Well, not really, although the true status of Little Man/Baby Speedway is up for speculation. You see, even now, almost three months after his birth, I’ve yet to actually SEE the baby, except in a few early photographs. Seriously.
Zilla is still keeping the baby at home unless absolutely necessary, so I can’t confirm, in a tangible way, that this kid even exists. I've heard rumors it exists, but I don't know. We've tried everything to coax it out into the open (and this is beginning to sound like that Royal Caribbean commercial, but trust me, it's no vacation cruise ).
I’ve seen digital pics of a young baby in the arms of a grimacing Boss and a beaming Zilla. Photos by people who have actually laid eyes on the infant - Boss’ sis and our beloved organizational VP. I once spied Boss’ company vehicle, which reportedly contained a nursing Zilla and tiny Speedway, for a few minutes before it vanished from the parking lot. Didn’t get a glimpse of Momzilla or the babe, though.
There are a limited number of people who have actually HELD the baby, although again, I can’t personally verify, since I've never been that close . Half a dozen family members, and assorted medical personnel. Particularly medical personnel. You see, the little man spits up. A lot.
This was, early on, cleared by the pediatrician since he is having lots of wet diapers and gaining well. Same thing happened with several of my own kids, just some immature, weak little digestive muscles that take a few weeks or months to strengthen. More than a little alarming, at first, especially when you see them spew like a garden hose. Frequent, abundant, and sometimes even projectile regurgitation can be quite scary, and sometimes your initial inclination is to rush the the ER. But, over time, as you see that the little sweetie is happy, packing on the ounces, and making good use of his diapers, you calm down a little , use lots of bibs and wouldn’t be caught dead without a burp cloth. Still, you’re bound to have at least one panicked phone call and one office visit to discuss the issue with your doc, especially as a new mom having your first encounter with a major spitter. I get that.
As you have come to fully appreciate over the last several months, such a neonatal trial wouldn’t set well with Princess Zilla. Plainly put, she has freaked in a sustained and unrelenting way. Boss was frenzied too, to begin with, as he certainly has no experience with newborns and their digestive issues. He fed off of Zilla’s panic almost as predictably as Baby Speedway fed off of Zilla. VP’s wife, who is a nurse, had been consulted, and as a good professional who is not authorized to dispense medical advice would naturally do, she gave her shot of opinion along with a “you should probably have him checked out, just to be sure” chaser.
This was all the permission Zilla needed to justify a campout in the emergency room. I imagine Zilla was dismayed when the ER docs didn’t turn up anything alarming and the little family was released with instructions to call the pediatrician’s office for a follow-up.
Predictably, the follow-up visit(s) didn’t satisfy. Now, all of us have been armed with more emotion than reason from time to time, and there’s that thing about “mother’s intuition”, when you KNOW, despite a doctor’s insistence otherwise, that there IS something wrong with your baby. On the other hand, there’s also Munchausen syndrome by proxy. I’m not making any accusations, but I have my hunches as to which process of thought Zilla’s brainwaves more closely resemble. Yeah. So anyway… I'm just saying.
Boss’ family certainly didn’t help. They were all in a flutter because of the breastfeeding thing in the first place – the general consensus being that breastfeeding is “gross”, and wasn’t that just like Zilla to insist upon it. With an “I told you so” air, they informed Boss gravely that all previous babies in the family had been “allergic” to breastfeeding. Now THAT’S a new one. Look THAT one up in the Breastfeeding Mother’s Companion, will ya?
Meanwhile, before you could say “Pass me that burp cloth,” Boss was taking a day off so Speedway could undergo a round of tests at our regional children’s hospital. No local hospital mish-mash for Zilla. Since they don’t have health insurance, baby qualifies for any kind of treatment the doctor orders, anywhere, under a special assistance program administered by the state. After listening to Zilla’s harried repeated phone calls, I’ll bet that pediatrician will readily send them wherever necessary to get them out of his hair.
Poor little Baby Speedway has been put through the wringer more than a couple of times for extensive gastrointestinal assessment . Those of you who have accompanied your infant through digestive tests are well acquainted with the fact that these procedures are kind of torturous for babies . The barium swallow, the upper GI, the lower GI, the scope investigations. They require fasting, occasionally sedation, and often, special radioactive marker solutions fed to or shot up the behind of that sweet little defenseless baby . So far, all they’ve turned up is that the little guy has a weak gastroesophageal flap, the “valve” between the food pipe and the tummy.
I know you MUST be getting really tired of me relating my personal experiences with my kids, but a weak flap was what I suggested to Boss when he first mentioned the extensive upspitting. Of COURSE I’m not an expert on baby’s digestive systems, but I had a few profuse regurgitators, and that was my experience. Their mileage may vary, but I had hoped to reassure Boss that even what seems like vast amounts of spit up can be within the range of normal. Not always, but usually. Sometimes the key is to prevent the baby from swallowing too much air before or during feeding; don’t let him get too upset before nursing as hard crying creates air pockets in the tummy, burp often during feeding, use different burping positions to coax out those stubborn bubbles.
Turned out that was just what the ER said, what their pediatrician said, and what has been repeated to them at every hospital visit. The baby has a weak gastroesophageal flap. He’ll grow out of it. The flap over his trachea is fine, his digestive system is otherwise normal. The diarrhea Zilla was hounding the docs about Is NOT diarrhea, but the soft, sometimes liquidy stool of a normal, exclusively-breastfed baby.
Twelve-week-old Speedway, whose birthweight was just over seven pounds, reportedly now weighs more than 16 pounds, so whatever amount he’s losing isn’t affecting his growth a whit, to say the least. Boss, who was obviously alarmed at the outset of Zilla’s hysterics, now is clearly reluctant to admit their latest foray to the children’s hospital for a new baby-poking session.
I don’t mean this to sound insensitive or ungracious, but am I wrong to be incensed that my tax dollars are being spent on incessant high-priced tests for a baby who is, from all accounts, healthy? If I were to insist to my child’s primary care pediatrician that there was something haywire in my kid’s belly, he’d take me seriously and probably do some preliminary testing. But if the usual and customary examinations showed no problem, and there was a lack of concerning or worsening symptoms, my family health insurance would have put the brakes on any further testing, AND FAST. But since Zilla is bound by no such limitation, she is apparently free to seek opinion after opinion and demand that the baby be subjected to test after test, until such time as somebody can find SOMETHING wrong. ENOUGH already! Rant over. Deep cleansing breath…
Karma does bite, though. I have no info to back this up, but I do know that a “non-emergency” visit to the emergency room – a visit not authorized by the primary care doctor – costs a PRETTY penny. Since neither boss nor Zilla is good with details, I’d bet a dollar to donuts that they are being billed for at least that first ER visit. Even the most dramatic maternal histrionics is no substitute for prior authorization by your primary medical provider, and baby spit-up? It does not constitute a true emergency. I can almost hear Boss’ wallet say, “Ouch!”
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Chapter 21 - VP: In the Loop
Before we continue with the story, allow me to extend an official shout out to our corporate Vice President. Welcome to the Pregzilla Chronicles, brother! Yep, VP is now a member of the Zilla fold. You might correctly recall that I wasn’t going to share the Chronicles with ANYONE on the inside of the office, for reasons of discretion and anonymity. Hey, things change. One day, VP came into our building with a long face and a draggin’ tail. (Which is a rather unflattering, canine description of someone who is actually a very nice man, but is nevertheless the most accurate way to describe his state of mental anguish.)
VP asked me to come into his office, where, out of total frustration with Boss’ lack of appropriate response to current circumstances and inattentiveness to sound business practices, he began asking me a few questions about Boss, Zilla and our organization in general.
Our poor VP had begun to think he was nuts. Did NOBODY else see the absurd and inept things he was seeing? Did everyone else think the familial and organizational goings on he had observed over the last six months or so was NORMAL???
He asked me to fill in some blank spots in what he already knew about the past few years of our company itself, and I shared with him some strange and wonderful corporate details. Details about which he quite frankly needed to be aware; I was no less than shocked to hear that Boss hadn’t revealed these facts to him, right off the bat, before Veep was even hired! I mean, how can the poor guy be expected to formulate a BUSINESS PLAN to take us through the next few years when he has been kept in the dark (or glossed over) about what has happened in the past? VP felt as though he had gained at least a few more pieces to the company puzzle.
Then our conversation turned a little into Boss’ personal life, and the zany antics of Zilla. Was she for real? Where did he get her? She’s a bona fide &^%$#! Was the engagement and wedding as outlandish and irrational as the marriage appeared to be? How does Boss stand it? I tried to tactfully elucidate the few things I could, but at some point, with fear and trepidation, I decided VP needed to become a reader of The Pregzilla Chronicles.
The general state of affairs in our organization easily becomes pretty heavy when you don’t see the sheer hilarity, and I thought VP was greatly in need of a little situational lightheartedness. So I made Veep pinky swear to secrecy and pulled up the Chronicles on Blogspot. “That ought to answer a lot of your questions. And by the way, all the readers love you.” So he read. And read. And read some more. And now VP knows that he’s not alone, or insane, or in some madcap dream from which he can’t awaken. And he’s laughing again…..sometimes, about the asinine stuff that goes on in Zillaland.
In addition, out of the often senseless and irrational way we deal with issues in our establishment, a new term has been coined: “Bozo Nickels.” (Get it? Coined? Nickels? Oh, never mind.)
Anyway, imagine yourself, at a store’s checkout, pulling a handful of change from your pocket or purse to settle up your purchases. As you glance over the coins, you notice that the tails-side of each 5¢ piece has the familiar image of Monticello, but when flipped over, “heads” is no longer the comfortingly customary bust of Thomas Jefferson. Instead, gaping at you from the front of the coin is a ridiculous grinning image of Bozo the Clown. You wonder if you’re entranced in a crazy dream, but no, you’re wide awake. Practically panicking, you check the other 5¢ pieces. ALL the nickels are Bozofied. The cashier is drumming the conveyor, waiting for payment. You hesitate. Finally,psychologically defeated, you hand over the change, purposely heads-up, to wait for the cashier’s comment. The cashier has a clear view of the Bozos, but says nothing, and you go incredulously on your way.
Later, you ask a friend about the picture on HER nickels. She gives you an alarmed look, fishes a few nickels out of her purse, and again, there is the bust of Bozo.
“Well?” you ask.
“What?”she says.
“Where’s Thomas Jefferson?”
“Huh?”
“That’s Bozo the Clown. On the nickel.”
“Riiiiiight…….and???? So what’s the problem?”
You want to SCREAM , because Bozo shouldn’t be there, but everyone is acting like it’s perfectly sane and normal. You feel like you’re in a crazy suspense movie, or on Candid Camera or maybe just off your rocker, but NOBODY seems to notice or make comment that there is a GLARING example of “What’s wrong with this picture” going on right before your eyes. Everyone just carries on as usual, behaving as though Bozo is SUPPOSED to be on the frontside of all your nickels. Perfect illustration of how things are when you deal with Boss and his cast of unconventional family members.
Anyway, “Bozo Nickels” is now covert office code. When something astonishingly peculiar happens, and the authorized, status quo response is to ignore it and pretend that it’s totally within the realm of the rational and routine , VP or I will catch the other’s attention and whisper, “Bozo Nickels.” Just a little reality buoy in a raging, oddball sea.
So now, The Pregzilla Chronicles has a burgeoning “mole”. (And I’ve just made allusions to VP not only as a dog, but a RODENT, for pity’s sake, but he’s pretty cool, and he likes the word “burgeoning”, so I hope he’ll forgive the word picture.) He gives me the latest news bulletins, reads me pertinent texts from Boss and Zilla, and just generally helps out with the information gathering so my cathartic journaling can flourish. Hats off to you, VP!
While my convenient mental health outlet is creative writing, VP has his own therapeutic method of dealing with the daily crises. He writes parody songs. The early Monday morning after the week I’d shared the Pregzilla blog URL with him, VP and I were the only ones in the building. He greeted me from his corner office, and advised me that once I was settled, he had something to share. Veep appeared, grinning, plucked an acoustic guitar from behind his door, walked over, slung his leg up on the credenza next to the printer in my workspace, cleared his throat and began to sing, to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”
“I can hear Boss a comin’, comin’ round the bend,
That man ain’t been on time, since, I don’t know when,
He’s been trapped in Zilla’s prison, and time keeps a draggin’ on…”
I was literally ROLLING. And Veep promises there will be more, because that’s how HE deals with stress. He writes songs. I can’t wait.
VP asked me to come into his office, where, out of total frustration with Boss’ lack of appropriate response to current circumstances and inattentiveness to sound business practices, he began asking me a few questions about Boss, Zilla and our organization in general.
Our poor VP had begun to think he was nuts. Did NOBODY else see the absurd and inept things he was seeing? Did everyone else think the familial and organizational goings on he had observed over the last six months or so was NORMAL???
He asked me to fill in some blank spots in what he already knew about the past few years of our company itself, and I shared with him some strange and wonderful corporate details. Details about which he quite frankly needed to be aware; I was no less than shocked to hear that Boss hadn’t revealed these facts to him, right off the bat, before Veep was even hired! I mean, how can the poor guy be expected to formulate a BUSINESS PLAN to take us through the next few years when he has been kept in the dark (or glossed over) about what has happened in the past? VP felt as though he had gained at least a few more pieces to the company puzzle.
Then our conversation turned a little into Boss’ personal life, and the zany antics of Zilla. Was she for real? Where did he get her? She’s a bona fide &^%$#! Was the engagement and wedding as outlandish and irrational as the marriage appeared to be? How does Boss stand it? I tried to tactfully elucidate the few things I could, but at some point, with fear and trepidation, I decided VP needed to become a reader of The Pregzilla Chronicles.
The general state of affairs in our organization easily becomes pretty heavy when you don’t see the sheer hilarity, and I thought VP was greatly in need of a little situational lightheartedness. So I made Veep pinky swear to secrecy and pulled up the Chronicles on Blogspot. “That ought to answer a lot of your questions. And by the way, all the readers love you.” So he read. And read. And read some more. And now VP knows that he’s not alone, or insane, or in some madcap dream from which he can’t awaken. And he’s laughing again…..sometimes, about the asinine stuff that goes on in Zillaland.
In addition, out of the often senseless and irrational way we deal with issues in our establishment, a new term has been coined: “Bozo Nickels.” (Get it? Coined? Nickels? Oh, never mind.)
Anyway, imagine yourself, at a store’s checkout, pulling a handful of change from your pocket or purse to settle up your purchases. As you glance over the coins, you notice that the tails-side of each 5¢ piece has the familiar image of Monticello, but when flipped over, “heads” is no longer the comfortingly customary bust of Thomas Jefferson. Instead, gaping at you from the front of the coin is a ridiculous grinning image of Bozo the Clown. You wonder if you’re entranced in a crazy dream, but no, you’re wide awake. Practically panicking, you check the other 5¢ pieces. ALL the nickels are Bozofied. The cashier is drumming the conveyor, waiting for payment. You hesitate. Finally,psychologically defeated, you hand over the change, purposely heads-up, to wait for the cashier’s comment. The cashier has a clear view of the Bozos, but says nothing, and you go incredulously on your way.
