Friend who knows me

ME

"The tool must also allow for year-on-year, month-on-month, etc." - is it weird I read that as 'mouth-on-mouth'?

I need holidays.

FRIEND

no, it's fine

all it shows is that you are perturbed

ME

so just my regular self

FRIEND

Exactly

Saint Nicolas

Today is Saint Nicolas. Yes, we celebrate this in the family. Basically it means kids get sweets and gifts in (or around) their boots.
Strangely enough, I only remember one Saint Nicolas from my childhood. And it's not the usual "I got up excited and found many presents in my boots" kind.
When I grew up I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's apartment. My father was (he's retired now) an engineer on ships, so he was away often - for months at a time. During his absences, my mother and I were spending a lot of time at my grandmother's - she lived with one of my aunts, and it was quite fun being there all together.
So this one Saint Nicolas we were staying at their place. And I don't remember how old I was, but I already knew there is no Saint Nicolas who brings gifts and stuff. So what I did is that I took oranges & sweets I found in the house, and put them in all the shoes I could find. My mother's, my aunt's (and she had plenty of shoes!!) and my grandmother's. I am not sure what they really thought when they found oranges and in their shoes, but they seemed surprised (duh!) and quite amused and happy about it.

I think since then this is what brings back "Saint Nicolas spirit" for me: oranges and sweets in and around boots.
Yup, this sounds as if I had a "slightly" weird childhood. I actually think it was pretty awesome...

What are you afraid of?

After months (really, months!) of things coming up at the last minute, I finally managed to go to a 30 min massage session several days ago.

I thought I would get the relaxing, essential oil, etc. type of massage. It ended up being a shiatsu one.
After chatting with me for five minutes the lady said she recommends shiatsu. I figured it had more to do with her liking it better than the other one, than the vague "you need it" thing, so I said why not.

So for the next half of hour something unexpected happened. I felt like I've gone to see a fortune teller. In fact, I never saw one of those, so I am not sure how it would go, but this lady kept asking me questions about myself (more like making statements, really) and my answer was basically always Yes.
Like "you are anxious", "you like to control everything", "you never let go", "you don't relax", "you don't take time for yourself", "you are tired"... and on and on.
Fine, so maybe most mothers of young kids are tired and don't have time for themselves, but I am not sure how many are ... control freaks. I just had to admit she guesses well.
And then she asked me an open question "what are you afraid of?".  Huh... I said (surprise, surprise!) "I don't know". And I don't, really. OK, I am afraid something will happen to my kids or my family, but that is just normal (I hope so). What I am deeply afraid of? No clue.

I started thinking about it in my second home (yes, the car), going through the sports I would not want to do. The massage lady asked me if I am claustrophobic, if I would do speleology and stuff like that, so I thought I could continue that train of thought.
What I came up with was: I think I am afraid of falling. The sports I would not do are those that imply falling: bungee jumping, parachute jumping... and I am not totally comfortable walking on cables across a deep valley (like in some more 'extreme' hiking in the mountains we did several years ago).  But what scares me is not height in itself, I don't feel dizzy or afraid of looking down, as long as I have my feet on the ground. Falling, however, is a totally different story.

So now I am stuck thinking if falling & failing are the same for me - not only because the words are so much alike in English. I have no idea what do to with this. I know what you think, but there is just no way I will do what scares me just to get over it. I need to find something else :-)

I wonder if weirdness runs in the family

Cause it might explain ... stuff. Today is my mom's birthday. I was just thinking I am not a very nice daughter as the only present I planned to give her was a phone call. So I thought hard what I could give her and came up with nothing. Long story to explain why, so I am not going there. Anyway, during the famous phone-call-as-a-present, I asked her. She says "a skirt". And I am like "huh? What for?" (She does not leave her couch house ...) I can bet with any of you people reading this that you will not guess the reason! "for my funeral, cause I don't want to be burried in jeans" Is she for real? She wants as a BIRTHDAY present a skirt for her funeral?! Yup, that is my mom. I am young and stupid but can't figure how wearing jeans would be such a horrible thing. What if you are cremated, are you dressed when they turn you to ashes? Or on top of having a horrible job burning the dead, they get to see you dead AND naked? Yikes!Why am I thinking about these strange things now? Ah yes, thanks, mom. Happy birthday.

What is this bitchiness that just hit me?

I was in a bad mood. For no apparent reason.

I have been pretty bored at work, as I am still new to my job and I need to complete some training to do any kind of useful work. So yes, I was bored, with nothing very interesting to read on the Internet any more. Or I just suffer from lack of imagination. Anyhow, no reason to be pissed. But I was.

