Ghost Home

The first feature I see as I walk into the kitchen is the old cabinets. The hardware is different – original latches painted white instead of the bronze-toned window latches J installed to keep ours closed. The cabinets are slightly askew and the shelves are dusty and dirty.

I turn to my left and see my old sink. A double instead of a single, but it is the same heavy, white metal sink with ridged drain boards on each side. The cabinetry is the same off white metal. I’m certain that if I opened a drawer, it would balk and give a rusty screech before opening, and close with a heavy, clanging thud.

The sound of my footsteps as I walk the wooden floors through the high ceilinged rooms is familiar.  The parlor has a large area of untreated wood in the center, where a rug would have lain. The mantel and tile in this room are the same as my former home, the dark wood and mirror glass contrasting with the mottled-bottle green tile of the fireplace. The mirror is oval instead of square.

One wall of the entrance is paneled floor to ceiling in dark wood. A loveseat is built underneath a window opposite. The banister is square, the pegs turned.

Upstairs, I see my old home continue in the wavy glass, the heavy wooden frames and doors. The ratty carpeting muffles my footsteps. I have no doubt that if the carpeting was stripped away, the sound of walking through the rooms of the second floor would echo too. A half dismantled kitchen stands in one room, the remnants of a time when the place was split into apartments.

This is not my house. The rooms are right angles instead of hexagon curves. The structure is brick instead of vinyl over wood frame. The basement is slab instead of dirt, with the same cement footprint from a long discarded oversized furnace in the middle of the room. The bathrooms are woefully out of date, the basement needs rebuilt, the windows need replaced.

On the way home, J talks about potential, how confident he is that he could bring the place back to life. He feels the same resonance as I, the same sense of familiarity that comes from walking back into a place that you truly loved and called home. We have the money and skills this time around to do it right, he argues.

I say no, that it is too much work, with a young child. J is working as a contractor and doesn’t have the illusion of a safety net that comes with full-time employment. I make enough to cover our bills if he should become unemployed, but just enough.

Still, even if it is just memory, this is my house. Standing large and high on top of a hill, with a view of the country below, wild and overgrown landscaping, a detached garage with poorly hung doors.

September 11 - Revisited

On this, the 11 anniversary of September 11, it seems appropriate to talk one last time about my brother.

Since my September 11, 2006 post, my brother has been deployed two more times. Both deployments were served in the United States, on a base outside Atlanta. He stayed behind to replace units sent to Afghanistan. All of us think about the soldiers he replaced who did not come home.

Deployment number two resulted in the postponement of his wedding until his tour was finished. Over half of deployment number three was spent traveling back and forth from Atlanta to his home, as his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

This year was my brother’s twentieth year as a reservist. With twenty years in, my brother can retire. We all waited for the letter marking this twentieth year. The letter came and preparations were made for his retirement.

Because he actively served in the United States Military, my brother is entitled to an increase in his pension. However, this increase only counts toward his first and second tour, as the law granting military reservists additional pension was not grandfathered back far enough to cover his first tour.

On September 9, 2012, the same day that his unit was officially deactivated, M retired from the Army Reserves. On the way home from the Inactivation ceremony, he and his wife stopped at for dinner.

Someone picked up their check. To that person, who saw my brother and his wife at the Eat N’ Park in Altoona Pa, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My brother served safely. He is able to retire, to live his life, to love and be loved. Since the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan began, 6510 members of the United States Armed Forces have died. Countless civilian women, men and children are dead due to an unholy combination of incompetence, ego and the desire for vengeance.

Pray for Peace.

Light

I did something different today.

J’s family decided to attend my BIL’s 10:30 mass (1). As I have made it abundantly clear that I will not be setting foot in a Catholic church (weddings and funerals excepted) I elected not to attend, even though it was the BIL’s birthday. At some point in the past few weeks I decided to maintain a stand on this position. This is becoming something of a tradition in my maternal family, as I am not the first cradle Catholic woman to walk away from the church with nary a backwards glance.

Instead I attended a Friend’s Meeting. My first one.