Later, you ask a friend about the picture on HER nickels. She gives you an alarmed look, fishes a few nickels out of her purse, and again, there is the bust of Bozo.
“Well?” you ask.
“What?”she says.
“Where’s Thomas Jefferson?”
“Huh?”
“That’s Bozo the Clown. On the nickel.”
“Riiiiiight…….and???? So what’s the problem?”
You want to SCREAM , because Bozo shouldn’t be there, but everyone is acting like it’s perfectly sane and normal. You feel like you’re in a crazy suspense movie, or on Candid Camera or maybe just off your rocker, but NOBODY seems to notice or make comment that there is a GLARING example of “What’s wrong with this picture” going on right before your eyes. Everyone just carries on as usual, behaving as though Bozo is SUPPOSED to be on the frontside of all your nickels. Perfect illustration of how things are when you deal with Boss and his cast of unconventional family members.
Anyway, “Bozo Nickels” is now covert office code. When something astonishingly peculiar happens, and the authorized, status quo response is to ignore it and pretend that it’s totally within the realm of the rational and routine , VP or I will catch the other’s attention and whisper, “Bozo Nickels.” Just a little reality buoy in a raging, oddball sea.
So now, The Pregzilla Chronicles has a burgeoning “mole”. (And I’ve just made allusions to VP not only as a dog, but a RODENT, for pity’s sake, but he’s pretty cool, and he likes the word “burgeoning”, so I hope he’ll forgive the word picture.) He gives me the latest news bulletins, reads me pertinent texts from Boss and Zilla, and just generally helps out with the information gathering so my cathartic journaling can flourish. Hats off to you, VP!
While my convenient mental health outlet is creative writing, VP has his own therapeutic method of dealing with the daily crises. He writes parody songs. The early Monday morning after the week I’d shared the Pregzilla blog URL with him, VP and I were the only ones in the building. He greeted me from his corner office, and advised me that once I was settled, he had something to share. Veep appeared, grinning, plucked an acoustic guitar from behind his door, walked over, slung his leg up on the credenza next to the printer in my workspace, cleared his throat and began to sing, to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”
“I can hear Boss a comin’, comin’ round the bend,
That man ain’t been on time, since, I don’t know when,
He’s been trapped in Zilla’s prison, and time keeps a draggin’ on…”
I was literally ROLLING. And Veep promises there will be more, because that’s how HE deals with stress. He writes songs. I can’t wait.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Chapter 20 – Boss: Tales from the Dark Side
Boss has been getting on our last nerves lately at the office , which is the reason he is the subject of this chapter instead of the fair Pregzilla. All of his former recalcitrant, backwards charm seems to have evaporated in the wake of the stark reality of his otherworldly union with Zilla. He has virtually ceased demonstrating any compassion or concern whatsoever toward his faithful employees, only seeming to have energy to deal with the copious and often irrational demands of his wife. He’s operating in survival mode, and while I’ve made a real effort to be patient and forgiving of his irresponsibility toward those of us who are struggling to keep his sole source of income up and running, his lack of pulling his own weight, and DOING HIS JOB is becoming almost intolerable. So there. Indulge me, please, while I get this off my chest.
All of us, I think, have a somewhat ugly underbelly of emotion. If you’re a hermit, no one ever has to know. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, only your family sees your most unpleasant moments. Unfortunately however, if we spend a lot of time in the public eye and/or have a great deal of face time with non-family members, it’s inevitable that some of the rough, unsightly borders of our psyche make themselves uncomfortably visible to others, much like an errant brassiere strap or glaring panty line.
Boss’ ragged edges of emotional inconsistency sometimes stare you in the face like that. Boss spends an inordinate amount of time interacting with others. In fact, even though he’s still a relative newlywed, with a new son, I surmise that unless he’s fast asleep, he’s either engaged in or thinking of engaging in a conversation with a colleague, client or acquaintance. He spends over 60 hours per month talking on his cell phone, in addition to his face-to-face meetings, which take several hours per day. I’m not even counting the time he devotes to text messages, which number in the several hundreds. (By the way, text messaging happens to be Zilla’s preferred means of discourse with Boss, so she’s responsible for a lot of these, which you’ll read about next time. ) So yeah, LOTS of time on communication with those outside his family.
I remember the very first time I was startled by one of Boss’ incongruous outbursts from left field. I’d been working in the office just a few weeks when Boss announced in a staff meeting that he wanted to institute a corporate fitness program. An area of the facility would be set aside for employee work-outs, and a plan was devised whereby the female staff members were to meet at 9 am, two or three days per week. The guys were to have a program too, but it would be revealed at a later time, and would be conducted in a different manner. Boss emphasized that keeping fit was an important part of the total mental/physical/spiritual wellness package where the staff was concerned, so he was going to make provision for fitness a priority. I was naïve enough at the time to consider it a wise and calculated corporate move. I realize now that it was probably an idea he thought of as it was coming out of his mouth.
Nevertheless, we girls embarked on our corporate fitness quest. A couple of our staff members were quite handy fitness instructors, so they took the lead. Time passed, and we’d developed a habit of working out for about half an hour two or three days per week, depending on what professional obligations we had going in the office. We’d even expanded our sessions so that acquaintances, family and ladies from the community could come join us. We arranged for someone to provide paid child care, the cost of which was covered by those whose children were being supervised. Boss always made it a point to stay away from our workout area, because he didn’t want to make any of the ladies’ uncomfortable, but he’d sometimes holler a cheerful “Hello!” toward our area as he entered the building. More often than not, though, he didn’t show up at our place of business until well after we had wrapped things up and returned to our desks in the office, so he was only remotely aware of what we were doing and how successful and popular our workouts had become.
The organization was even turning a bit of revenue from the sale of bottled beverages during the sessions, so we all began to agree that this was a great idea, and an excellent way to both keep fit and to reach out to the community.
Months passed. Things seemed to be going remarkably well, which I’ve learned over the years is usually a sign that there is a bizarre undulation about to take place. One day, when Boss appeared to be casually perusing our time cards on payday, he suddenly burst out with an exclamation directed toward me, but audible to nearly everyone in the building. “Wait a minute! I see that Susie has written 9 am on her time sheet on Monday and Wednesday!
“Yes….?” I replied tentatively, not sure what he was getting at.
“And so have you! But didn’t you work out on those days?”
“Yes….we did work out on Monday and Wednesday. What’s wrong?”
“YOU PUT IT DOWN ON YOUR TIME CARDS!!! I can’t be paying you to work out! You can’t put hours on your time card unless you are actually doing work in the office!”
Okay, so this had pretty much been my gut feeling, months ago, when he first told us he WANTED us to work out on company time. I thought that probably wasn’t the best use of corporate resources. But he seemed so enthusiastic, and he had made a good a point about the well-rounded, healthy employee thing. He even kind of talked it up as a peace offering to the staff from our organization, since we can’t afford corporate health insurance. So quite naturally, since Boss has the authority to determine whether or not we employees should be paid for whatever he chooses, I went with it. I even double-checked with him and confirmed it before I handed over the first round of time sheets claiming our corporate work-out time. But now, Boss’ tone made me feel quite shady, and a lot like a thief.
I wanted to retort, “But, at the staff meeting, you said….” I didn’t. I rationalized that if Boss had suddenly become so alarmed about the money coming out of the company coffers for something he had previously authorized, the financial situation must be dire. I didn’t want to stress him out even further and sound like a whiner, when he was obviously concerned about funding. I didn’t know him that well at the time, so I backed off without even a question.
From that point on, I DID vow to begin taking detailed notes at staff meetings, which had never been done before, but is a practice that I began and continue to do to this day. I informed all the hourly employees who had been joining us for exercise sessions that fitness was no longer a part of our employee package. Say la vie. Some employees subsequently decided that if they weren’t getting PAID for it, they would rather stay in bed and come in later. Others decided to focus their limited workday hours on more businesslike pursuits. Non-staff participants sensed the change in attitude and enthusiasm, I think, and gradually stopped showing up. Finally, the gals who had been instructing picked up some “real” evening classes in other locations, and decided that an additional morning workout was too much for them. Anyhow, before long, our workouts dwindled away to nothing.
At about this same time, we were in habit of frequently going out for lunch as an office. Maybe once every couple of weeks. Most of the time, they were impromptu instances of taking our staff meetings on the road. We’d all be invited to have a “business lunch” together, for which our organization picked up the tab. Boss had made a point of wanting us to be cohesive as a staff, and desiring for us to build relationships with one another, so we viewed these power lunches as an outgrowth of that. Besides that, as I’ve written before, our staff meetings NEVER started on time, so by the time they were even half over, lunchtime had come and gone and we were all RAVENOUS. It was either go get a bite to eat or scrap the meeting. Boss would NEVER scrap a staff meeting. NEVER.
Once, to my surprise, and by Boss’ suggestion, we went to a popular, but fairly pricey local eatery. We discovered after we arrived that we were there to celebrate a staff member’s birthday and encourage an employee whose husband had just lost his job. We didn’t conduct a huge amount of business during that lunch, as I recollect, but we were under the impression that it was “mandatory” that we go, so we all did. We ordered, ate, and spent a short time chatting about office stuff and personal stuff. When the checks came, Boss grabbed his own and the check of the birthday celebrant, and put their meals on the corporate card. The rest of us paid for our own meals. I didn’t realize we were going dutch until the checks came. I was shocked. I wouldn’t have felt I should afford to go had I known, but whatever.
So, at the end of the week, we all turned in our time cards and I submitted them, with the paychecks to be signed by Boss. While he was busy in his office, the rest of us took a few minutes and ran to a local fast food restaurant for a quick bite, since our computers were temporarily down, and the IT technician who was reconfiguring our system needed some “empty office” time to get things reworked. Boss stayed behind to sign the checks and confer with the tech. When we returned to the building, Boss and the tech were bent over a flowchart of some sort. Boss interrupted the meeting long enough to call my co-worker and I into the office where they were.
“I saw that you put 9-5 on your timecards last Tuesday. That’s the day we all went to the local café.” He raised his voice a little, inflecting a little indignance. “You both claimed that on your timecards. I can’t be paying you to go out for lunch!! You have to sign out every time you leave the office. I don’t have the funds to pay employees to eat.”
Wow. This had never even been an issue, especially since we almost always ate while we worked at our desks, unless we were required to accompany the rest of the staff to a restaurant for a meeting. For our typical mid-day meals, we’d either brown bag it or make a run to a nearby fast food restaurant. If one of us did happen to leave the building, we were ALWAYS back in the office within 10 or 15 minutes, where we distributed the food and got back to work. In fact, this day had been a rarity, because we’d all gone out and taken a half hour, since we had been asked to clear the building for the computer tech.
I was a little speechless. Boss had just revealed his ignorance about common business practices. Don’t even minimum wage jobs require a paid 20 or 30 minute lunch break? In addition, don’t they also offer a couple of 10 minute regular breaks within an eight hour shift? Our staff never TOOK breaks, as we were always loathe to interrupt our project momentum. We were also, as a group, very conscientious and wanted to make sure our time spent on the clock wasn’t squandering precious funds. Had we REALLY just been scolded about one hour-long lunch out after working through countless others at our desks? I believe you’ve treed the wrong squirrels there, Rover!
The most disturbing thing to me was the fact that this scolding had taken place in front of a complete stranger instead of being pulled aside and counseled privately. I had to work with that computer gentleman at a later time, and it took him a long time to realize that I wasn’t a lazy, money-grubbing bum, but actually was someone who had been placed in a trustworthy position.
I ended up appealing and securing a paid 30 minute lunch break for employees, and, as a bonus got an apology for Boss’ strident treatment of us in front of a stranger too. So that was good, and I appreciated his humility, short-lived though it was. He continues to call employees out in front of others, for things they may or may not have done.
See, Boss gets pretty stressed out sometimes , and he doesn’t always remember exactly what he says, and to whom. He will sometimes make a comment, phrased as an announcement, indicating that there is a new office policy. That office policy will be effective immediately, only not everyone will be aware of it, and it takes quite a bit of time for the information to trickle down to everyone on payroll. Due to the lag, Boss gets frustrated , because he assumes that the employees are deliberately ignoring his directives, when the real truth is that they’re simply underinformed. The truth is, he’s told maybe ONE MEMBER of the staff the NEW policy, the new policy which trumps the OLD policy, but since he sometimes makes the announcement as an offhanded comment to someone the new policy doesn’t affect, we assume he’s already spread the word to the parties who would be vitally interested. Humph. Not so.
Case in point. A few months after the tongue-lashing about paid lunchtime, somebody scored at a Best Buy Black Friday sale, and our organization was blessed with a new laptop computer. (For those especially alert readers, yes, this is the same laptop Boss later briefly bestowed upon “Eddie” when he joined our staff this spring.)
Because Boss had just purchased a corporate laptop, and the other office computer needs were primarily for desktop stations, Boss decided that the recipient of this shiny new machine should be……..ME! I was pretty stoked. I didn’t really NEED a portable computer, but he touted at length how handy it would be, and eventually sold me on the idea. It had a wireless card, so I’d be able to check and respond to emails even if I was away from the office at a remote event. I’d be able to create and save corporate documents, even do on-site invoices, if necessary. Perhaps most attractive to me, I’d be able to work on an educational program for clients that I’d been itching to flesh out and implement. What a great thing! What a blessing!
So I went out and bought a cool new laptop case, a small wireless mouse, USB cables….everything I’d need to take my portion of the corporate show on the road. I even signed up for a correspondence course that would give me some additional certification in the field of the program I wanted to develop. I took the laptop home almost every evening and most weekends, too. If it was particularly late when I left the office, or if I knew my weekend would be otherwise full, I’d sometimes leave the laptop on my desk for the next workday. Boss made the suggestion once that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave the computer out in plain sight, since my desk is in a relatively easily-accessible area and could conceivably be swiped. The possibility wasn’t very likely due to the configuration of our office and the hours I worked, which is why it wasn’t a no-brainer, but still, his caution made perfect sense to me, and besides that, the tall nephews had been logging on and messing a few things up, so I started being diligent to take the computer home EVERY day.
This arrangement worked well for nearly a year. On a weekend sometime after the wedding, Boss called me in a veritable panic. WHERE was ” ‘the’ laptop you use? “ Boss had always referred to it as “ ‘your’ laptop” previously, so I had the presence of mind to sense that something was up. I assured him that it was with me at home, thinking that knowledge would calm his fears. It seemed to only stir him up more. He grilled me as to why I had it at home, which was to do some online studying for the class I was taking. Boss wondered aloud why I hadn’t asked for permission. Hmmmmm. Okay, he KNEW I was taking this class, he knew I’d paid for it out of my own pocket, but that I was hoping that it would benefit our organization. He knew I was using the laptop, at home, for that purpose, and that I wasn’t claiming ANY of those study hours on my time sheet. I’d made that quite clear. I was just using the laptop. The one he had DISCUSSED with me as being so versatile and handy. The one I’d be able to take with me anywhere, and use for a variety of purposes. Yeah, that one.
