Home alone

So my family is gone for a trip for one week and I am home alone till Thursday.
It is strange to feel single again. People are asking me if the house feels empty now but really, I am not staying much home.
I woke up at 11:30 on Sunday morning and it felt like I had a good rest, eventhough was hot. I am not wasting time with unfruitful conversations with my neighbours while we keep an eye at the kids that play outside on the street. I am not in rush to get back home in order to catch the swimming class, I am not in rush to prepare the dinner so the kid can go sleep early and I feel stressless. Haven't felt stressless in a long time.
There are places i like to hang out with friends, there are things i like to explore after work and now i can do it. I wish I could meet with some friends that i usually do not have time to catch up, but it feels complicated.

Am i a good mother and wife for feeling good when my family is away?



I know this doesn't make me a bad women but is the women inside me that is trying to take me to primal feelings and limit my freedom to enjoy the time i have for me. Now most of the times, philosophers rely to these primal instincts and feelings to make us understand what goes on now with us. For example, if we eat only 3 times a day, the body will think that something is going on and needs to reserve fat for the bad days that are coming. Now, if i think this makes sense, maybe the primal instinct i am feeling now is also right.
But when do we stop looking back to cave people in order to find out what will happen with our brain tomorrow? Where are all these brave, strong women that have been teaching me since the last century that we should not be just wives and mothers, we should be more than that..and in order to be more than that, we should able to explore the world around us with our own eyes and we should have time to evolve personally. So right now, inside me, the primal women is fighting with Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Condolezza Rice...Looking from the sides of the balance, I find it more compelling to trust the other women and forget about Ardi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardi).
I know that most of the times i am my self's worst enemy. My train of thoughts takes me to places i don't want to go and don't want to believe. But I have to get up and take the sword of Jean D'arc and be strong.
Ok, going out with my girls now for a drink ..no blame at all!

Bitter-sweet symphony

Have you ever had the chance to taste the feeling of saying "I quit!" ?
Sometimes, work and work relations come to a point where you want a knife and either cut your wrist's veins or kill someone. Since I am not aggressive by nature and religion, none of these was an option for me. So plan C was to quit.
There were moments when I wished I had another job lined up for me and tell my manger right there: You idiot, you brownnose.. I can't work like this with you anymore, I quit right here, right now!
Then there were moments when I thought: It is not that bad and going somewhere else wont be any better, there are problems everywhere.
So I was in limbo between leaving or staying, trying to find reasons to keep myself going where I was. I knew the people, I knew the products, I knew what I had to deal with and if I could resist, something good would come from it. Like a promotion for example. And then I would take a step back and see how my position was in edge and how my role was setup for failure. And then was the yearly performance review where I heard: Great job, but can't make any change to salary or signority this time, sorry!
That was it! I updated my resume and put it online to all the job engines out there. I even contacted a recruiter and had an interview. It was really bad.The guy told me that he used to be a car salesman and then he started in the agency as a helper but when the economy went tits up, they needed recruiters and so he was promoted. What a joke! He really looked at me like a car, what was my engine, how many doors, what colour, what material for the seats, automatic/stick.. and then looked if there was any customer that was asking for something similar. Never heard from him after and that's good.
Meanwhile, on my gmail account, there was a message waiting for me for a while. See, gmail is not my primary account and I check that every once in a while. Since I was busy posting resumes, I didn't look at this message where someone I used to work with, was making me an offer to apply where he was working! Careful what you wish for ..cause you might get it all ...and then some more!
So I applied, went for an interview that went well. And then another interview that went ok. Then I had to wait for a while but was asked for another interview that was sort of messed up. None of the two people that I was supposed to meet was available and then at the last moment, they sent downstairs someone to interview me on the spot! The guy did show his anger on how this was dropped on his lap but at the end, was ok.
So, here we are, I have my old job in a big corporate that is killing me and where I see no more growth, but where I have been for 11 years, I know everyone, I feel like home and I have 27 days vacation piled up. On the flip side, I have now this offer from this small-ish company, very sexy, lots of room to grow if you are smart but where people work like mad and response is expected at any time of the day/night. And to top it, the guy that asked me to get there, resigned and went somewhere else with less work.
What to do!?
I waited for an official offer from the new job and then I pulled my manger and told him that after the last review, I wasn't happy and I started looking for a job and now I have an offer. I told him that I haven't accept it yet in order to give him a chance to make a counter-offer. He asked for 2 days to work on this but then came back the very next day and said : Sorry, we are not investing in your team this year so there is nothing I can offer to you. You can look to other areas within the company if you want!
Wow! That made me think that I really had to get out of there.. quick! So I discussed my offer with the new place and accept it. And then told my manager when was my last day. I had to google a template for official resignation to find out what to write. He didn't even book 10 minutes to say to me a proper goodbye!
I was really sure that I was doing the right thing leaving that place. I knew I would miss the company of the people I hang out and I consider them friends now, but friends can stay in touch and they do understand what is good for me! That was exactly what happened.
Took a week off to Orlando, Disney. Vacation with family was mandatory before starting a new job. That was fun, material for another post.
And the day came to start the new job!
I am now on my second week in the new job and I have to admit is not as bad as I thought. There are some elements of wild-wild-west in the everyday flow but my tam seems to be ok. I have to really loosen up those guys because they are a bunch of geeks. My previous life as a geek might help. My goal now is to grow in role, and to make this job a place I like to go to work everyday.
Wish me luck because I really need it!

