St. Blaise

Sometimes, when you start a new job, they don’t tell you what the perks are going to be.  Like really hot security guards.  They don’t tell you about that.  You just have to find out for yourself, the day you meet the head of security (you know, the guy you’ve been e-mailing multiple times a day about security clearances), and he’s six foot plus of manly pulchritude, complete with deep blue eyes fringed with thick, dark lashes, and a quiet, almost bashful manner.  And then there’s his staff, every man of them apparently picked for his ability to turn female brains to jelly just by walking by.  It’s ridiculous.  And of course my new office is twenty feet away from the security desk.  I swear, it’s like working with the cast of Zoolander.  It makes me feel so shallow, but still, the fact that I’ve got so much gorgeousness strolling past my door (and, you know, occasionally stopping by) definitely goes a long way towards making this job a lot more fun.

It helps that  they’ve all been really sweet guys too, at least the ones I’ve talked to.  The other day the one with the amazing eyes saw that I was opening approximately twenty million boxes of uniforms with my not-so-sharp desk scissors, and gave me his special, super-sharp police knife to open them with instead.  It was awesome – the packing tape practically fell off the boxes before I even got around to cutting it.  But then, most of the guys around here have been very sweet.  The IT guys have been almost disturbingly willing, nay, eager to get me whatever I want the instant I hint that I might have been possibly thinking about wanting it.  On Tuesday at lunchtime I told my boss that it would be really nice to have a scanner that I didn’t have to go back out to the trailers to use, and before my lunch was half digested, I had all three guys from the IT department down in my office installing a nice little desktop model that not only scans both sides of a paper at once, but can handle different page sizes in the same scan, and came with Adobe Acrobat.  And it’s not just them.  Our facilities director seems almost upset that I can’t come up with more things that I need.  The mischief part of me is tempted to see how far I can push this, but honestly there isn’t much more that is reasonable for me to ask for while I’m in temporary quarters, and I don’t want to spoil things for the time down the road when I will have real favors to ask.  I just have to hope that they’ll still be in the giving frame of mind when I actually need something!

Besides the abundance of really, really ridiculously good-looking men in my corner of the world, what my life has mostly been since they moved me out of the trailer into the building Monday morning has been busy.  Crazy busy.  Busy like I haven’t been in a long time.  People lined up out my office door and down the hallway busy.  Having to lock my door and hide to eat my lunch sandwich in peace busy.  I think I’ve only been this busy a few times before in my life, and those times mostly involved coordinating movie premieres, or arranging a month’s retreat schedule, housing, and travel arrangements for a traveling youth ministry team, or things like that.  I think this is the first time I’ve been this busy and actually got paid for it.  Which is kinda amazing, if you think about it.  Things have quieted down a little, but I’m still running all day.  I pretty much collapse as soon as I get home.  Wednesday night I fully intended to go to dancing, but then I fell asleep on the couch before I ever got there.  I’m sure that soon things will calm down a little, and I’ll get acclimated to the new pace, and I won’t be so exhausted, but it will take a little while.

In the meantime, this is looking like a very full weekend.  Tonight Grace is having a small bonfire.  I may have possibly instigated this solely for the selfish purpose of having somewhere to burn the pine branches I used to decorate my house for Christmas.  Then Saturday morning is our First Saturday Women’s group in the morning, and a birthday dinner for Mr. T and Fleur on the evening.  On Sunday I’ve heard there’s going to be a football game or something.  The Pessimist has bough a special tv just for the purpose, and is having everybody over to help break it in.  And then it will be Monday again, and I’ll be back at the hospital with the really, really ridiculously good looking guys.

Life is good!

St. Aquilinus

So I had this moment this past week, and I thought I’d share it with you.  I was nearing the end of my work day, and feeling pretty depressed.  The sky was gray, there hadn’t been very many visitors out to my trailer that day, and in general things were feeling bleak.  I wanted to just go home, read a book, and finish hemming the warm wool skirt I started sewing on Sunday, but instead I had a full schedule of tutoring plus dancing afterwards.

On a whim, right before I turned off my computer, I decided that,  since the next day was payday, I’d check to see if my newest pay stub had been posted online.  I looked, and it was.  When I saw the number on it, first I thought that was the amount I was paid before taxes, and I kinda sighed to myself.  Then I looked again and realized that no, that was the amount I was being paid after taxes.  I kinda blinked, and the triumphal trumpet blasts started playing.  And you know, there is nothing to break a girl out of her funk like nice round numbers on her pay check!  As I drove away, it was all I could do not to roll down my window and yell things out into the traffic, things like, “Gainfully employed!  I’m gainfully employed!  Gainful f-ing employment!  I’ve got a freaking job! Yeeeeaaaaah!”  You know, like that.

