Thank you for Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.

Love,
Amy

(I’ll write more when I get my head above water. House is on market. 1st Showing is tomorrow. Have an interview coming up. There will be a whirwind tour of Michigan in my near future. While I’m away cleaning…talk amongst yourselves. Need a topic? How about placing your bets on when Newly will deliver?!?)

to pick up the phone and make the hardest call I’ve had to make in years.

I called my ex and I told him that it was not a matter of if w were going to move anymore, it was when.

And when I hung up, I cried. For I cannot imagine what it would feel like to have someone take my son several states away.

I cannot imagine at all.

LM is on the phone with his best friend, W. It was the first person he wanted to talk to after he and I had our discussion tonight. The first and only person he wanted to tell. The person that makes this decision the hardest.

LM is explaining to W that we are going to move. That his mom has potentially two interviews in Michigan next week, but regardless of the outcome, the house is going on the market. The question is no longer IF we are going to move, but WHEN. I heard him explain to W that it could be as few as three weeks, it could be as much as four months.

They’re also talking about the time LM stayed the night at W’s house and they played superheroes, with W’s younger brother being “Captain Obvious”. They’re talking about next year, and all the things W needs to be on guard against in the new middle school (“the big kids, W, stay away from the big kids”). LM is also asking how well W and his favorite brother are getting along, and sharing his stories about counselling two brothers this summer in Pittsburgh (that were going through a divorce). LM is reminding W about the time he tried to go a whole day without speaking and how the reason it failed was because the girl W has a crush on came up and spoke to him, making him break his silence. LM is telling him about how this kid, A, the kid that was so mean to LM all year, asked him for his email address on the last day of school, explaining that he didn’t really HATE LM, and that they really did have some things in common (Star Wars). LM said, “He told me not to tell anyone, but that doesn’t include you.” I hear giggles, and teases, and stories pouring out of LM’s room. “If you want her to be your girlfriend, then she is your girlfriend. She might not know that, but it’s TRUE.” LM is reminding W that if he decided to tell Melissa that he likes her, “don’t do it around a ton of people”. They are remeniscing , they are sharing stories, they are talking like two eleven year old best friends who’ve known each other for thirty years.

I remember the friends I’ve left behind, and friends who have moved away from me over the years. I remember each and every one of them. I know where many of them are today, even if we don’t communicate regularly. And I have a few that I have grown closer to over the years.

I hope that LM and W have a great friendship for years to come. No matter where we live.

It’s difficult, when it’s just the two of us, to help LM buy gifts for me. We’ve tried a lot of different options, from asking a sales person to help him shop and to let me know when they are ready so I can just pay the bill (the result: a $93 bill in a candle store- the clerk didn’t think that was at all outrageous for an 8 year old to spend on his mom…); I’ve given LM money and waited in the parking lot of a Hallmark store while he shopped (better results, but unchaperoned gifts can be, well, interesting…).

LM returned home from his six week stay at grandparents with boxes and bags and duffles packed with odds and ends and what’s-its. But in and amongst everything was a little red box. Upon seeing it, he quickly seized it and set it on top of his bookshelves proclaiming it as “off limits!” to me. “It’s your birthday present,” he explained.

I’ll admit, I was tickled. He had bought something without me even knowing about it. With money he had earned working for his grandpa ($1/hr to answer phones and help with mailings!) I was really touched.

And so the red box has sat, untouched by me, until last night, when LM asked for wrapping paper and spent several minutes in his room making it “just perfect”. And then the gift was hidden away and I was given strict instructions to make sure I woke him this morning before I left for work so he could give me my gift.

Because today, my birthday, I was to be at work from 7:30am until 11pm. LM would be going to his dad’s mid-day, so we would only see each other for a few brief moments in the early morning hours before I headed off for my long day.

And so, at 6:30 this morning, I woke LM as I was ready to head out the door. He had slept on my floor again last night, tickled by the idea of “camping out in Mom’s room” once again – a rare treat – He rolled over and fumbled around with his blankets and pillow and I said, “don’t go back to sleep – you wanted me to open my gift, remember?”

“I know, I’m getting it for you.”

And he reached under his pillow and pulled out my beautifully hand-wrapped gift with a handmade bow that was just a little bit smushed from being slept on. A precious birthday gift that had spent the night under his pillow awaiting my birthday.

While I love the onyx cross necklace that he picked out just for me, I hope I never forget this morning and the precious moments we spent with a pillow-smooshed present and all the love that came out of it.

Totally.Rocks.

