St. Joseph

Sunday afternoon when we were at the Family Homestead for St. Patrick’s day brunch (we had reubens: they are corned beef & cabbage, after all), Sae asked me if she could borrow some shirts.  When she was buying her pregnancy wardrobe, she wasn’t counting on the ridiculously warm weather this year.  So all her larger shirts are long sleeved, and geared towards keeping her warm in cold weather.  Considering the current highs in the 70s, and realizing that she’s not going to immediately spring back into her pre-pregnancy shape for some time after this kid finally decides to join us in the sunshine, she needs a little wardrobe help.

I had coincidentally just packed up a big bag of stuff to take down to Goodwill, so I headed home to get it, plus a few other things I thought she might get some good use of.  And now she’s got some well-washed swing dance shirts in her wardrobe, plus one of the t-shirts I inherited from Jacob, plus the Our Lady of Guadelupe t-shirt she originally gave me some years ago.  And it was nice.

Sae is so ready to have this baby.  Her official due date was Thursday, so now she’s overdue.  Today while she was home, Mom brought out the bags of baby clothes she had stored, the very favorite things she’d saved through all her pregnancies, and kept for nineteen years since Boy-O grew out of them.  She also brought out the christening gown that all of us were baptized in – a delicate embroidered thing of fine white batiste, with drawn thread work, and tiny white matching shoes.  It was passed down on her side of the family, and hopefully will keep being passed down.

I wish that Big Brother’s son could be baptized in that gown too.  I got to see pictures of him for the first time earlier this week.  He is so sweet.  (You can see for yourself on Indy’s blog.)  He is also still missing a name, though the deadline is coming fast.  So hopefully soon we’ll know his name.

Speaking of our expanding family, Boy-O is also adding to the family.  He and his roommates have adopted a baby sugar glider.  It’s also still waiting for a name, though Captain Nutters is a strong contender.  I think even a sugar glider needs a better name than that.  But it’s three young men and a baby sugar glider, which is about as ridiculously cute as a small marsupial can be.  It’s also a recipe for a sitcom.  I predict hijinks.

Saturday night Flo came to the St. Patrick’s day hang out at my house.  She looked at me, and said, “What a difference a year makes, right?”  And I had to laugh.

St. Mathilda

Today I got to see my new offices with the furniture all arranged for the first time.  Friends, it is so beautiful.  And big!  Two storage rooms!  Two!  One just for files that I can keep locked all the time, and one for everything else I have to keep track of (see also: uniforms).  And as much as I’m going to miss being near my friends (see also: police officers), I am so ready to move.  Sigh.

In other news, my new baby nephew still doesn’t have a name.  I think this might take a while.  My only hope is that when he finally does get a name, it won’t be something that will automatically get him teased ruthlessly on the playground.  Though everyone gets teased on the playground anyway.  But if you have an opportunity to cut down on the amount of future torment your kid is going to be subjected to, isn’t it your parently duty to do so?  Though it’s not like you can control the future.  And now I’ve been debating back and forth for way too long about names, and parent duties and control issues, and to be honest, let’s just name the kid already, amirite?

Tonight was swing dancing, as all Wednesday nights are fated to be.  Dancing has been challenging lately.  For a long time I’ve felt stuck.  I knew that I wasn’t dancing like I wanted to be dancing, I knew that there were things I needed to be working on, but I didn’t know what they were, I didn’t know what to do to be better.  So at Smackdown I used some of my new income to take my first ever private lesson with my dance crush, Peter Strom.  And it was good.  It was worth every penny (and there were a lot of pennies).  It was also a good experience in ego-reduction.  For the first time in years I felt like the gawky beginning dancer I used to be who was just discovering how badly she danced.

This was not at all the fault of my instructor.  He was great, and he did exactly what I asked him to do: be honest with me about my dancing.  And he gave me things to work on.  So I’ve been working.  It’s hard.  It’s challenging.  I’m trying to make myself move in ways that are entirely new to me, and in some ways go against the way I painstakingly worked so hard to learn how to dance.  But it’s good.  Tonight for the first time, I feel like I’m dancing just a little differently, maybe a little better.  It feels like something has changed.  I did the snappiest switches I’ve ever done in my life.  I danced fast without getting an asthma attack.  It felt really good.  I still have a long, long way to go.  But I feel like I’m on my way.

