When Things Are Complicated

The job that I currently have, and which I have had for two years now (!!), has been challenging in a number of ways I could not have anticipated. Middle management, for one thing, is just as bad as it has traditionally sounded to me. I avoided managing people for years for this reason. As a middle manager, you are sandwiched between your boss and your employee(s), and must run interference when there is a problem on either end. Managing people takes an insane amount of time and energy, and quite frankly, I already have children so I don't find managing adults all that fulfilling.

I work with someone who has naturally-occurring high levels of stress, to the extent that every speed bump is a ten on a scale of one to ten. She takes work-related things personally. If someone doesn't respond to an email in a timely fashion, for example, she tells me she hates that person, and from then on, that person has a terrible track record in her eyes. She also then gives attitude to that person, who understandably does not enjoy receiving attitude and thusly, tries to avoid working with her. 

I explain to her how she can't respond to people from a place of hostility, how it will work better if she recognizes everyone has multiple demands on their time and her request is just one of multiple requests that each person has to manage for themselves. I urge her to approach co-workers in a spirit of collegiality rather than as adversaries who have perversely decided to ruin her workflow and her life.

I am turning the tables on myself and for my own sanity, not taking things my boss does personally. I do pretty well with everyone else, but my boss can come across as rather judgmental (she is a bit of a perfectionist). You can see how this might make me a bit nuts between the two.

So today, I give you this:

 

In case you can't read it, it says: 

The sun is up

The sky is blue

It's beautiful

And so are you

It's a postcard for a business called Lyrical Kids, which offers "music classes for babies, kids, and their grown-ups."

It is a simple message. I keep it by my desk to remind myself when things get complicated. They don't always have to be.

Pampering Myself (and not with Diapers)

I took a few days off a couple of weeks ago (calling it a vacation seems a bit disingenuous, since we didn’t go anywhere and since I spent most of it working hard corralling the kids without the help of my husband). On one of the days when Viva was in camp and Ceeya was at daycare, I took 3.5 hours at a new salon to get my hair colored. Call me shallow, vain, whatever, but baby, I felt like a new woman when I walked out of there. My new colorist, April, was sweet and down to earth and my hair looks exactly its natural color. I mean exactly.

My hair is very thick and resistant to color, so whenever I color it takes forever. Somehow she managed to cover most of the silver hairs that were cropping up (I did find a few strays here and there later) and she also managed to duplicate not only my natural light brown hair but also the lighter highlights that naturally occur. I’m not sure exactly what went down in the salon—I may have made promises I couldn’t keep, something about free tickets to the Cayman Islands or something, it’s all a bit foggy in my memory, but you know, whatever I said, she hooked me up and my hair looks better than it has in recent memory.

I was thinking, as I walked out, how difficult it is for me to do this kind of thing with any regularity, but how easily it made me feel better about myself. And feeling better about myself makes me better in every other aspect of my life (cue cheesy music here, I mean could I BE more predictable). Sorry for the cliché, but for reals, it’s one small thing that makes a big difference.

Take care of yourselves out there. Give pampering a chance!

This Parenting Thing

Have you noticed, you who have children, that this parenting thing is um, kind of non-stop? As Exhibit A, I give you this:

Dear [name redacted],

I would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter. I spoke with [AM childcare person] this morning, and wanted to follow up with an email. When I picked Cily up at around 5:00 on Friday, her chart indicated that she had not eaten anything since 12:10. You may remember I asked you about it, and you said perhaps she was fed and no one recorded it. When I dropped her off that morning, I left her with three 4 oz. bottles. One was completely full when I picked her up – consistent with her not having been fed.

Cily does not always cry when she is hungry. I noticed she was sucking on her fingers loudly in the car on the way home. When I fed her, she drained the bottle (4 oz.) and wanted more. I then changed her and noticed her diaper was really heavy.

Looking back at the chart, it looks like she was asleep from 12-ish until 3:30 or so. In the time between her waking up and my arrival, she did not have her diaper changed and was not fed. This is the second time since January (when Cily started at [daycare]) that I have arrived to discover Cily hasn’t been fed for several hours. This is absolutely not acceptable.

Cily should get a diaper change within five (at most ten) minutes of waking up, and should be fed every three hours if possible. She shouldn’t go five hours without eating anything, even if she is not crying. If this is not feasible, please let me know.

It’s difficult to leave my child in someone else’s care. It’s really upsetting to be paying a premium for care and feel she is not being attended to.

Yours truly,
Lisa Blah Blah

I think it speaks for itself. Will let you know what response I get at pickup today.

Squeakers

Cily has the croup and it has resulted in laryngitis. She coughs so hard she vomits, and then she cries in the most pathetic heartbreaking squeak. Needless to say, Sweet Dub and I have been taking turns taking sick days to stay home with her. She is intermittently feverish, but surprisingly not very irritable at all. A little fussy, but snuggly and sweet fussy rather than “O My God nothing is making her happy” fussy.

Today, Sweet Dub went to work from 6AM to 11AM, and then came home so I could go into work in the afternoon. Of course, now that I am at work (and it's almost time to leave) I can’t concentrate. Hence:

Grace in Small Things*

1. This morning I was tickling Cily on the sides of her neck and she really started laughing – which, since she has laryngitis, was not very loud, but nonetheless really turned my heart into a big gooey mess.

2. Last night, our neighbor from around the corner came over to introduce herself and to let us know of the deadline for a local charter school (next Wednesday). I guess she’d been talking to our next door neighbor and he told her of our school issues. We had a nice chat and I found out that not only does she have a 7-year-old daughter who is into a lot of the same things Viva is, but there’s a 5-going-on-6-year-old girl living next door to them as well. You mean Viva might actually be able to play with little girls her age, a mere stone’s throw away? Sweet!

3. Today I am only working a half-day! Granted, that is because Cily is sick, but hey, a half-day on a Friday? I’ll take it!

4. Today an old classmate of mine from college emailed me unexpectedly – found me through Facebook – and she is just as I remember, funny and on point.

5. At work today someone dropped off a bunch of free pies. I just had a slice of blackberry pie heated up in the microwave and it was heavenly.

* Hat tip to Journeymama for her blog posts which led me to the Grace in Small Things Website. If you haven’t read her blog, take a look – she and her husband moved last year from the States to India and I love to read about their transition. They have four very small children and you’d think their lives would be nuts, but Rae is always kind of inspirational and peaceful. Her kids are beautiful, too.