It's Begun

Last day of work for that company...

and its begun already. My mother says that she'd rather that I didn't look for another job, since I made the mistake of telling her that the one I'm looking at would involve some travel. "We want you here", she said -- which I'm sure is true, but which almost triggered the observation that if we didn't pay several thousand dollars a year for her one - day - a - week companion, I might be willing to just chuck it and stay home. (We're not going to tell her -- truth to tell, I doubt she has a clue what it costs. And we're doing it as much for us as for her. ) If this job doesn't work out, we'll still likely keep the companion, but we might go to a lesser schedule. And even with that, if I'm home, I know what that'll mean in terms of 'can you come look at this', and 'since you're going out, can you go to the grocery store for me'. I don't mind it, but I don't want to appear as the 'always available gofer'.

My daughter came home and said 'I'm home!' (as she usually does) and today's my dad's last day of work!' I asked her if this made her happy or sad, and she shrugged. Not a big deal to her. She's already opined that in the summer, she might not care if I'm gone on occasion, but in the fall -- might be a different story. We talked a little about her day. She told me that she likes the people she's teamed with for a project, because each of them is a hard worker, and they do what they say they'll do, and they have complementary skills. She told me she tries to keep in touch with what each is doing, and I told her that in my opinion, that's one of her mother's strengths -- not necessarily being the smartest or the most experienced, but being very good at keeping in touch, keeping things moving, helping out as necessary. She said she thought she had that skill, and I said that I would rather have that than be handsome -- to which she replied 'But you're not handsome!' What a great kid....

The office folks did take me out to lunch, at which there was discussion about the project thats resulting in all of these layoffs. The conclusion is that its going to implode at some point, because its just barely working now, and they're adding stress to it. In fact, one woman who is involved with it turned to me at lunch and said 'Take me with you' -- and she wasn't entirely kidding.

On to the next challenge....