St. Constantine

So before I get to explaining this picture of pinata-y magnificence, I should perhaps mention that I am now an Aunt, not just a step-Aunt (which is pretty awesome all in itself) but a full Aunt, the Aunt of a nephew to be precise – a little scrap of humanity running about 7lbs, 11.5 oz and 22 inches long, currently resting after his ordeal along with his family in Korea.  Yup, Sunny had the baby, Big Brother is now a father, and we have a brand new baby in the family for the first time since we brought Boy-O home from the hospital twenty years ago.

Yeah, it feels pretty darn good.  I was at the shoe store looking at work shoes when I got the news, and I started crying right there in the clearance aisle.  And then I had to text half the people I know to tell them the news.  And then I had to explain to the sales clerk, that, no, a bird had not somehow gotten into the store – that was my text alert sound from all the reply texts I was getting.  And it was fairly awesome.

One thing the kid is still missing (besides getting cooed at in person by all his aunts and uncles, which is going to have to wait until we can assemble the cash to get the kid and his mama here) is a name.  You see Big Brother is really Big Brother IV, so the question is whether we’re going to have a Big Brother V, or if Big Brother and Sunny are going to strike out in some other direction.  And then if they strike out in a new direction (which is likely, since I don’t think Big Brother has ever much liked his name), how will they honor the child’s heritage, both Korean and Western.  So it will be interesting to see what Sunny and Big Brother choose.

In other news it has been a pretty darn good weekend all ’round, with lots of quality girl time, which is exactly what I needed.  The week had been a hard kind of roller coaster.  I’m not going to blog about why, but it’s safe to say that by the time Friday rolled around I was really ready to see my girls.  Luckily, this weekend is Pippi’s birthday, and Little J had planned a surprise birthday party for her, and asked me to bring the pinata.  I love pinatas.  But I didn’t want to go with the usual cardboard Dora the Explorer stuff at the local supermart.  So I headed down to the combination Asian/Hispanic specialty store down on Airway, and poked around to see if they had pinatas.  And oh, boy, did they ever!  There was the turquois and blue unicorn, and the big red burro with the huge ears, and then, in the midst of them, this big orange foo dog.  Or lion.  Or whatever he is.  All I knew was that he was awesome, and I needed to take him home.

So I did.  And then I took him to The Pessimist’s house, where we hugged him and kissed him, stuffed him full of candy, and then battered him to bits with a stick.  It was great. Then I brought his head home with me, and stuck it in the corner of the living room as a trophy.

No, I’m not disturbed.  Why do you ask?

It was an excellent party.  Apart from the pinata, I ended up sitting at a table with Flo and Mo and The Girl Next Door and Jar Jar’s Friend, playing Rummy and laughing until I cried at the really stupid jokes off the Laffy Taffy wrappers.  I haven’t laughed like that in a while, the kind of laughing when you start having trouble breathing, and everyone just keeps laughing and laughing until you don’t really know what you’re laughing at anymore.  These days this mostly happens around my family, usually after my brothers have tickled me into fits, and then Boy-O starts making jokes about Wheezy, and you know, it goes from there.  But this time all I needed was my friends and some really, really stupid jokes.

Saturday I did some necessary shopping, and then met up with Pippi to head up to Flo’s house.  We haven’t seen much of Flo lately since she’s been on the Disabled List after ankle surgery.  I’ve missed her, though I’ve been so busy it’s been hard to realize how much I’d missed hearing her laugh.  So we headed up to have dinner together, catch up on everything that’s been going on, and just be together.  It was really, really good, and we laughed a lot!

And now it’s the beginning of another week.  And while I’m kinda hoping that this one goes better, I couldn’t ask for a better weekend!

St. Mary di Rosa

Today I got a personal tweet from @KnittingRyanG, he of the F***Yeah, Ryan Gosling and Feminist Ryan Gosling fame.  This has so overloaded my circuits that all I have to give you today is pictures.  Pictures of a baby sweater so cute, it might be cuter than Ryan Gosling. Judge for yourself:

It’s the Sunnyside Cardigan from Tanis Fiber Arts, and the yarn is Premiere Yarns Serenity Garden in the Gems colorway.

Why, yes, those are itty bitty baby bunny rabbit buttons.  Yes, I do understand why you’re suddenly cooing at a computer screen.  It happens.

Of course I made matching socks.  The universe might implode if I didn’t.

This much cuteness in one place sometimes causes unusual reactions in those who behold it.  There’s cooing, and heart-melting, and shrieks of joy.  Or, you know, if you’re Boy-O you might decide that you need to try it on.  Immediately.  As one does with baby sweaters.  As you can see, it totally fits him.

The sweater is destined for Big Brother and Sunny’s new baby, who will hopefully arrive sometime in early March.  Considering how international shipping sometimes works, hopefully it will actually get there by then.

