Candyland

I've said before how one of the things that I like least about working in my triangle is the complete and total lack of privacy. Here's another, less typical, example of that.

Mama X works on Tuesdays and Fridays and one of her main responsibilities is to keep the office clean, which means that she empties my trash. Because she also hates waste, she doesn't take the old bag out and replace it with a fresh bag, instead she reaches into your trash with her hands and scoops out whatever is in there. I've learned that it's against the rules to put anything messy in your desk trash because of this. (There are designated trash cans for the messy stuff.) She always empties your trash while you're sitting there and then also makes comments on it. She frequently remarks on how many Post-It notes I use. (I think that means that I'm supposed to use fewer, since Post-Its are expensive.) I hate having my trash judged.

At the beginning of the week jars of red, white and blue Jelly Belly jellybeans arrived from Prudential Annuities* for all the sales guys and they are now sitting on the conference table. I enjoy candy, especially after lunch, so I've been eating a few jellybeans here and there. However, I have a problem. I don't like the white ones, which are coconut flavored**. So, right now in my top desk drawer there is a little plastic cup filled with white jelly beans. I can't throw them in my trash because there will be trash commentary about them and I really don't want to deal with that. I can't throw them in the messy trash, because even though the whole bag gets thrown away, Mama X looks through it first and she'll make some comment about waisting food. Hopefully we don't have any bugs in the office, or my desk will be overrun with them (and then I'll be in trouble for that). I'm thinking that I should bring a Ziploc bag to work tomorrow and tote them home in my purse to throw away.

Thoughts?

*We get some weird stuff in the office--I think the boomerangs from Franklin Templeton that came last month are the weirdest that I've seen. Earlier in the spring we also got little plastic pots and watering cans from American Funds. Sweet Pea is enjoing those. She was not giving a boomerrang because I feared for every lamp and other breakable item in my house.

**I think that they should have sent the buttered popcorn flavored ones as the white option--I like those. (And yes, I'm aware that I'm probably one of the 10 people who like popcorn flavored candy.)

Curse You Perry the Platypus!*

Today was one of those days in my triangle when nothing seemed to go right...

The Big Cheese, like many "important" men, is unable to maintain his own work calendar. I've never understood this, as I would hate the idea of putting my time in the hands of someone else who doesn't really understand what I do. At BCFG, it is K's job to maintain the Big Cheese's calendar, however yesterday K wasn't there and the Big Cheese needed to have about a million things scheduled and told me to schedule them. Apparently (although I don't really see how), I did it wrong and I was chewed out by K on several occasions**. To make matters worse, Will overheard everything and echoed what K was saying. A younger me would have snapped back with a "The Big Cheese told me to do this and you weren't here--what was I supposed to do?" The mature me just said okay and didn't fight an argument that I was bound to lose. To make things worse apparently sending Will an email, talking to him, and writing him a note about something isn't giving him enough information and he got mad at me later in the day. Again, I was an adult and took it. I'm storing all these things up for sometime when I can bring it up with Mr. X.

In other news...our intern seems to be following the K dress code. On Monday she wore orangey/peach jean type pants that stopped at the ankles(but weren't cropped--the length was weird), black pumps, a gold sequined tank top, and a white cotton jacket. With the exception of the black shoes she looked incredibly cool (and I felt really old), however when did sequins become appropriate for the work place, even if you are in college? I think I'm going to make myself a little tin foil badge that says "Fashion Police," although I'm sure that K and Intern would say that I'm extremely unqualified for that position.

*I've been wanting to use this as a title for a long time. It doesn't really go that well with today, but I decided to use it anyway.

**In the spirit of full disclosure, K did apologize the first time that she did this to me, but not the many, many occasions that came after it.

When Did I Get So Old?

I've been thinking about telling you all the story of K and The Chair; I've actually started to write it several times, but I think that it was one of those things where you had to be there. In a nutshell*, Will got new chairs for the small conference table in his office. I don't know why--his old chairs were fine and are now in The Godfather's office. Will's new chairs are really nice and K decided that she needed a new desk chair, even though her existing (now previous) desk chair is also perfectly fine. So, K asked Will and he told her to go ahead and order a new ($300) desk chair. It came in and Mama X freaked out on two levels: 1) The utter waste of $300 when the existing desk chair was fine and 2) the fact that K asked Mama X to "help her put it together," but then promptly went to lunch, leaving Mama X sitting on the floor surrounded by chair pieces for most of the afternoon. That was the day that I realized that Mama X doesn't like K either. I'm feeling more vindicated in my opinion every day.

