Hide The Mess

Creating Chaos

Lots of chatter this week at the office. Mainly about the Us vs. Them atmosphere that some of us are starting to realize may have been entirely manufactured by someone no longer in a leadership position. I actually had to go back and amend something I told my bosses boss about the vibe at the office, because the truth is, as I went back and thought about it, the Us vs. Them thing isn't something that I actually experienced myself. It was the chatter in the office. The general consensus among others that I adopted as my own. Work and group dynamics are so strange. I didn't intentionally buy into other people's perception, but it crept in, seeped into my brain and became how I saw things, when the reality is, I don't actually have any experiences of my own to back that up. Just a bunch of They Said bullshit. I hate that I was susceptible to that. Years ago I had a new boss who was not popular with some of my coworkers but I happened to like the guy. I found him hilarious, to the point where sometimes I was laughing so hard I'd have to excuse myself and go to the bathroom because OMG GET CONTROL OF  YOURSELF. I never really outright defended the guy when my work friends would bash him, I would just sort of shrug and say I didn't know him well enough to have the same opinion. But later, after a few months, shit wasn't funny anymore, and I began to see what they meant. I sort of prided myself on the fact that I formed my own opinion, I didn't take what everyone else said as the truth. I waited and eventually, I did come to the same conclusion, that the guy was a total douche-bag. But that was from my experience. It wasn't just because a bunch of yahoos at my work said so. I am aiming to do the same thing now, under these new circumstances. Just wipe the slate clean and start over. That's all I can do. I'll trust these people (in the work sense of trust) until my own experience tells me to do otherwise. I guess I'll be wearing my headphones at the office on a more regular basis - to block out the chatter.

Change

Ohhh another organizational change at my office. It makes for interesting times! Big wigs were in from the corp. office to make the announcement to our department (division? no idea.) and by big wigs I don't mean like the super big ones who run the entire operation, just the ones who directly impact our division. There was a major-ish change, a key person shifted to what one might call a dubious role, AT BEST. As it was explained to me: When someone doesn't excel in a leadership position it doesn't mean they shouldn't be given an opportunity to excel individually. Ha. Essentially, what that means is that the person in that leadership position sucked and so now they aren't in that position anymore and they've been given responsibilities that are self contained, or some shit. I think everyone worries about their job, but honestly, I can only put so much mental energy into that kind of thing and then I just have to get busy doing my job and hoping that what I bring to the table is valued. The end of work talk. It is boring. I'm half asleep just writing about it.

I looked up the benefits of being an only child. I needed to see the other side of the coin, because the only one I ever see is the one that seems lonely and isolated and with no one to play with. Turns out, there are benefits, and apparently 20% of American families have only one child. That's a high number, apparently, compared to previous decades. I don't know what the answer is for us. My husband makes compelling arguments for having only one, and then flips himself upside down and talks about having a little girl and gets all mushy and "well, maybe....". Our age factors in, in a big way. We are not young people! So we'll just see. I think we're going to hang out with "I don't know" for a little while longer.

One fell off and bumped his head

OMFG. Playing on the bed with the kid last night, tickling his feet and pulling him back from the edge over and over because depth perception is not his thing - I missed. And he crawled right off the edge of our bed. Which is like 3 feet off the ground (pillow top mattress, memory foam, fancy bed frame = really tall bed that requires a stool for me to get on, which is ridiculous). It was a miracle fall. He did not hit the bed frame with this gigantic noggin. He did not bust his teeth out due to the face planting. But OMFG (and I kinda hate that abbreviation) the wailing and crying and heated looks from my husband because this type of thing tends to make him think I do not know how to do things like "watch the baby". There were no obvious bumps and no bloody mouth so I think he's ok, but JESUS CHRIST. Who let me have this baby?

Divorce

On the world wide web this week a blogger I have been following for years shared that she and her husband have separated. I don't have any opinions about their marriage, I mean, they aren't people I know in real life so who am I to speculate on the inter-workings of their home life? It's really just made me think about the impact divorce has in a long reaching sort of way. My parents have been divorced since 1987 (they were married for 20 years) and I think back to what it was like at first, and all of the usual things happened. Lines were drawn. A villain was cast. Fortunately (I guess) my sister and I were old enough to hop in a car and go see my Dad whenever we wanted. We didn't have a whole custody thing, it just wasn't necessary. Even though my Dad played the part of the villain, in all honesty, as far as divorces go, my parents was pretty clean and tidy. It was only  years later, well into my own self absorbed adulthood, that details started to spill out and I learned things about my parents that I didn't necessarily want to know. You would think that the biggest impact to our lives would occur at the beginning. My Dad moved out. My Mom cried, a lot. And my sister was angry that her senior year in high school had been hijacked by my selfish parents. But where I really feel the effects, where it interrupts my life and makes things complicated, is now. Not when I was 16. Divorce sucks because it forever requires the children involved to choose. Christmas: Mom or Dad? Thanksgiving: Mom or Dad? Want to have a birthday party? Do we invite them both? In my case, the answer is yes, invite them both, because my parents do not have a vicious hate for one another, or if they do, they keep that shit to themselves, as they should. And it's not just the holidays that are complicated. Although that is where I generally feel the effects most often. When my son was born, I wished it could have just been my parents there, and not my step parents too. That sounds so shitty doesn't it? But it's not like I grew up in a house with these step parents. I was in college when my parents remarried, so like it or not, they are really, in my head, My Mom's Husband and My Dad's Wife. I call them both by their first name. I don't feel especially parented by either one, although my step dad did at one point in my complicated young adulthood counsel me and try and help me navigate my emotional terrain, but that's more because he's a minister, and that's what he does, than because I am his step daughter. There are times, even now, 25 years later, that I resent the hell out of their divorce. Not because I want them to be together, really, because I never had those "My parents will get back together" hopes and dreams, but I resent it all the same. When people with children get divorced, it changes everyones lives. Forever. Not just in the short run when it comes to who lives where and who gets what. But in the long run too. They will always have to choose, no matter how you try and set it up so they don't, at some point, in the quiet of their own home, they will have to choose.