Baby on the Outside Now

Miss Paige Victoria McClusky made a fashionable and dramatic entrance to the world on January 31st at 2:50PM–12 long days past her due date.

Paige weighed a hearty 9 lbs. 3 ozs. at birth, and is 21.5 inches long. Her Apgar scores were perfect.

Mark, Kate and I are assimilating to life as a family of four, and spending long stretches of time gazing adoringly at Paige. Oddly, but thankfully, Kate finds diaper changing an exciting spectator sport. Thus far she hasn’t asked us to return Paige to the hospital, but God knows there’s plenty of time for that.

Thanks to all for the calls, emails, love, flowers, food and support!

Hello Society, I’m Back

Today I have returned to the working world. I’m, as they say, a contributing member of society again. Unless of course you consider lolling around on the couch with one eye closed while a nanny tended to my child “contributing.”

It was actually fine. There is a reason that I decided to work there which I was reminded of today. Being away for so long–7 weeks–made the best thing about the place–a pervasive niceness and friendliness–fade a bit.

Kate and I were happy to see each other at the end of the day though. She is getting more adorable and delightful by the minute, so being away from her rots.

Speaking of which, yes, her leg is in fact broken again. They mumbled something to Mark about maybe not having kept the first cast on for long enough. Greeeeeaat! The color of her new cast? Neon green!

The damn thing comes off on August 13th and we’ll hopefully not be in the “what color cast to get next” quandary for quite some time (if ever).

The Ultimate Pairing of Good and Evil

Dunkin’ Donuts [good] is now using Rachel Ray [evil] in their advertising.

What is this world coming to?

Grumpy Moi

Boy am I grumpy! A kind of “Don’t talk to me, Mark, I need to go into the other room and scowl” kinda grumpy.

My frustration with the nanny has re-emerged from where I’d swept it under the carpet of my consciousness. This time it may be too big to sweep back under there again.

Today I was in the car heading home at 5PM. Well, it was actually 4:57. And I get a call from Shelly saying did I remember that today was a 5:00 day, not a 6:00 day.

And no. I’d forgotten. Got Wednesday and Thursday confused.

So I’m in the wrong, but come ON. It’s the way she talks to me:

Her: [in a stern and pissy voice] This is not good, Kristen. I am going to miss another appointment.

Me: [getting up my gumption to not be intimidated] Another one? Did you miss one before because of me?

Her: [evading my question] I have to leave at 5:00.

Me: I’m sorry. I messed up. But let me call the neighbor to see if you can drop Kate off there so you can go.

Her: No, it’s already too late.

Me: [thinking "too late" doesn't fly when it's not even 5:00 yet] No it’s not. Let me call her.

Her: [sighing with annoyance because she would clearly rather lord this over me than let me attempt to fix the situation] Okay.

I reach Jennifer, a nice human (hooray!), who says it’s no problem and Kate can come by I call Shelly back to tell her and she says, “Okay. Leaving now. Bye.” And hangs up. Soooo pleasant.

When I call Mark to rant, he comments that it’s only 5:03. Yes, this entire interaction took place before 5:03 when she was set to work until. Mark made the wise comment that she really shouldn’t be planning her post-work activities with such maniacal precision that one minute of lateness will set her schedule off kilter.

And all this when it’s not like she arrives in the morning with Swiss-clock timing. A handful of times she’s arrive 5-10 minutes late, and of course neither Mark nor I have mentioned it to her. And of course, she never mentioned it either.

God this pisses me off.

Celebrating Stupidity

So I’m walking by the local bookstore, Diesel (totally cool place that makes you want to read every book in it), and I always stop to look at their window displays. In part, Kate just loves to look at all the books and say, “Book! Book!” as if alerting the other pedestrians that an anvil was about to fall on their heads. And I too just like to look at the books, but I keep my, “Book! Book!” on the inside.

Today they had a calendar in the window, one of those daily calendars that is small and you tear a page off each day, called Stuff on My Cat. The cover shows a lounging cat covered in small yellow Post-Its. And yes, there were 363 pages with other pictures of, as billed, things on someone’s cat.

(Yes, I had to go into the store to take a closer look.)

I couldn’t help but wonder when stupid things like this became so acceptable to so many people. And I’m not saying I’m above the celebration of it all. Maybe it’s these damn internets that allow everyone to let their freak flags fly. There is so much out there for us to process, that we’ve just had to move in a totally inane direction in order for anyone to stop and pay attention.

