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.
I think the first time I left the Girl at home for any length of time was when she was around 6 months old, and I went to the movies with some girl friends to see Slumdog Millionaire. Afterwards, we were hanging out in lobby, and my boobs were the size of basketballs. I felt the twinge that meant that they were filling up even more, and I was like, “I have to go home right now!” So I rushed home, to find that she had woken up a few minutes earlier, right around when my boobs twinged.
Babby’s reaction to you when you came home reminded me of the first time both me AND Mr. Goldragon left the Girl with other people for any length of time. She was almost a year old. We were doing the post moving out of our apartment clean, and we left her with our friends, who had a child around her age, for about 6 hours. I anxious to get back to her, but when I got there, she was sitting in a highchair, eating a snack, as happy as could be. When she saw us she smiled, and needed to nurse immediately (to prove that they were still around) but she was completely fine.
That’s how he is when I pick him up from a friend’s house. We’ve left him with friends a couple of times a month since he was a month old, for two or three hours at a time.
They always told us he screamed most of the time, because he was Screamy McGee and NEVER, EVER sleeps.
But, he’s a lot better now, mostly because we’ve started leaving him in the afternoon instead. That way they don’t have to deal with the Sleep Issue.
I’ve left him with Pug Momma twice in the afternoon for four hour stints and she says he just has a BLAST.
NotMaryP warns me that pretty much ALL babies catch on to the “hey, you leave me here EVERY DAY” thing when daycare starts. But I just know that the first time he clings to me when I leave I’ll feel like I have broken my baby, because really, right now, he doesn’t give a damn if I walk out. He trusts pretty much all humans to care for his needs.
When she got older, she started recognizing “Mom” as a species that could be trusted to look after her when her Mummy wasn’t around.
Oh, noes! He walked in on you?!? :O
That’s horrible AND hilarious! (I’m sure you’ll laugh about it…eventually.)
Best of luck getting into the swing of things quickly and easily. Babby will be just fine. 🙂
I know, so awkward.
Thanks!
Oh the bursting into the bathroom can NOT help with your anxiety either. Oh boy. New jobs suck. I’m really bad at being a new employee ( I would stay at jobs just to avoid the month of awkward).
I’ve got the Booba-o-clock where is your Babby stuck in a loop in my head now. It will be there for weeks now.
My husband went out with friends from school one year for halloween and one guy dressed up as a banana and kept shouting “I’M A BANANA!”
Hang in there. It will get easier.
BOOBA-O-CLOCK!
It’s been so long since I started a new job. I’d forgotten about the steepness of the learning curve. Daunting. You’re a smart woman, though. It won’t be long before you know the ropes! And I’m delighted that Babby managed his first day of your work so very well. Let us cross our fingers that he’s that one in a thousand baby who makes a totally seamless transition!
Years ago, I went on holiday for a week (in Vancouver!) with my then-husband, without my breastfeeding 8-month-old, and with a breast pump. After a few VERY strange looks as I emerged from a toilet stall in various spots around that lovely city, I took to avoiding all discretion as I carried the pump to the sink to WASH OUT THE BABY BOTTLE!!! See, everyone else in the bathroom? It’s a BREAST PUMP!!!
Because, after thinking about the looks I’d been getting, I realized that the hum of my battery-operated breast pump sounded just like a vibrator. Just exactly. Suddenly the awkwardness of the milk in a bottle was waaaaaay less than the embarrassment of realizing that everyone in the place was thinking “that woman just wanked (can women wank?) in the can!!!”
Eesh.
NOW it’s funny.
Ha! Mine’s a manual, but since it’s been so creaky lately I’m sure the rhythmic SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK isn’t much better.
I have a great breast pumping story. When I went back to work after my daughter’s birth I was lucky enough to have my own office, so I had one of those scary-ass double barreled milking machines for efficiency’s sake. I was at my desk, pumping away before my evening class, door locked. I forgot, however, that the custodian had a key and came in to empty the trash ever night. Which he did that night. The door opened and . . . the look of sheer puzzlement and horror (he’s a single guy, so I doubt he had even imagined a machine such as the one I was attached to ever existed) on his face was priceless. He couldn’t look me in the eye for a year when we passed in the hall.
Best of luck with the back to work. It gets better. Iphy.
Ahahaha, awesome.
haha….no problem! That one worked out for you… you never know, it might work out again. When I met M, he quoted a line from The Arrogant Worms and I finished it – and now we’re married.
Embarassing work situations – did I ever tell you about the time I was wearing yoga pants and a dog jumped up on me and caught his nail in a pant leg? The pants slipped down at the front and pulled down my panties (not all the way, but I’m not sure exactly how far they went – I hope nothing showed. I choose to believe nothing showed). Anyways. I was still learning and my supervisor was in the room… he didn’t say anything and it was never spoken of again. The thing about him is i don’t know whether he really didn’t see it because he was being introverted, in his own little zone, or whether he saw and just decided to pretend it didn’t happen. He has been known to do both.
~k
I had never heard that story. Awkward indeed!
Popping back in here to say I LOLed at the thought of you randomly blurting out “I’M A BANANA!” in a mixed company of strangers. It reminds me of something I would do. Except that I probably wouldn’t notice the dead silence that came afterward, as I would be doing that high pitched, loud, cackle I do when I’m nervous.
Yeah well, I LOL whenever I think of the time you dropped a Dorito at work in front of a new employee…
😀
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