I have been kicking around the idea of attending Friend’s meeting for years. In the past year I learned that there was a meeting in Pittsburgh, but until today I had not gathered the courage to actually walk through the door.

But when J asked me what I was going to do today, I told him that I was going to the meeting, then the Arts Festival. I planned on attending the 9:00am Meeting (2), but Toddler Alien, who appears to be emulating the sleep habits of his aforementioned uncle (which is to say that he is sleeping far less than ideal for a child pushing 3), had the sort of breakdown that required a nap to restore him to good humor.

I stayed home, even after J insisted on waking Toddler Alien. After refereeing an argument about clothing  (Toddler Alien dislikes shirts with collars, J was not about to take him to mass wearing a Charles Darwin Origin of the Species t-shirt, cuteness of the frog be damned), the two of them headed off.

But I did not want my statement to be a lie. I decided to attempt to attend the 10:30 Meeting. I placed some conditions on the attempt. I would drive by the building, so I knew where it was located. If I could find the location until after 10:30am, I would not interrupt.

I found the place. I drove past it twice, searching for a parking space, as I felt odd using the parking lot next to the building.

It was scary, walking into this strange place. Scary, taking a step that I have spent so much time contemplating, but not doing anything about.

I was welcomed. I made a nametag. I walked into the meeting room. It was quiet, with windows open to the fresh air, the natural light. It was so, so silent. I sat down on a chair in a row to myself. After a few minutes, I sensed people sitting next to me.

Minutes passed. I contemplated on why I was there, on that day. What was it that made today different for other Sundays? Probed my conscience and my feelings, to figure out.

Two people spoke. One spoke about physics, and the search for truth. The other spoke about the difficultly in determining the mind’s truth. Between the two, I had a moment of clarity, that I was there, on that day, to begin learning how to speak and live my truth without anger or fear.

I watched the light, meditated on why it seemed so brilliant in one corner of the room. At the conclusion of the meeting, as the elders managed announcements, I stroked the walls. Brown velvet walls, absorbing and reflecting the light.

In the end, I stayed for the meal. I ate some salad, some fruit, a jelly sandwich. I spoke with a woman, another former/lapsed Catholic, who asked me, intently, why was I there? I told her the truth – I had heard many good things about the Friends from a former professor, that I had a lot of anger and needed a someplace to work it out that would not tell me what to do.

All day, today, I have carried an unfamiliar kind of peace with me. I am not different, but I am not the same person as I was at 10:25am. I do not know how to label this feeling.

(1) BIL is a RC priest.

(2) Fewer people, no social hour afterwards. I wanted to be inconspicuous.

Sporting Support - Much Has Changed

With J and Toddler Alien gone for the week, I took Friday off with the intention of sleeping in and lounging about the house until they arrived home. A last minute change of plans left me with a three day weekend to myself. Faced the prospect of too much free time, I emailed a friend, informing her that I was suddenly free for the next three days and asked if she would like to get together. B suggested coming to her Yoga class, then getting some breakfast.

Which is how I found myself digging through my drawer of workout clothing at 8:00am Friday morning, trying to find something suitable for a 9:00am Yoga class. As merciless and brutal as my initial post-baby purge had been, I still found myself putting on clothing that no longer fit.

Specifically sports bras. The bands of most of the bras have deteriorated over the past months and the cup sizes are mysteriously and ridiculously small. I managed to salvage three Under Armour bras, but they will not last more than a couple of months.

So after a class that left my upper body sore and my wrists aching and a smashing good breakfast at Pamela's, I set off for Marshall's to replace the bras. And walked straight into trouble.

Some time, in the past three years, the really great, supportive, tight compression bras that I am used to wearing while working out disappeared and were replaced with total, utter crap. Every single bra I tried on, even tried and true brands from my pre-baby life, were so loose of band and short of cup fabric as to be unusable.

Visits to two other Marshall's, a T.J. Maxx and a Dick's Sporting Goods over the past two days have confirmed my suspicions. If you are a woman who is large of cup but small of chest, you will not find bras to fit you in your average retail store.

