween party, we’ve had a bag of candy around for several days, and I anticipated it would be worse after trick or treat last night. We decided early on (that is, me and daddy decided!) that we’d only go to a few houses, so as not to overload with candy. The Princess was so giddy getting dressed up – looked so beautiful in her dress and my sister’s homecoming queen tiara… but when we’d get up to people’s houses, she’d get shy, and hide behind my husband’s legs and wouldn’t say trick or treat! It was hilarious. She would get this deer in the headlights look, refuse to talk, and then, as we’d turn around to go back down the driveway to the sidewalks, she would start chatting away like crazy. “Look at me, I’m a princess! I’m a princess! No one is looking at my pretty green light!” (We’d given her a glow stick). It was crazy!

She was up by 6 a.m. and already asking to have candy with her breakfast.

I hate Halloween.