Boss said he’d made a comment to another member of our staff months ago about my desk being empty all the time when I wasn’t there, and that it shouldn’t be so. (Sorry, I didn’t get the memo. ) He went on to say that I’d NEVER had blanket permission to take my laptop out of the office, and that he was concerned for its safety because he had a notion and was pretty certain that my children were using it when I was at home, and downloading viruses and spyware. He was serious. Only…my kids had never used that laptop at home. In fact, there is no need, since we have no fewer than five other computers available at our house, which works out to one for every student in middle school and higher. We also have DIAL-UP internet access, which means that only one computer can access the Web at a time – and the only one with a cable is our main desktop.
End result? I had to leave the laptop in the office permanently without SPECIFIC, special permission to remove it. It turned out that my desk is empty anyway, because while leaving the computer in the office solved the possibility that the laptop would fall victim to evil devices or improper uses, it DIDN’T address the original issue of being safe from theft. So I now lock it in a filing cabinet when I leave the office, and things are mostly good with that.
Boss has a habit of getting really possessive about “stuff.” He didn’t have a lot of “stuff” growing up, and I have concluded that he kind of had to jealously horde and protect what he did get. When his folks got stuff, he wasn’t allowed to touch it for fear he’d break it. This very guarded, very possessive attitude is still prevalent in his family. Boss’ nephews live in a home with a computer that has internet access, but they aren’t allowed to use it. The boys, regardless of the fact that the youngest is a senior in high school, are NOT allowed to log onto that computer for ANYTHING. There’s an outside chance they might break it, or mess it up, so grandpa made it off-limits, permanently.
Totally understandably, when the nephews come to our office, which usually has several unattended computer stations, they are absolutely SALIVATING to use our computers with high-speed internet. (They even bent the drawer on my locked filing cabinet in an attempt to get at my laptop when they were bored and all the other facility computers were in use. ) Over the years, they’ve gotten into some pretty hairy situations by using office computers. Crashed individual computers and even our whole network a couple of times with some bugs from Limewire. They have, on occasion, accessed some taboo websites. I mean, they’re human, they have lots of unsupervised idle time when they’re there, so, to me anyway, it’s kind of a “duh” moment when it’s discovered that they’ve done something unseemly because they have nothing else to do. Setting them up for failure, in my opinion, and the primary reason why I rarely EVER bring my boys, except the youngest, with me to work anymore.
We used to all be there DAILY, but over time, I began to see that I was, by permitting them too much idle time there, allowing the finger of blame to be pointed in their direction for every mess that was made; for every misplaced or broken object in the facility. They’re not perfect, and they DO sometimes break things, lose things and make messes. It was wearying though, to feel responsible by default for anything that happened to go wrong in the facility. I diligently have tried to make sure they cleaned up their messes, replaced anything they broke, and found anything that was lost – even stuff THEY didn’t lose.
Not letting them “hang out” in the facility anymore has worked well, for the most part. The only hiccup was a few weeks ago, when Boss made a remark during staff meeting about an area of the facility he’d had to clean up himself, and stressed that he was VERY unhappy about it. It was a rather generic comment, except for his pointed use of the phrase “make sure your kids…..”. Well, my youngest had been the only staff child who had been in the building that week, and is the only employee’s child in general who regularly comes to the office, so I realized immediately that Boss was talking to me. I hadn’t remembered a mess in the area that Boss mentioned , so after the meeting, I asked on what day this had occurred. (Boss rarely pauses DURING the meetings long enough for anyone else to get a word in edgewise when he gets on a tear. ) The day Boss named was a day I hadn’t even been into the office. I told him so, and walked away. Go pin the blame on somebody else. Later, I found out that some of his sibling’s children had visited on the day in question, so they must have been responsible. But they’re family, so we’ll let it go , and at the next staff meeting, there will be no public apology for Boss’ jumping to conclusions. As far as everyone else knows, my kid made a mess, and I wasn’t responsible enough to clean it up. Whatever, only everyone knows I wouldn’t do that.
It’s all SO like Boss, going off all half-cocked like that, and showing the tattered, threadbare edges of his unsettled mental state. The frazzled, jagged edges we’d all hoped his eventual wife could help him slough away. The ragged, hurtful edges that his characterless wife has only caused to be more raw, brittle and pain-inflicting. Poor Boss. I’m afraid, at this point, it really might be hopeless…
All of us, I think, have a somewhat ugly underbelly of emotion. If you’re a hermit, no one ever has to know. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, only your family sees your most unpleasant moments. Unfortunately however, if we spend a lot of time in the public eye and/or have a great deal of face time with non-family members, it’s inevitable that some of the rough, unsightly borders of our psyche make themselves uncomfortably visible to others, much like an errant brassiere strap or glaring panty line.
Boss’ ragged edges of emotional inconsistency sometimes stare you in the face like that. Boss spends an inordinate amount of time interacting with others. In fact, even though he’s still a relative newlywed, with a new son, I surmise that unless he’s fast asleep, he’s either engaged in or thinking of engaging in a conversation with a colleague, client or acquaintance. He spends over 60 hours per month talking on his cell phone, in addition to his face-to-face meetings, which take several hours per day. I’m not even counting the time he devotes to text messages, which number in the several hundreds. (By the way, text messaging happens to be Zilla’s preferred means of discourse with Boss, so she’s responsible for a lot of these, which you’ll read about next time. ) So yeah, LOTS of time on communication with those outside his family.
I remember the very first time I was startled by one of Boss’ incongruous outbursts from left field. I’d been working in the office just a few weeks when Boss announced in a staff meeting that he wanted to institute a corporate fitness program. An area of the facility would be set aside for employee work-outs, and a plan was devised whereby the female staff members were to meet at 9 am, two or three days per week. The guys were to have a program too, but it would be revealed at a later time, and would be conducted in a different manner. Boss emphasized that keeping fit was an important part of the total mental/physical/spiritual wellness package where the staff was concerned, so he was going to make provision for fitness a priority. I was naïve enough at the time to consider it a wise and calculated corporate move. I realize now that it was probably an idea he thought of as it was coming out of his mouth.
Nevertheless, we girls embarked on our corporate fitness quest. A couple of our staff members were quite handy fitness instructors, so they took the lead. Time passed, and we’d developed a habit of working out for about half an hour two or three days per week, depending on what professional obligations we had going in the office. We’d even expanded our sessions so that acquaintances, family and ladies from the community could come join us. We arranged for someone to provide paid child care, the cost of which was covered by those whose children were being supervised. Boss always made it a point to stay away from our workout area, because he didn’t want to make any of the ladies’ uncomfortable, but he’d sometimes holler a cheerful “Hello!” toward our area as he entered the building. More often than not, though, he didn’t show up at our place of business until well after we had wrapped things up and returned to our desks in the office, so he was only remotely aware of what we were doing and how successful and popular our workouts had become.
The organization was even turning a bit of revenue from the sale of bottled beverages during the sessions, so we all began to agree that this was a great idea, and an excellent way to both keep fit and to reach out to the community.
Months passed. Things seemed to be going remarkably well, which I’ve learned over the years is usually a sign that there is a bizarre undulation about to take place. One day, when Boss appeared to be casually perusing our time cards on payday, he suddenly burst out with an exclamation directed toward me, but audible to nearly everyone in the building. “Wait a minute! I see that Susie has written 9 am on her time sheet on Monday and Wednesday!
“Yes….?” I replied tentatively, not sure what he was getting at.
“And so have you! But didn’t you work out on those days?”
“Yes….we did work out on Monday and Wednesday. What’s wrong?”
“YOU PUT IT DOWN ON YOUR TIME CARDS!!! I can’t be paying you to work out! You can’t put hours on your time card unless you are actually doing work in the office!”
Okay, so this had pretty much been my gut feeling, months ago, when he first told us he WANTED us to work out on company time. I thought that probably wasn’t the best use of corporate resources. But he seemed so enthusiastic, and he had made a good a point about the well-rounded, healthy employee thing. He even kind of talked it up as a peace offering to the staff from our organization, since we can’t afford corporate health insurance. So quite naturally, since Boss has the authority to determine whether or not we employees should be paid for whatever he chooses, I went with it. I even double-checked with him and confirmed it before I handed over the first round of time sheets claiming our corporate work-out time. But now, Boss’ tone made me feel quite shady, and a lot like a thief.
I wanted to retort, “But, at the staff meeting, you said….” I didn’t. I rationalized that if Boss had suddenly become so alarmed about the money coming out of the company coffers for something he had previously authorized, the financial situation must be dire. I didn’t want to stress him out even further and sound like a whiner, when he was obviously concerned about funding. I didn’t know him that well at the time, so I backed off without even a question.
From that point on, I DID vow to begin taking detailed notes at staff meetings, which had never been done before, but is a practice that I began and continue to do to this day. I informed all the hourly employees who had been joining us for exercise sessions that fitness was no longer a part of our employee package. Say la vie. Some employees subsequently decided that if they weren’t getting PAID for it, they would rather stay in bed and come in later. Others decided to focus their limited workday hours on more businesslike pursuits. Non-staff participants sensed the change in attitude and enthusiasm, I think, and gradually stopped showing up. Finally, the gals who had been instructing picked up some “real” evening classes in other locations, and decided that an additional morning workout was too much for them. Anyhow, before long, our workouts dwindled away to nothing.
At about this same time, we were in habit of frequently going out for lunch as an office. Maybe once every couple of weeks. Most of the time, they were impromptu instances of taking our staff meetings on the road. We’d all be invited to have a “business lunch” together, for which our organization picked up the tab. Boss had made a point of wanting us to be cohesive as a staff, and desiring for us to build relationships with one another, so we viewed these power lunches as an outgrowth of that. Besides that, as I’ve written before, our staff meetings NEVER started on time, so by the time they were even half over, lunchtime had come and gone and we were all RAVENOUS. It was either go get a bite to eat or scrap the meeting. Boss would NEVER scrap a staff meeting. NEVER.
Once, to my surprise, and by Boss’ suggestion, we went to a popular, but fairly pricey local eatery. We discovered after we arrived that we were there to celebrate a staff member’s birthday and encourage an employee whose husband had just lost his job. We didn’t conduct a huge amount of business during that lunch, as I recollect, but we were under the impression that it was “mandatory” that we go, so we all did. We ordered, ate, and spent a short time chatting about office stuff and personal stuff. When the checks came, Boss grabbed his own and the check of the birthday celebrant, and put their meals on the corporate card. The rest of us paid for our own meals. I didn’t realize we were going dutch until the checks came. I was shocked. I wouldn’t have felt I should afford to go had I known, but whatever.
So, at the end of the week, we all turned in our time cards and I submitted them, with the paychecks to be signed by Boss. While he was busy in his office, the rest of us took a few minutes and ran to a local fast food restaurant for a quick bite, since our computers were temporarily down, and the IT technician who was reconfiguring our system needed some “empty office” time to get things reworked. Boss stayed behind to sign the checks and confer with the tech. When we returned to the building, Boss and the tech were bent over a flowchart of some sort. Boss interrupted the meeting long enough to call my co-worker and I into the office where they were.
“I saw that you put 9-5 on your timecards last Tuesday. That’s the day we all went to the local café.” He raised his voice a little, inflecting a little indignance. “You both claimed that on your timecards. I can’t be paying you to go out for lunch!! You have to sign out every time you leave the office. I don’t have the funds to pay employees to eat.”
Wow. This had never even been an issue, especially since we almost always ate while we worked at our desks, unless we were required to accompany the rest of the staff to a restaurant for a meeting. For our typical mid-day meals, we’d either brown bag it or make a run to a nearby fast food restaurant. If one of us did happen to leave the building, we were ALWAYS back in the office within 10 or 15 minutes, where we distributed the food and got back to work. In fact, this day had been a rarity, because we’d all gone out and taken a half hour, since we had been asked to clear the building for the computer tech.
I was a little speechless. Boss had just revealed his ignorance about common business practices. Don’t even minimum wage jobs require a paid 20 or 30 minute lunch break? In addition, don’t they also offer a couple of 10 minute regular breaks within an eight hour shift? Our staff never TOOK breaks, as we were always loathe to interrupt our project momentum. We were also, as a group, very conscientious and wanted to make sure our time spent on the clock wasn’t squandering precious funds. Had we REALLY just been scolded about one hour-long lunch out after working through countless others at our desks? I believe you’ve treed the wrong squirrels there, Rover!
The most disturbing thing to me was the fact that this scolding had taken place in front of a complete stranger instead of being pulled aside and counseled privately. I had to work with that computer gentleman at a later time, and it took him a long time to realize that I wasn’t a lazy, money-grubbing bum, but actually was someone who had been placed in a trustworthy position.
I ended up appealing and securing a paid 30 minute lunch break for employees, and, as a bonus got an apology for Boss’ strident treatment of us in front of a stranger too. So that was good, and I appreciated his humility, short-lived though it was. He continues to call employees out in front of others, for things they may or may not have done.
See, Boss gets pretty stressed out sometimes , and he doesn’t always remember exactly what he says, and to whom. He will sometimes make a comment, phrased as an announcement, indicating that there is a new office policy. That office policy will be effective immediately, only not everyone will be aware of it, and it takes quite a bit of time for the information to trickle down to everyone on payroll. Due to the lag, Boss gets frustrated , because he assumes that the employees are deliberately ignoring his directives, when the real truth is that they’re simply underinformed. The truth is, he’s told maybe ONE MEMBER of the staff the NEW policy, the new policy which trumps the OLD policy, but since he sometimes makes the announcement as an offhanded comment to someone the new policy doesn’t affect, we assume he’s already spread the word to the parties who would be vitally interested. Humph. Not so.
Case in point. A few months after the tongue-lashing about paid lunchtime, somebody scored at a Best Buy Black Friday sale, and our organization was blessed with a new laptop computer. (For those especially alert readers, yes, this is the same laptop Boss later briefly bestowed upon “Eddie” when he joined our staff this spring.)
Because Boss had just purchased a corporate laptop, and the other office computer needs were primarily for desktop stations, Boss decided that the recipient of this shiny new machine should be……..ME! I was pretty stoked. I didn’t really NEED a portable computer, but he touted at length how handy it would be, and eventually sold me on the idea. It had a wireless card, so I’d be able to check and respond to emails even if I was away from the office at a remote event. I’d be able to create and save corporate documents, even do on-site invoices, if necessary. Perhaps most attractive to me, I’d be able to work on an educational program for clients that I’d been itching to flesh out and implement. What a great thing! What a blessing!
So I went out and bought a cool new laptop case, a small wireless mouse, USB cables….everything I’d need to take my portion of the corporate show on the road. I even signed up for a correspondence course that would give me some additional certification in the field of the program I wanted to develop. I took the laptop home almost every evening and most weekends, too. If it was particularly late when I left the office, or if I knew my weekend would be otherwise full, I’d sometimes leave the laptop on my desk for the next workday. Boss made the suggestion once that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave the computer out in plain sight, since my desk is in a relatively easily-accessible area and could conceivably be swiped. The possibility wasn’t very likely due to the configuration of our office and the hours I worked, which is why it wasn’t a no-brainer, but still, his caution made perfect sense to me, and besides that, the tall nephews had been logging on and messing a few things up, so I started being diligent to take the computer home EVERY day.