The closest to success I came was an Under Armour bra I found it Dick's, which was tight of band but too small in the cup to be comfortable. I've checked online and I can order the bras from their website - but at $57.99 a bra plus shipping, I am paying dearly for the privilege of making sure my upper body stays put.

Opaque Bubble

Today was a shitty day, in which I allowed myself to be baited into a political discussion, lost my composure, as I am do every single time I allow myself to be baited into a political discussion, and came to the very firm conclusion that my SIL lives in an opaque bubble.

Part of me can't help but hope her bubble bursts in spectacular fashion, if only to see how long her ass will remain sore from hitting the ground. Part of me is furious with allowing myself to be baited. Part of me is just really fucking tired and ready to pull the plug on talking to anyone about anything until after November. And the rest of me feels depressed and isolated.

Burned Out?

I have not been in the greatest of mental spaces for the past day and a half. I’m cranky, irritable, mildly depressed and having a difficult time focusing on anything. I’m completely disinterested doing anything work or fun related. Last night I spent several hours in ten minutes chunks, moving from one activity to another and finding no satisfaction in anything. Angry Birds? Boring. Listening to music? Dragging me down. Nothing worth seeing on Netflix. Even researching activities for my upcoming vacation seemed too much work.

Work is overwhelming right now. Last week was 15 hours worth of meetings, primarily for the project I will be working on starting at the end of June. The rest of the week was spent frantically attempting to get data together for my current project, missing lunch most days to get back the some of the time spent in meetings.

This week I’ve finished data sets and am trying to set up my machine for testing on the new project. Except that I can’t even get past reading the instructions for the setup. The reading alone leaves me feeling overwhelmed.

One of my co-workers suggested that I take a day off, which I am already scheduled to do at the end of June. I don’t know how to get there from here right now. I feel paralyzed and out of focus.

The only movement I’ve done in the last two days is to yell at J for kicking me in his sleep for the past two nights. Last night he managed to hit the bruise I obtained earlier in the evening when I backed into the corner of a coffee table.

I went to the bathroom and tried to cry. I wanted to. I wanted the relief of tears. But I only managed to eke out a few salty drops. After several minutes, I crawled back into bed, tossing a pillow down the middle of the mattress as a barrier against future assaults. J’s comment about a chaperone elicited the response that the pillow would go once he stopped accidentally beating me up in his sleep

Against the Current

My cortex hurts. A fancy way of saying that my ability to think constructively has been hampered by a series of work and home frustrations. I have spent a lot of time over the past several months staring at a blank word processing screen, paralyzed by my inability to write anything I would find interesting while --edit: not finishing my sentences...

I have also attempted to ameliorate some of the frustration and stress by spreading some kindness – sending an old college classmate a vintage Esterbrook pen from my small collection. Waving that guy in the big ass truck into my lane. Driving slowly through downtown Pittsburgh streets while listening to electronic tango music to calm my nerves against the inevitable road rage.

This past weekend was spent playing referee between J and TA. J had a headache for most of the weekend and made the decision to power through it without taking aspirin, acetaminophen or ibuprofen for the pain. The headache made him impatient and short with TA, which trickled down to me.

The result was the two of us attempting to come to some sort of agreement on an appropriate standard of public behavior in restaurants. I am of the mind that as long as TA is eating the majority of his meal with a fork and/or spoon and is not screaming, crying, throwing food, running around or otherwise acting in a manner that would be disruptive to other dining patrons, then we can give him a bit of leeway in how he sits at the table, as long as he is not attempting to lie down.

J is of the mind that TA should sit up straight until the end of the meal. Which lead to two incidents over the weekend in which TA was chastised by J for slumping and cuddling up to J while we were finishing up our meal. As to the point of this mommy-blog entry: Guess which one of us had to remove TA from the table and deal with the tears?

By Sunday evening I was worn down by J's untreated headache, TA's totally appropriate 2.5 year behavior and refereeing their battle of the wills.

