Laden with Thoughts

This is the best Monday ever! After working lots of overtime last week and not seeing my children at ALL (I swear Liam knows 50 more words now than he did last week) I asked my supervisor if I could use a floating holiday to stay home today. REQUEST APPROVED! So here I am, in all my unshowered glory, drinking tea and explaining to Liam that he can sit on my lap AFTER I finish my writing and NO you may not put your fingers in my tea and YES I know you have hair and a nose and a belly button.

Love him.

Totally exhausting day. I get the day off on Wednesday, so you’d think I would have had a lovely day playing with the children and bumming around the house. Unfortunately I’ve let all the housework pile up and pile up until the thought of doing laundry or sweeping completely overwhelms me. So, as you can probably imagine, nothing got done today. Liam spent much of the day pushing Maeve off of his toys and onto her head (she’s been crawling for a few weeks and Liam is so resentful that she is suddenly all up in his play area) and Maeve spent much of the day crying and wailing because Liam pushed her off of his toys and onto her head.

It’s been twelve hours of this. Maeve just went to sleep, the precious girl. Liam’s still up watching Curious George and getting into mischief (feeding Seamus cheerios, climbing up bookshelves, demanding dinosaur chicken nuggets instead of the pasta and chicken he was given for dinner).

Wednesdays are made more difficult by the fact that Josh is gone to the office in Boston all day long, and goes straight from work to church for worship team practice. He won’t get home until eleven or so tonight. Being all on my own with two rambunctious (albeit adorable) babies and knowing there’s no relief coming makes the day seem that much more overwhelming.

Sad to say, I look forward to going back to work on Thursdays if only because I know I’ll get a shower, wear decent looking clothes, and talk to grownups during the day - a refreshing change from, “Did you poop? Are you poopie? Did you smear your poop on the wall? No! Don’t smear your poop on Maeve!”

Siiiiiiiiigh.

Twenty more minutes before Liam goes to bed. And all I can think about is the pint of Ben and Jerry’s (Light) Phish Food ice cream in the freezer.

Hey, at least I don’t have to wear a girdle on Wednesdays! Needless to say, I definitely have to wear them on Thursdays after all the ice cream I eat on Wednesday nights…

So… life. Want a quick update?

Our poor Seamus got hit by a car two weeks ago. We have one of those invisible fences in our yard for him, so he wears an electric collar that gives him a shock if he gets too close to the border. We’ve never had a problem, but it turns out that during the first snowstorm of the year the guy who plows our driveway pushed the snow into our yard and sheared the wire (which was buried underground) with the plow. So… fence no worky. So yes, Seamus soon discovered his “luck” and escaped… an hour later he got hit. Actually, he was completely run over by the car, and MIRACULOUSLY he only had a broken rib and bruised lungs. It was a horribly scary night though, and cost us a good deal of money to keep him in the animal hospital for a few days… but we’d never have done anything differently. He’s our first child, our baby. (Even if he is a pain in the ass.) The good news is he’s stealing chicken nuggets out of Liam’s hands again, so we know he’s getting back to normal. Idiot.

Also a subject of some interest (not much interest): I got a new job. The bank I’ve worked at for years was bought out by a CRAPPY BANK and I basically was laid off. Most of the people I loved who worked there have either left voluntarily or have been let go. Luckily I had an amazing boss who told me ahead of time how things were going to be, so I had time to send out my resume and I am now working at a medical facility as a receptionist! Or, as I like to fancy myself, as a “PAM”. Alisa, aren’t you proud?

So yes, that’s life these days… now I will carry on with living my life and be back here in about a month or so. Hehe.

Yeah. Let’s just bypass the whole subject.

Let’s talk about happy things! Like life! And my children! Yay! Happy thoughts!

(As long as you know that I’m actually dying inside. Freakin’ sports.)

So, life. I started a new job last week after being laid off from my previous position at a local bank. The whole situation depressed me at first, because the bank was my favorite place to work and I had worked there for over four years until the company was bought out and new management decided I wasn’t worth keeping. Luckily, I had a brilliant boss who kept me informed and saw the writing on the wall, giving me enough warning to allow me to send out my resume and get an interview at a medical facility even before I was laid off. I got the job and started on Monday. And the best part… I got a call last week from the head of Human Resources at the bank, asking me if I would be interested in interviewing for an administrative assistant position. I was able to call back and inform HR that I had already accepted a job offer from a different company. Such a sweet moment for me. Mwahahaha. So far, so good… the new job is keeping me busy (which I like) and giving me great benefits (which I adore). The only downfall: less time with Liam and Maeve.

