Major decision

I woke up this morning “hung over” with grief, wondering if I should call up my sister and ask for a valium. I almost blew off the pre-interview laboratory visit I had this afternoon, because I was barely functional.

But I didn’t blow it off.

And I went. Mostly to force myself out of my sadness. I didn’t even care to go, except I thought it might help distract me from the hurt. It did help, more than I thought it would.

*****

At first, I was a little concerned by the fact that there was no one in the lab actually doing lab work today (Wednesday).

They have a VERY small staff.

One was out of town.

One had a day off.

One was the “chief financial officer”.

One was on the computer doing work.

And the last one was showing me around.

Strange. But they’ve only been operational at that facility for about a year.

They do microbiological validation studies, bioburden testing, disinfectant studies, environmental sampling and testing (not exactly exciting, but someone has to do it, and they are making themselves a good name doing it). Some of it would be taking a few steps backward in my training…at first.

But, they want to expand into DNA analysis, something I’ve done for 9 years. When one of the staff found out about my PCR experience, they were excited. But not as excited as I got just talking about it. I could feel myself come alive when I talked about what I did before.

They could use someone with my experience. I know I could do this job.

When I told the woman I used to work who had called me up in the first place, that I’d need to brush up on my skills, she said,”I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Sometimes we have to do that as well”. They recently had to brush up on something they hadn’t done in years. And since they do project based work for other companies, they will have a variety of new things to do. It’s always something different (good for the person who enjoys novelty).

It seems like it would benefit us both. I could help them get their DNA technology on-line, and they could be the break I need.

And, it could be on a part-time/flex-time basis.

And it’s only 30 minutes away, in a town we’ve been considering moving to in the not so distant future.

One huge drawback?

Child care.

I have one in full day school, one in half day K, and one in preschool 2 hours a day, three days a week to make things more complicated.

Do I take a job that changes everything for them, just to give myself a chance to go back to the kind of career I found deeply satisfying?

I didn’t go looking for this. It literally came looking for me.

Out of the blue.

When I’m not quite ready.

Next year would be “more perfect”, when they would be in school all day long.

It’s so hard to find an on-ramp in the STEM field, and here is one handed to me.

No, this wasn’t even the official interview. Yes, there is a small chance I won’t get offered the job. But it’s not likely. They seem desperate.

And maybe I wouldn’t mope about so much if I had something else to do with my time.

 

So how do you decide when to take a risk or pass up an opportunity that knocks on your door?

The bad part about being so sensitive

You grieve more deeply.

You hurt more profoundly.

You can’t force yourself to ignore the thoughts that bring you pain.

Songs like this creep into your head keeping you in pain

Live Like You Were Dying

My grieving child

The grieving started tonight. M’s school made the announcement yesterday that Mrs. P died over the weekend, losing a long battle with ovarian cancer. M told me she wasn’t sad, and that she didn’t even cry in school. She did, however, start crying buckets when we got into the car and she said she forgot to do something that might prevent her from participating in backwards day on Friday. Through tears, she said, “we’ve never had a backwards day and what if we never have one again?” I thought this was very strange and asked her if she thought any of her tears were because she was said about Mrs. P. She told me no. I thought I got off easy.

That was a premature thought.

About 8:30 pm tonight, I went into M’s room to say goodnight to her and saw her looking at last year’s yearbook. She held up the book to me and pointed to Mrs. P’s photo. She started crying. We spent the next half an hour crying and talking and crying some more. I held my big girl (7 years old) as we both cried. I’m not sure if I was crying more for her or for me. I’m not sure if my crying made things harder for her or not. I just couldn’t help it.

This is very hard on both of us. I lost a dear friend to cancer a few years ago, and it’s been hard for me because of that. I’m not sure why she did, but Mrs. P told me that she had cancer during our parent teacher conference last year. I’ve been expecting this was going to happen for just about a year now and had been dreading having to have M go through this.

You could just tell how much Mrs. P cared about her kids, and I felt she was especially fond of M. She promised me she’d take care of M, knowing how shy she was socially when M was first in her class. And every time she saw me, she told me how much she enjoyed having M in her class and how much she felt so happy to see her bright and smiling face. We saw Mrs. P over the summer, after the science summer camp and her face would just light up when she saw M, and M’’s face would light up too. It seemed to me that M felt especially close to Mrs. P.

