Yesterday I called my mother from work, and she said, "your stroller arrived today!"
"Stroller? I didn't order a stroller." A few more of these intellectually-charged sentences between us, and I surmised the stroller was purchased from our gift registry (though my mother couldn't tell me who was on the return address label because she couldn't read it without her glasses.)
The whole thing was way more exciting than I expected. It came from Grandpa R. and his wife, and wouldn't you know the first gift would come from the one person I cannot invite to the shower? Though Mr. R and I recently clarified our position in the ongoing saga of old wife v. new wife, I still feel like an as$hole.
It seems the wrong stroller was delivered to us, however; the one we received is a two-seater, and the one we registered for is a one-seater, and since it holds the infant carrier we were gifted from friends, I'm pretty firm on having the one I selected. So tonight we go exchanging.
Well. That's it for this posting. Nothing fancy, simply a record of Audrey's first gift from the registry.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
pink slips, or the lack therof
Funny how what you fear the most meets you halfway (eddie vetter, poet laureate), and sometimes, if you're willing to stare it down, it actually retreats. Two weeks ago, I'm driving home from work, looking forward to a trip with Mr. R to Virginia Beach, and he tells me he's probably going to be offered a). a severance package or b). the opportunity to apply for a network engineer job within the company. In one week. I thought I was going to pass out I was so frightened. I think I said something like, "Now? With the baby coming?" I slept very little that night, but we were both determined to chin up and enjoy our last getaway before baby, though I can't say I really saw his chin go down.
We spoke very little on the way down (invariably, I fall asleep in the car), but when we arrived and settled in for a seafood dinner on the boardwalk, he opened up about contingency employment plans, and I reciprocated with a clarification of my fears: uncertainty, not lack of confidence. As we spoke about new starts, I felt the familiar spark, and I heard it in his voice as he described his discontent with Corporate America and the American Dream as we've come to know it. He has ideas for starting his own business, and still enjoys fixing cars and would be very content doing just that. I came away realizing my sense of safety was misfounded, so I began shifting it off of his employer and onto his own shoulders.
And I slept that night.
In the days to come, thoughts of the pink slip were amazingly optimistic. I felt brave, excited, and not fearful in the least. On Tuesday, he thought he might want to be a teacher. On Wednesday, it was laser tattoo removal. Thursday, auto mechanic. On Friday, I surprised myself and told him I thought he should fore go the network engineer option altogether and just take the package. Mentally, emotionally, we had lept.
This morning, he had a late start. He was in the addition, working on his laptop, and I was upstairs getting ready for work. I heard him talking, assumed he had dialed into a meeting, and went about the business of blowdrying my hair. I had the strangest thought about how retirement plans are essentially Ponzi schemes, and I couldn't wait for him to finish his call so I could discuss this profound observation with him. So, he came upstairs, and I blurted out my Ponzi nonsense, and he said, "they didn't offer me a package." Totally out of context, this hit me like a brick, and then as my Ponzi-focused brain reversed direction and put his statement into the proper context, I felt the fear again, thinking he had lost his job and his employer had just stiffed him on 8 month's of severance, to boot.
Turned out, they did not offer him the option but rather told him he was being reassigned, effective immediately. As he relayed this to me, there was no spark in his eyes, there was a resignation - one which I felt, too.
It's time to move on, that much we know. I said joyful invocations all day for his continued employment, but the experience reminded me that I would work two jobs to keep him from selling his soul to the highest bidder or to keep me feeling "safe." It taught me that I still have a few risks in me. Last week, he said the most secure 8 months he would have ever had with the company would have been the 8 months of severance, and he was absolutely right.
Safety is an illusion.
We spoke very little on the way down (invariably, I fall asleep in the car), but when we arrived and settled in for a seafood dinner on the boardwalk, he opened up about contingency employment plans, and I reciprocated with a clarification of my fears: uncertainty, not lack of confidence. As we spoke about new starts, I felt the familiar spark, and I heard it in his voice as he described his discontent with Corporate America and the American Dream as we've come to know it. He has ideas for starting his own business, and still enjoys fixing cars and would be very content doing just that. I came away realizing my sense of safety was misfounded, so I began shifting it off of his employer and onto his own shoulders.
And I slept that night.