I’m by no means a dumb-stuff connoisseur, mind you. Our friend Jamie is pretty good at digging up cyber-weirdness and delighting in it. And every once and a while I’ll come home and Mark will need to drag me to his computer to show me something that he saw at work and found outrageously funny. One time it was a website that showed what happened when you left a gummi bear in water overnight–or for some faux-scientifically significant amount of time. What happens, somewhat unsurprisingly, is it gets all bloated. Anyway, Mark found it incredibly hilarious and I think I looked at him with disdain and thought, “I’m married to a 14-year-old.”

Ah well, one person’s stuff on a cat is another person’s waterlogged candy.

Everything Old Should Stay Old

In the line at the grocery store today I saw that Luke and Laura from General Hospital are getting married. AGAIN.

This is madness. I haven’t watched that show for, God, 20 years. (Feeling old now.) And I tuned into two of their weddings way back then.

Have they continued to obsessively renew their vows in all these years that I haven’t been watching? Or did one of the actors somehow return from their trailer park in Arizona where they were living in obscurity and beg the network to give them one last go of it?

At any rate, the passage of time has at least given Luke some perspective on hairstyles. The long shaggy male perm cum mullet is blessedly gone now, and he is actually kinda cute with short hair.

Which isn’t to say I’m watching again though.

It’s Just Too Soon

Sunday Mark and I were in Babies R Us buying some crap we probably don’t need. They were playing Christmas carols. On November 5th.

That’s just wrong.

Making Client Nice-Nice

I’m living proof that there’s no such thing as a part-time job. The other night after putting Kate to sleep I was up until 11:30 reading work documents. Last night it was 9:00, composing an email to a client after a big meeting. But the thing is, I’m totally digging it.

Yesterday I went to a meeting with a client who has been less-than-pleased with some of the work we’ve done. And she’s someone who sets the bar high, which I’d totally do too if I were a client. So I’m going to meet her for lunch and I felt like the team at my office was squirting water in my mouth, rubbing my shoulders and sending me into the ring. Everyone was saying good luck as if I was chum about to be tossed in a shark tank. And I wasn’t really worried about it. But it was nice to have my new posse looking out for me. Made me feel like in the couple weeks I’ve been there I’ve been welcomed into the fold.

And the fact is, I love a good challenge. Especially when it’s about connecting with someone, getting to the bottom of what is bugging them, you know–making nice-nice with the client and turning the ship around. And it’s nothing fake that I bust out. I guess I just took the advice an old boss gave to me once years ago which was simply to put myself in the client’s shoes. At the time I was sticking up so vehemently for the internal team I’d lost sight of the fact that what the client wanted was totally reasonable.

So anyway, the night before my meeting I did my background reading. Printed out my driving directions. Carefully picked out an outfit and ironed it. And Kate even pulled one for the team by sleeping 12 hours straight so I could get a good night’s sleep. (What a peach.)

I feel like much of the time I brace myself for something it ends up being not half-bad. My meeting was totally do-able—somewhat positive and definitely productive. I heard some honest feedback on the team’s past performance, and it was neither crushing nor unrealistic. And I also think I made some inroads into determining ways I could help solve some of their problems. It was hardly a love-fest, but it felt like a solid first step toward developing a good relationship with the clients.

Of course, I’m all of two hours into working with them. The thing that’s challenging and fun and totally unnerving at times about client work is, just like anywhere else, it takes a while to develop trust and gain credibility. And at times you feel like despite whatever history you’ve established, you’re still only as good as your last presentation or conference call. But that’s what keeps me on my toes and gives me momentum to forge through late work nights. That and the satisfaction of feeling like even after a year of being out of the game, I can still give good client.

Spell Check Can Be Funny

Today spell-check identified my last name–McClusky–as a word it didn’t recognize, and therefore thought it was something I’d spelled wrong. The suggestion it made for what it thought I was trying to type was “Clunky.”

After spending a lot of time trying to come up with baby names that went well with McClusky, that really hit home.

Ah, yes. Clearly I have returned to the world of the working. I am finding spell check funny. I guess you get your work-day amusement where you can.

Two Things

I was just making the bed and felt something crinkly below the sheet. I pulled it back and there was a five-dollar bill! Just sitting there between the fitted sheet and the mattress pad. Woo hoo! There’s money stuffed in our mattress! I’d always thought that was just some expression.

And totally unrelated yet delightful (at least to me):
The other day our issue of Outside magazine came in the mail. One of the stories is a travel feature about Mexico’s Yucatan coast. The headline is “The Pleasure’s All Mayan.” How good is that?