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I gave my two weeks’ notice at my job today.

I have a pretty strict policy about not talking about my job on my blog, because it just doesn’t seem like a very wise thing to do. And I’m still not going to get into specifics about it now. But I’ll say this: I started this job back in January, and I liked it at first because it was all new and I was learning about a side of the IT industry that I’d never worked in before. Sure, it wasn’t my intended career path, but it was a work-from-home job so it worked with my lifestyle/parenting choices, and it was kinda fun at first.

But once it stopped being all new and exciting? I got bored. And it showed. I’ve definitely been putting in a half-assed effort because this just isn’t something that interests me. It’s just a job. I don’t hate it and I don’t love it, it’s just… neutral. But it’s a really small company and my boss feels like everybody needs to work together and feel like an invested stakeholder in the company in order for it to be successful. I get where he’s coming from, because this company is his baby, but at the same time? This isn’t my passion. I don’t want to be a primary stakeholder in any company. I have enough responsibility in my day-to-day life as a wife, mom, daughter, sister, friend, etc… I have no desire to be a CEO of anything.

Because my job performance has been pretty sub-par lately, I was put on probation this week. This really just reinforced to me what I already knew: I’m not very good at this job, I don’t particularly like it, and I want to go back to tech writing. So my resume is out there, I’ve got a couple of different job possibilities cooking, and I turned in my notice.

I’m a little scared that I quit without having another job already lined up. But I also know that I’m doing the right thing. There’s no need to continue in a job that I suck at. My boss actually sounded relieved when I told him I was quitting.

So, that’s what’s going on here. Now I just have to scramble like hell and hope that the perfect job shows up in the next two weeks. Wish me luck!

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*That’s how Catie says Mary Poppins. I don’t know why the “H” sound in front of her name, but she does this a lot. Like her cousin Austin is “Haustin.” And this month? Is “Haugust.” Don’t know where it comes from, but it’s funny, so I let it slide.

This weekend, we made a quick trip to Charlotte to visit my sister, who got us tickets to go see the traveling Broadway musical of Mary Poppins. Catie would’ve been excited to just sit in Tracy’s apartment for 24 hours, but getting to see the “concert” (her words) of one of her favorite movies was definitely a bonus.

Wait, let me back up because I need an excuse to post this picture. On Friday evening, we went to our monthly Drum Night, and I got this picture, which cracks me up.

What a bunch of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells. I swear there needs to be a “No Loitering” sign over their heads.

ANYWAY. So on Saturday, we drove to Charlotte. Catie napped in the car.

Man, I wish I could nap in the car like that. (Also? Dave says that I do that exact open-mouth thing when I sleep. I say he’s a dirty liar.)

We hung out at my sister’s place for a while, then went out for dinner.

Catie was very excited by the crayons that came with her kids’ menu.

Then we walked around. Or, in my sister’s case, got dragged around.

(I’m pretty sure Tracy didn’t mind being dragged. She didn’t seem to mind giving Catie a piggy-back ride either.)

Soon, it was time to head off for the show. Dave wisely headed back to Tracy’s apartment to chill out and watch movies while the girls went to the show. (Dave is definitely not a Broadway kind of dude.)

I only managed to take this one really awful picture before the mean old usher came over and fussed at me for using my camera. (It was before the show even started!!)

I have to say, the flash on the iPhone 4? Kind of makes everyone look jaundiced. I’m not a fan.

As for the show, it was fantastic. I’m not generally a Broadway fan, but it was really great. My only complaint was that the matinee was sold out, so Tracy got us tickets for the 8 p.m. show. Which would’ve been fine if it’d just been us, but the show ended at 10:45, by which point Catie had dozed off on Tracy’s arm. (I woke her up so she could see Mary Poppins fly out over the audience, because MAN that was cool.)

Anyway, if the show comes to your town? I highly recommend it. It was so fun.

On Sunday, we got up, had brunch with Tracy, then drove home. Usually when we leave Tracy, Catie has a total meltdown. This time, I promised her that if she was good and didn’t cry when it was time to leave, I’d take her swimming when we got back to Raleigh.

She held up her end of the deal.

And yes, I absolutely did take her to the pool as soon as we got home.

All in all, super-fun weekend. And my parents are flying up on Wednesday to visit for a few days, so we’re going to get lots of good family time this week, which is great. I predict that Catie will be spoiled rotten by the time Labor Day arrives. Ah well. What can you do?

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Two stories for you.

1. The Sad.

When I picked up Catie at daycare yesterday, she ran to me sort of whimpering and buried her face in my legs. Normally she’s happy to see me, so this was unusual. I raised an eyebrow at her teacher, and she kind of whispered to me, “Clara hit her.”

