introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- saturday nights are still date nights a cold night and a fire - 1 february 2o15 "it's rock paper scissors as to whether i will get over you at all / it's hand against hand and both hands are mine / it's standing in a circular line / which is not to say that I'm not also happy."~ani difranco i swear we woke up at the exact same time. i feel my lips curl into an involuntary smile when i look at him. in the mornings, he is most engaged and alert and it is in the morning that he invariably smiles back. i love to sing made-up songs to him in the mornings (songs i hope my neighbor's can't hear) and tell him what the day might bring...today was no different from any other day except that we slept in a little later than usual. i think we both had a long week. i spend my days at work counting down hours until i can be with him again. the days are going by smoothly, broken into little two hour chunks. i think having time with him to look forward to makes my days go by so much faster than i ever remember. i'm feeling more centered than i have in so long...anything for that smile. anything to hear those little noises as he mimics little laughs when i say words that he seems to like: coconut, woolly mammoth, poop. he's an easy enough guy to entertain. i am thankful for every minute i get to spend with him...but i'm also starting to enjoy my work again. my boss rang my phone on friday as i walked in from the parking lot. fumbling with cold fingers on a touch screen in the snow, i answered. "my child care fell through this morning and i'm coming in late. can you manage the huddle?" and so i did at the most basic level. i also had the opportunity to handle some of the followup calls that he'd had earlier in the week. i've been back eight days and i'm taking on more responsibility, finally. it feels good to be doing more of the things that i was doing back in pittsburgh. i asked him about it in my coaching and he explained that i'd clearly responded to one of our meetings before i left for my maternity leave and was handling my work less like i did on the escalations team and more like myself again...my job is easy when i let it be. it's good to be given a little more to do--that makes the day go by fast, too. it makes me less bored when the days switch up from time to time. by friday night, though, i was ready for this week to be over. it wouldn't be a friday night without someone getting a virus on their phone from whatever porn site they were browsing. i spent my last 4o minutes assuring a woman that her ex-husband was likely not going to jail because he'd been viewing illegal horse and lady porn on his phone. i gave her steps to help him reset his phone and called it a night. when i took off my headset after my last call, i felt glad to be going home to a couple days with my little guy and my sweet dog. i said goodnight to my teammates and to jeremy, the security guard, on my way out the door. i'm getting better, for the most part, at leaving my work behind when i leave. this makes me glad. the snow has been relentless. it's exactly what i'd pictured...like the winter streets in northern exposure, we haven't seen the asphalt for days. the plows haven't completely cleared the roads, even in town. there is a packed solid layer of snow, the snowbanks are taller than my car in most places. the trees are laced with snow that will likely blow off in the arctic winds tonight that will, with any luck, blow most of the cloud cover out and give me a shot at seeing the auroras. i spent most of today cleaning in quick bursts while the baby slept or with him strapped to me in the moby wrap. he holds his head up now and seems to enjoy taking in the scenery of our little home more every day. the snow didn't stop until just before sunset after which i bundled up my boy and myself and headed for the grocery store for the week's groceries. he didn't fuss at all while we were out which i'm taking as a sign that i'm getting really damned good at this timing thing. i met a fella in the dairy aisle with the muckboots that i've been looking at. we talked about snow boots and snow while we both picked out yogurt and then about beers in the beer aisle. since when do i talk to strangers? i usually keep my head low or have headphones jammed into my ears so i don't have to talk to people. i think i must be feeling more brave lately. when i was making my grocery list, i couldn't help but think of the conversations i had with one of my new teammates this week. the woman hasn't stopped talking about her gastric bypass surgery since we met on my return. she is probably in her late 40s and i believe she's recently divorced and this is a life-changing thing for her, no doubt. i'd mentioned to the guys on my team that i want to start joining them at the gym after our shift a few days a week until the weather gets a little more consistent again to start jogging in the woods. when she overheard, she started telling me about her gym days a little and at first, i figured, hey, cool...someone who might want to train for a 10k or something with me. it took a few days before i started noticing how much she talks about her surgery and only a few more days before she started suggesting i do it, too--the underlying logic is what? i'm fat and i should want to be skinny and why not just do it the easy way? "that's not really for me, man," i said. i've had versions of this conversation before with other women who've had the surgery. they don't understand why i don't just want to lose weight super fast and be done with it. it hasn't really ever been about that for me. i've always wanted to just be healthier more than any certain size. i guess if have an ideal goal, it'd be a size 16 so i could have even more clothes to choose from...but truth be told, i'm happy how i am as long as i can still do anything i'm interested in doing. every time the baby goes for his wellness exams and weight checks, i'm hopping on the scale, too....but just for the sake of the data. i don't need the number to tell me my clothes are all starting to be too big. i don't need the number to recognize my shape changing again. since i've been back in bangor, beers aside, i've been making some pretty good choices. i've stuck to my resolution to take my lunch to work no matter what...mainly to save money but that also means that i'm planning healthier meals than whatever i can grab in a pinch. i'm getting into soup in this cold weather...soup, some fruit, a few quarts of warm tea with fenugreek and blessed thistle and goat's rue. i feel better than i did when i was eating all the junk i was in the last few months. i'm doing this my way...just making better choices, really. so i think that's why it bothers me when she tells me i should get the surgery. it will never make sense to me...to me, there is nothing worth having that comes so simply, right? i'm not going to let it get to me...everyone has their own path and that was hers. it just isn't something i'm ever going to be interested in. still, i just don't like something about how it makes me feel to have someone keep telling me to do it day after day...it seems a little intrusive. so i spent the day trying to add my chores back into our routine. a few loads of laundry, vacuuming, the few dishes i hadn't gotten to yesterday, and minding an under-the-weather old hound dog. i've had a lot of thoughts in my head that seemed worth saying at the time but they have for the most part cleared. what's the point, anyway? i'm trying, instead, to just let it go...i spent the day looking forward to putting my baby to bed for the night, having one of those beers i brought home and a hot, long, relaxing shower, listening to some good music, and relaxing with some saturday night me-time. the more i manage to fit into our everyday, the more i want to make sure i keep my saturday nights for me....they're still going to be date nights and hopefully, eventually, there'll be actual dates on saturday nights, too. dollars in the jar for a babysitter for when the time comes but for now...i'm content. i'm one day at a time. i'm a beer at the end of a busy day. each night, i'm the happiest kind of exhausted i have ever been in my life and i'll wake up and do it again tomorrow...i'm getting better at this mom thing and really starting to find my groove which is making me feel more and more like myself. stay warm, jones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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