Today at BCFG an inter started;we'll just call her The Intern. She's going to be a junior in college and is so young, or maybe I'm so old. Of course, she is hip and cute, which adds to my feeling of oldness. I don't know if any of you feel this way, but in my head I'm still this girl who just graduated from college, or just got married, or just had a baby, until something happens that makes reality crash down on me and I'm forced to admit that I've been out of college for 12 years, my 10 year anniversary is coming up and I'm the mother of a 7 year old. The Intern seems like a nice girl, however I have no idea where they are going to put her--thanks to me, all the corners are even taken.

I was, as usual, antisocial at lunch today and was in my car listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Today she had the artist Christoph Niemann as her guest. You can listen to the interview (which was great) or see some images of his art here: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/22/137197285/-that-s-how-an-illustrator-explains-it-all
Even better than his art was his accent, as he is from Berlin. Just like English is spoken differently in different parts of the US, Berlin German has it's own accent or cadence. This also made me feel old, since it has been 14 years since I was there. (I remember making a promise to myself when I left that I wouldn't let more than 10 years pass before I came back. Oops.) It was the birthday of one of my German Facebook friends, so we were Facebook chatting (with me needing to consult my dictionary more than I would have liked to). I also have another friend that recently moved to Switzerland. I'm having one of those days when every one's life seems cooler than mine.

One final thought...I've become obsessed with The Glee Project on the Oxygen Network. It's like The Real World (when I used to watch it in my youth) combined with the TV Show "Fame" (which I always liked) combined with "American Idol" (When I used to think it was good.) Unfortunately, I'm all caught up with the episodes now and must wait for a new one like the regular people.

*in case any of you have an inquiring mind and need to know

I Believe

This is awesome on so many levels... This is my favorite song from "The Book of Mormon" and it's even better than I thought that it would be. I love the facial expressions--I think that the war lord who shoots people in the face (what's so scary about that) being forced to dance at the end is my favorite part. I hope that you enjoy it.

I have a story to tell you about Mama X and a new chair for K, but I think that will have to wait until tomorrow. To give you a little taste...I'm finding out that my dislike of K is putting me in the majority, not the minority (like I had previously thought).

Now I'm going to go and eat some pancakes.

The Long Blink

First, some good advice:

Ah, the Monday Morning Meeting--probably the most boring part of working in my triangle. I have the pleasure of sitting through both the sales meeting and the administrative meeting on Monday morning. Occasionally I'm assigned to do something during the administrative portion, but most of the time I just sit there and admire everyone's polo shirts, or hair gel or watch the men debate the merits of one country club over the other. Today I was really tired. Have you ever had that really tired when every time you blink it's like your eyes are trying to close? (Occasionally this happens to me during church (bad) and I remember it happening a lot during college.) This morning I was tired and bored--a very bad combination. I actually think that I fell asleep for a second or two because I jumped about a mile when Mr. X, who was sitting next to me, started talking. I looked around really quickly and it didn't seem like anyone noticed. After that I was more alert.

After the meeting, K and I spent about $3,000, which is always fun. On Thursday, BCFG will be the proud owner of a new binding machine. This one is really cool--it is a spiral binding machine (instead of the metal pinchy things) and it has this fabulous roller thing that spins the coils in. I'm pretty excited about--binding may become my new favorite thing. I may have to take a video on my phone so you can see the coils spinning. Seriously, I like it that much.

I've started seeing things that aren't there again.* They are all out of the corners of my eye, in my peripheral vision and, of course, not there when I turn my head. In the past I've had these when I've been under a lot of stress. I'm guessing that my stress is IRS related. We got that letter saying that our 2009 return was wrong and our deadline for responding to the IRS is June 15. I sent everything off this morning and now we wait for about 30 days. I'm trying to talk myself into a pleasant 30 days because I can't do anything now. Of course, I'm hoping that once the IRS sees the new documentation that they'll agree with my version of things. I really don't want to pay more money. I also really want the things to go away.

Oh, I'm not looking forward to Sunday. I just got home from choir practice and found out that the director has given power to the girl I don't like. Our director will be out of town on Sunday, so she will be directing. He better be careful, she may not give that baton back.

*Yes, the technical name for this would be hallucinations, but lets not call them that just yet.

What is up with those shirts?

As I have said before, the vast majority of the employees at BCFG are men, and it seems that frequently men are kind of weird. My current issue with my male co-workers is their obsession with BCFG polo shirts. I get that it's summer and our office is pretty casual, so you can wear a polo to work every day, but does it HAVE to be a BCFG polo? Take today for example--my 6 male coworkers were in the office today for some point in time and the three that didn't have outside appointments were ALL wearing a BCFG polo. What made today unique for me is that these guys have just come off of 4 days in a row of hosting a hospitality house where they were required to wear their polos, in order to be easily identified by our guests. I guess they just really like those shirts, or feel the need to wick some sweat during the work day.* In other news, involving someone not wearing their shirt...R got really mad at K during the hospitality house. K was in charge of checking in guests (which had previously been Rs job, prior to her husband getting sick and her schedule being pretty crazy) and K did not wear her BCFG polo. Instead she wore sun dresses. This was a big no-no and is still causing inter-office tension.

