Office Space

I've been at my job for about a month now.

 

And I still like it.

 

Cause daaaaaamn would that suck if I already hated it!

 

Anyhoo... it's the first job I've ever had that is downtown in a city. (Granted our city isn't all that big!) But there's something I like about the commute into the "tall" buildings and having to park in a parking garage. Really the highlight is that I can take my lunch break to stroll Main Street and pop into cute shops (which means lots of goodies for Bimmer that we didn't need) and grab a coffee with the girls or a red velvet cupcake. Yeah, that "Frequent Customer Card" is getting filled up pretty quickly!

 

After having an office with a door at my last two real jobs, I am still getting used to this...

 

 

But all told, it hasn't been that horrific. Minus the one lady who likes to drone on and on about her cat and how it predicted a flood in her apartment. For realz?!? The only thing that keeps me from stabbing her with a highlighter is that she's leaving at the end of the month to move to Florida. Good riddance. They'll accept you much better there.

 

All the other girls are great and I feel like I'm fitting in pretty well. There's lots of yelling down the hallway and joking with each other and sharing photos and stories of our babies. (All but 3 of us have kids 5 years old or younger, and those other 3 are all set to be married within the next 6 months.) Did I mention the morning our boss poured us all mimosas in a meeting because we met a goal? Um... I can just picture my last job's "Story Time Meeting" with our uber-conservative bosses who made us sign a form that said we would never drink ever again in our lives. (Or something like that.)

 

Plus there was a morning where he played us clips from old SNL skits of Chris Farley. Or the live feed on the conference room TV of the giraffe at the zoo waiting to give birth. Or the morning he yelled down the hall, "Quit looking at my crotch!"

 

And the constant emails of "thank you" from my boss and GM and others in the building for even the smallest thing. I was lucky if I got a pat on the back once a year at my last job. And I usually had to work a 70 hour week and manage to not kill anyone for that to happen.

 

It's not perfect, nor do I expect it to ever be. But it's nice to like to go to work every day. It's nice to know I'll be greeted with smiles and hellos and that on long afternoons, we can all pow-wow and talk about makeup and husbands. I still hate that I don't have any good prospects of guys to become my outlet when there's too much estrogen. My best candidate is in HR. So... that's not gonna work! (Although I did want to try to hook him up with Kimhead. But again, that whole being in HR thing sorta put a stop to that.) But I'm sure, over time, I'll figure out my place here. I can't expect that to happen overnight.

 

As for Bimmer? I think the ideal situation for me would be a 4-day work week. But that'll never happen in my industry, so I've got to take what I can get. I love that for the entire month of October, I only have to work late two nights and there are no weekends. The. Entire. Month. At my old job? I'd have probably had to work two Saturdays and at least 5 late nights. This is definitely a step in the right direction for the good of my family. I absolutely love going home and seeing Bimmer's big ol' toothless grin when she sees me.

 

Any concerns about her forgetting about me were thrown out the window pretty quickly. I love the time I get to spend with her, and I now don't take any of it for granted. I love the morning snuggles and the evening baths. I cannot wait for weekends so I can soak up as much of her as I can. Sure, I miss all those extra hours of watching her cuteness, but she's thriving just fine (and will even more so, I think, once she's in daycare) so I can take it easy through the day and not panic or worry.

 

Who am I kidding? I'm a mom. I still miss her. I still worry. I still panic if she didn't sleep well the night before or woke up with a little cough. But she's a strong, independent little lady. And she is proving to her Mommy that she is doing just fine adjusting. She just reminds me every night, as I have to lay next to her for her to fall asleep, that she still needs me. And I hope she always does.