This arrangement worked well for nearly a year. On a weekend sometime after the wedding, Boss called me in a veritable panic. WHERE was ” ‘the’ laptop you use? “ Boss had always referred to it as “ ‘your’ laptop” previously, so I had the presence of mind to sense that something was up. I assured him that it was with me at home, thinking that knowledge would calm his fears. It seemed to only stir him up more. He grilled me as to why I had it at home, which was to do some online studying for the class I was taking. Boss wondered aloud why I hadn’t asked for permission. Hmmmmm. Okay, he KNEW I was taking this class, he knew I’d paid for it out of my own pocket, but that I was hoping that it would benefit our organization. He knew I was using the laptop, at home, for that purpose, and that I wasn’t claiming ANY of those study hours on my time sheet. I’d made that quite clear. I was just using the laptop. The one he had DISCUSSED with me as being so versatile and handy. The one I’d be able to take with me anywhere, and use for a variety of purposes. Yeah, that one.
Boss said he’d made a comment to another member of our staff months ago about my desk being empty all the time when I wasn’t there, and that it shouldn’t be so. (Sorry, I didn’t get the memo. ) He went on to say that I’d NEVER had blanket permission to take my laptop out of the office, and that he was concerned for its safety because he had a notion and was pretty certain that my children were using it when I was at home, and downloading viruses and spyware. He was serious. Only…my kids had never used that laptop at home. In fact, there is no need, since we have no fewer than five other computers available at our house, which works out to one for every student in middle school and higher. We also have DIAL-UP internet access, which means that only one computer can access the Web at a time – and the only one with a cable is our main desktop.
End result? I had to leave the laptop in the office permanently without SPECIFIC, special permission to remove it. It turned out that my desk is empty anyway, because while leaving the computer in the office solved the possibility that the laptop would fall victim to evil devices or improper uses, it DIDN’T address the original issue of being safe from theft. So I now lock it in a filing cabinet when I leave the office, and things are mostly good with that.
Boss has a habit of getting really possessive about “stuff.” He didn’t have a lot of “stuff” growing up, and I have concluded that he kind of had to jealously horde and protect what he did get. When his folks got stuff, he wasn’t allowed to touch it for fear he’d break it. This very guarded, very possessive attitude is still prevalent in his family. Boss’ nephews live in a home with a computer that has internet access, but they aren’t allowed to use it. The boys, regardless of the fact that the youngest is a senior in high school, are NOT allowed to log onto that computer for ANYTHING. There’s an outside chance they might break it, or mess it up, so grandpa made it off-limits, permanently.
Totally understandably, when the nephews come to our office, which usually has several unattended computer stations, they are absolutely SALIVATING to use our computers with high-speed internet. (They even bent the drawer on my locked filing cabinet in an attempt to get at my laptop when they were bored and all the other facility computers were in use. ) Over the years, they’ve gotten into some pretty hairy situations by using office computers. Crashed individual computers and even our whole network a couple of times with some bugs from Limewire. They have, on occasion, accessed some taboo websites. I mean, they’re human, they have lots of unsupervised idle time when they’re there, so, to me anyway, it’s kind of a “duh” moment when it’s discovered that they’ve done something unseemly because they have nothing else to do. Setting them up for failure, in my opinion, and the primary reason why I rarely EVER bring my boys, except the youngest, with me to work anymore.
We used to all be there DAILY, but over time, I began to see that I was, by permitting them too much idle time there, allowing the finger of blame to be pointed in their direction for every mess that was made; for every misplaced or broken object in the facility. They’re not perfect, and they DO sometimes break things, lose things and make messes. It was wearying though, to feel responsible by default for anything that happened to go wrong in the facility. I diligently have tried to make sure they cleaned up their messes, replaced anything they broke, and found anything that was lost – even stuff THEY didn’t lose.
Not letting them “hang out” in the facility anymore has worked well, for the most part. The only hiccup was a few weeks ago, when Boss made a remark during staff meeting about an area of the facility he’d had to clean up himself, and stressed that he was VERY unhappy about it. It was a rather generic comment, except for his pointed use of the phrase “make sure your kids…..”. Well, my youngest had been the only staff child who had been in the building that week, and is the only employee’s child in general who regularly comes to the office, so I realized immediately that Boss was talking to me. I hadn’t remembered a mess in the area that Boss mentioned , so after the meeting, I asked on what day this had occurred. (Boss rarely pauses DURING the meetings long enough for anyone else to get a word in edgewise when he gets on a tear. ) The day Boss named was a day I hadn’t even been into the office. I told him so, and walked away. Go pin the blame on somebody else. Later, I found out that some of his sibling’s children had visited on the day in question, so they must have been responsible. But they’re family, so we’ll let it go , and at the next staff meeting, there will be no public apology for Boss’ jumping to conclusions. As far as everyone else knows, my kid made a mess, and I wasn’t responsible enough to clean it up. Whatever, only everyone knows I wouldn’t do that.
It’s all SO like Boss, going off all half-cocked like that, and showing the tattered, threadbare edges of his unsettled mental state. The frazzled, jagged edges we’d all hoped his eventual wife could help him slough away. The ragged, hurtful edges that his characterless wife has only caused to be more raw, brittle and pain-inflicting. Poor Boss. I’m afraid, at this point, it really might be hopeless…
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Chapter 19 - Pregzilla: What's in a Name?
Last Friday, I received some news that on its face was pretty unremarkable, but upon further explanation, was a rather stunning revelation. Sis, my co-worker, had just hung up her cell phone after a conversation with her mom, who is also Boss’ mom. Sis reported that her mom had just left Boss’ and Zilla’s, where she had been holding baby Speedway, their adorable and precious progeny.
You might remember that Boss’ mom had been one of the chosen two who were able to gain admission to Zilla’s room during her labor and delivery at the hospital, with the exception of the brief intercessory visit by the transient pastor and his wife. I had made the reckless assumption that at least the grandmothers had been able to satisfy their newborn baby fixes and had been able to enjoy their new grandson at will. On the contrary. This day, August 21, three weeks after the birth, was the very FIRST time Boss’ mom had been able to even lay a finger on that baby. Indeed, it was the very first time ANYONE on Boss’ side of the family (except Boss himself) had been able to touch the baby. And not only can Boss’ family not touch the baby, they are not welcome to enter Boss and Zilla’s house, either. After the solitary visit a couple of weeks ago at the end of which nephew got stiff-armed by Zilla for making an illegal approach too near the babe, Zilla has declared a moratorium on all visits until further notice. That visit, if you remember, was the first and only time any of them had been in the same room with the baby. Well, party’s over.
As for Zilla’s side of the family? Zilla’s mom landed herself in the hospital last Thursday. Her couple of weeks of live-in helping the new mom climaxed with some sort of health crisis and collapse. The doctors at first thought it was a stroke, then her heart. Testing came up clean in spite of her symptoms, so they finally pinned the cause on anxiety and an allergic reaction. Okay, two weeks of dealing with Zilla, meeting her demands, yet not being able to touch or draw too near her new grandson. Anxiety? Ya think???? And I’m not surprised she broke out in a mass of hives along with the chest pain, tremors and other neurological issues. Poor Zilla’s mom.
I’d like to wager that Zilla’s mom isn’t the only one close to the situation that is ready to dissolve in paroxysms. When I got the new corporate cell bill and was going over it, I saw a number I recognized. Over and over and over. Looks like Zilla’s been developing synergy with the pediatrician’s office. At least 15 minutes at a time, often several times per day. Bet they love that; an opportunity to both care for their patient AND work on their patience.
Boss himself has been strangely mum about the whole baby/parenthood thing. He will answer a direct question about Zilla or the baby, but rarely volunteers anything. No more effusive commentary than if he’d bought a new mattress, or switched toothpastes. “They’re doing fine,” is about all you can wrench out of him. We got more of a descriptive rundown about his grass mowing over the weekend than I’ve heard the last THREE weeks about that baby. No accounts of sleepy smiles and yawns, or how much he eats, or middle-of-the-night diaper changes. Nada. I wonder if Boss, not having a lot of previous experience with babies, expected his son to “do” something spectacular, even as a newborn, and is kind of disconcerted that Isaac just lies there.
Isaac. Yep, baby Speedway’s name is Isaac. Boss predicted this soon after they discovered the baby’s gender, claiming to have settled upon the moniker through supernatural means. In other words, he dreamed it. Problem was, Zilla ALSO had an auspiciously chosen name for the baby, and it WASN’T Isaac. She had already chosen paint for the nursery, picked a bedding set and begun to purchase decorations to match the name, so THAT WAS IT. Name decision made. Zilla intended for the baby to be a namesake of a different hero of the faith; one who built an ark, and cared for two of every kind of creature and rode out a flood. The baby’s room was going to resemble the inside of an ark, right down to the animal pairs.
All right, so if she had liked the name Daniel, would the nursery have looked like a lion’s den? Would little Jonah have been sentenced to lodge in the belly of a fish? Baby Adam might have really enjoyed the Garden of Eden… but would tiny Paul have appreciated peering through the bars of the crib at his room fashioned like a prison? I dunno. Maybe I’m being too picky, but I think decorating a nursery to match the biblical history of your child’s name – not just the name posted somewhere IN the nursery mind you, which I’m okay with, but the all-embracing décor – is a little creeeeepy. I guess I’m REALLY glad she didn’t pick the name Stephen… or Samson. Room decorations to go with those could have probably wreaked psychological havoc.
Anyhow, the months went by while Zilla was pregnant and she insisted that SHE had picked the baby’s name. Boss was just as sure – even MORE sure, if that’s possible – that HE had named the baby. There was no compromise for either of them. I knew better than to ask Zilla directly myself, but whenever some unsuspecting soul brought the subject up with Boss, he’d say that yes, the baby had a name. Then he’d admit the fact that Zilla had chosen a different name, and then he’d LAUGH (I thought, kind of uncharitably) and basically say that Zilla had a little bit to learn. Wow. Because he KNEW what the baby’s name was. And HER name for the baby just wouldn’t suit.
As the due date neared, neither Boss nor Zilla were budging and if anyone called attention to the baby’s possible name, Boss visibly tensed and would say only that they were seeking heavenly guidance on the matter. They reportedly sought heavenly guidance pretty much continuously for four months. After the birth, when well-wishers and family asked what the baby would be called, Boss and Zilla were STILL seeking heavenly guidance. In fact, they sequestered themselves in Zilla’s hospital room alone the whole afternoon following the baby’s birth seeking heavenly guidance.
Family members reported staking a watch reminiscent of keeping an eye on the smoke from the chimney of the Vatican when the cardinals are voting for a new pope. Not being able to gain admittance to visit the couple or the baby, yet continuing to post a strong and doggedly faithful presence in the waiting room of the hospital because Boss “is family,” they made a deal with the nurses to change the label placard on the bassinette in the nursery AS SOON as they could wheedle the name out of the parents. No such luck. The child remained Baby XXXXX for his entire stay. Boss and Zilla from all accounts, continued to seek periodic heavenly guidance for two full days, right up until the time the paperwork had to be filled out in order to be discharged from the hospital, at which time they either received a celestial answer or Boss cut some kind of earthly deal with Zilla. They named the baby Isaac.
We had a kind of informal poll going on at work regarding who we thought would win the battle of the names. Let’s just say that we weren’t surprised that Boss prevailed. We don’t know how he did it, what was said, or any of the details. We are sure of one constant, regardless of whether we ever hear the real story or not. Without a doubt, we know ZIlla was ROYALLY TICKED. She always is when she doesn’t get her way.
Even when it’s something NICE that someone does for her. Boss apparently invited VP, who is pretty good with a camera, to come on over to their house and spearhead the inaugural Family Photo Session, of course, free of charge. So VP went, on his best behavior, requesting that the family choose a time when the baby would be content, awake and alert. Boss chose 10:30 p.m. and Zilla wasn’t happy about it. Don’t know if it was that Boss had made the plans without her knowledge, or that VP was getting closer to the baby than Zilla was comfortable with, or just plain that VP was even in the house, period. It could even have had something to do with the fact that Boss had chosen the most horrible time EVER for a photo shoot, at the end of a long day with a newborn. The baby was SCREAMING, wouldn’t settle down, and kept rooting for a nipple. So the first couple dozen shots, VP said, all show an agitated baby Speedway in some state of craning his neck looking for lunch in all the wrong places.
Since Zilla had been getting HERSELF ready for the photo op , she hadn’t had time to feed the baby, so he was starving – and mad about it. Finally, Zilla excused herself and the babe to the bedroom so the baby could get some relief from his empty tummy and so they could all get some relief from the decibel level. VP appreciated the quiet, but not the forty-five minutes he had to cool his heels waiting for the pair to come back to continue the pictures. Sometime around midnight, Zilla reemerged with the baby. VP said he was able to finally go home around 1:30 a.m. Poor guy. He needed toothpicks for his eyelids.
One subsequent morning at the office, VP tossed the portrait session’s resultant picture CD to me for a look-see. Little Speedway IS a cute, cute baby. Well, as cute as a close-up taken from across a family room with a standard zoom lens can show, anyway. VP told me, with a laugh, to look at Zilla’s face in the initial pictures. Yep, she was REALLY honked off about something. What a sourpuss.
Later on, as he was taking fewer pictures focusing on the baby, and more of the three of them; Boss, Zilla and baby together, VP said he’d made a query about Zilla’s unpleasant expression. He asked her if it would break her face to smile. Marvelous to relate, it didn’t break her face. Maybe Zilla didn’t even realize she looked so unwelcoming. Regardless of the root cause of the attitude change, the rest of the CD shows images of Zilla positively beaming in various poses next to the peacefully sleeping babe (of course, being a newborn, he fell fast asleep after he ate) and the perpetually grimacing Boss.
By the way, that baby furniture apparently is set to be a permanent fixture in our conference room. We just had a fundraising sale, for which I was hoping that item had been brought, but apparently not. Someone has made room for it in a conspicuous corner. (Not in the ladies’ restroom, or in Boss’ office, but in the freakin’ public CONFERENCE room where we host important and influential guests.) A white Jenny Lind changing table, complete with clear acrylic diaper stacker/wipe holder, right next to the fancy upholstered mahogany chairs and occasional table certainly makes an incongruous addition to the décor. Wonder how many of the corporate execs and community leaders, too polite to make a comment, do double-takes when they come in for a meeting?
You might remember that Boss’ mom had been one of the chosen two who were able to gain admission to Zilla’s room during her labor and delivery at the hospital, with the exception of the brief intercessory visit by the transient pastor and his wife. I had made the reckless assumption that at least the grandmothers had been able to satisfy their newborn baby fixes and had been able to enjoy their new grandson at will. On the contrary. This day, August 21, three weeks after the birth, was the very FIRST time Boss’ mom had been able to even lay a finger on that baby. Indeed, it was the very first time ANYONE on Boss’ side of the family (except Boss himself) had been able to touch the baby. And not only can Boss’ family not touch the baby, they are not welcome to enter Boss and Zilla’s house, either. After the solitary visit a couple of weeks ago at the end of which nephew got stiff-armed by Zilla for making an illegal approach too near the babe, Zilla has declared a moratorium on all visits until further notice. That visit, if you remember, was the first and only time any of them had been in the same room with the baby. Well, party’s over.