Only to get sucked into another battle of the wills. In this case, the battle being an extended “discussion” over the disaster that was this last development cycle following an official product release. A development cycle which was mostly spend fixing defects in the newly released product. Which could have been avoided with a short cycle of integration and regression testing before release. Which was scrapped in favor of adding new features. And the defects? My fault for not regression testing during the development cycles.

Forward Progress, Maybe?

I’m tired. Too tired to write, even though I find myself missing it more and more. Since Christmas I’ve been intermittently sick, first with the nastiest 24-hour GI bug I have encountered in a long time, then with a sinus infection capped with a bout of bronchitis. Every time I feel like I have recovered, I get hit with yet another illness. Falling into bed at 7:30 without bothering to have any dinner has become a common occurrence, a habit that I want to break.

As happy as I am to be working full time, doing what I enjoy and feeling as if I contribute, I find myself often overwhelmed by day-to-day home life. TA is peeing through his nighttime diapers, which necessitates a daily washing of his bedding. The laundry still needs done, the dishes still need washed, the bathroom still needs scrubbed, the cats still need food, fresh water and a clean litter box. There always seems to be at least one pair of socks on the living room floor and the bookshelves, dining room table and buffet are usually piled high with miscellaneous papers, J’s coins and other sundry materials that have no remote connection to literature or dining. Any conversation about hiring someone to come in for a few hours and straighten up the house a few hours a month (not even a week) is shut down as a waste of money. Add the guilt I feel at J picking up my significant slack with my tiredness at struggling to just keep clutter out of the main rooms, and I’m hair trigger cranky.

But there is progress.

I've starting sitting in and conducting interviews with job candidates. Not phone screens, which are handled by my manager, L. Actual face to face interviews in which I must come up with technical questions (and know the answers) and evaluate whether an individual will be a good fit within my department.

With the exception of the first interview, all of them have been done in tandem with a second person from my department. The experience has been eye opening.

The first candidate was competent, talented, and had a strong work ethic. The only stumble during the interview was when I asked the candidate to define the ideal person for the job. Part of the response included a mini-dissertation on the importance of having a very specific degree to qualify for the job. Which is a fine answer, unless the person conducting the interview doesn't have the degree in question. I found this amusing (rule one in my field is "never assume") and voted to extend the candidate a job offer. It was turned down in favor of accepting a position in a more than pleasant city on the west coast.

The second candidate had a great resume on the surface. Good degrees, memberships to several professional organizations, professional certification and a considerable amount of job experience.

But something about the certifications piqued my interest enough to do a bit of additional research. One of the certifications in question came from an organization that has faced blowback in the past several years for charging a substantial sum of money for individuals to take a test to call themselves "certified" without actually teaching them anything of substance. Candidate two turned out to be a disaster during the interview, with zero practical experience and poor reasoning skills.

Another candiate was a complete nightmare. Between myself and my coworker, we got managed to ask four questions (total) in a forty-five minute period. The questions were answered in excruciating detail. Most of the time was spent nodding and saying "uh huh".

The debriefing was derailed when the CTO, after listening to five other interviewers express strong reservations about this person's ability to work in a collaborative environment, wanted my manager to do a background check anyway. The exact phrasing was "there is nothing wrong with being an odd duck".

A week later my coworker and I learned that this individual found our questions inappropriate and complained that we were "confrontational". This person, with 20+ years of industry experience, stated that they would not be comfortable working with us, but somehow managed to find all the managers quite amiable. 

Both my coworker and myself were momentarily floored by the feedback, as neither of us had an opportunity to say much of anything during the interview. The CTO, who passed this feedback to my manager to give to us, stated that we needed to focus more on selling the company then assessing the technical skills of potential candidates.

The Hard Way to Say Goodbye

I picked Axel's ashes up from the veterinarian today. It has been almost three weeks since we put him sleep and the call that his ashes were ready peeled away all the scabs that had formed since Christmas Eve.