M asked how you “catch” cancer, and why does your body stop fighting it even if you get treatment for it? These are tough questions to answer.

I tried to focus on the good things about Mrs. P, but that only made us both cry harder. The thing is, even though I didn’t know her that well, she was such a sweet person and a dedicated teacher. I wanted all my girls to have a chance to have her for first grade. I was going to miss her smile at us every time she saw us.

The most heartbreaking thing about our conversation tonight was that said she never got to say goodbye. But I did remind her that she did send cards and pictures and that I was sure Mrs. P knew that M loved her. I told her we would go to the wake on Friday. I have no idea how to prepare her for that.

I told M that it was okay if she needed to see Mrs. Z (school psychologist) to talk if she felt sad. She told me that if she was sad, that she’d cry after school. I told her that was okay and it might take a while to feel better and that was okay too.

I know she is private with her feelings, and never wants to cause a scene in front of anyone.

This is just….hard.

What a week this is turning out to be

We will be attending the wake for Mrs. P at the end of the week. She was M’s teacher for first grade.

M took the news of Mrs. P’s passing pretty well, though she did say that she would have been more upset if she and I hadn’t been talking about it all along. I started talking with her a few months ago about how serious she was, when the school decided to let the kids know she was very ill.

I talked with her about it, and we watched the episode of Arthur not too long ago called The Great McGrady, who was the lunch lady at Arthur’s school who got cancer too (and survived). We used that to talk with more as well.

When M found out yesterday, she didn’t cry about it at school. But when she came home, she cried, but not about it either. She cried about something she forgot to school and she got really upset by that and cried a lot.

She also asked me about what kind of cancer she had, so I told her it was ovarian cancer, and then showed her a picture of what it was, then she asked some questions and somehow we ended up talking a little bit about what the ovaries do and ended up talking a little bit about reproduction. Not exactly what I planned to do, but I’m not one to avoid answering questions.

Wish me luck that I won’t break down when we go to the wake this week.

*******
On other news fronts:

Later last night, I called back the person from three jobs ago to find out what kind of job she had in mind. She was a woman who was my supervisor in the microbiology department of a food testing company I worked for while in my junior and senior year of college. She’d moved on to a few other jobs and now was at a small private microbiological testing company who was looking to expand it’s services. They were looking for someone to work on a part-time basis for some project work.

They do a few things, including environmental sampling and bacteriological identification. They also work on projects that pharmaceutical companies might want to contract out. My first impression of the companies website wasn’t quite as “professional” as I was hoping it would be, and environmental sampling wasn’t all that exciting to me, but what caught my eye was some of the testing they did and what instrumentation they used for their work.

I’m no stranger to molecular DNA techniques like microsatellite analysis or gene sequencing. But instead of huge pieces of instrumentation and labor intensive set up, everything gets done on a teeny-tiny little 2 inch (if that) square chip. I would love to get the chance to learn that technology.

But, as interesting as that sounds, there’s this minor little problem of what to do with my kids. Only one of them is in school full time. The other two aren’t. I’d have to scramble to figure out what to do with them when they aren’t in school. And while I swore up and down I’d never put them in day-care, this is an opportunity that would be hard to come by again.

One of the particularly attractive parts to it is that I wouldn’t have to go back to the city, but instead, a quaint little suburban town about a half hour from where I live…a place we’ve been thinking about moving to anyway, eventually. If we were to move there, it would be literally minutes away from home. And…the same town is where my MIL and Aunt in law live…so we could potentially have them watch the girls for us at least until they are all in school full time next year.

I’m excited but I don’t want to get my hopes up…but I don’t want to lose out on this unique opportunity.

Wish me luck, I hope something good can come of this.

I hardly ever get important calls anymore

And I got two today within an hour of each other:

We regret to inform you that Ms. P, finally lost her battle with ovarian cancer.

Hi Casey, I’m so-and-so from three jobs ago.  If you aren’t currently working, I might have a job you might be interested in

I’m emotionally spent.

Because there can’t be enough of Chuck Bartowski

I can’t wait until Chuck starts up again next spring. Isn’t he the sweetest, most handsome nerd turned CIA agent there is? I find him dreamy – literally I dreamt about him once and it was one of the top 5 dreams I’ve ever had (I’m not going to kiss and tell though, sorry).

