We all know from Dooce that posting about work is a bad idea. So I haven’t talked much about my new workplace and probably won’t.

Suffice to say it is a two-clinic practice, the man who hired me seems very nice, and one of the clinics reminds me of my old work in Nova Scotia, which makes me feel at home.

So all in all, I have hopes.

But you all know how nightmarish starting a new job is:

You don’t know anyone, and they don’t know you, so the slightest thing you say or do comes to define your whole personality as understood by them. Like the time, in my last job, when someone mentioned bananas and I went, “I AM A BANANA!”

There was this moment of silence afterwards when I realized that I was not among my friends, and that anyone who hasn’t seen the Rejected video would be highly inclined to question my sanity.

I have never been so relieved to hear someone reply “MAH SPOON IS TOO BIG!”

Thanks, ~K, for getting me out of THAT mess.

…Anyway, that was then, this was now. I was older, wiser.

But still me.

All in all it wasn’t too bad. I managed to make myself useful as much as possible when I didn’t know where ANYTHING was, or belonged, didn’t know any policies, any of the clients, or how to operate the computer system. Mostly I cleaned and counted pills.

I did managed to set up a fecal float in a dissatisfactory manner, and then my boss burst into the bathroom to discover me sitting hunched on the toilet seat lid with my boobas out. (It doesn’t help that my pump has started sounding like an old woman in a rocking chair, so it was going “squeak squeak squeak” while fluids gushed out of me.).

I’m so glad that despite my best efforts I still managed a moment of humiliation. At least this one was probably worse for my boss than for me. He practically rebounded out o the room as though he had walked into a force field, and when I came out IT WAS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.

Babby did fine without me, having a blast with his Daddy all day. The only sign that he missed me was a big grin and an immediate sign for “milk” (yet more proof that I am not so much “mommy” as “Milk Jugs”). But after he’d had his fill, he went right back to re-engaging his father in peek-a-boo.

I was pleased.

But oh, man, so hard to go so long from my baby. When my boobs fill up, so do my anxiety levels. The full boobas somehow send a message to my brain that say,

“IT’S BOOBA-O-CLOCK. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BABBY IS?”

I work again on Tuesday. Hopefully there will be more pumping and less anxiety/awkwardness.