In the days to come, thoughts of the pink slip were amazingly optimistic. I felt brave, excited, and not fearful in the least. On Tuesday, he thought he might want to be a teacher. On Wednesday, it was laser tattoo removal. Thursday, auto mechanic. On Friday, I surprised myself and told him I thought he should fore go the network engineer option altogether and just take the package. Mentally, emotionally, we had lept.
This morning, he had a late start. He was in the addition, working on his laptop, and I was upstairs getting ready for work. I heard him talking, assumed he had dialed into a meeting, and went about the business of blowdrying my hair. I had the strangest thought about how retirement plans are essentially Ponzi schemes, and I couldn't wait for him to finish his call so I could discuss this profound observation with him. So, he came upstairs, and I blurted out my Ponzi nonsense, and he said, "they didn't offer me a package." Totally out of context, this hit me like a brick, and then as my Ponzi-focused brain reversed direction and put his statement into the proper context, I felt the fear again, thinking he had lost his job and his employer had just stiffed him on 8 month's of severance, to boot.
Turned out, they did not offer him the option but rather told him he was being reassigned, effective immediately. As he relayed this to me, there was no spark in his eyes, there was a resignation - one which I felt, too.
It's time to move on, that much we know. I said joyful invocations all day for his continued employment, but the experience reminded me that I would work two jobs to keep him from selling his soul to the highest bidder or to keep me feeling "safe." It taught me that I still have a few risks in me. Last week, he said the most secure 8 months he would have ever had with the company would have been the 8 months of severance, and he was absolutely right.
Safety is an illusion.
Monday, March 2, 2009
baby tricks
I like reading ahead on the your-pregnancy-week-by-week sites: not too far ahead, just what should be happening the next week. So, while reading about the 26-week markers (which is where I am now), I learned that the baby's eyes develop quite a bit even though the iris is not yet formed. You can test this, says one of the sites, by shining a flashlight on your belly. If you feel the baby move when you shine the light, she's noticing it.
I told Mr. R about the experiment, and he was more curious about the flashlight trick than he has been about any of the stupid baby tricks I've told him about, to date, including the one where she comes shooting out of my vagina like a rabbit out of a hat. So, after dinner I tried it, and it totally worked. I put the flashlight on my belly, and I felt her move away from the light. It was really cool. Suffice to say we spent a fair amount of time harassing her with the flashlight thoughout the evening. I think we desensitized her because her movements were lighter each time, but we'll see what happens tonight.
So, the theme of the week, last week, was, "how a father affects his daughter's future relationships with men." It started, innocently enough, with a conversation about Drew Peterson, the 54-year-old cop whose 20-something wife disappeared about 18 months' ago. Over dinner, I told Mr. R that he was engaged, again, to a 24-year old, and Mr. R's response was to stare at me for about 20 seconds, shake his head, and say, "this is why men need to be better fathers to their daughters." Wow. I am so glad he gets that, being that he's going to begin raising our daughter in 3 short months. Next came the Mardi Gras party we attended. Our neighbors threw the party, and their college-aged daughter and her cohort of male friends came home for the bash.
I will have to continue these thoughts on another post as I am being called away from my computer. Sorry.
I told Mr. R about the experiment, and he was more curious about the flashlight trick than he has been about any of the stupid baby tricks I've told him about, to date, including the one where she comes shooting out of my vagina like a rabbit out of a hat. So, after dinner I tried it, and it totally worked. I put the flashlight on my belly, and I felt her move away from the light. It was really cool. Suffice to say we spent a fair amount of time harassing her with the flashlight thoughout the evening. I think we desensitized her because her movements were lighter each time, but we'll see what happens tonight.
So, the theme of the week, last week, was, "how a father affects his daughter's future relationships with men." It started, innocently enough, with a conversation about Drew Peterson, the 54-year-old cop whose 20-something wife disappeared about 18 months' ago. Over dinner, I told Mr. R that he was engaged, again, to a 24-year old, and Mr. R's response was to stare at me for about 20 seconds, shake his head, and say, "this is why men need to be better fathers to their daughters." Wow. I am so glad he gets that, being that he's going to begin raising our daughter in 3 short months. Next came the Mardi Gras party we attended. Our neighbors threw the party, and their college-aged daughter and her cohort of male friends came home for the bash.
I will have to continue these thoughts on another post as I am being called away from my computer. Sorry.
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