I had a little time to kill before tutoring, so I decided to stop in to Half Price books, both because I think it’s shameful that I work so close to a used book store and hadn’t stopped in before, and because, you know, I could now afford to spend a few bucks on a book.  I headed straight to the crafts section to see if they’d gotten any decent knitting books in.  And there, on the shelves was a book that is kinda one of the Holy Grails of knitting: Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting.  Until it was recently republished (after being out of print for some twenty years) the only way you could get a copy was by paying huge bucks on eBay.  (Even now there’s still a copy of the first edition going for $65.)  But there it was, on the Half Price Books shelf with a sticker on it that said $15.99.

It gets better.  Below it was a copy of Knitting In The Old Way, another knitting Holy Grail, for $14.99, and The Harmony Guide to Aran and Fair Isle Knitting, and The Art of Fair Isle Knitting by Ann Feitelson, all really excellent books.  There were a couple of others, but that’s what I can remember right now.  All I know is that I hit the total knitting jackpot.  It was a amazing.

And then, as I was looking through my armful of incredible knitting books, trying to decide just how many I could afford to bring home with me, one of my favorite songs of all time came on over the store radio.  I swear, if heavenly light had started shining down upon me, and birds came to perch on my shoulders while the animals of the forest crept close to bask in my awesomeness, I would not have been surprised.  Then, of course, I checked the time, discovered that I was now late for tutoring, checked out in a hurry, and headed off to the rest of my day.  But it was pretty cool.

Work continues to be that odd mix of very busy and lonely.  However, things are looking up.  The day after I wrote my last post I had a real conversation with the admin in the next trailer (all about socks, and what color of shoes are appropriate with dark blue uniforms), and then ran into her again later at Target.  And then yesterday I found out that on Monday they’re moving me out of the trailer into a temporary office off the hallway between the security box and the ER, so hopefully I’ll be less isolated soon.

Also, on Friday the rest of my actual HR team (I really do have a team, I swear!) came to tour the building where our real offices will be located.  It was really, really good to see them.  I think part of why I’ve been getting so lonely is because I feel so disconnected and on my own, not part of a team that I am supporting, who will support me in return.  It was great to see these people with whom I have been e-mailing, who I don’t know very well, who don’t really know me much either, but with whom I hope to build something that will make having to wear heels to work maybe almost worth it.  And maybe one day I’ll even know them well enough to give them nicknames for the blog.  :)

The tour of the building was very interesting.  It’s still under construction, and won’t be ready until sometime in March, so we all had to put on ill-fitting hard hats to go in.  So far they’ve got drywall up, so you can see the shape of the rooms, but not much else.  I have to admit that I was a little disappointed.  I had heard much about fabled windows of amazing size, and I had been hoping (against all past experience) that perhaps one might be visible from where I’ll be sitting.  But of course not.  And the way it sounded like the front office is going to be set up sounds like a very awkward arrangement.  My boss didn’t sound very sure of what she remembered from the plans (the arrangement of the font office is not exactly her first concern right now), so I’m hoping dher memory is inaccurate.  On Monday, after I get moved, I’m planning to see if there’s any way I can get a look at the building plans to find out.

The really interesting part was when we were done looking around, and tried to leave.  The guy who was supposed to be giving us the tour had never showed up (he’s insanely busy, so this wasn’t much of a surprise), so we were showing ourselves around.  When we headed back to the door we’d come in through, we discovered that it was locked.  We found another door going out through the construction, and it was locked too.  It was late in the day, after hours, so there were no workers around, and it was getting cold.  One of my co-workers started making noises about things starting to look like something from a horror movie.  I didn’t much care about that, but I had left my coat in the trailer, and I did mind the cold.  Thankfully not too much later my boss tracked down what must have been the last construction worker still in the building, who let us out the far door into the muddy rock patch that will eventually be our parking lot.

And that’s pretty much my news.  So far this weekend has been mostly eaten by a cold that I had been trying to pretend I didn’t have.  That only worked until about eight o’clock Friday night when I fell asleep on the couch, and didn’t really wake up until ten o’clock the next morning.  Yesterday I managed to get a few things done (tutoring, the last few rows on Mr. T’s last sock, the guage swatch for Fleur’s birthday present), but mostly I slept.  This morning I woke up without my alarm, feeling really rested for the first time in weeks.  It was marvelous.