As for Zilla’s side of the family? Zilla’s mom landed herself in the hospital last Thursday. Her couple of weeks of live-in helping the new mom climaxed with some sort of health crisis and collapse. The doctors at first thought it was a stroke, then her heart. Testing came up clean in spite of her symptoms, so they finally pinned the cause on anxiety and an allergic reaction. Okay, two weeks of dealing with Zilla, meeting her demands, yet not being able to touch or draw too near her new grandson. Anxiety? Ya think???? And I’m not surprised she broke out in a mass of hives along with the chest pain, tremors and other neurological issues. Poor Zilla’s mom.
I’d like to wager that Zilla’s mom isn’t the only one close to the situation that is ready to dissolve in paroxysms. When I got the new corporate cell bill and was going over it, I saw a number I recognized. Over and over and over. Looks like Zilla’s been developing synergy with the pediatrician’s office. At least 15 minutes at a time, often several times per day. Bet they love that; an opportunity to both care for their patient AND work on their patience.
Boss himself has been strangely mum about the whole baby/parenthood thing. He will answer a direct question about Zilla or the baby, but rarely volunteers anything. No more effusive commentary than if he’d bought a new mattress, or switched toothpastes. “They’re doing fine,” is about all you can wrench out of him. We got more of a descriptive rundown about his grass mowing over the weekend than I’ve heard the last THREE weeks about that baby. No accounts of sleepy smiles and yawns, or how much he eats, or middle-of-the-night diaper changes. Nada. I wonder if Boss, not having a lot of previous experience with babies, expected his son to “do” something spectacular, even as a newborn, and is kind of disconcerted that Isaac just lies there.
Isaac. Yep, baby Speedway’s name is Isaac. Boss predicted this soon after they discovered the baby’s gender, claiming to have settled upon the moniker through supernatural means. In other words, he dreamed it. Problem was, Zilla ALSO had an auspiciously chosen name for the baby, and it WASN’T Isaac. She had already chosen paint for the nursery, picked a bedding set and begun to purchase decorations to match the name, so THAT WAS IT. Name decision made. Zilla intended for the baby to be a namesake of a different hero of the faith; one who built an ark, and cared for two of every kind of creature and rode out a flood. The baby’s room was going to resemble the inside of an ark, right down to the animal pairs.
All right, so if she had liked the name Daniel, would the nursery have looked like a lion’s den? Would little Jonah have been sentenced to lodge in the belly of a fish? Baby Adam might have really enjoyed the Garden of Eden… but would tiny Paul have appreciated peering through the bars of the crib at his room fashioned like a prison? I dunno. Maybe I’m being too picky, but I think decorating a nursery to match the biblical history of your child’s name – not just the name posted somewhere IN the nursery mind you, which I’m okay with, but the all-embracing décor – is a little creeeeepy. I guess I’m REALLY glad she didn’t pick the name Stephen… or Samson. Room decorations to go with those could have probably wreaked psychological havoc.
Anyhow, the months went by while Zilla was pregnant and she insisted that SHE had picked the baby’s name. Boss was just as sure – even MORE sure, if that’s possible – that HE had named the baby. There was no compromise for either of them. I knew better than to ask Zilla directly myself, but whenever some unsuspecting soul brought the subject up with Boss, he’d say that yes, the baby had a name. Then he’d admit the fact that Zilla had chosen a different name, and then he’d LAUGH (I thought, kind of uncharitably) and basically say that Zilla had a little bit to learn. Wow. Because he KNEW what the baby’s name was. And HER name for the baby just wouldn’t suit.
As the due date neared, neither Boss nor Zilla were budging and if anyone called attention to the baby’s possible name, Boss visibly tensed and would say only that they were seeking heavenly guidance on the matter. They reportedly sought heavenly guidance pretty much continuously for four months. After the birth, when well-wishers and family asked what the baby would be called, Boss and Zilla were STILL seeking heavenly guidance. In fact, they sequestered themselves in Zilla’s hospital room alone the whole afternoon following the baby’s birth seeking heavenly guidance.
Family members reported staking a watch reminiscent of keeping an eye on the smoke from the chimney of the Vatican when the cardinals are voting for a new pope. Not being able to gain admittance to visit the couple or the baby, yet continuing to post a strong and doggedly faithful presence in the waiting room of the hospital because Boss “is family,” they made a deal with the nurses to change the label placard on the bassinette in the nursery AS SOON as they could wheedle the name out of the parents. No such luck. The child remained Baby XXXXX for his entire stay. Boss and Zilla from all accounts, continued to seek periodic heavenly guidance for two full days, right up until the time the paperwork had to be filled out in order to be discharged from the hospital, at which time they either received a celestial answer or Boss cut some kind of earthly deal with Zilla. They named the baby Isaac.
We had a kind of informal poll going on at work regarding who we thought would win the battle of the names. Let’s just say that we weren’t surprised that Boss prevailed. We don’t know how he did it, what was said, or any of the details. We are sure of one constant, regardless of whether we ever hear the real story or not. Without a doubt, we know ZIlla was ROYALLY TICKED. She always is when she doesn’t get her way.
Even when it’s something NICE that someone does for her. Boss apparently invited VP, who is pretty good with a camera, to come on over to their house and spearhead the inaugural Family Photo Session, of course, free of charge. So VP went, on his best behavior, requesting that the family choose a time when the baby would be content, awake and alert. Boss chose 10:30 p.m. and Zilla wasn’t happy about it. Don’t know if it was that Boss had made the plans without her knowledge, or that VP was getting closer to the baby than Zilla was comfortable with, or just plain that VP was even in the house, period. It could even have had something to do with the fact that Boss had chosen the most horrible time EVER for a photo shoot, at the end of a long day with a newborn. The baby was SCREAMING, wouldn’t settle down, and kept rooting for a nipple. So the first couple dozen shots, VP said, all show an agitated baby Speedway in some state of craning his neck looking for lunch in all the wrong places.
Since Zilla had been getting HERSELF ready for the photo op , she hadn’t had time to feed the baby, so he was starving – and mad about it. Finally, Zilla excused herself and the babe to the bedroom so the baby could get some relief from his empty tummy and so they could all get some relief from the decibel level. VP appreciated the quiet, but not the forty-five minutes he had to cool his heels waiting for the pair to come back to continue the pictures. Sometime around midnight, Zilla reemerged with the baby. VP said he was able to finally go home around 1:30 a.m. Poor guy. He needed toothpicks for his eyelids.
One subsequent morning at the office, VP tossed the portrait session’s resultant picture CD to me for a look-see. Little Speedway IS a cute, cute baby. Well, as cute as a close-up taken from across a family room with a standard zoom lens can show, anyway. VP told me, with a laugh, to look at Zilla’s face in the initial pictures. Yep, she was REALLY honked off about something. What a sourpuss.
Later on, as he was taking fewer pictures focusing on the baby, and more of the three of them; Boss, Zilla and baby together, VP said he’d made a query about Zilla’s unpleasant expression. He asked her if it would break her face to smile. Marvelous to relate, it didn’t break her face. Maybe Zilla didn’t even realize she looked so unwelcoming. Regardless of the root cause of the attitude change, the rest of the CD shows images of Zilla positively beaming in various poses next to the peacefully sleeping babe (of course, being a newborn, he fell fast asleep after he ate) and the perpetually grimacing Boss.
By the way, that baby furniture apparently is set to be a permanent fixture in our conference room. We just had a fundraising sale, for which I was hoping that item had been brought, but apparently not. Someone has made room for it in a conspicuous corner. (Not in the ladies’ restroom, or in Boss’ office, but in the freakin’ public CONFERENCE room where we host important and influential guests.) A white Jenny Lind changing table, complete with clear acrylic diaper stacker/wipe holder, right next to the fancy upholstered mahogany chairs and occasional table certainly makes an incongruous addition to the décor. Wonder how many of the corporate execs and community leaders, too polite to make a comment, do double-takes when they come in for a meeting?
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Chapter 18 - Pregzilla: A Pregnant Pause
(Okay, I lied. This chapter isn’t about the baby’s name. It got too long, and I still hadn’t gotten to the discussion of infant nomenclature, so I had to change the title. It’s kind of on the darker side, as Pregzilla Chronicles go. Just a warning. )
From the time the pregnancy announcement was made, we all knew that Zilla and Boss had some heavy decision-making ahead. On paper, at least, this was not a good time to add a family member.
First of all , Boss’ landlord had recently made notification that the house Boss was occupying was about to be put on the market. Which would mean the two of them could soon be homeless.
A little backstory on that. You might remember that I have said that I had been caring for Boss’ personal finances. He has very little time for routine, menial tasks. I think I started paying Boss’ bills about a year before he got married, long before he ever met Zilla, beginning when he abashedly brought in a disconnect notice from the water company that services his home. He was preparing for a trip out of state, and was terribly busy, but knew this needed to be attended to, pronto. Boss wanted to see if I’d be willing to call the water company and attempt to talk them out of a huge late fee and service charge they’d tacked onto his bill. I’m pretty good at working with vendors and smoothing over problems, and he thought I might be able to help.
The reason behind this unpaid bill was that Boss’ roommate, a young college graduate (incidentally, the earnest musician from the wedding prelude concert ), had been stacking the mail in the wrong place in the house. Boss doesn’t pay much attention unless a bill is actually placed in hand, so he had missed his water payment a couple of times. And incidentally, he shared with me, his other utility bills were either already in arrears or about to be, due to the misplaced mail.
My previous job had been as a mortgage loan officer, so I was well aware the havoc that can be wreaked on a credit report by having accounts in collections. I knew also that Boss’ deep desire was to get married. Putting both of these together , and knowing that this probably wasn’t the first time Boss had a slow pay on an account, I wanted to help him get his act together. I offered to set up online accounts for all his bills, check them regularly and make sure they were always paid on time, even when he was out of town. I knew that what was costing HIM several hours a month of disorganization and stress would only take me a few minutes per week after the initial set-up. I even pulled Boss’ credit report for him and showed him what steps he needed to take to bring up his score, so that at some time in the future, he could be prepared to offer a new bride more pleasant financial possibilities, like, the ability to get a credit card, car loan, or mortgage, for example. Or simply not to have to pay an arm and a leg for auto insurance! The little things that mean so much to a spouse and make you much less likely to want to wring their necks!
I’d been doing all I could to help Boss improve his credit history as quickly as possible, but obviously, it can’t happen overnight, and even though it had been several months since I’d taken over his personal finances, when the wedding took place it had not been NEARLY enough time to make a real impact on his financial reputation. I had talked to him a little bit about the realistic money-related goals he wanted to meet before he married, and although there was SOME progress, he hadn’t reached even ONE of those goals yet when he asked Zilla for her hand. I mean, he had to take out a loan for her wedding and engagement rings, even after deciding that having sufficient resources to pay CASH for wedding jewelry had been one of his FIRM goals. But what are ya gonna do? He’s a big boy.
One thing I knew almost for sure; they were in no position to put a downpayment on a home, in the event they had to leave the place he and Zilla were occupying now. None of my business, but I was skeptical whether they could even scrape together enough for a rental deposit, let alone pay monthly rent, based on the whopper of a medical tab Zilla surely must have run up on the honeymoon , and Boss’ somewhat anxious comments about the lack of cash gifts from the wedding reception(s). So if Boss and Zilla had their current residence sold out from under them, the house on which Boss had secured FREE rent from the owner, they’d probably be at the mercy of family members for a place to stay. Boss had previously lived with one of his sisters and her DH for awhile, but – not with Pregzilla. Since Miss Princess Zilla has so de-ingratiated herself with Boss’ family, the imposition of asking any one of them to share their home is not likely to ever be a viable alternative.
Secondly , Boss had developed a pretty ambitious set of objectives for our organization over the next year, which included several time-intensive major events and a trip overseas. Had Zilla (or anyone – we weren’t that picky! ) been able to jump right in and be an active member of our support staff, we might have been able to pull them all off. But Boss’ aspirations were far too grandiose for our small staff. An even worse sign - the overseas trip, which Boss remained doggedly committed to up until early spring, was scheduled for late July into early August. They had just announced that Zilla was due on August 7. In fact, the delegation was set to return to the states on August 4, which turned out to be three days AFTER the baby’s actual birth.
We at the office had some frustrated fun with Boss’ delusion about his being able to keep the foreign journey obligation. He readily agreed that of course, Zilla probably wouldn’t be able to go. No kidding. But it would still work out okay, because she could just have that baby before they left. Oh REALLY, just like that? Well, and then she’s not actually DUE until the 7th, so she could also just wait until they got back. As if the mom controls the time of the labor, and Zilla could just will the birth to occur on whatever day was convenient. Boss actually said this with Zilla sitting right THERE at the table with us. I had never before realized how unattentive Boss must have been during his siblings’ and their spouses’ pregnancies. Like, totally oblivious. He did finally nix the idea of the overseas trip later, in April, citing some overcharging of fees by the trip organizers and that he no longer felt peace about going. No, if my husband was planning on going on a non-mandatory foreign expedition three days before I was due with our first child, I can bet you that peace is the LAST thing he would feel.
Thirdly , again due to skimpy corporate finances, all employees of our organization must supply their own health insurance independently. Boss, being a fairly healthy single guy with a lot of connections, didn’t bother with it. If he got sick and needed a doctor, he’d call a physician friend who’d be glad to take a look at him. Zilla lost her health insurance when the store where she worked went out of business. Boss had already experienced the incredible financial vortex of Zilla’s recurring need for medical attention, so I’m sure the thought of Zilla pregnant and requiring even more health monitoring was quite shocking for him.
And finally , though there was never any specific communication regarding such from either Boss or Zilla, we could all tell that married life wasn’t at ALL what either of them had anticipated it would be. Each of them had built up an image of the other that had most likely been dashed to pieces sometime during those first couple of weeks of marriage. They just plain ol’ hadn’t had enough time to get to fully acquainted before they were ceremonially stuck with each other “forever.” Cautionary word to the wise…
In Boss’ own words, speaking of the pregnancy “This isn’t the time we would have picked for this to happen.” Well, as my dear mom said once, “Those that play have gotta pay,” and “If you can’t afford a condom, you surely can’t afford a baby.” Wise woman. I’m just sayin’.
After the initial shock of the announcement wore off, the magnitude of what was happening truly set in. Zilla was sick, she was crotchety, and if anything, she was even less charming than she had been in the enlightening and prophetic moments just before her wedding. Sis and the nephews happened to be stranded by bad weather one night early in January, and Boss reluctantly (which seemed odd to them because he’s typically so hospitable) invited them to bunk down at his place. Sis told me they had arrived, been there for a short time, and were expecting Zilla to come greet them at any moment. Zilla materialized at the door of her bedroom, glared silently at all of them for a long moment , turned and slammed the door. Boss excused himself and went in to speak with her.
Nephew said as they were settling onto the couches and recliners to sleep, they heard a heated exchange behind that closed door. Boss eventually emerged from the bedroom carrying a pillow and blanket and asked one of them to move to the floor so Boss could have the recliner. Nephew asked what was going on and got the reply, “She can’t stand the way I smell, so I’ve been sleeping out here until she feels better.” Ouch. I didn’t ask many questions, but the family updates confirmed that Boss’ bedroom was the living room for a good long time.