(anyone recognize the guy who played Agent Krycek on the X-Files?)

Fitting in is hard to do, or is it?

A good laugh is hard to come by.  So is fitting in.

Well, for me it always has.

If you could go back about 10 years, I was sitting in the Dos Hermanos bar at the bottom of the Sears Tower after work from the crime lab on a Friday evening.  I was 28 years old and while I had many social contacts, both personal and work affiliated, I had always struggled with a distinct missing component in my temperamental makeup.  I could not easily laugh or fit into a group.

As I sat there in the bar, I was surrounded by about 6 of my colleagues, all whose company I enjoyed immensely.   Julie was one I had known the longest, as we’d begun our training together 4 years before – 18 months of grueling lectures, lab practical exams, mock trial preparations, and supervised casework.   After training, she had transferred to a different lab than the one I was to work at.   She had come in for some new training at my laboratory and as we were at the end of this training session, we decided to go out to celebrate.

As I sat there with Julie on my left, and Dan (my friend/mentor/father figure who worked with me in my lab) on my right, I listened to the jokes being cracked and the laughter generated by the camaraderie of my co-workers- turned- friends.   I distinctly felt separate from the jocularity and wondered what was wrong with me that laughter didn’t flow from me with ease that it did my friends.   Well, actually, I knew that something within me was broken, but I did not know how to fix it.

I’d been accused of being aloof and uptight a few times in my life.  But I insist that was not my doing.  Growing up in a home that rejected the very nature of who I am, caused me to distrust others with my vulnerabilities.  I accidentally closed off myself to people who had no reason to hurt me.

I didn’t want to be that way.  I sat there that night, staring at my margarita, feeling a weariness to my soul and feeling disconnected from the very people I cared about, simply because I could not join in.  My heart broke a little, and tears welled up in my eyes.

Julie, dear ebullient, wavy-blond-haired, blue-eyed, intelligent and wise-cracking Julie, noticed I was looking morose and said to me, “Casey are you crying?  You’re  supposed to be having fun”.   I don’t remember exactly what she said next (some smart-ass comment to be sure), but I think she hugged me (I’d like to think she did anyway) and I do remember breaking down in tears, then laughing so hard at the emotional well-spring that came out in me.  It was a very emotionally charged night.  I was grateful to be surrounded by people who at least tried to comfort me, even if they could not understand it.

****

I think about how I am now.  I still tend to be a little reserved, but I do find it a bit easier to be spontaneous and laugh.  But when something reaches deep inside me and pulls out a belly laugh, I know it’s something I can’t take for granted.  That’s something special right there.

The same goes true with people in my life.  I think that’s why it’s so hard right now to fight against the melancholy that threatens to swallow me up whole.

Five years ago, I had a full life.  I had friends.  Granted, most of them were my co-workers, but I LIKED my co-workers.  They happened to share a lot of responsibility, and personal history with me.  They cared about what was going on in my life.  They loved me, and I deeply loved them.  Maintaining the friendships are harder now that I no longer work with them, but I do get to see them at least once a year on Halloween (like I did last weekend).  And every year, the same promises are made – that we MUST get together more than 1x a year.  I think this year I’m going to hold them to that.

Now, I see people in short windows of time.  5-10 minutes at most when I go get my kids from school.  I feel so damn pathetic that it’s not enough for me.   And I feel guilty that I need so much and my husband, who does a  good job when he’s at home, can’t give me what I need for the 9 hours he’s gone to work.

I’m a social introvert (paradoxical, I know).  I need people, even though I sometimes get too much and get exhausted by them.   I was reminded of how nice it was to be a part of something social when I went to a NaNoWriMo writing event at the local bookstore last night.  I almost didn’t go, afraid I wouldn’t fit in.  I even called my husband on the way over there and told him I had no idea why I was going.  I fully expected to be disappointed.

I was really, pleasantly surprised when I walked in to the coffee shop inside the bookstore.  I had a nice little chat with the young male coffee barista, who made my Raspberry Mocha Kiss, and had a nice smile and wished me luck trying to find the writer’s group.

I did find the group, and I sat with 3 other women, one younger than me and two older than me.   As we sat together, working on our novels, I was feeling quite happy to feel a natural ease with these women.   They shared writing tips with me,  suggested I stop trying so hard to be perfect,  and seemed interested in my story and I was interested in theirs.  I was also pleased to get some feedback from one who was an English teacher who fully believed I had what it took to be a writer.  It was really kind of nice to hear that vote of confidence.

