Boston - You're My Home

This happens in places I've never been, or in places I've only been to once or twice as a tourist.

I'm still struggling to fully accept what happened at today's Boston Marathon.  I want it to be a movie script, waiting for Ben Affleck or Mark Wahlberg to come around the corner.

I've walked those very feet of sidewalk, driven that street, where others were attacked and killed today.

Boston is college, a first apartment, first job, first serious boyfriend... and second - all happened in that beloved city of mine. I met my husband there, our first date beginning when we met under the clock at Filene's at Downtown Crossing. I know its nooks and crannies and bars and streets and stores and restaurants and subway and roads (and yes, I can drive them... and even find onstreet parking!). I have friends and classmates who live and work there.  I have family who live and work there.  I have stood in those very spots and cheered on friends and strangers as they ran the race of their lives.

I cannot comprehend what kind of sick, selfish, arrogant, twisted mind would find any reason, any justification in their own dark world that purposefully doing this to others would be okay, would earn them adulation, or that their God would find favorable.

And now the stories have started that will make my tears flow.
      Of one of the victims being only 8 years old, his mother and sister injured as well.
      Of the first responders and others running towards the blast to help.  
      Of former Patriot Joe Andruzzi, whose three brothers were first responders at 9/11, being at the finish line and carrying an injured woman from the scene.
      Of the people along the route offering stranded runners clothes and bananas and water and places to stay the night.
      Of the friends and classmates of the Oldest who were at the finish line just before the blast who escaped injury but saw horrible, horrible things today that no one, let alone a child, should see.

Boston, you're my second home.  And tonight my heart is breaking for you.

Catching Up

3½ months. Yup.  I haven’t blogged in 3.5 months.  Guess what else I haven’t done?  

• gotten my act together 
• started any type of regular workout regime
• donated all the stuff in the garage and cellar that's marked "Donate"
• moved the spare chair from the useless corner of the dining area to the TV room
• lost the 25 pounds I hoped to lose before Christmas; in fact, another 5 pounds somehow found its way onto my thighs
• folded that one last basket of laundry sitting in our bedroom 

But, you ask, what on Earth have I done with my valuable time?  Because I couldn’t possibly have wasted 14 weeks on “Honey Boo Boo” reruns.

Right?

Right!

We went to Walt Disney World.  An invasion, I mean, family vacation which required lists and planning and packing and details.  Great time was had by all, including me.
 

A lot of family stuff - illnesses and birthdays and arguments and laughs.

I changed hairdressers.  For those of you who've gone through this, you understand what a big thing that is.

 

I started a new job a week after my last blog.

Yeah, that’s a biggie.  

I’m back to work full-time, no thanks to my last employer’s half-assed decision to issue a half-assed ultimatum.  Or should I say, to have the comptroller, who I somehow ended up working under even though I was the administrative assistant to the company CEO and the board (welcome to Small Company Politics), inform me mid-August that if I didn’t go full-time by October (I was working 25 hours a week), I was out of a job.  Even better, they wouldn’t be raising my hourly wage.  

More perplexing was the confusion this ultimatum created.  The head of our Human Resources Department (which consists of two people) knew nothing about this change.  One Vice-President knew nothing about the decision, and the other was under the impression that a further discussion was to have taken place amongst the executive staff to clarify what I’d be doing during all these additional hours before I was told of the situation.  I even asked if I could work from home part of the time (most of the billing and my other work is online and computer-based, and could easily have been done from anywhere).  My proposal was turned down.

So, faced with bringing home even less money if I went full-time, plus having to pull the Youngest out of his 2-hour-a-day, 4-day-a-week, school-year-only preschool and find him a spot in a full-day preschool/daycare setting, which as so many of you know does not come cheaply, all to stay in a job that offered little in the way of benefits (limited sick/personal and vacation time), I took the leap and put my resume out there.  I focused on part-time jobs in school offices, since they seem to provide the most flexibility for a working mom.  That didn’t get me anywhere – most of those jobs seem to be written for a person already in mind in most systems.  Then I looked at all the pros and cons and tossed my name in the ring for a few full-time positions.  That’s when the stars aligned, the angels sang, and I got a great full-time job in a school system as a secretary.  Paid holidays, snow days, working a reduced shift during summer and school vacation weeks, and having a workday that ends at 3:00 p.m. all made this a viable option.  Even more amazing, when I took the chance and called the Middle Child’s former preschool, they had one opening in the pre-Kindergarten classroom… the week before school started.  I signed the paperwork for the new job and gave my two weeks’ notice the next morning.

The real kicker?  Hubby was convinced the decision was driven by other issues in the company, including the external IT consultant’s personal relationship with the CEO and his absolute inability to do his job, something which a number of us had commented on.  And I think Hubby was right – after all that, when they posted my position, it was posted for a 30-hour workweek – 10 hours less than I was told I was needed.
 

There’s a lot of ways this change wasn’t so great.  I’m not a morning person, but need to be at work before 7:00 a.m. every school day.  Every afternoon I now have to rush to pick up the Middle Child and the Youngest.  My income is higher, but it works out to the same amount I was bringing home working part-time when you deduct the daycare expenses.  I had to buy a new car, and it was more expensive than planned – we ended up with a used Honda Pilot to handle the roads on days they don’t call off school and our plow guy does his normal craptastic job on the streets in our neighborhood.
 

But I am happier in more ways than not.  I have benefits, I like what I do, and as my mother-in-law (a school nurse for decades) always said, one of the best places for a mom to work is in a school.
 

So what’s new with you since we last talked?

Lighting Candles

Eleven.  Eleven years since so many families were shattered, so many lives lost, our collective being attacked.  That day is still as brilliantly clear in my mind as the sky was that day - I'm sure it always will be, much like the memories of those who heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor or the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  And I, like so many of you, look at my children today, and sometimes wish the visions of smoke and fire and tears and falling buildings were things I'd only seen in a movie or read about in a horror novel.

Every year since 2001, at sundown on this day, four candles are lit in our home. The two red ones, lit first, are for the Twin Towers in the Big Apple that is NYC.  The blue one, lit third, is for those lost at the Pentagon.  And the last to be lit, the white candle, is for those on United 93 who somehow were able to regain enough control over their situation and forced the plane to crash down in a field in Pennsylvania rather than harming any more innocents that horrible, horrible day.

We must never forget.