I am literally eating my feelings today. My husband would say that isn’t possible, but I just cried into, and then ate, a delicious oatmeal raisin cookie I procured from the coffee shop near my office. I wanted a latte, but the espresso machine is a total jerk and decided to quit working. The girl behind the counter felt so sorry for me she gave me free coffee. Which is awesome, but not as awesome for the boob milk I am trying to keep at least partly caffeine free. If anybody knows any science about that and how I shouldn’t be worried, please let me know, because I NEED my delicious coffee flavored drinks.
In hindsight, I think she might have given me free coffee because she thought I was homeless. I look way worse than I feel, and I feel like a dead espresso machine.
It’s not even fair how crappy today has been. I mean, it’s Friday! The most magical day of the week! I also had grand plans this morning to write about marketing yourself when looking for a new job. It was going to be full of buzzwords and encouraging statements with exclamation marks after them. But like every single episode of Game of Thrones, something terrible was about to happen.
The content of yesterday’s blog was about a work conflict, and I went home smugly thinking that I had handled it with class and it was over. No no NO ma’am it was not. It reared it’s ugly passive aggressive head during a presentation I gave this morning. A beotchy attitude was in full effect. So like any other professional would, I started to cry.
It was awful. It was like a John Hughes movie, accept the main character is much older and chubbier. I managed to keep the alligator tears in check, but I’m pretty sure the rapid blinking and sniffling gave it away. So after the massacre was over, I crawled back to my desk and shut the door and just had a Molly Ringwald pity party.
Two days in a row! Why is this happening to me?
So like yesterday, I went back to my other office – the bathroom – and pumped milk and thought it over. I waited for my mammaries to give me some sort of zen like wisdom about the whole incident, but no. No clarity this time, none.
So then I sent my poor husband an email about how everyone hates me and how I hate me and how life is so unfair, and he responded appropriately so I stopped crying. I even got a little work done.
But then my mother sends me a text to tell me that my baby rolled over for the first time! She rolled over and I wasn’t there. This did me in utterly. If curses are real, my place of employment will probably sink into the ground tonight and never be seen again, or something. I don’t really know a lot about curses. I only really care if they can, in fact, sink my workplace in the ground so I don’t miss another precious baby milestone.
Why? Why couldn’t I be there to see her roll over?
The problem with searching for a new job after your maternity leave is that you are racing time. Your baby is growing faster than you can send out resumes. Faster than you can get your small business off the ground. It makes you question everything, all the things you are doing and why you are doing them. And if you aren’t careful, depression looms in the distance.
I have kept the baby blues and sad stuff in check for the most part, though, and I’m soldiering through all this stress because I know there is a change coming soon. I have found that taking a few extra minutes to myself, writing down my feelings, and well, eating them, helps while I’m in this postpartum stage of my life.
So after that, I took my inner fat girl and my outer fat girl and we marched down to the coffee shop to get a latte. Which morphed into a cookie, which is even better. And you know, Tina Fey really said it best in response to the quote ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ with ‘I don’t know, you ever put a doughnut in the microwave?’
I’m ok now. I ate my feelings cookie and now I am ready to go home to my babies and forget about this place for two days. When I come back on Monday I will again attempt to act like a grown up and begin anew with my quest to become a full-time writer at home that gets to watch babies do stuff for the first time. I might even have a few days where I don’t cry at my desk. Maybe, let’s not push it.
The Mommyverse 