Take Your Child To Work Day: Penelope, I feel ya

You know how much I love my kid, right?

Well...

Even so, I must agree that she'd be better served by spending today at school instead of here at the office with me. Basically, Penelope Trunk's post about abolishing Take Your Child To Work Day is dead-on right about this activity being of problematic effectiveness.

I wrote a comment on her blog that I rather liked, so I'm copying it here:

I'm at work, with my daughter, right now. She's down the hall, playing her DS in somebody's empty office that I'm doing some work in. I had to come back to my office for a second to do something. As soon as I sit down at my computer, to do what I need to do for the person down the hall, my fingers automatically take me to my blogroll, because that's what they do. Every day.

Do I want my daughter to know that my fingers take me to my blogroll, every day, while I'm "at work"? No, I do not.

This is why I do not like Take Your Child To Work Day. Because I do not want my child to figure out exactly what...uh..."work"...I do at my desk, necessarily, while she is slaving away at school learning how to divide and what "simple machines" are, taking spelling tests, meeting her reading goal for the week.

It should be Take Your Child to Your Kickass Job Or Else Stay Away While We Slack Day. I mean, if she got to see me save the world or something, that'd be one thing. But watch me write another blog post? Meh. I'd rather she didn't know, thank you very much. Actually, what I'm doing for the person down the hall is pretty cool, if you care about unified communications and even know what a fax is. But she doesn't. And she couldn't care less. I know, because I tried to explain the relevancy to her. I basically got a big fat "Is it time for lunch yet? Oh, look! I just earned the diamond gem stone by killing Eviltor and now I'm on the top level of this game!" response.

Yes, this is an enlightening experience. But not for her. For me...in a does-my-job-totally-suck-and-is-my-kid-THAT-pathetic kind of way. So, yes. I'm with you. Let's abolish this thing. This TYCTWD is not helping either of us.

Semi-Hawt, Semi-Nawt-Maintenance Men

This post is brought to you by Blognut. OK, that's untrue, because it's still me (gudnuff), but I owe the impetus for actually posting these pictures to Blognut, who just may or may not post her own picture of her own version of a semi-hawt maintenance man on her own blog. Now, I'm not sayin' these are some hawt pics. I'm just sayin', check out my maintenance man's interesting use of technology.




This guy has a cute face, but it's not visible in these pics. This is how he spends his days:



He is not a Maintenance Man in the facilities-management kind of way. He is a phone/telecommunications tech. I took these pictures on the sly when we had a T1 line go dead about a month ago. People called up saying their internet apps were dog-slow. Turned out, we were operating with one less T1 line than normal. Two guys came out from the phone company, found a pair of wires that weren't connected properly in some metal box somewhere out in the alley, used an alternate pair of wires for our T1 connection to by-pass the problem pair, and we were fixed.

Don't you love how he hangs that...that...meter reader thingy off his belt so it bumps his butt when he moves? What's up with that?

Luckily, he didn't walk around like that, with it attached to his belt that way. He just snapped it on while we were hiding out, er, I mean, troubleshooting the problem in the phone closet. I just thought it was weird, but smart, but nerdy, but attractive in that "Ooooh...shiny!" kind of way (except it's not shiny, just motion-y...movement tends to attract my ADD brain's attention as much as bright, shiny objects do), to have that thing hanging there like that, swinging back and forth between his legs.

Yes, I said it.

It's time for a low-brow post, and this is it. I'm a year older since yesterday, and have embraced that whole I'm-too-old-to-bother-with-being-socially-acceptable thing (for today, anyway). Bring on the semi-hawt, not-really-a-maintenance-man-but-close-enough pics. Bring on the pandering to the populace. Bring on the google searches. And Blognut, bring on YOUR semi-hawt maintenance man. I bet yours is better than mine.

Today's My Birthday

Today is my birthday.

In a way, I got the best birthday gift ever, from Leo, last night. He's been thinking that we, all three of us, could go to Europe next year!!!

I love to travel. I have not had the chance to travel for over twenty years. I yearn for it. I miss it. I miss it every.single.day. I've missed it every single day for a couple of decades now.