When in the office, Boss spent a lot of time on the phone with Zilla. He always spoke soothingly, like you would imagine a horseman might talk to a skittish colt. You’d hear, before Boss shut his office door, things like, “No, Sweetheart, that’s not it at all…. Now, you don’t have to do THAT….” Sounded like he was trying to peel her off the walls over the phone. I was praying, for his sake – for all our sakes – that it was just those crazy pregnancy hormones.
Zilla reportedly couldn’t keep anything down , yet Boss reported a plethora of stereotypical middle-of-the night runs to the grocery to fulfill her random cravings. Then, her beloved Kitty died and things really went south. Once, she was admitted to the hospital overnight for dehydration, and a whole handful of occurrences of visits to the urgent care - for a bag of fluids this time, a bleeding hemorrhoid next, indigestion or vomiting the time after. Her OB pleaded with her to call the office first (I know him - he would have talked her down and told her to stay home ) but somehow, that didn’t happen. She wouldn’t call. Boss started to stress about the bills. The OB gave Boss a way out by offering his services free of charge – see, I told you people just love to give Boss things…
Boss had a birthday in January. Birthdays are a big deal in Boss’ family – EVERYBODY goes to each family member’s birthday celebration. We in the office decided to take Boss to lunch on his birthday, at a place just across the street from the subdivision where Boss and Zilla live. His whole family was invited, and they all came. We had already heard from Boss that Zilla had been feeling better that day – she was nearly 12 weeks along, and her all-day morning sickness seemed to be improving somewhat. Zilla was going to drive the, oh, 400 feet or so to the restaurant and meet us there. NO, she did NOT want anyone to pick her up. Boss shrugged. She was funny about things like that sometimes, he said.
So we waited on her. And waited. Boss called her. She must be on her way, no answer. “No ma’am, we’ll order when the rest of our party gets here. “ More waiting. Boss called again. Short conversation. Rather stunned look. Zilla wasn’t coming. She had changed her mind, ON BOSS’ BIRTHDAY, and had stood up the whole family and office staff while we waited for her at the restaurant. Boss tried not to show it, but he HAD to be crushed. He spent a long time talking with one of his siblings after we ate – one who had also had some marriage struggles. I felt really bad for Boss. But ya know, It wasn’t like he wasn’t warned…
By the way, the thing about Boss’ landlord selling the house he lives in – it seems to have gone away. Boss and Zilla repainted the rooms and replaced that tainted carpet in the nursery. I don’t know the details, but they’re staying put for now.
Home Sweet (I mean Sterile) Home.
From the time the pregnancy announcement was made, we all knew that Zilla and Boss had some heavy decision-making ahead. On paper, at least, this was not a good time to add a family member.
First of all , Boss’ landlord had recently made notification that the house Boss was occupying was about to be put on the market. Which would mean the two of them could soon be homeless.
A little backstory on that. You might remember that I have said that I had been caring for Boss’ personal finances. He has very little time for routine, menial tasks. I think I started paying Boss’ bills about a year before he got married, long before he ever met Zilla, beginning when he abashedly brought in a disconnect notice from the water company that services his home. He was preparing for a trip out of state, and was terribly busy, but knew this needed to be attended to, pronto. Boss wanted to see if I’d be willing to call the water company and attempt to talk them out of a huge late fee and service charge they’d tacked onto his bill. I’m pretty good at working with vendors and smoothing over problems, and he thought I might be able to help.
The reason behind this unpaid bill was that Boss’ roommate, a young college graduate (incidentally, the earnest musician from the wedding prelude concert ), had been stacking the mail in the wrong place in the house. Boss doesn’t pay much attention unless a bill is actually placed in hand, so he had missed his water payment a couple of times. And incidentally, he shared with me, his other utility bills were either already in arrears or about to be, due to the misplaced mail.
My previous job had been as a mortgage loan officer, so I was well aware the havoc that can be wreaked on a credit report by having accounts in collections. I knew also that Boss’ deep desire was to get married. Putting both of these together , and knowing that this probably wasn’t the first time Boss had a slow pay on an account, I wanted to help him get his act together. I offered to set up online accounts for all his bills, check them regularly and make sure they were always paid on time, even when he was out of town. I knew that what was costing HIM several hours a month of disorganization and stress would only take me a few minutes per week after the initial set-up. I even pulled Boss’ credit report for him and showed him what steps he needed to take to bring up his score, so that at some time in the future, he could be prepared to offer a new bride more pleasant financial possibilities, like, the ability to get a credit card, car loan, or mortgage, for example. Or simply not to have to pay an arm and a leg for auto insurance! The little things that mean so much to a spouse and make you much less likely to want to wring their necks!
I’d been doing all I could to help Boss improve his credit history as quickly as possible, but obviously, it can’t happen overnight, and even though it had been several months since I’d taken over his personal finances, when the wedding took place it had not been NEARLY enough time to make a real impact on his financial reputation. I had talked to him a little bit about the realistic money-related goals he wanted to meet before he married, and although there was SOME progress, he hadn’t reached even ONE of those goals yet when he asked Zilla for her hand. I mean, he had to take out a loan for her wedding and engagement rings, even after deciding that having sufficient resources to pay CASH for wedding jewelry had been one of his FIRM goals. But what are ya gonna do? He’s a big boy.
One thing I knew almost for sure; they were in no position to put a downpayment on a home, in the event they had to leave the place he and Zilla were occupying now. None of my business, but I was skeptical whether they could even scrape together enough for a rental deposit, let alone pay monthly rent, based on the whopper of a medical tab Zilla surely must have run up on the honeymoon , and Boss’ somewhat anxious comments about the lack of cash gifts from the wedding reception(s). So if Boss and Zilla had their current residence sold out from under them, the house on which Boss had secured FREE rent from the owner, they’d probably be at the mercy of family members for a place to stay. Boss had previously lived with one of his sisters and her DH for awhile, but – not with Pregzilla. Since Miss Princess Zilla has so de-ingratiated herself with Boss’ family, the imposition of asking any one of them to share their home is not likely to ever be a viable alternative.
Secondly , Boss had developed a pretty ambitious set of objectives for our organization over the next year, which included several time-intensive major events and a trip overseas. Had Zilla (or anyone – we weren’t that picky! ) been able to jump right in and be an active member of our support staff, we might have been able to pull them all off. But Boss’ aspirations were far too grandiose for our small staff. An even worse sign - the overseas trip, which Boss remained doggedly committed to up until early spring, was scheduled for late July into early August. They had just announced that Zilla was due on August 7. In fact, the delegation was set to return to the states on August 4, which turned out to be three days AFTER the baby’s actual birth.
We at the office had some frustrated fun with Boss’ delusion about his being able to keep the foreign journey obligation. He readily agreed that of course, Zilla probably wouldn’t be able to go. No kidding. But it would still work out okay, because she could just have that baby before they left. Oh REALLY, just like that? Well, and then she’s not actually DUE until the 7th, so she could also just wait until they got back. As if the mom controls the time of the labor, and Zilla could just will the birth to occur on whatever day was convenient. Boss actually said this with Zilla sitting right THERE at the table with us. I had never before realized how unattentive Boss must have been during his siblings’ and their spouses’ pregnancies. Like, totally oblivious. He did finally nix the idea of the overseas trip later, in April, citing some overcharging of fees by the trip organizers and that he no longer felt peace about going. No, if my husband was planning on going on a non-mandatory foreign expedition three days before I was due with our first child, I can bet you that peace is the LAST thing he would feel.
Thirdly , again due to skimpy corporate finances, all employees of our organization must supply their own health insurance independently. Boss, being a fairly healthy single guy with a lot of connections, didn’t bother with it. If he got sick and needed a doctor, he’d call a physician friend who’d be glad to take a look at him. Zilla lost her health insurance when the store where she worked went out of business. Boss had already experienced the incredible financial vortex of Zilla’s recurring need for medical attention, so I’m sure the thought of Zilla pregnant and requiring even more health monitoring was quite shocking for him.
And finally , though there was never any specific communication regarding such from either Boss or Zilla, we could all tell that married life wasn’t at ALL what either of them had anticipated it would be. Each of them had built up an image of the other that had most likely been dashed to pieces sometime during those first couple of weeks of marriage. They just plain ol’ hadn’t had enough time to get to fully acquainted before they were ceremonially stuck with each other “forever.” Cautionary word to the wise…
In Boss’ own words, speaking of the pregnancy “This isn’t the time we would have picked for this to happen.” Well, as my dear mom said once, “Those that play have gotta pay,” and “If you can’t afford a condom, you surely can’t afford a baby.” Wise woman. I’m just sayin’.
After the initial shock of the announcement wore off, the magnitude of what was happening truly set in. Zilla was sick, she was crotchety, and if anything, she was even less charming than she had been in the enlightening and prophetic moments just before her wedding. Sis and the nephews happened to be stranded by bad weather one night early in January, and Boss reluctantly (which seemed odd to them because he’s typically so hospitable) invited them to bunk down at his place. Sis told me they had arrived, been there for a short time, and were expecting Zilla to come greet them at any moment. Zilla materialized at the door of her bedroom, glared silently at all of them for a long moment , turned and slammed the door. Boss excused himself and went in to speak with her.
Nephew said as they were settling onto the couches and recliners to sleep, they heard a heated exchange behind that closed door. Boss eventually emerged from the bedroom carrying a pillow and blanket and asked one of them to move to the floor so Boss could have the recliner. Nephew asked what was going on and got the reply, “She can’t stand the way I smell, so I’ve been sleeping out here until she feels better.” Ouch. I didn’t ask many questions, but the family updates confirmed that Boss’ bedroom was the living room for a good long time.
When in the office, Boss spent a lot of time on the phone with Zilla. He always spoke soothingly, like you would imagine a horseman might talk to a skittish colt. You’d hear, before Boss shut his office door, things like, “No, Sweetheart, that’s not it at all…. Now, you don’t have to do THAT….” Sounded like he was trying to peel her off the walls over the phone. I was praying, for his sake – for all our sakes – that it was just those crazy pregnancy hormones.
Zilla reportedly couldn’t keep anything down , yet Boss reported a plethora of stereotypical middle-of-the night runs to the grocery to fulfill her random cravings. Then, her beloved Kitty died and things really went south. Once, she was admitted to the hospital overnight for dehydration, and a whole handful of occurrences of visits to the urgent care - for a bag of fluids this time, a bleeding hemorrhoid next, indigestion or vomiting the time after. Her OB pleaded with her to call the office first (I know him - he would have talked her down and told her to stay home ) but somehow, that didn’t happen. She wouldn’t call. Boss started to stress about the bills. The OB gave Boss a way out by offering his services free of charge – see, I told you people just love to give Boss things…
Boss had a birthday in January. Birthdays are a big deal in Boss’ family – EVERYBODY goes to each family member’s birthday celebration. We in the office decided to take Boss to lunch on his birthday, at a place just across the street from the subdivision where Boss and Zilla live. His whole family was invited, and they all came. We had already heard from Boss that Zilla had been feeling better that day – she was nearly 12 weeks along, and her all-day morning sickness seemed to be improving somewhat. Zilla was going to drive the, oh, 400 feet or so to the restaurant and meet us there. NO, she did NOT want anyone to pick her up. Boss shrugged. She was funny about things like that sometimes, he said.
So we waited on her. And waited. Boss called her. She must be on her way, no answer. “No ma’am, we’ll order when the rest of our party gets here. “ More waiting. Boss called again. Short conversation. Rather stunned look. Zilla wasn’t coming. She had changed her mind, ON BOSS’ BIRTHDAY, and had stood up the whole family and office staff while we waited for her at the restaurant. Boss tried not to show it, but he HAD to be crushed. He spent a long time talking with one of his siblings after we ate – one who had also had some marriage struggles. I felt really bad for Boss. But ya know, It wasn’t like he wasn’t warned…
By the way, the thing about Boss’ landlord selling the house he lives in – it seems to have gone away. Boss and Zilla repainted the rooms and replaced that tainted carpet in the nursery. I don’t know the details, but they’re staying put for now.
Home Sweet (I mean Sterile) Home.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Chapter 17 – Pregzilla Delivers!
(I'm absolutely SURE there will be more info coming about the blessed event, but here's what I know so far:)
Birthdate: August 1, 2008, 9:05 p.m. (5 days and 3 hours before his due date)
Vitals: 8 lb., 2.6 oz., 22 inches (tall)
OH. MY. GOSH. After all that I’ve seen and heard about over the last 10 months, I thought I’d be prepared for whatever was likely to occur during/after the birth of Boss’ and Pregzilla’s Little Man. Now that the madness has begun in earnest, I have realized that there was no way anyone COULD be prepared…
Zilla’s water broke at home on Friday midmorning. Boss was at a meeting in the city. He had ridden with our organization’s VP, so after Zilla’s frantic cell call , they sped back to Boss’ place. Boss scurried to get the bags in the vehicle and Zilla loaded, just like in the movies. They arrived at the hospital where the details I have now become a little sketchy, but I do know that someone picked up the grandmothers – neither of whom drive, and dropped them off at the hospital to be a part of the labor room support team.
As I’ve mentioned before, Boss’ family is pretty tight, so it wasn’t long before his whole clan had set up camp in the waiting room of labor & delivery. They were all expecting that, as in past family birth experiences, they’d each get a chance to casually visit in turn with the prospective parents, and then after the delivery, be invited in to meet the new family member as soon as it was practical. That’s just the way they do things. It’s nice, it’s friendly, it’s inclusive……and it was TOTALLY not a part of Zilla’s birth plan.
Zilla decided that there would, in addition to the medical staff, be three and only three other people allowed in the birthing suite. Boss, Zilla’s mom and Boss’ mom. Boss’ mom was allowed in only because Boss specifically had requested/demanded it. Zilla had conceded as long as Boss’ mom would take care of the video footage. I found that extremely interesting, because if you knew Boss’ mom, she is probably one of the last people on the planet you would choose to enlist to video ANYTHING, let alone an important event like a birth. So the fact that Boss had slid her into the room in the capacity of videographer was amazing, because having high-quality video is typically SO important to Boss. It also showed what I imagined to be Boss’ desperation to get a ticket for his mom. That must have been the ONLY way Zilla was letting her through the door.
In fact, one of Boss’ sisters had offered to video so that Boss’ mom could relax (an oxymoron, if you know Boss’ mom, who doesn’t relax about ANYthing) and enjoy the birth of her new grandchild. No dice, and no thank you. Zilla did permit the entrance of a minister and his wife early on for a short time, and this peeved Boss’ family even more. Why, those people weren’t even FAMILY, and they weren’t even from Boss’ and Zilla’s church, Boss’ family sniped. But still, they waited, sure that when all was said and done, and labor was ended, they’d be allowed in to meet the baby and spend time with the new family.
By evening, Zilla had spiked a low grade fever, and when it came time to push, she tuckered out quickly. The OB decided to use vacuum extraction to deliver the baby. There are so many double entendres that could describe this dynamic course of action, but none of them are very polite or politically correct, so we’ll just say that Little Man was eventually sucked out of Zilla’s loins. He had a brief breathing issue, but was soon hale and hearty with a strong set of lungs. After a short stay in the nursery for observation and his first bath, where Boss’ family was able to snap some pictures through the glass, he was returned to his parents.