Here’s the thing. Clara is a very sweet little girl with a pretty major developmental delay. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with her. She doesn’t have Down’s Syndrome but it’s something on par with that. She’s older than the rest of the kids in her class (she’s already 4), but she’s still in diapers and just learning “bye-bye” and basic vocabulary stuff. She goes to a special-ed school during the day, so she’s only at the daycare for an hour or so in the afternoons until her parents get off work and pick her up.

The thing is, Clara can be very rough without meaning to be. None of it is ill-intentioned, she’s a really sweet-natured kid. But, like, today for example, while I was there, I saw a little girl with cute little blonde ringlet curls, and Clara ran over and yanked on the little girl’s hair. Which made her cry. But Clara wasn’t being mean, it’s like she was trying to pet the little girl or treat her like a baby doll. She doesn’t realize that she can hurt the other kids. So how do you discipline a child when she honestly has no concept that she’s done anything wrong?

The problem on this occasion, though? Was that Clara hit Catie in the face.

When we got home, Catie mentioned that her mouth hurt where Clara hit her. I looked inside her mouth and saw that she had a cut on the inside of her lip where her tooth dug into it. So obviously Clara hit Catie in the face pretty damn hard.

I didn’t know how to react to that. I wanted to cry. On the one hand, somebody hurt my baby, and that brings out the whole mama bear instinct. On the other hand, my heart breaks for this little girl who’s got an entire lifetime of obstacles and challenges ahead of her. I try to imagine myself in her parents’ place, and… oof. I cannot even begin to imagine what their day-to-day life is like.

Catie’s way of processing things is to talk about it over and over again. So we talked about it several times, and I told her that while it wasn’t nice that Clara hit her, that Clara has a hard time understanding right and wrong, so we can’t be mad at her because she didn’t know what she was doing. I said that if Clara gets too rough again, she needs to tell her to stop, and if she doesn’t stop, then she needs to tell her teacher. I absolutely don’t want to tell my daughter to avoid the special-needs kid in her class, because I think that sets an unhealthy precedent. I’m not sure how else to handle the situation. This is all completely foreign territory for me.

Later that night, Catie and I were practicing drawing her letters. I helped her get started, then I went to wash dishes. She called me and said she had something to show me. I walked over, and saw that she had flipped to a new piece of paper, and she had drawn a perfect tear-drop shape. She said, “That’s the tears I cried when Clara hit me.” I wanted to lie down on the floor and sob. I just don’t know how to explain this on a level that a 3 year-old can understand.

I talked to both the daycare director and Catie’s teacher about it today, since they had no idea that the hit was so hard that it cut her lip. (It was a small cut, it probably didn’t bleed much or a very noticeable amount.) I didn’t ask them to do anything about it, I don’t want to cause any problems for Clara’s family, I just wanted them to be aware of the situation in case it happens more frequently and becomes a problem later on down the road. I didn’t know what else to do, really.

So, yeah. Anybody out there have any experiences like this? Words of wisdom? I’ll take whatever I can get.

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2. Now for the funny (which is needed after all that).

I almost had the most awkward conversation with a grocery store cashier, ever.

The cashier guy rang up all my stuff and was starting to put it all in bags. Among my purchases was an econo-size HUGE box of tampons. (Don’t judge me. I buy in bulk. It saves money.) I was already self-conscious about that, because you know, it’s a dude ringing me up and apparently I’m still 13 and this whole menstruation thing is all new to me.

(Seriously, self. It’s been going on for over 20 years now. Time to get used to it.)

In an effort to make conversation, the guy says, “So, big fans of the Crimson Tide, huh?”

I was putting my wallet back in my purse when he said this, but my jaw dropped and I whipped my head around and I was about to say, “I’m sorry, WHAT?!?!!” Because OMG, how offensive can you possibly get, right?

Then I realized he was pointing at Catie’s big stuffed elephant that she was carrying with her. And I remembered that Alabama’s mascot is the elephant. And their football team is called the Crimson Tide.

I mumbled, “Oh. Uh. Not really, she just likes elephants.”

And then I died of embarrassment. The End.

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So, besides my girl deciding that she’s half-fish this weekend, we also had not one but TWO birthday parties to attend. This makes three birthday parties in less than a month. It’s pretty sad when you realize that your 3 year-old has a more active social calendar than either of her parents.

On Friday evening, we went to a birthday party at the Jump Zone for Catie’s daycare friend Cole. I tried out the iPhone’s video camera and got this (warning: turn down your volume, the Jump Zone is LOUD).