Then next morning I finally understood why. Or the beginning of the 'why'. Because when I woke up I instantly started looking for excuses to not go to work. It was not supposed to be a boring day at work, as I had a training scheduled. But it was that training that put me in such bad mood.

The training was called "Maximizing your personal impact".

Why would a training like that depress me? Well, I am not sure I have all the 'why's, but I have got some of them. Last year I got interviewed by several people to get a promotion that would have reflected the job that I had been doing for more than two years. To put it that way: I had a job, been doing it for couple of years, then HR realized the job was at a higher level than I had on my contract and said I should go through a formal promotion process. Hey, I didn't like it, but it's France - and either the country or the company (or both) have their way of doing things that sometimes is surprising.

The feedback I got after the interviews was extremely annoying. It said that I need to work on my assertiveness (whatever the heck that is - just goes to show I don't have it), my "voice" (yeah, getting better and better), my personal impact (thus the idiot training), etc. Basically everybody thought I was a very nice lady, doing a good job - but too "nice", shy, whatever, to be promoted. Because no director (being a man, you see) would ever take me seriously. For a job I have already been doing. Well - or very well - according to my yearly reviews.

That pissed the hell out of me. Like you wouldn't believe it. I didn't care about the promotion - I had not asked for it, nor for the money or whatever. It was the principle of it.

And I finally nailed it 6 months later, the morning I realized I am being bitchy because this training was just a reminder that I am not good enough. FOR.A.JOB.I.HAVE.ALREADY.BEEN.DOING.VERY.WELL.
Is it a wonder I thought "what the f$%&?!"

I've been reading a lot of personal improvement books and so on lately. Bored at work, remember? All - or most of them - try to tell us we are good enough as we are and until we are happy with who and what we are, we will not be able to progress.

And my company/HR/colleagues (pick your favorite) keep telling me I am not good enough. Of course, it is my choice how I take this whole business - and let me tell you I did not take it well at the time. It's still a sore spot, even if I changed jobs since then. Human mind (or weird mind, seeing that I am talking about mine) sometimes works in mysterious ways :-) I hate not getting something even if I didn't really want it. I am happy I did not get this promotion, as it would have meant my career had to be in a place I do not wish it to be at this time in my life. But... I was already doing the job and they said I am not good enough for it.

I reserve my right to be bitchy. In general that is true, but even more when others judge me and label me as 'not good enough'. Does this mean I actually think I am good enough? If yes, good for me!

On the road to madness. Or boredom. Or both

Disclaimer: You need to know that I spend around two hours a day in my car, driving to and from work. Ocasionally school and day care are in the schedule as well, and then it gets more like three hours.

It's not to complain (because I do that a lot anyhow) , it's just to explain I get bored. Like really really bored. Close to a coma bored. So then I find funny things to observe on the road. You can imagine that my notion of funny is not a standard one at that degree of boredom.

These two are from a few days ago, on my way back home.

First one is about publicity on cars and how it can go quite wrong. 

See the  QR code? Yes, the one kind of hidden behind the ladder. Let's say you're weird enough to want to scan it. And you go (a bit like me): Don't move, truck. OK, got my phone ready. Now stay like that. A bit to the left... no, not working. Maybe to the right? Riiiight... I get it now: what I need to do is just to squeeze the phone between the truck and the ladder. THAT makes sense.

Worst publicity ever.

And this guy (or gal, no idea). What is that sticker?
No, seriously, for the 5 minutes I had the car in front of me I kept asking myself that question.
Okay, I get the skull. Fine. A skull. Not a big deal. Then what the what is on its... head? Is that a tree? Oh, no, it kind of looks like a crocodile. Or not. It's actually a... bird. Is that a crow? Why? I mean, what are you trying to say? Look what I just had for dinner? Admire how much of a thorough eater I am? Worst of all, the crow looks skinny, so not sure it had enough to eat anyway.

I don't know what you're having, but maybe you should not drive.

About reading, sex and survival

This is IT. This is why I read like an obsessed person and I couldn't have said it better.
The quote is from a romance book, of course :-) 

"Reading, for me, was like breathing. It was probably akin to masturbation for my brain. Getting off on the fantasy within the pages of a good novel felt necessary to my survival. If I wasn't asleep, knitting, or working, I was reading. This was for several reasons, all of them focused around the infinitely superior and enviable lives of fictional heroines to real-life people.
Take romance for instance. Fictional women in romance novels never get their period. They never have morning breath. they orgasm seventeen times a day. And they never seem to have jobs with bosses."
(Penny Reid)

PS: I don't knit, I bake cakes.