Maybe it’s because I give tours daily, or maybe it’s because I just took a First Aid class, or maybe it’s because I dreaded the obligatory birthday gathering my company does that I thought for sure they’d try to surprise me with today. I don’t know the cause, all I know is I haven’t had dreams this weird since I was preggers (and no, I’m definitely not. Thanks for being concerned anyway.)

Last night I dreamt that I was giving a tour to a man who was not quite all there. He was mentally handicapped to some degree, but I was giving him a tour around the basement of some house. There were pool tables and general clutter, but I was telling him all about it nontheless. I was interrupted by my sister, who said we had to go. I knew she meant we had to go to the birthday thing, but I didn’t want to go. I reluctantly followed her, abandoning the tour guy and we found ourselves walking through a very long and very crowded hotel lobby. I knew we were headed for one of the banquet rooms at the end of the hall (even though the birthday thing is a really small and quick affair). Along the way, my sister was throwing little yellow cubes at Little Bird and LM. They had been doing something bad, apparently and this was how she decided to get them to stop. I yelled at her to knock it off. I was soooo upset that she was THROWING things at the kids. Jules said, “I didn’t hurt them. I didn’t even hit them.” And I started screaming at her, “Yes you did! Look! Here’s a DENT in LB’s head!!” I was so angry with her, but she just kept on walking towards the banquet room. I decided right then and there that I wasn’t going. I knew it was for my own birthday and I knew I would take a lot of grief for it later, but I just decided I didn’t care, I wasn’t going.

As I walked back the way we came, I saw my old boss (from two jobs ago). He and I started talking as we stood on either side of this strange machine. The machine was about the size of a typewriter but was a square wooden box of sorts with a conveyor belt running along the side of the top. My old boss was telling me that I should go to this birthday thing. I kept trying to interrupt, to tell him what my sister had done, but he kept saying, “It doesn’t matter. You still need to go.” I was getting so upset that he wouldn’t even listen to me, and didn’t CARE how irrational my sister had been (apparently, in my dream in all,) but just then, his arm got caught in the conveyor and the machine started to pull him in. His body shrunk to about a quarter of the size that it would normally be as he was pulled into the machine. I immediately yelled, “HELP! Someone help us! Call 911!” and grabbed onto the conveyor to keep it from pulling him in any further. All that was left, sticking out, were his legs, which were strangely small and seemed soft and pliable, dangling in an unnatural position. I saw down by the edge of the conveyor belt his little hand sticking out, so I held onto it and kept saying, “You’ll be all right,” even though I knew there was no way he could be sucked into that small of a space and come out all right.

I found a switch on the side of the machine and turned it off and then immediately started unscrewing these tiny little screws on the sides (I was picking up the machine and turning it all around while I unscrewed them…it was very light for holding a grown man inside). As I got a section unscrewed, I would lift off a layer of the machine which revealed a small amount more of the squished boss, and several more layers of machine. I kept unscrewing and pulling away layers only to realize that when I got to the last layer, it was only about an inch thick and surely, no brain could survive being smooshed that small and flat…

And that’s when I woke up.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But it makes me just slightly uneasy that later in the day a 3 1/2 year old boy broke his arm at the Y and we had to call his grandmother and paramedics.

“The egg is in the basket”

(LM is home.)

:o)

It’s been a long week. Long long days at work, coming home to a puppy who wants to play when I just want to sleep. Wondering how I’m going to get up and go again the next day when I’m so drained from the one I just had. Dealing with craziness in the work place on a daily basis – things I never would have dreamt I’d deal with ever. There was only one thing I looked forward to more than my Thursday night call to my boy – picking him up on Friday after six long weeks away.

When I called, my ex mil answered the phone (the “outlaws” as I call them). She said she had just been talking with my ex. I could tell from her voice that something not so good was about to follow. It seems that somehow there was confusion about when we were doing the swap and she thought we were doing it on Saturday, not Friday. My eyes welled up immediately, and I fought back the tremors in my voice. I said I would just come all the way to Pittsburgh, then, an irrational response, but the only one I could deal with. If she couldn’t meet me part way on Friday, I’d come all the way instead of waiting one more day. As we talked, I finally realized that was insane. I realized I was being irrational and said we’d just meet on Friday. I knew she felt badly. I knew she understood. She wasn’t doing this intentionally, but her plans prohibited her from leaving tomorrow morning. We finally agreed to meet earlier on Saturday (instead of for lunch) and she put LM on the phone.

