Frustrating Day

I have been offline, mostly unwillingly. When I got back from the U.S., my internet was out. The company could have cared less. It only came back on yesterday. Coincidentally, they sent me (for the very first time) a survey to find out what I thought of their service. Ah, the things I told them!

I have so many things to talk about--Miss M's giant language explosion, complete with sentences--sentences!; our trip home; parenting a 20 month old who can now talk; having my bed back to myself now that Miss M sleeps in her crib, and how we got there; how my final CVS results are in, and they are fine; thoughts on #2; the fact that I've negotiated my next assignment, and where we are going. . .and so much more. But tonight I need to just vent.

I really try to help other people out. I volunteer for projects around the office. I volunteer to do people favors when they need them. . .even one person recently that I don't even really like. I try to be a good human being. So when people don't reciprocate, sometimes it just gets me down. Today is one of those days.

It started when I couldn't find anything to wear this morning. I'm not out of the closet yet at work about the pregnancy. I'll be 15 weeks at the end of this week, so I'm sort of running out of time. I haven't told anyone because the head of my unit has left, and the new head doesn't start for another month. The interim head has turned from a reasonable person into an utter neurotic stressball. I know she is going to freak out when I tell her, even though the unit will be fully staffed again long before my maternity leave. I'm dreading telling her, so I've put it off. But the fact that I stressed so much about clothes because I'm trying to dress strategically because she's created this stressful situation at work where it will be even more stressful to be "out". . .it just really upset me.

Then I got to work, and the same person wasted an hour of my time obsessing over eight million things in an utterly unproductive conversation. She is one of those people that channels her stress by talking about how much work she has to do. Then we had to have a staff meeting, which normally takes 30 minutes. This took and hour and a half, because once again she had to obsess and talk everything to death. She's not a good interim boss, as the stress just kills her. I am a do-er, not a talk-about-er, and all of the wasted time drove me batty.

Later in the day, I had a great opportunity that came up for the end of the month. It's work-related, very cool, and involves just a half-day of work. I can't stress again how much WORK is involved in this opportunity. But, I need her to sign off on it. Guess what? She won't. She has a really busy month, and she wants me to be around in case she needs anything. This, despite the fact that I routinely travel for work, and have continued to schedule out of town assignments for myself for the next month, so what's one more half day?!

Then, there is the matter of the stroller. It's a long story not worth even getting into. Suffice it to say, I spent a lot of money and went to a lot of trouble to purchase a double stroller and get it shipped to me (it's hard to get large items shipped internationally). It required a bit of help from a friend, but I was doing her a favor in return. Let's just say things got screwed up and she seems inclined to just leave it at that. I am stuck with a stroller in a place that is a) not accessible to me, and b) from which I cannot get the stroller to me here. I will likely have to spend a lot of money to fix the situation.

Sigh. I've just had a bad day.

The silver lining? I have friends flying in tomorrow morning, with their daughter, who is a few months younger than Miss M. IT will be so good to see them.