One Week

I haven't quit many jobs. Now, I went through a span for a couple of years that every place I worked at would either close, or have their office condemned or some one would urinate on my desk but leaving those jobs is simple. Your resume is a mess and at a certain point you wonder am I asking for this somehow but leaving is pretty easy. You get up and you go home. Sometimes you turn some one in for tax fraud.

I've worked at current company for eight years. I've changed jobs a bunch of times in there but kept plugging away at this company. I've worked very hard, been a very good employee and yeah, I am struggling with leaving. Not because I am not thrilled to--I am. This is the right decision for me and for my family and though it is going to be an adjustment I believe in a year I will be here writing about how I wish I had done it all sooner.

It's hard leaving because I feel like I am not being treated the way I should be. This sounds bizarre right, I quit, so why do I care. But I did the right thing, I gave notice and am working very hard to leave the place better than I found it. So why are they acting like I betrayed some one personally? I didn't have an affair--I am not even going to work for a competitor--I am just doing something different. I suppose this attitude is part of why I am leaving in the first place.

So I am going to work every day. Trying to do a good job. And well, I am getting the silent treatment. But the great news is that I only have to do it for one more week.

Happy Father's Day

My husband has a complicated relationship with his father. It's not my story to tell but it's a situation where I am in awe that he sees him. It takes a great deal of effort to see his father, to deal with his social issues, to hold his temper, to cope with the complicated feelings that it always brings up. J is usually angry when the visits are over--they never go well. He will have a headache, he will be sad, and he will feel relief that, for now, it is over with.

I can tell you that I would have given up probably ten years ago.

I think that he continues with the relationship out of guilt, naturally, but also because he wishes things were different. And J believes in the best in people. I know that his father will not change, and I am sure J knows it too, but there is always that hope.

I am proud of him for being the kind of person who keeps trying, even though as recently as this morning I was pretty much yelling "TELL HIM NO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TELL HIM NO," but I am even more proud of the kind of father he is for our daughter. And more than a little smug because I knew he would be.

The two of them are crazy for each other. It is like watching two teenagers falling in love and hanging on to each other's every word--without the humping. They have inside jokes and their little rituals. They hold hands and giggle and it is a little sickening. I can't imagine a circumstance that would make their relationship change into what he has with his dad. I am pretty sure it would involve a lobotomy and possibly some sort of imprisonment. Our daughter will grow up knowing her father loves her every single day of her life.

I feel so lucky to have him as my husband, to build our family together. And though I find his complicated relationship with his father frustrating I know that it is just part of the package. He wants to keep that relationship because he knows what it means to love your child.

Brave

I remember when I could keep a thought in my head. This was years ago, obviously, because now I am a scattered woman and I am likely to say "what was I going to tell you" at least three times if we talk long enough. This past week has been particularly bad, as my brain is smoking from all the spinning around it's been doing.

This is my shitty explanation for not writing.

Also. I was supposed to quit my job today.

I would have, and will tomorrow, which is why I feel ok saying this here, but my boss didn't come to work. Hard to quit if he isn't there. Though I will tomorrow, no matter what. This will force me to anyhow.

There are a million reasons. Some of them having to do with the normal soul sucking work stuff, and some not. Many that involve just the shit that is being a working mother (and lord I believe all mother's are working mothers--we all just have to figure out how to make that work WORK). I have another job lined up, one doing something that I had given up doing for a living long ago. I will make a whole lot less money--which makes me wake up at night in a sweat. But also this job will give me more time to do some other things that need doing. Spend time with my daughter. Have a life.

Also, I will stop being so angry. I hope. I am not an angry person. Which might be a hard argument to make here since all I do is rage. But mostly I am not an angry person. But lately I walk into my office, read three emails, take a phone call and turn into the Hulk. I start smashing up furniture and tearing up phone books and really--who can afford a new wardrobe all the time from their muscles bursting through fabric? I don't like being angry, which shouldn't shock anyone. Don't like teaching my daughter that is how adults should be. Don't like how I feel all the time. And since I am lucky enough to do something else, I am.

I am also freaking out about it. Really truly frightened.

I do tend to think that if you are scared it doesn't count though.

I am not a brave person. I don't take risks. But I have come to realize that nothing will ever happen if I just don't JUMP already. So I am. Tomorrow morning you will probably hear me screeching over the edge--making that Goofy wail like in the cartoons.

This is me being Brave.

Welcome Sun

The first year my family moved here from Iowa none of us wore coats. It just never got cold enough for us to upgrade from rain slickers (this is where we stood out as no one here wears raincoats for some reason). And in the summer, my mother was harpied by the other mothers for letting me play outside when it was eighty degrees. Apparently Northwestern children's brains cook in temps above 75. Considering my mother didn't allow us to wear shorts until is was 75 (a rule that was scrapped that first year) she thought those ladies were very silly. The climate here is mild here, is what I am saying, and well as a group we lose our damn minds when things go up or down the thermometer (exhibit A our crazy ice storm this winter which wiped out the city for two weeks).

It's been over eighty degrees here for almost a week. Sweet delicious sun, the kind that makes the evenings stay warm. This is weather that the rest of the country takes for granted but there are about eight nights a year in Seattle where you don't need at least a windbreaker (yes, I have been here twenty years so I wear coats now I am WEAK AND PITIFUL). Everyone has lost their collective shit and are sunbathing in the streets and wearing flip flops to the office. And well, there is whining about how HOT IT IS.

I admit it, our weather service has issued a heat advisory because it is supposed to be ninety degrees this week. Before you laugh your asses off, and it is funny, remember how amazing unprepared people here are for any sort of heat.

1. There is no air conditioning. So all of you that think "what wimps" while turning up your AC just know that my house is over eighty degrees right now and it is 8:30 at night. If we want AC we go to the movies.

2. Ditto for fans. A lot of people don't have them and I had to school several people at work about how to use box fans to exhaust your house.

3. People are just stupid. They will stay out in the weather for hours an hours, doing outdoorsy things--because Northwesterners who are not me are very outdoorsy--and not drink water, take shade or wear sunscreen. Lots of sun poisoning headed this way.

4. I think the sun is a little like the full moon to other parts of the country. It gives everyone an excuse to do foolish things.

So be prepared for hilarious national news stories about all the stupid shit that Seattlites have done in their "heat wave." We didn't make big enough asses of ourselves in the snow.