He had been watching a movie and started telling me all about it. It gave me time to gather my senses and stop the tears and realize I could do this. We talked about the bunny that had been left at work. He talked about why it made sense to him that someone might leave it at the Y. “Let’s say that someone got a bunny. And went to the pet store and bought bedding, and a cage and food and all the things that bunnies need. And then, a couple years go by, and something happens and they don’t have as much money. Maybe they have some bad debts. Maybe they have a gambling problem. I don’t know, but for some reason, they just can’t provide for the bunny anymore. So they try to think. They want to think of a place where there might be people that might want a bunny. They try to think of a place where someone might have the means to provide a good home for the bunny. And they think of the Y.” It was just so cute (gambling problems?) that I laughed and I felt better and I knew that one more day wasn’t going to kill me.

So we finally decided to get off the phone and we said our goodnights and as I just about hung up, he said, “Hang on, Mom. Nana wants to talk with you again.”

And Nana said she had thought about it and she could surely get everything done tomorrow morning and could meet me part way tomorrow afternoon.

And I had to get off the phone so I could cry. Tears of joy this time. Tears of joy.

Within 15 hours I will hold my Little Man in my arms once again.

When you are asked to remove a tick from an elderly woman’s bum in the first week of employment at a new management job, don’t complain. God has a funny sense of humor and it’s not of the funny ha-ha variety.

I was speaking with my boss, R, in our very small, shared office space today when a woman out at the front desk was causing quite a commotion. R asked me if I had met D yet, and I said no, as I tried in vain to figure out which employee she might be that I hadn’t met yet. As D waved to R and came around behind the desk to our office to say hello, R said, “D just got breast implants. When she comes into the office, say, “My God! What great tits!” I am certain my jaw hit the floor and my expression must have been priceless. NEVER in my entire life would I utter such words, more or less to a woman I have not even met! “I think I’ll pass on that, actually,” I muttered in disbelief.

As D rounded the corner into our office she was cupping her breasts and proceeded to play with them, touch them and move them around for the duration of the 25 minute conversation in our office. R asked about the surgery, intimate details were shared. During a discussion of the firmness of the new implants, one of my staff members came in (who apparently knew D well, but I don’t think it really mattered) and asked if they were ‘softening up.’ D immediately squished her breasts around and then asked this co-worker if she wanted to feel. M did. She poked a few times and remarked on their solidity.

After a diversion into D’s recent vacation, she eventually went back to talking about her breasts with R egging her on. Eventually, D asked R if she wanted to feel. R laughed and said, ‘of course!’ and poked and felt around at the implants just as apparently many others had done. It was then that D turned to me and asked if I wanted to feel, too. “It’s okay,” she said, “Really! Everyone wants to know what they feel like! Go ahead!” I declined. I am certain I looked as shell shocked as anything.

R did make a comment about how they had probably thrown “little Christian Amy” for a loop and just laughed. She and D clearly thought this was hysterical.

I have never felt more uncomfortable in a professional setting. Never. And to think, this is an organization who is supposed to be honoring “Christian principles”.

Man, can’t all my problems be about ticks?

(And to think, that this morning, I thought I’d be blogging about how someone seems to think the Y is the charitable pet organization as they left us a domesticated rabbit in a cage with food and water this morning, on our basketball courts with a note saying, “Please adopt me”.)

15-hour work days aside even ones that include uncomfortable sexual conversations, I go pick up LM on Friday. Nothing in the world can ruin my excitement for that!!

Last night I met up with one of my former co-workers. We browsed through IKEA and chatted about our jobs and lives. She asked how the new job was going and I told her about life at the health club, including what I considered to be the very entertaining tick debacle. When I finished, I asked how life was at my old job. She said the new employee that had started a few months before I left was actually fired (a first for the company) for various reasons including because they gave him $10K towards moving costs and he spent it all without ever really moving here. He had rented an apartment locally, but never sold his home in California or moved his family here. Instead, he spent some $8K on blenders, toasters, kitchenaid mixers and a microwave oven for his apartment. He also expensed a trip to NY City with his family, stating it was a scouting trip for schools for his daughter. The company let him know on Friday that he was being terminated for that as well as lack of performance and continual absences.

And he completely freaked out.

He refused to leave. He screamed and yelled. The company, a very dignified group of elite scientists had to call the POLICE to come and take him away. They had to take him away in the police cruiser and everything. My friend said she was right in the thick of the action in her new office location, but at one point was concerned for her safety thinking this guy just might go postal or something. For a place that requires government Secret clearance, passwords, and an FBI background check, how exciting must it be to have someone who requires a police escort upon termination?

Totally beats my tick story by a landslide.