And now I’m going to go have a little lie down, and recompose my shattered nerves.

Also, I should mention that all of these pictures, except for the last one of Boy-O, were very generously taken for me by Indy.  I had taken pictures of the sweater before I gave it to her to put in the Christmas box for China, but when I looked at the pictures again, I realized that some of them were blurry.  So Indy got the sweater out of the box again before shipping it, and photographed it so that I could have a record of the ridiculous cuteness.  Isn’t she awesome.  Yeah, I think so too.

St. John the Wonder Worker

My dears, I have a dilemma.  You see, I had hoped to start this blog post with the splendiferously good news that last Friday the nice ladies at Job 3 (the one at the small regional hospital) offered me a full time position as the HR Support Partner at the brand new hospital that’s being built as I type, starting either the second week of January (if the head of the HR department gets her way) or the beginning of February (if the financial guy she has to clear things through gets his).  All weekend I’ve been excited about this.  It’s great work, which I enjoy, the benefits and pay are the same as what I’m getting now, I like everyone I’d be working with, and I’ve been really impressed with the medical network that both hospitals are a part of.  Plus, since I’d be helping set up a brand new office, and I’d be the only admin, I’d have the chance for once to set things up the way I like them.  Being the one secretary supporting an office is very different from being the undersecretary answering to multiple other secretaries, all of whom have their own ideas about How Things Should Be.  Plus there’s the whole only having one work to go to instead of three thing.  I was pretty excited.

Then this morning, I went in to tell my boss at Job 2 about my job offer.  This is the job with the extra hours and the pretty building, where they’ve been telling me that they can’t tell me anything definite about whether or not I have a future with them until sometime towards the end of January.  I was fully expecting to tell my boss about the job offer, to have her tell me that they would be very sorry to lose me, but that she still wasn’t able to offer me anything definite, for me to get the ok to keep working up until I switched to my new job, and that would be it.  Instead, she asked me how firm my commitment to the new job was, and then told me that she was in the process of getting my current job posted as a full time position, so that I could apply for it, and be hired into their department full time.  However, she hadn’t gotten far in that process yet, both because she is very, very busy right now, and because it’s difficult to get our HR to do anything in December.  So she asked me if I would consider perhaps staying on here, and working with them full time instead.

And now I’m torn.  Both jobs have great co-workers, similar pay, similar benefits.  Both have opportunities for upward advancement once I’ve settled into the job.  I like the work at the hospital better, and I’d be able to have a little more autonomy there.  But the university has a more laid back attitude towards a lot of things (both good and bad), plus when I finally get to the place where I can go back to school, I’d be able to get tuition reimbursement pretty easily.  The hospital offers tuition reimbursement as well, but they only have a limited amount to spend on it each year, so they prioritize the jobs that benefit the hospital.  So if I were going for a nursing degree, I might have a pretty good shot at it, but a theology degree?  Not so much.  But going back to school is a long way off in any case.  Wouldn’t I rather enjoy my work in the meantime?

Also, how ironic is it that, after all the time when I couldn’t even get an interview, suddenly I’ve got two companies pulling out all the stops to try to hire me full time?

I think in the end I’m going to probably stick with the hospital.  I was totally happy with the hospital job before this other possibility was raised.  I still really want to do it.  It would be nice to have a fresh start.  But now, no matter what I decide, I have to say no to people I really like, who have gone out of their way to be good to me.  And I don’t like that at all.

So what I’m asking for from you guys is feedback.  Do you have any advice, encouragement, or good counsel to pass on?  Whether you do or not, could you also please pray for me, that I can make the right decision, and that I can feel peaceful about whatever decision I make.  Sigh.  I would love to have a little peace about this right now.

In other news, we are starting to be recovered from the latest wedding.  Our dining room is now clear of floral products, and back to being used as an actual dining room.  The Duchess and 007 are back from their honeymoon, and plunging right back into their busy lives.  Instead of sewing things, I’m back to knitting away on baby things.  I’m trying to finish a tiny sweater to send off to Big Brother and Sunny in their Christmas box.  So far I just have one sleeve to go, so I might even make it!  We’ll see.

Also, on Saturday we had Swing In The Snow, our big swing dance.  It was a roaring success, with a packed dance floor, and lots of fun people to dance with.  I was delighted when a bunch of my friends from my Catholic young adult group showed up too.  It made everything extra fun!  Now some of them are talking about maybe having a swing dance lesson for one of our meetings.  Who knows?  Maybe I won’t be the only Catholic at swing dancing anymore!