And still the family waited. As the medical team had attended to Zilla, and the neonatal staff had cared for the baby in the nursery, Boss had jovially visited with his family. After it was clear that everything was going well, Boss disappeared into Zilla’s room, promising to be “right back.” The family said they heard the sound of a baby crying inside the room, and realized that Boss and Zilla were watching the birth video together. THE WHOLE THING. The baby was eventually brought in, and the new family had some time alone together.
And still, the family waited. After quite a while, Boss reemerged from the room, reporting that Zilla and the baby were resting, thanks for coming, and they’d see them all soon. Bye. Anticlimax, to the max, especially after they’d all spent all day at the hospital, and it was now after midnight. Mad is another word I heard bandied about during the recounting.
I talked to our organization’s VP on Saturday morning. He was on his way to the hospital for a visit. I got the lowdown on that visit this morning at work. I really didn’t expect to hear ANYTHING juicy from VP, as he’s always VERY discreet, but the first words out of his mouth after his greeting to me, and asking me if I’d seen the baby yet – I haven’t – was to tell me that the little guy is very cute; oh, and Zilla is NUTS. Poor Boss. He's in for a long haul. Whaaaaaaaaat???
Yep. Nuts. VP is baby-saavy enough not to touch a newborn without the mom’s permission, but I guess when he bent down (not even very close) to get a good look at the baby’s face, Zilla gasped and whipped the babe over on the other side of her, AWAY from VP. Okay, he chalked it up to new mom jitters….
And then, he said, the baby got the hiccups. Zilla went into hysterics, shrieking at Boss to go get the nurse. VP said you would have thought the baby was choking to death. VP, an experienced dad, tried to calm Zilla down and explain that hiccups in newborns are pretty common and normal, and not dangerous, and they bother the parents more than they bother the baby. Boss was soaking up the wisdom appreciatively, but Zilla wasn’t having any of it. She kept frantically yelping at Boss until he got up and sprinted out in the hallway to flag down a nurse. Disaster averted, I guess.
VP mentioned to me that Zilla needs an experienced mother to mentor her and help her deal with the stresses of new motherhood. No kidding?! And that I’d be a good one for that job. Nope, nothing doing. Whoa. I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. Not with Zilla. Not unless I saw a total 180° change in her way of thinking. I’m compassionate, but I’m not crazy. Thanks for the vote of confidence just the same, though.
Zilla and the babe were released from the hospital late Sunday night. Family gathered at Boss’ house to welcome them home, figuring that surely, now that they were out of the hospital, Zilla would soften and let them have a crack at holding, or at least TOUCHING the baby. They were dreaming once again. NOBODY but Zilla and Boss hold the baby. NOBODY. Nobody but Zilla and Boss touch the baby. No exceptions. One of the seven-foot nephews reported that Zilla stiff-armed him when he passed too close to the baby during the welcome home assembly, and again when he awkwardly attempted to give Zilla a customary goodbye hug when they all gave up on ever getting ahold of the baby and left to go home. No warm embraces of thankfulness for the siblings’ presence and support during labor from Zilla, and DEFINITELY no sweet baby nuzzles. Step AWAY from the baby. Shoot, step AWAY from Zilla!
Boss called during our staff meeting at the office this morning. Since they just got home from the hospital last night, he wasn’t in the office today. VP predicts that we won’t be seeing much of Boss for SOME time to come; that Zilla will be keeping Boss pretty busy waiting on her and Babezilla. I’ll have to admit, Boss sounded REALLY frazzled on the speakerphone. He said the baby is doing well, but Zilla is in lots of pain. They had just been to the doctor for her. Really? Less than 12 hours after she was released from the hospital? What a surprise! But everything is normal, and there are no problems with Zilla’s recovery. Just her nagging pain. (And his. And ours. ) Again, what a surprise.
In a wicked moment, VP asked when Boss and Zilla would be bringing the baby in to the office so that everyone could hold it and snuggle with it. I couldn’t BELIEVE he asked that, but how entertaining! Since Boss was on the speakerphone on his end as well as ours, we were all nobly muffling our guffaws of helpless laughter so Zilla wouldn’t hear. We didn’t want either her or Boss to suspect that the staff was already swapping shocking stories about her Momzilla ways, complete with references to John Travolta and the Boy in the Plastic Bubble. And all this with the poor babe yet less than three days old! Boss would say only that the little family would pay the office a visit “in time.” I’m not holding my breath, how about you? Well, on second thought, maybe we SHOULD hold our breaths after all, ALL OF US, since we all share the same atmosphere with the sterile Babezilla.
Okay, I know I gotta go see that kid, and soon , but how discomfiting it will be to be in the presence of a perfectly healthy newborn that I can’t touch, no matter how well I scrub up. I LOVE babies, new ones most especially, and that’s just going to be so weird for me. I think maybe I’ll take along the sign-language books Zilla asked me about a few months ago, (Little Man’s going to learn sign language.) and the “What to Expect” books I dug out of my collection for her. And a nice little baby gift (but not clothes, of course). Anybody know where I can pick up a good used autoclave in a Noah’s Ark pattern?
Birthdate: August 1, 2008, 9:05 p.m. (5 days and 3 hours before his due date)
Vitals: 8 lb., 2.6 oz., 22 inches (tall)
OH. MY. GOSH. After all that I’ve seen and heard about over the last 10 months, I thought I’d be prepared for whatever was likely to occur during/after the birth of Boss’ and Pregzilla’s Little Man. Now that the madness has begun in earnest, I have realized that there was no way anyone COULD be prepared…
Zilla’s water broke at home on Friday midmorning. Boss was at a meeting in the city. He had ridden with our organization’s VP, so after Zilla’s frantic cell call , they sped back to Boss’ place. Boss scurried to get the bags in the vehicle and Zilla loaded, just like in the movies. They arrived at the hospital where the details I have now become a little sketchy, but I do know that someone picked up the grandmothers – neither of whom drive, and dropped them off at the hospital to be a part of the labor room support team.
As I’ve mentioned before, Boss’ family is pretty tight, so it wasn’t long before his whole clan had set up camp in the waiting room of labor & delivery. They were all expecting that, as in past family birth experiences, they’d each get a chance to casually visit in turn with the prospective parents, and then after the delivery, be invited in to meet the new family member as soon as it was practical. That’s just the way they do things. It’s nice, it’s friendly, it’s inclusive……and it was TOTALLY not a part of Zilla’s birth plan.
Zilla decided that there would, in addition to the medical staff, be three and only three other people allowed in the birthing suite. Boss, Zilla’s mom and Boss’ mom. Boss’ mom was allowed in only because Boss specifically had requested/demanded it. Zilla had conceded as long as Boss’ mom would take care of the video footage. I found that extremely interesting, because if you knew Boss’ mom, she is probably one of the last people on the planet you would choose to enlist to video ANYTHING, let alone an important event like a birth. So the fact that Boss had slid her into the room in the capacity of videographer was amazing, because having high-quality video is typically SO important to Boss. It also showed what I imagined to be Boss’ desperation to get a ticket for his mom. That must have been the ONLY way Zilla was letting her through the door.
In fact, one of Boss’ sisters had offered to video so that Boss’ mom could relax (an oxymoron, if you know Boss’ mom, who doesn’t relax about ANYthing) and enjoy the birth of her new grandchild. No dice, and no thank you. Zilla did permit the entrance of a minister and his wife early on for a short time, and this peeved Boss’ family even more. Why, those people weren’t even FAMILY, and they weren’t even from Boss’ and Zilla’s church, Boss’ family sniped. But still, they waited, sure that when all was said and done, and labor was ended, they’d be allowed in to meet the baby and spend time with the new family.
By evening, Zilla had spiked a low grade fever, and when it came time to push, she tuckered out quickly. The OB decided to use vacuum extraction to deliver the baby. There are so many double entendres that could describe this dynamic course of action, but none of them are very polite or politically correct, so we’ll just say that Little Man was eventually sucked out of Zilla’s loins. He had a brief breathing issue, but was soon hale and hearty with a strong set of lungs. After a short stay in the nursery for observation and his first bath, where Boss’ family was able to snap some pictures through the glass, he was returned to his parents.
And still the family waited. As the medical team had attended to Zilla, and the neonatal staff had cared for the baby in the nursery, Boss had jovially visited with his family. After it was clear that everything was going well, Boss disappeared into Zilla’s room, promising to be “right back.” The family said they heard the sound of a baby crying inside the room, and realized that Boss and Zilla were watching the birth video together. THE WHOLE THING. The baby was eventually brought in, and the new family had some time alone together.
And still, the family waited. After quite a while, Boss reemerged from the room, reporting that Zilla and the baby were resting, thanks for coming, and they’d see them all soon. Bye. Anticlimax, to the max, especially after they’d all spent all day at the hospital, and it was now after midnight. Mad is another word I heard bandied about during the recounting.
I talked to our organization’s VP on Saturday morning. He was on his way to the hospital for a visit. I got the lowdown on that visit this morning at work. I really didn’t expect to hear ANYTHING juicy from VP, as he’s always VERY discreet, but the first words out of his mouth after his greeting to me, and asking me if I’d seen the baby yet – I haven’t – was to tell me that the little guy is very cute; oh, and Zilla is NUTS. Poor Boss. He's in for a long haul. Whaaaaaaaaat???
Yep. Nuts. VP is baby-saavy enough not to touch a newborn without the mom’s permission, but I guess when he bent down (not even very close) to get a good look at the baby’s face, Zilla gasped and whipped the babe over on the other side of her, AWAY from VP. Okay, he chalked it up to new mom jitters….
And then, he said, the baby got the hiccups. Zilla went into hysterics, shrieking at Boss to go get the nurse. VP said you would have thought the baby was choking to death. VP, an experienced dad, tried to calm Zilla down and explain that hiccups in newborns are pretty common and normal, and not dangerous, and they bother the parents more than they bother the baby. Boss was soaking up the wisdom appreciatively, but Zilla wasn’t having any of it. She kept frantically yelping at Boss until he got up and sprinted out in the hallway to flag down a nurse. Disaster averted, I guess.
VP mentioned to me that Zilla needs an experienced mother to mentor her and help her deal with the stresses of new motherhood. No kidding?! And that I’d be a good one for that job. Nope, nothing doing. Whoa. I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. Not with Zilla. Not unless I saw a total 180° change in her way of thinking. I’m compassionate, but I’m not crazy. Thanks for the vote of confidence just the same, though.
Zilla and the babe were released from the hospital late Sunday night. Family gathered at Boss’ house to welcome them home, figuring that surely, now that they were out of the hospital, Zilla would soften and let them have a crack at holding, or at least TOUCHING the baby. They were dreaming once again. NOBODY but Zilla and Boss hold the baby. NOBODY. Nobody but Zilla and Boss touch the baby. No exceptions. One of the seven-foot nephews reported that Zilla stiff-armed him when he passed too close to the baby during the welcome home assembly, and again when he awkwardly attempted to give Zilla a customary goodbye hug when they all gave up on ever getting ahold of the baby and left to go home. No warm embraces of thankfulness for the siblings’ presence and support during labor from Zilla, and DEFINITELY no sweet baby nuzzles. Step AWAY from the baby. Shoot, step AWAY from Zilla!
Boss called during our staff meeting at the office this morning. Since they just got home from the hospital last night, he wasn’t in the office today. VP predicts that we won’t be seeing much of Boss for SOME time to come; that Zilla will be keeping Boss pretty busy waiting on her and Babezilla. I’ll have to admit, Boss sounded REALLY frazzled on the speakerphone. He said the baby is doing well, but Zilla is in lots of pain. They had just been to the doctor for her. Really? Less than 12 hours after she was released from the hospital? What a surprise! But everything is normal, and there are no problems with Zilla’s recovery. Just her nagging pain. (And his. And ours. ) Again, what a surprise.
In a wicked moment, VP asked when Boss and Zilla would be bringing the baby in to the office so that everyone could hold it and snuggle with it. I couldn’t BELIEVE he asked that, but how entertaining! Since Boss was on the speakerphone on his end as well as ours, we were all nobly muffling our guffaws of helpless laughter so Zilla wouldn’t hear. We didn’t want either her or Boss to suspect that the staff was already swapping shocking stories about her Momzilla ways, complete with references to John Travolta and the Boy in the Plastic Bubble. And all this with the poor babe yet less than three days old! Boss would say only that the little family would pay the office a visit “in time.” I’m not holding my breath, how about you? Well, on second thought, maybe we SHOULD hold our breaths after all, ALL OF US, since we all share the same atmosphere with the sterile Babezilla.
Okay, I know I gotta go see that kid, and soon , but how discomfiting it will be to be in the presence of a perfectly healthy newborn that I can’t touch, no matter how well I scrub up. I LOVE babies, new ones most especially, and that’s just going to be so weird for me. I think maybe I’ll take along the sign-language books Zilla asked me about a few months ago, (Little Man’s going to learn sign language.) and the “What to Expect” books I dug out of my collection for her. And a nice little baby gift (but not clothes, of course). Anybody know where I can pick up a good used autoclave in a Noah’s Ark pattern?
Chapter 16 – Pregzilla: The More Things Change…
(Yeah, I know the baby's here. But this was already queued up, so I finished it. )
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” right? You’ve heard the old adage. Likewise, I’ve noticed that certain deficient elements of Boss’ and Zilla’s character appear as recurrent themes in our stories. Like obliviousness, entitlement, and lack of preparation.
You’ll recall that soon after Zilla and Boss returned from their honeymoon, as Zilla crammed her first and last day of employment with our organization into a single 10-day period, our heroine was feeling increasingly ill. Every few days was punctuated with a trip to an immediate care facility or the local emergency room, depending on the perceived severity of Zilla’s symptoms.
She really WAS feeling puny, I’ll grant her that. First her UTI, which caused intense pelvic pain and later morphed into a mild kidney infection. Then she had a little stomach bug, followed by the steady development of a head cold. On the heels of their return home, she had the notorious ovulation experience, after which the aforementioned cold settled in her chest and created a nasty, lingering cough. And THEN, she began to suffer from some hauntingly familiar (to ME) flu-like symptoms that compounded her misery. I guessed she was pregnant even before she burst through the front door of our office one evening and made a nauseous beeline for the porcelain bowl in the ladies’ room.
Zilla was convinced she would surely die of her mysterious and debilitating ailment. I knew that my pulling her aside and informing her that I suspected she was PREGNANT would probably not end well, so I kept my yap shut. Especially after Zilla’s mass email debacle, and the account password shut-out, and the double-paid bills muddle. Zilla would probably think I was trying to exact some sort of revenge for making a disaster of my nice organized office procedures. Besides, I knew she’d eventually figure out her delicate condition on her own.
After a fair number of unsatisfying clinic and ER visits, Zilla and Boss took matters into their own hands. They completely forsook modern medicine and had enlisted Boss’ favorite alternative homeopathic/naturopathic/herbal guru to guide Zilla through a lemon juice fast, charcoal cleanse and super vitamin bulk-up as a last gasp effort to rid her body of whatever ghastly and insidious germs had invaded her system.