The Holy Name of Jesus

On New Year’s Day, I was thinking how different this year has been from pretty much every other New Year’s Day going back just about as far as I can remember.  Usually, New Year’s Day means the Huge Family Party, in which we pull out all the stops to entertain about forty of our nearest and dearest.  This means that we would have pulled ourselves out of bed early after days of cooking and cleaning (plus one night of revelry), ready to face a tight schedule of more cooking, cleaning, arranging, and then entertaining.  It would be a great party, a great way to start the new year, and definitely worth it.  However, it would also be a lot of stress and everyone would fall into bed at the end of the night totally exhausted.

This New Year’s, I got up in plenty of time to make it to Mass at my home parish, ate breakfast at home, and then headed over to the Family Homestead in time to see Indy and Rosie off to the Bengal’s game.  After a little while of hanging out, the rest of us headed off together to watch Tin Tin, which was awesome.  When we came out, we decided to see how many of us we could squeeze into the instant photo booth.  The answer was five (see evidence above).  The Duchess, Sae, and I were on the bottom, and AnniPotts and Fleur were on top.  I’m particularly proud of the picture on the bottom, where I managed to get at least half of my face into the frame.

After the movie, we headed home and cooked a quick dinner of pork chops, sweet potato fries, green beans and salad, and ate together around the big table.  Then there was dishes, and then I headed home again.  It was a little surreal to be heading away from my parents’ house on New Years Day, so early and so rested, but it was nice.

The night before was very nice too.  Mariah had her annual New Year’s Eve Party, complete with breaking a pinata in the front yard.  The pinata this year was the most adorable dinosaur, with big brown eyes, and a long neck that made him look disconcertingly like a llama.  And how can you hit a llama?  It’s just not possible.  It was a good thing it was dark, and we were blindfolded, otherwise we might have been totally defeated by The Cute.  Still, somehow we were able to overcome.  :D

After the pinata was properly subdued, we all headed back inside for more fun until we crowded up stairs (that’s where the tv is) to watch the ball drop in Times Square and toast the New Year.  Then, of course, there were noisemakers and poppers on the front porch.  But there was more.  I had gone into the house, and was tidying up the upstairs room when PM came to get me.  While he was gone in the wilds of Indiana the past year, he was apparently so lonely that he resorted to ballroom lessons.  I had told him that I wanted to learn Hustle (which is his favorite), and he had decided that I was going to have a lesson right then.  I’m always up for dancing, so I followed him downstairs to Mariah’s dining room, where I got my first Hustle lesson.  And then, since turn-about is fair play, I taught him some East Coast swing.  And then all the girls who had been watching wanted to learn swing too.  So I ended up starting off my New Year by beginning to learn a new dance, and then giving swing dancing lessons in my sister’s dining room.  Not a bad start, that.

Now I am in the midst of my last week at Job1 and Job2.  Tomorrow is my last day at Job2, and I’ve gathered that there is going to be some sort of good-bye luncheon.  No one has actually told me this, but they keep accidentally copying me on the e-mails.  Then I’ll take down the things on my bulletin board, return the cup I borrowed from one of them when mine disappeared, make a few last contract files, and say good-bye.

I really hate good-byes.

Sigh.

Bl. John Alcober – the 5th day of Christmas

The past few days have been full of Festivity.  First there was my parents’ Anniversary (they’ve been married now for 41 years).  It was a laid back sort of affair – hanging out at the Family Homestead and watching movies all together.  Mariah brought over most of her truly impressive alcohol collection, and we mixed Gin & Tonics with St. Germaine, and concoctions of ginger liquer mixed with Creme de Cacao or orange juice, plus many, many Shirley Temples for Fleur.  We watched A Muppet’s Christmas Carol together (I cried at the “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. I am sure that we shall never forget Tiny Tim, or this first parting that there was among us. “ part, and so did Mariah), and then we watched Raising Arizona, which was much more cheerful.

On Wednesday we had our Family Gift Day, which was mostly lovely, the first part, anyway.  This year AnniPotts and Boy-O collaborated on their presents, which included cleaning out the used book store.  Apparently they found a whole series of really ridiculous romance novels with nerdy heroes (The Nerd Who Loved Me, Nerds Like It Hot, Talk Nerdy To Me, My Nerdy Valentine, etc.), and gave one to each of the girls in the family.  Except Fleur.  She’s not old enough for even the most ridiculous romance novel.  Mariah had already given me my Christmas present (two very nice cardigan sweaters when I was freaking out about not having an office-y enough wardrobe), but she threw in a license plate cover from Fiber Works that says “I’d Rather Be Knitting.” I thought that was pretty cool.  I gave up on trying to finish Mr. T’s cabled socks, and instead gave him a gift card to Olive Garden.  I figure the socks will have to be a birthday present after all.