I also overheard a pretty funny clothing conversation between Mr. X and Mold today. Mr. X and Mole are going to see one of Mr. X's clients tomorrow and Mole called into Mr. X to see what he should wear. After much discussion, they both decided that they were going to wear suits, but without ties, so they look more casual. This may have been one of those times that you had to be there, but it was funny.

Today was Sweet Pea's first day back at her day care center. She had a great time. I had all the mother's guilt and anxiety leaving her there that I did when I left her there when she was 14 weeks old. Two of her old friends, who we will call Pippi and Dorothy, were there and they remembered her, so that was a good thing.

On that note, it's time to make Sweet Pea's bath, as she is all gross from doing soccer camp in 90 degree heat today.

*BCFG doesn't just provide regular cotton polos, these are high performance sweat wicking polos.

**Because I have now become the fashion police in addition to the attendance police, let me tell you about K's outfit today. She was wearing a bright red halter dress made out of a matte jersey material. There were big jewel-like things all around the halter and this dress was so short--it stopped mid-thigh and she needed to be careful getting in and out of cars, in my opinion. I think, although I do not know this for a fact, that she had belted it and then bloused it over the belt to make it even shorter. I know that I'm old and not cool, but this was soooooooooo inappropriate for work.

Feeling Sad

School is out for the year--yesterday was the last day, which was followed up by a pool party* for the whole school. I'm happy that school is out--no more homework, no more spelling tests (probably the biggest plus for me) and we don't have to worry about Sweet Pea getting to bed as early. Even though she is going to go to day care everyday, that isn't as big of a deal as school.

I am feeling sad, though. For the first time since Sweet Pea was 3 months old I have to work every day. Right now the fact that I'm done working at 2:00 every day isn't really doing anything for me. I feel like I've lost my whole summer with Sweet Pea. After driving to day care and then home it will be 3:00, which kind of feels like it's too late to do anything.

I also need to get Sweet Pea in to see the psychologist, now that we know that he inattentiveness is most likely caused by ADD (hooray for no seizures). We will probably do the psychologist once a week to reap as many benefits as we can before school starts.

Anyway, I'm starting the summer out feeling kind of bummed and this is another one of those times where working for The Man looks really good. I miss my 4 weeks of vacation time and I should have negotiated more time off into my current work contract.

I am starting to formulate a plan for work next summer. Ideally, I would like to go back to my 3 day a week schedule for the summer, but I don't think that BCFG is going to go for that, so instead, I am going to offer to work 4 full days (Monday-Thursday) and then have Friday off. BCFG would actually be getting a better deal out of this than me, as I would be working a lot more hours this way. Financial stuff, like what I do, has a natural lull in the summer, so maybe they would go with the 3 full days idea after I've been there for a year and proved what a delightful employee I am. I figure that it is a good thing that I'm thinking about this now, as it will take me a full year to build up the nerve to ask Mr. X and The Big Cheese if I can do it.

Right now I am being a bad mother--Sweet Pea and The Husband are out riding bikes, which I declined to do, as it is 90 degrees and I am not a fan of 90. I wanted to do something involving water today and suggested the sprinkler park, but so far I have been shot down.

*Where I actually got sort of a tan--isn't that crazy?

At least I know where I stand

This week there is a major sporting event in my city* and BCFG hosts a hospitality house for our clients and prospects. (The hospitality house is actually Will's house (soon to be the Big Cheese's house--but that's a story for another day), which is very close to the sporting event.) At the hospitality house we serve breakfast and lunch and there's a full bar all day and it is a nice appreciation event for the clients. I, however, have been dreading attending this thing. It's like a giant cocktail party when you don't know anyone and I never know what to do at those either.

Because of the house, everyone but R and me was out of the office today. I had very little work to do and I am now the proud owner of the most neatly organized work email box EVER.** At about 10:30 the phone rang and it was Will. He was calling to inform me that his dog was sick and that FedEx would be delivering dog medicine to the office and that I was not to leave the office until the dog medicine arrived. I didn't ask if I was allowed to go to the bathroom--I was afraid that he might say no. So, two things happened today. I learned that I am less important that Will's dog, but I didn't have to go to the hospitality house.


*which will remain nameless
**I also played a lot of Angry Birds. Have I told you how much I love my birthday iPhone?

Trying to be good at waiting...

We haven't heard anything from the hospital yet, which is probably a very good sign. However I did have a minor heart attack when Sweet Pea and I walked into the house and the answering machine light was blinking. The phone has also rung once since then, which caused more issues.

This has nothing to do with anything, however I found it too awesome not to share...