The house is cleaner now. Until he was gone, it never occurred to me how really messy Axel was. The piles of food and spilled water next to the cat's bowls. The litter scattered in front of the box in the basement and throughout the doghouse in the kitchen. The hairballs and piles of half-digested food on the floor. There is no longer an undertone of eau de piss from his persistent peeing underneath the puppy pads in the corner of the dining room. The pee in the dining room and the messy litter boxes we knew about. The rest came as a surprise, as we assumed it was a combination of all three of them.

The house is quieter now. We don't hear the thumping that told us he was running across the floor, lifting up his useless back legs to gain some speed. We don't hear as much meowing. There isn't as much purring. He isn't waiting by the door or on the stairs.

We were too late to help save him. Irritable bowel disease. Possibly a tumor too. A heart damaged by an unknown murmur. By the time we realized he was ill, he had lost two pounds, had bloody diarrhea, was consistently throwing up almost everything he tried to eat. Over a month's time we tried one medication, then another. He refused his food, threw up the medication, spent most of his time hiding underneath the bed. His spark was dying. By the morning of Christmas Eve we knew that it was time.

I took some photographs, that last morning. Axel on the bed, sitting in the sun.

One last trip to the veterinarian. One last consent form. One last credit card payment. A thousand dollars over a month's time, to save our cat. One last goodbye. Me in tears. Toddler Alien confused and a little bit scared, seeing his mother cry and his father so sad. An empty carrier, a long, sad drive afterwards to my parents for Christmas Eve.

Just shy of twelve years ago, we adopted Axel. A Valentine's Day gift from me to Jeff. Our first decision as a married couple, adopting a cat. Saturday, Jeff and I celebrate our twelfth wedding anniversary. Axel's ashes sit in a slightly tacky looking tin box above the china cabinet. My mind racing ahead, some to an artisan, to be shaped in the glass. Some to be scattered in the backyard, Axel in the outdoors he loved.

Jeff stops my thoughts. We have time to decide, he says. Give it time. 

Toddler Alien asks where Axel is.

Jeff glances at the tin on top of the china cabinet. He's home, Toddler Alien. He is here.

Heavy

I am overweight. By enough that my nurse practitioner made the gentle observation that I had gained a considerable amount since I last saw her two years ago. She did not lecture me about the additional weight. In fact she was concerned enough to order some labs to make sure that the weight gain was not caused by an underlying condition, such as an poor performing thyroid. She also ordered a fasting test to check my glucose levels, as diabetes runs on both sides of my family.

The labs were all negative. Simply put, I am fat, out of shape and otherwise healthy. My thyroid is in balance. My glucose levels are good. My cholesterol levels are good. My blood has the appropriate balance of red and white blood cells. I have not had a reoccurrence of HPV. My blood pressure is on the high side of normal, mainly because I have not exercised with any consistency in the past two years.

I'm not comfortable being like this. There aren't many pictures of Toddler Alien and I. Partially because I'm the one usually holding the camera, partially because TA is a daddy's boy and not very keen to sit still long enough to get his picture taken with me. Out of the few snapshots we are able to capture of the two of us, the majority end up getting deleted because I hate the way I look in them so much. It shows – in my posture, in my face, in my whole demeanor in front of the camera.

The dumbest part? I've basically been given orders by my health care provider to start exercising again, in order to keep myself healthy. But I'm not sure how to go about it. It was easier the first time around, when I did not have to feel guilty about J taking on the greater share of Toddler Alien care. While intellectually I know that we can work something out, emotionally I'm uncertain as to how to make it happen. Pulling rank by stating that this is no longer optional, it is necessary feels like a shitty thing to do to J.

My NP suggested doing exercise on demand, and working my way up from that to a regular gym routine. She pointed out that Toddler Alien would most likely want to join me, which was a good opportunity to spend time with him while doing something good for myself. It is a great idea, one that never occurred to me. I just don't know if it would work, as I am too easily distracted when I try to exercise in the house.

I need to figure this out, and soon.

The Devil You Know

 I am not good at work conflicts. I am, in fact, something of a coward when it comes to dealing with bullying, backstabbing and other inevitable high school artifacts that plague the majority of decent sized businesses.