I almost squealed when he said it. Especially when he said the word "London" and then "Paris".

O.M.G.

Leo has never before uttered the word "vacation" without the word "Disney" preceding it.

This is all pie-in-the-sky planning at this point. This may not happen. But that Leo is even talking about it...holy cow. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

If only he could get a job. If only we had the money. I have no idea how he thinks we can afford it. Because we so cannot afford it. But just that he is even willing to plan it...whether it happens or not...wow, it would be so cool to travel with people I love. People I LOVE. Have you ever traveled? In a group? With people you know from school? Or with strangers? Or alone? So not the same. No where near the same.

This is huge. Imagine traveling with people you LOVE. To a foreign country. For no reason other than to spend time together, as a family, in a different place, experiencing it together. Are you kidding me?!!

Best birthday gift EVER. Just the thought of it. Wow. It'll never happen. I have to keep saying that, to keep myself grounded, to keep myself from getting carried away. Oh, but the thought. What a fantasy. Way better than anything else I'm dreaming about otherwise. I would stay in my yucky-spot ("yucky-spot" = current job, IT career, no more school, no hopes of changing for the next twenty-four years...TWENTY-FOUR YEARS...oh god...dear lord in heaven...twenty-four years of this same thing...somebody get me a paper bag to stop my hyperventilation)...I would stay, I could stay, in my yucky-spot if I knew I could do things like travel to Europe with people I love, every couple of years. Every three years, even.

Anyway, today's my birthday. Leo already picked up my cake from the store, and brought home some special candles to put on it. In the shape of question marks. Smart man that he is, there are only two of them.

Ever Feel Like Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz?

Scarecrow: "First they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!"


Tinman: "Well, that's you all over! "


I've been blogging a lot lately, but you'll not find much of it here. On my blog! (Doh!) Rather, I'm leaving pieces of myself at other people's houses, er, blogs.


See? I don't just leave my shoes under the coffee table, I leave blog-bits all over the web.


.....................Messy, messy. Don't get stressy.
.....................Just clean up and be impressy.


So, here are some discussions I've been having with myself, on other people's blogs.


Church at Easter: We don't really attend church very often, although I insisted that all 3 of us go last Sunday to sit there with Grandma and Grandpa. Why? Because I'm scared, that's why. I'm scared about Q being uneducated and possibly socially disadvantaged by her lack of church exposure. So, for any of you non-church-attending parents reading here today, how do you handle your kid's lack of religiosity? I had a boyfriend once who got beat up on the playground as a kid because he didn't believe in God. Now, I doubt it'll come to blows for Q, but I am concerned about stigmatism (HA!). Q-The-Unsaved or whatnot. How have your kids dealt with this issue? How has it manifested itself in their lives? Do they sneak out on Sunday morning without your permission and secretly attend youth group meetings? Do you catch them singing hymns in the shower that they learned from kids at school? Have you noticed a certain sneer when they say Darwin's name? Are they hiding bible verses under their mattress?


Pleasure In The Rearview Mirror: Is there such a thing as a Good Boss? Should we view each bad boss we have as a learning opportunity, as something we get to move away from eventually so that later we can be glad we're not still at that job with that sucky boss even though the one we have now also sucks but in a totally different way? Besides your boss's suckiness, and my horrible Work Husband, is there anything else you can only appreciate now because it'll be nice to see it go when you leave?

Someone's Got To Believe

Tonight was the night. Tonight, about an hour ago, in the car, in the dark, after a wonderful, friend-filled, fun-filled day, I finally told her the truth.

"Yes."

Yes, I am the Easter Bunny. And it took her less than a minute to ask if I was Santa, too.

"Uh..."  Pause.

That was enough said. She knew.

And she was fine with it. FINE. She was just glad I'd told her the truth finally.

I'm not fine with it. I'm sad about it.

Well, we agreed to keep going with our traditions. I'll still be hiding eggs tonight. She'll wake and look for them. Happily.

Here's what she said to make ME feel better about this new world we now share:

"It doesn't matter who did it. It's just the fun you have with it."