Remember to wake up on Mondays

Yes, today is Tuesday. And this just proves my point. I need one day to wake up at the beginning of the week.

How I realized that recently (as in yesterday)?

Well, you know how ladies like to wear nice shoes? Those with medium to high heels? Old news that I discovered not so long ago: those are not good shoes for driving. So after watching my shoes get more and more wear marks on the heels, I finally did what every sane woman does: take a different pair of shoes in the car for driving, then switch once arrived at your destination.

For this, what you might also need is this little thing:

Like a very organised woman - which I totally am, 4 days a week as an average! - I have those in my car.

The bad luck is that I work in an office that has an unusual policy for entering the premises with your car. Even if we have a barrier with a badge reader - so in theory it should open once you put your badge next to it and it identifies you as a simple stupid employee and not a high tech spy... well, as I was saying, even if we have that, we also have two people before that aforementioned barrier who are asking to see your badge. Because, for unknown reasons -at least to my tired brain cells- the barrier is open in the morning. Yup. Just like that.

Anyway, back to my bad luck. Yesterday I was not very awake. And as you can suspect by now, after all this, it led me to showing the poor guy this:

See the problem there? I hope he didn't. I felt like an idiot anyway, but I admit I also felt relief that I don't have other type of clothing in the car that I could have picked up and shown to him by accident.

(Almost) perfect moments

I am usually the one putting the beasts kids to sleep. I used to think (and still do, on a regular basis) that those moms who say how wonderful it is to put kids to bed and give hugs and kisses and so on are full of it. For me it's more like this book my friend introduced me to.

Anyway... So I have this "quality" time with my kids which is mostly filled with 'stay in your bed', 'no need to drink milk for the 10th time in the past 5 minutes', 'shut up and let your brother sleep' - in all degrees of voices, from whispers to shouts and back again.

But I admit that it also happens that we have interesting conversations, some become my favorite moments. Or my almost perfect moments.


                       ************
(still) 5 years old: You know, mommy, before I die...
Me (thinking): huh?
(still) 5 years old: ... there is only one face I would like to see...
Me (thinking): hmm, that's so cute...
(still) 5 years old: ... my girlfriend's.
Me: What?!!

                       *************

(still) 5 years old: Mommy, I have a secret to tell you. You should not say anything to daddy.
Me: Ok...
(still) 5 years old: In fact, I prefer you over daddy.
Me: hmm... are you sure? Daddy tells nice stories and plays with you more than I do.
(still) 5 years old: Yes, but I really like you better.
Me: Ok then, that's unexpected...
(still) 5 years old: It's because I did the "eeny, meeny, miny, moe"* and you won.


*Equivalent in French is "la plouf" (for my friend who has no clue of what it is, but has great taste in books) and in Romanian it's "ala-bala-portocala"...

Jokes

• What does a tomato say when crossing the road?
• "Ketchup!"

•  What does a 5 years old kid tell his mom after she tells this joke?
• "That was so lame "

I had to agree with him.

Animals' cruelty

I love cats. And dogs. And bunnies and all nice fluffy, cuddly animals.

The only one I currently own - also known as The (Stupid) Cat - is a very welcomed addition to my household. That is my opinion, and for sure not my husband's.

Despite this, in many occasions I get to philosophize - usually this happens between 2 and 4 am, so bear with me, the quality of the philosophical part of my internal monologue might be slightly questionable:

• Is the clock showing the right hour or I am dreaming?
• How many times did The Cat wake me up already? Is The Cat inside and wants to go out or the other way around? What door should I open - it's f... dark outside and I only hear some scratching, no idea if from upstairs or downstairs?
• Does The Cat realize it is asking to be nicely kicked out of the house at -5 degrees for no reason whatsoever?
• What does The Cat try to express when climbing on my curtains at 2 am? 
• Why don't I wear any slippers so that I can throw one towards The Cat's head? Maybe I should buy some and just keep them next to my bed?
• Should I finish the beer I still have in my glass because I was too tired to finish it last night? Oh, it's 5 am so might not be a good idea to start the day with a beer. Or would it?...
• Does The Cat communicate with the children on a hidden channel and only wakes us up at 5-6 when the children sleep later than usual?
• How come when the children wake up at 6, The Cat seems abnormally tired and it's not even moving from the bed - making it difficult for me to go and stop the screaming kid from waking his brother?

All this brings me to the idea that there is such thing as animal's cruelty.

Might be a stretch, but what if they just hate our guts and find ways to show it to us and we are too dumb to get it? Or they just want to get even. Either way, it's working.