The hard part was that after we’d done all the fun present giving, Mariah brought out the last of the boxes of Jacob’s stuff, the ones that have been sitting in her living room for months, ever since we moved them out of Sae’s basement.  It seems like no matter how much of Jacob’s stuff we go through and distribute, there’s always more.  Or there was.  I have it on reliable authority that this was the last.  And it better be.  It took us five and a half hours.  It felt like infinitely longer.  At one point I thought we were never going to get out of there.  But we did.  I now have custody of what was Jacob’s stuffed R2D2, his George R.R. Martin books, the letters I wrote him while I was on NET, his The Tick figurine that used to balance on a bit of plastic wall until somehow we lost the wall, and his Baptismal candle, among other things.  And now we’re done.  I think.  I hope.  Please, God, let us be done!

Thursday was better, though I felt like I had a hangover most of the day from the emotional overload the day before.  I kinda just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and not come out again until the next day, but CO2 was in town for Christmas, and had volunteered to lead our Catholic young adult group in a Posada.  This is a Mexican (and other Spanish speaking countries) tradition in which you act out the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.  Afterwards you have a party, complete with a pinata.  I love pinatas!  So I packed up the vat of Buffalo Chicken Dip I made in my slow cooker, crackers, napkins, rope, and a whiffle ball bat to hit the pinata with.  And I was glad I did.  There’s nothing like whaling on a pinata to chase the holiday blues away.  And our pinata, a very jaunty blue pony, put up a fight!  Everyone got a turn blindfolded, and then we started whacking on it without the blindfold.  It was pretty sweet.  Once it was finally eviscerated we cheerfully adjourned to our meeting room for food & hanging out.  And it was good.

Tonight, in a few minutes I’m heading out to the Welcome Back Dinner for PM (my long lost Minion).  After dinner people are heading over to Tank’s, but I don’t think I’m going to.  I’m just tired.  I want to stay in and, I dunno, paint my nails.  Or something.  Tomorrow is Mariah’s Big New Year’s Eve Party, and then New Years Day is another family day.  We’re not having our Huge Family Party this year.  (We’ve thrown three weddings this year.  That’s enough parties for a while.)  But we’re still going to get together and hang out, and probably go watch Tin Tin.  And somewhere in there I swear I’m going to get some sleep.  Really.

Bl. Edward Detkins

Last night a miracle happened.  I finally got around to starting work on my bridesmaids dress for The Duchess’s wedding (I’ve got six weeks – that’s plenty of time, right?).  I started, like every good seamstress, by cutting out a muslin – a trial run in cheap fabric in order to test the fit.  Some of you may recall that the last time I made a bridesmaid dress, I think I went through three rounds of muslins and much profanity before I got something that fit.  This time, however, I sewed the muslin pieces together, went up to my room, tried the bodice on and it just about fit.  I think I could have got the zipper closed, but it would have been just a little too tight.  So I went downstairs, resewed my seams just a bit shallower, picked out the old seams, tried the bodice on again, and lo and behold it fit.  The sleeves were perfect, the back neckline lay nicely against my neck, the waist wasn’t too tight, yet appropriately tight for a 50s era dress, and it didn’t pull across my bust.  It was a miracle.  The only change I’d made to the pattern was to lengthen the bodice 2″ (I have a long torso), but otherwise I’d cut the pattern size.  And it fit.  No cussing, no recutting pieces, just a muslin that fit on the very first try.  I’d put this off so long because I was dreading the long, drawn out ordeal I was sure it was going to be.  Instead it went together so quickly and easily that I still had time to make a big batch of homemade granola before I went to bed.

Wonders will never cease.