Up until Tuesday morning I had an awesome supervisor who stood between my department the rest of the high school, which meant I could do my work and not worry about the rest. S had spent the last 10 years helping to build the company (her employee number was 5), working her way up from writing documentation to leading a unified team of testers, tech writers and support services employees.

Four weeks after I was hired, the company went through a reorganization. As part of the process, a CTO was hired to forge a development roadmap for the company's future and resolve the issues fracturing relationships between different departments.

When the CTO came on board, we all had brief meetings to discuss what we perceived to be the strengths and weaknesses of the company. S had a lot to say about the relationships between the different departments and where she felt the source of the dysfunction was coming from.

In particular, S had some choice words to say about a coworker, V. V has consistently made it difficult for other departments to effectively do their jobs. In charge of writing specifications and managing projects, she did her tasks poorly, when she did them at all. She routinely shows up late for meetings and expects all conversation to stop until she is bought up to speed. She contradicts herself constantly, when speaking and in writing. She micromanages her employees. In the past two years, four have quit and explicitly cited her as the reason for their resignation.

It is important for this narrative to mention that S was not the only employee to find herself in frequent conflict with V.

The same day the CTO's hire was announced, support services was removed from my S's sphere of responsibility. This was painted as a way for her to concentrate on her proven strengths in documentation and QA. In addition, she was informed that she would report to the CTO and her boss was moved to a client facing position. In the months that followed she was left out of meetings that she should have been attending. Her perks were cut. Her input was no longer solicited or welcomed.

Cue the firings.

First to be fired was D, who was informed that her job was not longer necessary due to the hiring of the CTO and the shuffling of departments. D had a long history of conflict with V. In the same breath that she was told that her position was being eliminated, she was asked to stay on until the end of the week to wrap up her work.

D accepted her severance and politely refused to work out the remaining week. Her job responsibilities were given to a recently hired male employee.

Two weeks ago the second firing took place. J was a direct report to V. J had been actively trying to move out from underneath V's sphere. Hired for what she believed was a specific positions, J was instead thrown into projects in which she had little knowledge, with no time to learn. J's job was taken over by a male employee.

This past Tuesday it was S's turn. The CTO told her that he could not envision a role for her in the company going forward. But instead of firing her outright, the CTO offered her the option of between coming back as a contract employee (at a reduced rate of pay, with no benefits) or taking a severance package that was 1/3 the size of the package offered to D. It is our impression that the CTO thought a crappy severance package would induce S to stay on as a contract employee.

S refused. She packed up her cubicle and was out of the building in less than an hour. Two of my coworkers helped her move 10 years worth of personal items to her car, then went out to lunch with her. I learned that she was fired when I walked into her cubicle to ask if she was ready to go to a pre-planned lunch and found it empty.

The CTO scheduled two meetings Tuesday afternoon. The first with my department, to inform us of the personnel change, the second with the entire development team to unveil his roadmap of the future. At the conclusion of our private meeting, he asked the senior qa member, L, to stay behind to discuss some transition issues before the development meeting.

And offered him S's position.

Since the meeting with the CTO, we have had two chats. The first took place on Tuesday after the development meeting. In that chat, L implied that there was some shady dealings occurring with the firings. I slept on this Tuesday night.

Wednesday we met again for our weekly department meeting, sans department head. In that meeting I pointedly asked L if the “shadiness” he was implying had anything to do with the fact that three mid-level female employees had been fired in the past four months and their responsibilities had been reassigned to male employees. L confirmed this statement and also reminded me that all three employees had a history of conflict with V.

It appears that V has trouble working with other women. So the solution to the problem was to fire the women and reassign their responsibilities to men instead of correcting the source of the problem.

The problem is that I am currently working on a project in which V is the project manager. And I may be working with her on a routine basis for the next year. With S gone, I am directly in her line of fire. This worries L.

This worries me slightly, but having already dealt with an epic incident of douche baggery in the past two years, I'm better equipped to deal with it this time around.