All became strangely quiet on the office front. The desk that Zilla had meticulously sanitized sat empty, its array of undisturbed disinfecting products a tacit reminder that surface underneath was falling victim to the degeneration of time and unsterile air particles, and that her careful efforts had been essentially futile. She never came back to the office as a staff member. We kept her desk empty for a while out of deference to her, but it was for naught. Boss was frequently absent, pressed into service as Zilla’s nurse.
In the meantime, the ever-active Boss and his family had been amassing a list of key associates and acquaintances who had curiously slipped through the cracks of being issued an invitation to the wedding. As the wedding plans had been going forward, there were about a BAZILLION people whom we staff knew Boss would want to witness the ceremony. Since there was no time for formal invitations, they all had to be notified via phone or email, or in person. Boss, being the control-freak micromanager that he is, wanted the honor of making all these notifications PERSONALLY. Boss gets a real charge out of shock value, and he wanted to hear or see the stunned reaction HIMSELF as each listener learned that Boss was getting married in TWO WEEKS to a stranger they’d never laid eyes on.
It quite frankly became somewhat of an uncomfortable situation for our staff in the weeks preceding the wedding. We’d been asked by Boss not to spread the news ourselves, so whenever we’d get a call, we couldn’t make any notifications beyond, “Hey, have you talked to Boss lately? I think you oughta talk to Boss.” There were literally THOUSANDS of people who needed to learn this matrimonial news to prevent hurt feelings, but our hands were tied.
So, do the math. Two weeks and change to prepare for the wedding. Even though Boss talks on the phone several hours per day, he had quite a few details to attend to, plus a time-consuming major event to prepare for which was totally unrelated to the speedily approaching ceremony. When Boss talks on the phone, he typically doesn’t get right to the point, and as a result spends at least 15-20 minutes on each call, sometimes more. So even if he was able to reach 10 or 12 new people per day with the blessed news, he was still going to fall far short of the thousands he had intended. And that’s just what happened.
As near the ceremony as the very afternoon of, Boss was calling me asking, “Did you tell Yoohoo and Yahoo and Yayhoo? How about Skeezix? Could you give them a call and let them know?” Okay Dude, your wedding is in less than two hours. How tacky is that, for your office assistant to extend an emergency telephone wedding invitation to a person who has erroneously harbored the thought that they might be your close buddy? Fine tribute to friendship there, old chum. Yessiree.
Bottom line, although the attendance was quite remarkable for a slap-dash affair, it wasn’t even CLOSE to what MIGHT have been the turnout if there had been time for a REAL engagement period that included LEGITIMATE wedding planning. Of course, lack of invited guests created one other lamentable result: a shortage of wedding gifts. Now, the table at the venue was piled high, don’t get me wrong. But Boss didn’t turn nearly the cash profit he was expecting on the wedding. He seemed rather bewildered when he told me that he and Zilla basically broke even on their honeymoon. That’s presumably not ALL they broke , but I go off the point.
Our usual customary business at the office valiantly carried on. A little less than one month after the wedding, our newly resurrected email list got a heartfelt summons to an “evening of celebration.” At the top of the newsletter was a brief agenda of the evening’s festivities, which were to include food, music and a discussion of upcoming events and opportunities for giving in support of them.
I had heard a little discussion about a party, but had no idea the newsletter was being sent, or even that a firm date had been set, until the email surreptitiously showed up in my inbox at home. I’d been home for a couple of days with a sick child.
There was an odd title at the top of the email. I recognized it as what was to be the evening’s “theme”. Unveiled, Restored, United. Nobody ever DID figure out exactly what that meant, by the way, and it wasn’t explained at the event. I’m sure Boss intended to enlighten us, but he got off on a tangent that night, and the audience was left hanging…
Anyway, as I scrolled to the bottom half of that email page, I was appalled, and wondered WHO had been given the go-ahead to send this dispatch. There was a HUGE wedding picture of Zilla splayed over Boss’ shoulder with the caption: “Please also join us in celebrating the marriage of (Boss and Bridezilla). We look forward to sharing the evening with you. God Bless!” I knew that Boss’ family had shared his bafflement that there wasn’t a bigger monetary take on the wedding day, so I guessed that one of them had volunteered to help with the event email and slid in the part about celebrating the marriage without the knowledge of the newlyweds, who would surely be aghast at the implication that they were having a second reception in the same locale where their wedding had taken place a few weeks prior.
Turned out I was TOTALLY off base. The couple had indeed cooked this up THEMSELVES. Boss and Zilla had been collectively thinking of a way to allow all those inadvertently uniformed potential wedding guests a second chance to demonstrate, in a tangible way, their delight about the union. Cha-ching. Their consensus was that this little email addendum was a very polished and subtle way to suggest that it wasn’t too late to endow their new household with a wedding gift. In addition to our elist, copies of this invitation were posted on the doors of our corporate offices, and horror of horrors, a press release was even sent to the local paper. To prove that the event was a BIG deal, it had an RSVP deadline.
As I said, I was appalled by the boorishness. Obviously others were as well. By the evening of the event, two weeks later, I think there were only about 30 RSVPs instead of the hundreds Boss expected. A large chunk of those coming were Boss’ family members, with the remainder being made up of a smattering of supporters and other folks whose curiosity had gotten the best of them , along with some of my family, and a few stragglers. There are ALWAYS a few stragglers.
By the night of the affair, I had come down with the same virus that had afflicted my kids a couple of weeks earlier, so sadly I couldn’t go. DH had to keep me up to speed via text message that night.
A GIFT TABLE set up in the banquet room. With a money basket. Gag. Both nearly empty. Gag. Stouffer’s lasagnas, bagged salad, bread sticks and brownies on the menu. Gag. The standard pizza-alternative meal that everyone in our organization hates, but that no one dares to disparage, because Boss thinks it’s glorious. There was a little Kum-bay-yah-esque group singing, followed with a set by a ROCKING band and then some kind of disjointed inspirational address delivered by Boss. Even DH, who knows Boss well, was surprised at his total lack of focus. The expository texts from DH were comical. Boss’ train of thought had utterly jumped the tracks. At the very end of the evening, DH sent one last message: “(Boss) just made an announcement. His bride is with child.” Oh, boy. Here we go.
Monday at the office, I congratulated Boss in person. “Were you surprised?” he prodded.
“I already knew, actually.” I was immediately sorry I said that, for he seemed a little deflated.
“When did you find out?” He must have thought one of his siblings let the secret slip.
“Oh, about two weeks ago.”
Obviously puzzled, Boss exclaimed, “Two WEEKS; but Zilla and I just found out a couple of days ago!”
“I know,” I said, as I shrugged, smiled compassionately, turned on my heel and walked out of his office.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” right? You’ve heard the old adage. Likewise, I’ve noticed that certain deficient elements of Boss’ and Zilla’s character appear as recurrent themes in our stories. Like obliviousness, entitlement, and lack of preparation.
You’ll recall that soon after Zilla and Boss returned from their honeymoon, as Zilla crammed her first and last day of employment with our organization into a single 10-day period, our heroine was feeling increasingly ill. Every few days was punctuated with a trip to an immediate care facility or the local emergency room, depending on the perceived severity of Zilla’s symptoms.
She really WAS feeling puny, I’ll grant her that. First her UTI, which caused intense pelvic pain and later morphed into a mild kidney infection. Then she had a little stomach bug, followed by the steady development of a head cold. On the heels of their return home, she had the notorious ovulation experience, after which the aforementioned cold settled in her chest and created a nasty, lingering cough. And THEN, she began to suffer from some hauntingly familiar (to ME) flu-like symptoms that compounded her misery. I guessed she was pregnant even before she burst through the front door of our office one evening and made a nauseous beeline for the porcelain bowl in the ladies’ room.
Zilla was convinced she would surely die of her mysterious and debilitating ailment. I knew that my pulling her aside and informing her that I suspected she was PREGNANT would probably not end well, so I kept my yap shut. Especially after Zilla’s mass email debacle, and the account password shut-out, and the double-paid bills muddle. Zilla would probably think I was trying to exact some sort of revenge for making a disaster of my nice organized office procedures. Besides, I knew she’d eventually figure out her delicate condition on her own.
After a fair number of unsatisfying clinic and ER visits, Zilla and Boss took matters into their own hands. They completely forsook modern medicine and had enlisted Boss’ favorite alternative homeopathic/naturopathic/herbal guru to guide Zilla through a lemon juice fast, charcoal cleanse and super vitamin bulk-up as a last gasp effort to rid her body of whatever ghastly and insidious germs had invaded her system.
All became strangely quiet on the office front. The desk that Zilla had meticulously sanitized sat empty, its array of undisturbed disinfecting products a tacit reminder that surface underneath was falling victim to the degeneration of time and unsterile air particles, and that her careful efforts had been essentially futile. She never came back to the office as a staff member. We kept her desk empty for a while out of deference to her, but it was for naught. Boss was frequently absent, pressed into service as Zilla’s nurse.
In the meantime, the ever-active Boss and his family had been amassing a list of key associates and acquaintances who had curiously slipped through the cracks of being issued an invitation to the wedding. As the wedding plans had been going forward, there were about a BAZILLION people whom we staff knew Boss would want to witness the ceremony. Since there was no time for formal invitations, they all had to be notified via phone or email, or in person. Boss, being the control-freak micromanager that he is, wanted the honor of making all these notifications PERSONALLY. Boss gets a real charge out of shock value, and he wanted to hear or see the stunned reaction HIMSELF as each listener learned that Boss was getting married in TWO WEEKS to a stranger they’d never laid eyes on.
It quite frankly became somewhat of an uncomfortable situation for our staff in the weeks preceding the wedding. We’d been asked by Boss not to spread the news ourselves, so whenever we’d get a call, we couldn’t make any notifications beyond, “Hey, have you talked to Boss lately? I think you oughta talk to Boss.” There were literally THOUSANDS of people who needed to learn this matrimonial news to prevent hurt feelings, but our hands were tied.
So, do the math. Two weeks and change to prepare for the wedding. Even though Boss talks on the phone several hours per day, he had quite a few details to attend to, plus a time-consuming major event to prepare for which was totally unrelated to the speedily approaching ceremony. When Boss talks on the phone, he typically doesn’t get right to the point, and as a result spends at least 15-20 minutes on each call, sometimes more. So even if he was able to reach 10 or 12 new people per day with the blessed news, he was still going to fall far short of the thousands he had intended. And that’s just what happened.
As near the ceremony as the very afternoon of, Boss was calling me asking, “Did you tell Yoohoo and Yahoo and Yayhoo? How about Skeezix? Could you give them a call and let them know?” Okay Dude, your wedding is in less than two hours. How tacky is that, for your office assistant to extend an emergency telephone wedding invitation to a person who has erroneously harbored the thought that they might be your close buddy? Fine tribute to friendship there, old chum. Yessiree.
Bottom line, although the attendance was quite remarkable for a slap-dash affair, it wasn’t even CLOSE to what MIGHT have been the turnout if there had been time for a REAL engagement period that included LEGITIMATE wedding planning. Of course, lack of invited guests created one other lamentable result: a shortage of wedding gifts. Now, the table at the venue was piled high, don’t get me wrong. But Boss didn’t turn nearly the cash profit he was expecting on the wedding. He seemed rather bewildered when he told me that he and Zilla basically broke even on their honeymoon. That’s presumably not ALL they broke , but I go off the point.
Our usual customary business at the office valiantly carried on. A little less than one month after the wedding, our newly resurrected email list got a heartfelt summons to an “evening of celebration.” At the top of the newsletter was a brief agenda of the evening’s festivities, which were to include food, music and a discussion of upcoming events and opportunities for giving in support of them.
I had heard a little discussion about a party, but had no idea the newsletter was being sent, or even that a firm date had been set, until the email surreptitiously showed up in my inbox at home. I’d been home for a couple of days with a sick child.
There was an odd title at the top of the email. I recognized it as what was to be the evening’s “theme”. Unveiled, Restored, United. Nobody ever DID figure out exactly what that meant, by the way, and it wasn’t explained at the event. I’m sure Boss intended to enlighten us, but he got off on a tangent that night, and the audience was left hanging…
Anyway, as I scrolled to the bottom half of that email page, I was appalled, and wondered WHO had been given the go-ahead to send this dispatch. There was a HUGE wedding picture of Zilla splayed over Boss’ shoulder with the caption: “Please also join us in celebrating the marriage of (Boss and Bridezilla). We look forward to sharing the evening with you. God Bless!” I knew that Boss’ family had shared his bafflement that there wasn’t a bigger monetary take on the wedding day, so I guessed that one of them had volunteered to help with the event email and slid in the part about celebrating the marriage without the knowledge of the newlyweds, who would surely be aghast at the implication that they were having a second reception in the same locale where their wedding had taken place a few weeks prior.
Turned out I was TOTALLY off base. The couple had indeed cooked this up THEMSELVES. Boss and Zilla had been collectively thinking of a way to allow all those inadvertently uniformed potential wedding guests a second chance to demonstrate, in a tangible way, their delight about the union. Cha-ching. Their consensus was that this little email addendum was a very polished and subtle way to suggest that it wasn’t too late to endow their new household with a wedding gift. In addition to our elist, copies of this invitation were posted on the doors of our corporate offices, and horror of horrors, a press release was even sent to the local paper. To prove that the event was a BIG deal, it had an RSVP deadline.
As I said, I was appalled by the boorishness. Obviously others were as well. By the evening of the event, two weeks later, I think there were only about 30 RSVPs instead of the hundreds Boss expected. A large chunk of those coming were Boss’ family members, with the remainder being made up of a smattering of supporters and other folks whose curiosity had gotten the best of them , along with some of my family, and a few stragglers. There are ALWAYS a few stragglers.
By the night of the affair, I had come down with the same virus that had afflicted my kids a couple of weeks earlier, so sadly I couldn’t go. DH had to keep me up to speed via text message that night.
A GIFT TABLE set up in the banquet room. With a money basket. Gag. Both nearly empty. Gag. Stouffer’s lasagnas, bagged salad, bread sticks and brownies on the menu. Gag. The standard pizza-alternative meal that everyone in our organization hates, but that no one dares to disparage, because Boss thinks it’s glorious. There was a little Kum-bay-yah-esque group singing, followed with a set by a ROCKING band and then some kind of disjointed inspirational address delivered by Boss. Even DH, who knows Boss well, was surprised at his total lack of focus. The expository texts from DH were comical. Boss’ train of thought had utterly jumped the tracks. At the very end of the evening, DH sent one last message: “(Boss) just made an announcement. His bride is with child.” Oh, boy. Here we go.
Monday at the office, I congratulated Boss in person. “Were you surprised?” he prodded.
“I already knew, actually.” I was immediately sorry I said that, for he seemed a little deflated.
“When did you find out?” He must have thought one of his siblings let the secret slip.
“Oh, about two weeks ago.”
Obviously puzzled, Boss exclaimed, “Two WEEKS; but Zilla and I just found out a couple of days ago!”
“I know,” I said, as I shrugged, smiled compassionately, turned on my heel and walked out of his office.
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