However, I think the reason why my dress is (so far – keep your fingers crossed) coming together so easily this time is because all the bad dress karma has transferred onto The Duchess.  She had been sure that her dress was going to be easy, since she’d had it even before she met 007.  Her dress is a gorgeous, lace covered vintage dress she bought at the thrift store years ago for $2.50.  The only thing she needed to change was that the long sleeves were much too small.  (For reference, they fit perfectly on Fleur’s arms.  Fleur’s eight.)  So The Duchess’s idea was that the sleeves could be cut off and turned into lacy cap sleeves, preserving the gorgeous lace applique that extended down from the neckline.  This would get rid of the tightness, and update the dress a little.  She asked the woman who made her bridesmaid’s dress for Sae’s wedding if she could do this, and also bustle the dress.  The woman said that she could.  Except, when she got the dress back from her, after cancelled appointments, unexpectedly raised fees, and lots of stress, what the the woman had actually done was cut the sleeves off at the worst part of the upper arm (exactly at a point that somehow made The Duchess’s arms – plenty slender, let me tell you! – actually look kinda chubby), not bothered to finish the raw edge, and instead applied a band of cheap bead trim that not only didn’t match the dress, but made the tight sleeves even tighter – so tight that she couldn’t zip the dress anymore.  This was exactly the opposite of what The Duchess had asked her to do.  Oh, and the bustling that The Duchess had asked her to do?  She didn’t even start.  And for this she was trying to get The Duchess to pay double the original estimate.

The first I heard of this was at the first bridal shower this weekend, when someone asked The Duchess about her dress, and she started crying.  The next day, at the second bridal shower, someone got The Duchess to show them the dress, and she ended up showing all of us how the seamstress (whom I think doesn’t deserve the title) butchered the dress.  Both Indy and I examined the dress, and decided that we could totally fix this.  I had my sharp scissors in my knitting, and Indy had her embroidery kit, so right then and there we got them out and started work.  First we removed the horrible bead trim, and then we basted up a narrow men, and trimmed around the lace applique.  It wasn’t the finished sewing, but super basic work that took myself and Indy less than an hour to do.  And just like that, we’d done more than that woman (see, I can’t even call her the seamstress anymore) had done in months!  There will be some fiddly hand finishing work to do (some of which is necessary because of even more awful things that did), but when we’re done, the dress will be beautiful.  Plus, when she wears it, The Duchess will be able to actually raise her arms to dance.  (Bonus!)

Besides various dressmaking adventures and bridal showers, the weekend was mostly full of babysitting.  On Friday night I went out to babysit Hello Nurse’s firstborn, who I think I’m going to call The Happy Baby.  We had a good time together.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a child so excited about peas!  When I was feeding her dinner I put a few of them on her tray so that she could feed them to herself.  She put great effort into picking them up and ferrying them into her mouth, and then would exclaim, “P! P!”  I would reply, “That’s right!  Peas!”  at which point she would throw her head back and laugh hysterically.  It was pretty awesome.

On Saturday night, however, I had a total Babysitting Fail.  I was babysitting for Hot Josh & Pixie Girl for the very first time ever.  They have two children: Little Miss Stinker, who is now an awesomely precocious two and a half year old, and Baby Bear, who is eight or nine months.  While Little Miss Stinker has the reputation of sometimes being quite a handful, Baby Bear is one of the most laid back babies in the world.  He came with his mother to the bridal shower earlier that day, and had a great time crawling from woman to woman, flirting his way shamelessly through the party.  When I got to Hot Josh & Pixie’s house, it seemed like he was quite content, in his laid back way, to have me there.  Even when his parents left, he barely blinked.  I spent a little time with Little Miss Stinker getting her settled in with the movie of her choice, and then went into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

However, when Baby Bear followed me into the kitchen, he realized for the first time that his parents hadn’t just gone into another room or something, they had really left the building.  This realization rocked his little world so hard that he stopped right where he was, threw back his head, and howled.  And kept howling.  And howling.  He was outraged at the immense injustice of the world, and he was letting the world know about it!  I picked him up, and bounced him.  I sang him songs.  I offered him food and drink (this seemed only to outrage him further – how could I expect him to be hungry or thirsty at a time like this!).  I checked his diaper.  He did need a change, but even after that was taken care of, he still howled.  At about the 45 minute mark, when his tears of rage showed no signs of abating, I threw in the towel and called his parents.  They had just barely sat down in their movie theatre, but when they heard that their laid back son had been throwing a fit for 45 minutes they got right up and headed home again.

And you know what?  Maybe I should have waited a little bit longer.  Soon after I called, Baby Bear started to have small pauses between his screams.  The pauses got gradually longer.  I realized that he was crying himself to sleep, and fighting it every step of the way.  By the time his parents got home, he had cried himself into a deep sleep, still snuffling little soblets in his sleep.  If I’d had the nerve to hold out just ten minutes more, his parents could have enjoyed their movie.  Sigh.  And then do you know what that child did?  He woke up when I passed him off to his mother, nursed a little, and then, cheered by his nap, proceeded to smile at me as if I were the sun in his sky, and flirt with me for the rest of my visit.  Maybe he’s the one I should be calling a stinker!