When two of the girls left, I sat with the third one who asked me what I did besides take care of my girls and write.  I had to think about it a moment.  Sometimes I forget that’s not all I’ve done in the past 5 years.

I was able to talk with her about the year and a half I took trying to research and help my daughter with selective mutism.  I actually marveled at the comfort I felt talking to her about it.   Being shy herself in new situations, she could relate to my daughter’s discomfort in social settings.  It’s been a very long time since I had someone seem to care and seemed fully interested in what I had to say, and I could feel comfortable sharing our story with.  And as I was telling my story, I actually felt a little proud of what I had helped my daughter work through.  Sometimes I am amazed at the things I’ve accomplished.  And I am definitely amazed at my little girl and what she’s accomplished (and the other girls for different reasons).

The conversation flowed smoothly all 3 hours we were there and it felt as if I’d been completely accepted as “one of them”.  I realized as I left that night that I knew what it was like to be in a place that felt like I belonged and I wasn’t an outsider looking in.

I had gone home very happy.  Feeling for the first time a community with others who actually shared my passion for writing.  It wasn’t strange or bizarre or a “waste of time”.  It was something they felt just as compelled to do.  And it was lovely to fit in so well.

Ah…true wuv

[Copyright 2009 by Casey and RaisingSmartGirls]

Because I know in a few days we will have to share some very bad news with my daughter, I thought I’d share a bit of an excerpt from the novel I’m writing for NaNo. Last night I poured my heart into some happy prose.

This is the scene where Maggie tells George in her living room she had gotten the job offer to train in the crime lab. She recently begun to feel she had affections for him beyond friendship, but thought it was one-sided.

After about a half an hour, she realized she was stalling, not wanting to tell George she was leaving. She excused herself and got up to retrieve the letter. When she returned, she didn’t say anything, but handed him the letter and sat down on the couch and waited silently while he read. She thought she could detect a slight grimace and a furrowed brow that flashed across George’s face, before he brightened up again. He looked directly at her with a beaming smile, and said, “I knew you could do it. I’m so happy for you. But…” George paused, looking uncertain about continuing.

“But what?” Maggie inquired, wondering what was on his mind that seemed to trouble him.

George sighed deeply, clasped his hands together between his knees as he leaned a little forward. He extended his index fingers and began rubbing them together before continuing, “at the same time I’m a little sad.”

Maggie looked surprised, not anticipating this response. Bewildered, she asked, “Really, why?”

“Don’t you have any idea, Maggie?” George inquired emphatically and he shifted anxiously in his chair. George looked at her intensely and waited for a reply.

Maggie shook her head. If she felt a little confused by his expression before,  she now felt a little panicked, not understanding what she was supposed to know.

He looked a little embarrassed and leaped up from his chair and walked over to the window of the living room, shifted the curtain a bit and looked out on the full moon shining brightly against the black sky. She got up to walk over to him. Just as she got there, he turned to her, took her hands in his, and said in a voice thick with emotion, “Because I love you, Maggie… I have always loved you”.

Maggie just stood for a second as she processed what he just said. The floor seemed to evaporate beneath her, and she felt unsteady on her feet. She tried to steady herself and compose her thoughts before replying but found herself mute. To say that she was stunned was an understatement. All Maggie could think of to say was “Oh!”

She looked up into his deep blue eyes and he looked down into her brown ones glittering from the moonlight that filtered through the crushed organza sheers on the window. For an endless moment, they gazed into each other’s eyes. She could see his face slowly descend towards hers. She thought it was a very strange thing indeed and then thought to herself, Is this really happening?

The next thing she knew, she was experiencing the sweetest, the most perfect, and the most tender first kisses she had ever felt. It was at that moment when the greatest first kiss in the entire history of first kisses happened.

And so you have it. True wuv…

(with apologies to the author of The Princess Bride. It happens to be one of our most favorite movies. I don’t know how close in similarity my words are to theirs, but I swear I didn’t plagiarize – on purpose anyway).