That’s 34 seconds of a tiny blonde blur right there. And it’s pretty much all I saw for the entire two hours we were there.

Finally, we managed to round up the kids and go have pizza and cake. The private room for birthday parties had a big inflatable throne, which I assume is for the birthday boy/girl to sit on, but all the kids took turns climbing on it.

(If you look closely, you can see evidence of the Thomas the Tank Engine cake. That blue frosting stuff requires soap and water to wash off, it won’t be contained by mere napkins alone.)

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party for Catie’s friend Ava at a local playground.

Of course, it was all fun and games until it was time to get the kids together for a group picture, at which point Catie crossed her arms and pouted. (She wanted to keep playing.)

It’s a great park, and the party was a lot of fun, but I don’t know if there are adequate words to express how miserably hot it was. Ninety degrees, humid, and not a single breeze to be found. It was about as sweaty as you can get. Not that the kids seemed too terribly bothered by it.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this child more sweaty in her life. Before we left, I dragged her into the ladies’ room to splash some cold water on her face to try to help her cool off.

(If any of y’all remember the boy that Catie was caught kissing? That’s him. He’s a very sweet kid. And apparently he’s told his parents that when he grows up, he’s going to drive a mini-van just like his dad, and Catie will ride beside him. I think that’s the 3 year-old version of saying he’s going to marry her. I’m taking notes of all this for when they end up going to prom together in 15 years.)

The party was great, and I love that most of the other daycare parents seem friendly and nice. But it would’ve been a lot more fun in maybe a month or so when it’s 10-15 degrees cooler outside!

On the upside, though, spending all that time out in the heat made the pool feel extra-awesome on Sunday afternoon. So there’s that.

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This weekend was so busy that I’m going to have to cut this into two separate posts. The most important news item first… (dun-dun-DUUUN!!!)

Catie is no longer afraid of the swimming pool.

Trust me, this is huge.

A month ago, I had to bribe her to just to get her to stick her feet in the water. We’ve been to the pool a few times since then, and each time she’s gotten gradually a little more comfortable, but she still wouldn’t go past the two steps that lead into the pool. I didn’t push it that much. I figured that this was all just practice, and that next summer she’d be more comfortable.

Yesterday, we had my cousin and her gang come swimming with us. Elizabeth is probably just about as chicken as Catie is about the water. But you can use logic with Elizabeth (a skill Catie has yet to master), so I stood in the two-feet deep shallow end of the pool and showed Elizabeth, “Look, see, the water only comes up to here on me? And you’re way taller than this, so the water won’t be over your head if you come off the steps!” It worked. Elizabeth stood up in the pool, and she realized that I was right.

Catie stubbornly stayed on the steps and insisted the water was too deep. I pointed out that she’s actually a little bit taller than her cousin, so if the water was an ok depth for Elizabeth, it would definitely be ok for Catie. Catie finally eased herself off the second step into the water. And once they were both off the steps and in the pool? They were unstoppable. They hopped all over the shallow end like tiny kangaroos, they had us carry them out into the deeper water and spin them around, give them “horsey-back” rides around the pool, etc. It was great.

This afternoon, even though it looked like it might rain, Catie and I decided to quickly throw on our swimsuits again and go back to the pool. I thought we’d probably be there for five minutes before the storms rolled in and we’d have to leave, but we lucked out. The weather held out, and we spent an hour and a half at the pool, just playing in the water.

At one point, Catie was watching a couple of boys who kept jumping in the deep end. She wanted me to carry her over there so she could watch them. (There aren’t any diving boards, they were just doing cannonballs from the edge of the pool.) She watched for a few minutes, then said, “I can do that?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I asked her if she wanted to jump in the pool. She said yes. So I helped her up onto the sidewalk, and she walked over to the lounge chairs, turned around, and ran to me. I caught her around her mid-section as she jumped so that she wouldn’t hit the water too hard. We repeated this about 25 times. (For the record? That’s a pretty great upper-body workout.) A few times I didn’t catch her quite in time and her head went completely under water for a split second before I pulled her back up, but she came up laughing every time.

I’m just stunned. A month ago, she cried when I mentioned going to the pool. Today, she jumped into the deep end.

I don’t know when this kid is going to stop knocking my socks off with the things she does. But apparently it won’t be anytime soon.

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**This post is not sponsored in any way, shape, or form. I just think this was a particularly awesome experience that warrants a shout-out.**

One of the major things people talk about at BlogHer is the swag. Last year, I brought home way too much stuff, and a lot of it eventually wound up in the trash. This year, I was way more cautious about only bringing home stuff that I genuinely wanted. The rest of it, either I didn’t pick it up in the first place, or I gave it to one of my hotel roommates.