Then she smiled. "Hey, that rhymes!"

And I hugged her more than once for telling me everything was alright still. I feel so guiltily grateful that she is fine with knowing and able to comfort ME about the situation. Really, I was quite upset about the big unveiling. I had dreaded it for a long time. Another death. Another corner turned, no going back. Welcome to this side of the world, where there is no magic.

And the best part of all is that she said, "Just don't tell Daddy that I know, okay?"

And we haven't. And he is waiting for me to finish hiding the eggs. Because he believes she still believes. And that is all the belief we need to keep this thing going. For one more year, at least. I think she is so smart and so cool and so fun. I feel a little bit in awe of her right now.

From several years ago, but still, it captures her well:

Q, I love you more than words can express. And I hope your Work Husband is not an uber-douche.

Such sad news, such loss, so much to process

What in the world was going on last Thursday?

I was not familiar with Maddie Spohr prior to Thursday. I can’t seem to find out what happened other than that this little almost-2-year-old girl died. Was she sick? Was she murdered? Did she suffer from a known condition? How unexpected was it? (The Spohr web site is hard to reach due to the high volume of traffic it's receiving.)

These questions are on my mind because a little boy died on Thursday in our town. He was 9 years old, in the 4th grade. He goes to, no, he went to my daughter's school. He had a known heart condition. Everything was going as normal on Thursday, a typical day. At some point Thursday morning, he fainted/passed out at his desk. The teacher performed CPR, in front of the rest of the class. He did not regain consciousness. They called an ambulance. He got to the hospital and died shortly after he arrived there.

He was fine in the morning, went to school like any other day, was dead by 2pm.

I don't know his name. They aren't releasing it. My daughter didn't know him directly. Every parent of a student at that school on Thursday received automated phone calls to our cell phones and to our home phones. We received emails. The local paper gave out breaking news updates every two hours. It was shocking. It was unexpected. It was very, very sad.

What happened to Maddie? Not that it matters, ultimately. But in a way, knowing the circumstances leading up to the death helps us put it in broader perspective. Thanks.

Stolen Lines, like, totally

Now that I've opened Pandora's Box and mentioned Work Husband here, it makes sense to continue along that road. Because I feel like it.

I sort of mentioned in yesterday's post, and went into some detail in my comment to that post, about this Work Husband guy with whom I have to work.

One time, when he was conducting a training session on the new version of Excel, he setup a sample spreadsheet with columns for Name and Title and Office Location, etc. He put his first name in the Name column, and for his title, he put "God". I kid you not.

So I've been swearing to him all this time, apparently.

And just now, I saw the following post over at It's Easy to Complain. Fun too. The poster doesn't allow comments, as far as I could see. So I'm reposting his entire post below, and telling you all this: his uber-douche describes MY Work Husband pretty accurately! Only at my work, if I said “You have got to be fucking kidding me," I'd be the bad guy. So I just say it under my breath and read blogs on my phone while he blabs and blabs and blabs.

From It's Easy to Complain. Fun, too:

Don't Waste My Time
Yesterday, in my quarterly review, my boss said he loved how I do my job, and encouraged me to be more of a leader on the team.
This morning, I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when the uber-douche I work with tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you have a sec?” he asked. “I am holding an ad hoc meeting and I wanted you to participate.”
I sighed loudly and begrudgingly agreed. I go into a conference room. He sits at the head of the table. Everyone in the room is on the same level within the organization; no superiors are present.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” he said, voice dripping with self-importance. “I wanted to do an impromptu brain storming session for ways that we can enhance the company image in relation to hot button issues of the day, like the green movement, etc.”
The room sat in silence for two seconds. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, and I got up and left. Everyone else followed. That is good leadership.

And yes, Work Husband loves to do the tap-tap on the shoulder, or suddenly pops into your office, never asks if you're already working on something, etc. He is 51% why I hate my job. He is about 40% why I am thinking of law school, because he is most likely going to be my boss once our current one retires. And I'd rather incur $100,000 in debt by going to law school than stay here for that fun little experience.