The back story on this is that while George is mostly fashioned after my husband, this scene is slightly modified from a very unusual first kiss that happened quite by “accident” between a very close friend of mine and me. We were friends from my senior year of high school, and after one long night of philosophical conversation, the best first kiss I ever experienced happened in the foyer (next to the living room in the above scene) when we were saying our customary goodbyes. The real story was even slightly more romantic, because there was some unexplained blue light coming from who knows where, and a high potential to be very awkward as that person and I both wore glasses. So smooth was the kiss, they never even got in the way. I never did figure out what caused that phenomenon, but I am sure it added to the sensory experience of the moment.

That I wish I could do more.

(this is predominantly for tbs, but others are on my mind as well).

You know, there are times when you simply can’t affect a change for the better for someone else. As much as you’d love to, there can be circumstances beyond your control to do much else than offer cyber support. It is better than nothing (right? I hope), but sometimes it feels so woefully inadequate.

I was sitting in our minivan this morning while I was waiting to pick up my youngest daughter from preschool. For another month, we have free access to satellite TV. I let my kindergartener watch The Fresh Beat Band while we were waiting for 20 minutes. I like that show because most of the music is good and some actually has good messages.

This song came on and it made me wish life were simpler and that all my internet friends, whom I’ve come to appreciate very much could be accessible so we could support each other in real life. I was reminded by how limited power I have to help my friends in need. I want so much to be able to do more than offer my words. I’d like to also offer my hugs and a shoulder to cry on. But that is impossible without involving a plane trip.

This a poor recording, maybe videotaped from someone’s tv (which reminds me of the times I audiotaped The Monkees TV show back in the 70s), but it’s the only one out there that’s good enough. This song just got to me today. I came home with a heavy heart because I know while my care and concern for my internet friends is limitless, distance makes it impossible to back words up with actions. That bothers me to no end.

At any rate, here is that song I was listening to:

I wish things were easier for my friends and I wish they could feel that peace and comfort and connection and healing.

My expressions of support are always given genuinely and freely, but they fall short of real community and connection. One could say it’s better than nothing, but is it really? I don’t know. I don’t feel that it really is enough.

The plight of the novice writer.

(Yeah, a bit of a whiny post…)

I should be catching up on sleep, or at least eating breakfast.  I have less than 45 minutes left alone before I have to get the girls from school.

But, I have a headache caused from staying up till 11 pm to get some more word-count in for the title-less novel for the NaNoWriMo.   Normally I usually don’t have trouble with that hour – usually I don’t get like this until I’m up til 1 am or so, but I was feeling it last night and again this morning.

I have a smidge over 8,000 words written, and even though I’m not supposed to go back and edit, I feel like I need to add more details to what I’ve got so far.  But, I am a little ahead of the game, and more importantly, I really need to start planning ahead to keep track of names and places and dates.

I downloaded a copy of yWriter5 so that I could organize the details. I realized that as I was writing the story, I forgot to write down the details of the names of places and the dates these times were occurring. So…I’d have to go back through 15 pages of text in order to fish them out again. It’s time that I start keeping track of these details to make it one less thing I need to do.

Also, never having really written a book before, I probably should do some research as to what constitutes a chapter. I’m such a novice, I just keep writing and writing and hoping this will become evident to me, but it’s not.

And because the time span is covering essentially 5 years, I have to take some literary license and condense it into a pace that won’t end up dragging things out.

Argggghhhh….

The whole idea is not to read what you write and avoid editing until December. The whole purpose is to just write, because if you re-read what you write, you just might feel like it’s total junk and having it totally undermine your confidence, and totally scrap the work, sealing your fate as a failure.

And then I make the mistake of reading excerpts from other people’s writings, and I think, “wow, their word choice is so amazing – so stylistic, so…much BETTER than mine.”

I have gotten a bit of appreciation for my style of writing over the years, not too much pretentious use of difficult vocabulary words because I can, but comparing their work to mine…well, let’s just say I’m flabbergasted at my own ineptitude to a scribe a composition with eloquent prose. In other words, I don’t write so pretty.

Ah, what is one to do? I dunno. I’m thinking it’s time to make use of Thesaurus.com

On another related note, I’m going to attend the regional NaNoWriMo event at a local bookstore and meet the other crazies who are attempting to win this year. I’m so excited maybe I’ll meet some interesting people. But I really hope they aren’t all 20-something “kids” who are going to think I’m ancient at 39.

Well see about that.