Something I actually did want to keep, was a Play-Doh duffel bag. Sure, it’s nothing huge, but I knew Catie would like it, so it was one of the things I shoved in my suitcase to bring home with me.

Flash-forward to Sunday, at LaGuardia airport. My suitcase was 3 pounds overweight. The (not-very nice or helpful) airline attendant told me that I’d either have to take some stuff out or she was going to charge me $75. (Which, BTW, would be on top of the $25 I was already paying to check my one damn suitcase in the first place, and good GRIEF, don’t get me started on that sucky new airline policy.) I didn’t want to pay $75 for 3 pounds worth of stuff, so I quickly opened my suitcase and grabbed a few things to shove into my carry-on.

Without thinking about it, I put the Play-Doh duffel bag in my carry-on bag. It never occurred to me that Play-Doh would be considered a “liquid” (WTF?), and so, a few minutes later at security, my Play-Doh was confiscated by the TSA.

To be fair: I know this was my fault. I should’ve packed more carefully ahead of time. I was annoyed with myself, and I was irritated with the TSA (because come ON, you can see that the package is sealed and has never been opened or tampered with, and I also heard from other people who got their Play-Doh past the TSA without a problem, which just made me even more irritated). I mentioned something on Twitter about how the TSA took my Play-Doh, and somebody made a joke about how they actually took it so they could play with it themselves in their break room, and I really thought that was the end of that.

A few days after I got home from NYC, I got an email from a representative of Hasbro, apologizing for the trouble I had with the TSA, and asking for my mailing address so they could replace the Play-Doh that was taken. I was pretty surprised. None of this incident was Hasbro’s fault in the slightest. What am I going to say? “Damn you, Hasbro, you gave me a lovely gift for free and I lost it, and it’s all your fault!” That doesn’t even make any sense.

We got the new Play-Doh set in the mail yesterday. Catie is very pleased.

So, thank you, Hasbro. You made a little girl’s Saturday morning a lot more fun than usual.

**Honest to God. Not sponsored at all. I just thought they deserved a little praise there for handling the situation so well.**

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A couple of things today got me thinking about how much TV I watch. Over at MamaPop, they’re taking a poll to find out what show their readers want them to recap. I read the list – fully intending to vote on one of them – but then I realized that I don’t watch any of the shows they listed.

Then a little while ago, I saw that my lovely BlogHer roomie Angie wrote a post on Aiming Low about what shows to DVR this fall. Again, none of them are shows that I watch (and I don’t really have any intent of watching the new ones she mentioned).

So, it got me thinking… What do I watch on TV? And the list is pretty short.

* Dave and I have shows that we DVR and watch together during dinner: The Daily Show, The Soup, or Tosh.0. (Although, really? I think Tosh might need to be a “not while you’re eating and definitely not while the kid is awake” show.)

* Project Runway (which I’ve watched since season 1).

* I usually DVR shows like “Clean House” or “Hoarders” for when I just want to veg out and watch a show that doesn’t require too much brain space.

* Umm… I think that’s it.

That’s weird, right? Don’t most people have like, I don’t know, a sitcom or a serialized drama or something that they enjoy watching? And I don’t have any? I mean, I used to watch Lost, but now that’s over, so… yeah.

I think there’s a couple of problems here working against me. First, I’ve basically had no attention span since 2006. Apparently when I got pregnant with Catie, I also acquired A.D.D. at the same time. I know some people call that “pregnancy brain,” but with me, it never went away. Pregnancy did lots of weird things to me. Like, I can’t stand to wear earrings anymore either. (I don’t know why, they made me nauseated during my first trimester – something about the idea of poking that thing through a hole in my ear made me want to barf – and now, since I wear them almost never, they make my ears hurt and ache on the rare occasions I do wear them. It’s weird, I know.)

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh right, my attention span. (See? A.D.D.!) I could probably count on one hand the number of movies I’ve watched from start to finish in the last year. It’s just nearly impossible for me to sit still and follow a plot for two hours. So the idea of watching a serialized show where you’re expected to commit to following a particular plotline week after week? No. I just don’t think I can do it.

The second reason that I don’t watch TV much anymore – and I think this is probably the bigger reason – is that my prime TV viewing time is at night, after Catie goes to bed. And usually, by the time I finally get her to sleep, all I want is an hour or so of blissful silence before I go to bed myself. I’ve hit my noise tolerance limit for the day, I don’t want the chatter on TV, I just want… QUIET.

Is that so weird? Do y’all have a bunch of shows that you watch, or do you (to quote Depeche Mode) enjoy the silence?

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