Sunday, August 21, 2005

In Pieces Well, they threw one last curveball at me.  My job decided that, rather than keep me as a 15-hour-a-week employee, they wanted to make me a contract employee.  Oh, yes, and raise my hours to 20 hours a week.  Now, coincidentally, you are only paid benefits at this particular business if you work 20 hours a week or more (50% benefits).  But of course, as a contract employee, I don't get any benefits at all.  I'm trying to pretend that it's merely a coincidence, and not a sneaky way to save the company $200 in health care benefits each month, plus sick days, etc. They didn't really save money, anyway.  By "terminating" me, they had to pay me two weeks' worth of vacation days.  It's a fair trade. I literally left the fourth floor in shambles.  As it happens, the whole office is being moved two floors down to make room for some big employer who wants to lease the whole floor.  So they're demolishing walls, offices, doorways, and anything else that needs wrecking.  The whole floor is a mass of dust, splinters, and exposed wires and pipes, and feels like a construction site, complete with sweaty men in dirty t-shirts walking up and down the floor.  I'm sorta grateful to be home now, because the dust and noise is only going to get worse.  I'll have quite enough chaos on the home front without having to worry about breathing pulverized drywall dust.  So tomorrow everything changes.  Tomorrow Mrs. Radiant Bluesky goes back to work at her school, and I become a stay-and-work-at-home dad.  I'll learn how to feed the kid 3-4 times a day, and how to settle him down when he starts screaming.  Somehow, I'll also have to squeeze in three or four hours of work every day.  I expect most of my work is going to be late at night and over the weekends.  It's hard for me to feel untempered joy at the transition, because I'm watching R. go through the emotional trauma of going back to work.  This will be the first time she's left her boy for an entire day, the first time she's spent more than three hours separated from him since he was born.  There have been lots of tears, and there's just nothing I can do to console her.  We just have to start the process and hope that the pain recedes somehow.  As I told her earlier, I don't want it get better.  I just want it to start hurting less.  Right now, she's n complete agony.  She told me that she's afraid she's going to start crying at work, in the middle of her all-day meeting.  I'm sure it's going to happen.  The next few weeks are going to be a strain on all of us, and I know all three of us are going to shed some tears.  (And yes, Oliver's got actual tears coming out of his eyes now.  It's the most heartbreaking thing you can imaging, watching a baby cry real tears for the first time.)  I just keep saying to myself, "this is the best we can do." It doesn't really help R. to try and rationalize things, by saying that at least I'm taking care of him instead of daycare.  I mean, it helps that I'm doing it. And she feels much more confident with me caring for him than complete strangers.  But she still has to leave him behind all day, while she goes to work.  I told her we'd come to visit her at least once a week.  But I know it'll hurt every time she breaks out the breast pump and has to look at a picture of her baby instead of the real thing.  I know that hearing Oliver on the phone instead of in person is going to break her heart.  I know all of this, and I'm crying for her, too.  This is the best we can do. This is the best we can do.  10:05:36 PM     Speak up!  []