Laughter and Tears! The Yin! The Yang!

Bright Spot of the Day

On our way to school this morning, Viva says, “Did you know we have secret signs at school?”

I immediately think of kindergarteners either throwing gang signs (East-SIIIIDE!) or dressed in softly gleaming white robes, performing by candlelight scary occult rituals for which there are secret signs. Guardedly, I say, “No, I didn’t know that. What are these secret signs? Are they so secret you can’t tell me?”

“No. What you do is you hold up your fingers to tell the teacher.”

“Okay, and what does that tell her?”

“If you hold up three fingers, it means you need a drink of water.”

“Oh,” I say, relieved. “I get it now.”

“If you hold up one finger, it means you have to go to the bathroom.”

“I see,” I say. “What does it mean if you hold up two fingers?”

“PEACE,” Viva says with a heavy sigh, and then gets pissed off because I can’t stop laughing.

Shitty Spot of the Day

A new director has joined our department and today is her first day. Since I was one of only a few people here when she arrived, somehow it falls to me to get her acclimated. Eventually we are joined by one of my other co-workers, who shows this new person that she’ll be sitting (for the moment) in a cubicle. (Note: We are notoriously short on space over here; it took me six months to get an office when I started.) So my co-worker assures this new person that the cubicle is only temporary.

The new person, L., says confidently, “Oh, I know.” And turning to me she says, “How do you feel about having to move out of your office?”

“I wasn’t aware that that was a done deal,” I say. My boss had recently floated the idea that I might have to move to an as-yet nonexistent office, which I would have to share with someone else, and I had already firmly stated my opposition to that idea. It now becomes clear that this has been presented to this new person as something that is going to happen pretty much as soon as I go out on maternity leave. She realizes she has said something she shouldn’t and starts backpedaling. “Woops, don’t get mad at me, I’m new,” she says.

I am PISSED. Really pissed. I’m not pissed at her – what sense would that make – and I say so. I also say my understanding was that this whole discussion is premature, and we don’t know where I’ll end up. I then reassure her she shouldn’t worry about it. We move on getting her oriented and after a few minutes I excuse myself.

I go down to the parking garage and sit in my car and call Sweet Dub, and as soon as he answers the phone I start crying. (Lucky, lucky him.) I just think it’s pretty shitty to plan to move someone into my office while I’m off having a baby. I mean, shit, I’m seven months pregnant and trying to keep all the aspects of my life under control and I have really tried to not let this pregnancy interfere with my work life, and I feel under the circumstances I have handled it well up to this point. This is just what people do, right? But my feelings are hurt and right now I just want to throw my hands up in the air and go home.

Since Sweet Dub’s job is imploding (they had some kind of disaster yesterday which he is in the middle of running damage control on), I let him off the phone after a few minutes. Blow my nose. Drink some water and take a few deep breaths. Send good vibes to the baby, get out of the car, and go back upstairs.

As the morning progresses, people ambush me in my office and I end up having to rehash this incident three times. First with my boss, then with the co-worker who was present when it happened, and then with my boss’ boss, who swears he was the one who told me they were going to give away my office while I’m gone. As in, yes, that IS going to happen. The alleged plan is to build out a conference room while I’m away – cut it in half and put up a wall and a second door.

I am thoroughly sick of it. At this point, I have closed my door and every time I get down to work, someone else comes by and knocks and asks about some other fucking thing. So since I’m not getting anything done, I had to vent. And here we are.

Peace (that’s two fingers).