Maeve started crawling last week, by the way. She is so strong. I am such a proud Momma.

Also. Liam counts all the time. He’s 2 years old, and he walks around saying “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6!” Math genius!

(It’s possible I’m overreacting. But I think, as the mother, I’m allowed.)

So anyway. No bad sports news. New job. Great kids. No losing sports teams that I know of. Everything’s just fine.

Success! Today I earned a wink from a male who was touring our office building.

AND I WASN’T EVEN WEARING A GIRDLE.

Nope, just good ol’ control top panty hose.

Panty hose: 1
Girdle: 0

Let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up. I have given birth to two babies in less than two years. Consequently, my body kind of hates me now… and I pretty much hate my body. Although I’m getting used to it. Before pregnancy I was a size zero (it’s silly that that is a size) and now I’m between a size four and six. That is absolutely fine with me, I am perfectly happy to be that size. However, my big problems with my “new” body include: ragged stretch marks all over my torso and butt, saggy empty belly skin, icky love handles, and national geographic-esque breasts.

(Boys, I understand if you need to stop reading at this point. I probably should have warned you earlier.)

Now, it was fairly easy to deal with these body image issues whenI got to stay home in my sweats all day with the kids, but now that I’ve gone back to work and have to wear actual clothes and be seen by actual people, I have a much harder time facing myself in the mirror each morning. My work trousers show all my little bumps and lumps… my tummy rolls over the top of my pants (muffin-top!) and other bad things happen that I don’t care to speak of on this public blog. Suffice it to say, it makes me sad.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY SOCIAL EXPERIMENT:

The power of girdles.

That’s right… I said girdles.

I worked this week on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. On Monday, I wore a cute sweater and a very nice pair of pinstriped trousers with sexy black pointy-toed patent leather stilletos. On Tuesday, I wore brown trousers with a red silk sweater and tweed flats with jewel embellishment.

BUT. On Thursday, I wore gray pin-striped trousers, a tasteful v-neck rose-colored sweater (read: just a hint of cleavage), and my stilletos again. Underneath these clothes, instead of my normal underwear, I wore a GIRDLE which smoothed out my tummy. (It also caused me to not be able to breathe or eat all day long. But you know… technicalities.)

Please allow me to share with you the results of my experiment.

Monday’s attire: NO GIRDLE.
Monday’s male attraction level: Pretty normal, no big hellos or smiles, just a few pleasant greetings and head-nods.

Tuesday’s attire: NO GIRDLE.
Tuesday’s male attraction level: Hardly anything. A few nods.

Thursday’s attire: GIRDLE!
Thursday’s male attraction level: Male barista at Starbucks looks me up and down. Gets nervous and messes up my coffee. When finished with coffee, says, “Here is your DELICIOUS beverage” while giggling nervously. Male customer holds the door for me as I leave. ALSO. Male boss enters my office to tell me some jokes. Tells me I’m doing a wonderful job at work. Goes into my (female) boss’s office to tell her what a good job I’m doing. ALSO. Some high mucky-mucks from our main office come to tour my office building. I walk down the hallway past them, they literally trip over themselves to introduce themselves to me. Please note: I have met these men several times before, and was never given a second glance.

You know, at first I was laughing and thought the change in attitude was funny. But as the day went on (and believe me, I didn’t list all the examples I could have), I was feeling pretty weirded out. Did I really look that different before without a girdle on?

Ah well. I guess I’m not above a little girdling (yes, I’ve decided that’s a perfectly acceptable term) to do well in life. At least I know I get to go home, remove the girdle (read: release the beast), and put my sweats back on at the end of the day. My poor, poor husband.

As he dropped my interoffice mail in my inbox, Greg the mail guy said to me:

I always save the best for last!

Thank you, Greg! I said, somewhat touched.

Greg the mail guy then proceded to pass out interoffice mail to 4 of my other co-workers, much to my chagrin (and to the amusement of Jay the IRA guy).

Jay, chuckling: That guy is as drunk as a skunk.

I love my job.