The hamster story

For a while, my daughter has been asking me for a pet, specifically, for a dog. I have been pushing the idea and trying to work out on another option. So at some point, we converged to the idea of having a hamster. Great! We bought the cage on kijiji. Bought a book about hamsters so she would know how to take care of it. At the end, we asked her what kind of hamster she wanted and she was really specific: a boy hamster, golden with short hair! So i took her to the pet store to find out that in that store they had only girl hamsters. We had to drive another 10km to go to the other store that had only boy hamsters. Ok, fine. We went there and directly to the hamster section. The girl there was friendly and presented us with a card box full of boy hamsters. There was a golden short hair one and my daughter picked him without any hesitation! Put him on a little bowl like cage and she was in heaven! He was moving a lot (off course!) so she decided to call him Mr. Movealot. We bought some food and some soft stuff that he can use to make his nest.
It was a really good week. My daughter was happy and excited to have a pet. She took all her friends at home to show them Mr. Movealot. Sometimes put him on a small ball and took him outside to play with the kids. We noticed that his eye had a small black scab. Since he was under warranty ( hamsters come with 2 weeks warranty!) we took him back to the store and asked if there was need to see the vet. The guy working there told us that all we had to do was to keep the eye moisturized. He was able to take the scab away with some small tools he had. So we took Mr. Movealot back home and made sure we will take care of his eye.
That night, we noticed a weird behaviour. He closed the tubes that connected the bog cage with the smaller cages. Weird! Why would he isolate himself ?
The next day, Mr. Movealot was being very quiet. Didn't come out, didn't play in his wheel and even in the evening, didn't come out of his small little nest. Worried, my husband decided to open the roof of his nest and see what was Mr. Movealot doing there. And to his surprise, he noticed that there was our hamster and .... 10 babies!!
10 baby hamsters!!

He closed the roof quickly. Since he has had hamsters before, he knew that if the mother feels in danger, she will kill the babies thinking that is protecting them. Good thing he knew that, I didn't. I wasn't home at that time, was out for a coffee. He called me and i almost fell from the chair when he told me that we have baby hamsters. I just took the car and drove back home quickly, going through red lights.
My daughter was in shock, completely terrified. She didn't know what to do with this news. She started crying and telling me that our hamster has babies. But mommy, how can a boy make babies? Is our hamster a boy outside and a girl inside? We had to calm her down and explain that apparently it is a mistake but let her think that the hamster is half boy and half girl. At that point we didn't call our hamster Mr. Movealot any more, rather started calling her (not him anymore) just Hamy.
I felt really bad. I started relating myself with that hamster. Imagine the poor thing. Left in a box full of boys for who knows how long. She has been rapped, constantly and had no way to escape. That's why she was so tame! And then she came to us, under the constant torturing of my daughter and her friends, all the shaking, all the banging on her cage..even one day before she gave birth we took her to the store and there was a lot of confusion and stress for her. The scab in her eye was probably a pregnancy issue that required some more attention and care. I felt so bad about that poor mother of 10.
So I called the store and told them what happened. I gave them two options, either they didn't know how to recognize male and female hamsters or this was a miracle and I had to call TV. Off course was not a miracle so we arranged to return the babies and they would take care of them. We read on the book that they needed their mother for the first couple of weeks because she breast fed them. After that they would start grow stronger and be more independent. it takes apparently only 40 days for a hamster to get pregnant again. So we had to keep the babies between 2 and 4 weeks. We decided for 3.
3 weeks to see how they grew from small gross little creature to cute little hamsters. We started naming them Number1, Number2 and so based on the order they started leaving the nest and tried to discover the cage. One of them was brave enough to start climbing a small tube that took Hamy to another cage. We called him the Spiderman. At the end of the third week, our Hammy was trying to stay as far as possible from them. Build a nest for herself in a cage that required some climbing and left the babies alone, fighting with each-other. Anytime they would be close to her, they would go to her breast and try to drink more, just like a kid that doesn't want to leave mom's breast...it's the best soother! She on the other had, was trying to push them away with her feet and arms and her face was almost screaming : Leave me alone!! At that point we understood that hamster motherhood is not the same as the human one. Even when our kids are 30 and living in our basements, we wouldn't kick them and stay away from them like that. It was time to take those babies back to the store.
My daughter was prepared but facing it, was hard. She really wanted to keep Number 1 or Spiderman but we had to be tough and explain that it was not the right thing to do. We could have ended up with babies again!!
And so, we are back again to have one hamster, Hamy, and is not a boy but we still think that there is some boy in her.