You 'Da Bomb Mom

I know it is a little early in the day for a lunch break. I could not sleep last night and in light of that it is very possible that all of today my brain will be on a lunch break. I found myself talking to myself all the way to work this morning-out loud-by myself-in my minivan.

Now, there is a common stereotype attached to minivans: Soccer Mom. Now I am under 25 with no athletic children of my own to cart around, yet I drive a luxury minivan....

I need to preface the rest of today's morning lunch break by explaining that I am a house director for a resident home for women facing homelessness (no longer homeless because they live in my home). Like I said they are women, eh hem, therefore, they are adults. Some would call my position being a house parent. I am not old enough to be any of these women's mothers. For the record, the average woman who comes through my home is older than me, so I go by "house director"... Although yesterday I was interviewing someone...rather she was interviewing me... to be a substitute house director when I go out of town. Then it happened.There is that thing that mothers do, where they talk about their children while they are sitting right next to them as if they can not speak for themselves and as if they are not sitting right next to them. I found this happening yesterday as I explained our home to our potential sub: "She likes to cook out, well she likes to eat grilled food-she's afraid of the grill though..." "She is very talkative and very friendly and she will help you set our alarm at night. You will find her sitting at the computer doing research often because she is a self-starter and productive." My Resident was sitting right there. I had to apologize after Potential Sub left for talking about Resident of home as if she is an infant. I am astonished at these mommy type things I am sliding into... I am house director not a house mother!

OVEREXTENDED Preface concluded.

On the way to work this morning Christian Radio Station was choosing the winners for "You 'Da Bomb Mom" mothers day contest where kids nominated their own moms to win this contest. I was behaving quite normal in my minivan on the way to work this morning (yes, I talk to myself every morning),  when all of the sudden the two radio hosts broke out into a "You 'Da Bomb Mom" rap "Toby Mac Style" dedicated to the mother who won the contest. It was not horrible. The horrible part was that alone in my minivan I broke out my hip hop dance moves and started rapping along, make "west side" "east side"  hand gestures as I drove up the highway, bouncing in my drivers seat, steering hands free (which probably looked more like I had some debilitating form of carpal tunnel than anything...) Suddenly I imagined my future children in my minivan rolling their eyes at me and covering their faces mortified that I am their mother...I got a real kick out of embarrassing my imagined children and had a real moment of identification with my own mother and appreciated her more than ever. I am not sure if it is the house directing that is bring out this awkward mother side in me... but all I can gather from this morning is that it's getting worse. ;-)

The Hole in the Ozone

Today the sun was shining bright much to my joy!!! Blue sky and puffy white clouds. Mm mm good, like Campbell's soup for a sunny day. As crossed the sidewalk to the steps for work, I noticed a lone slug making its trek across the warming pavement. I considered rescuing it, because it was going towards a desert sized area of pavement rather than the grass...and that meant that slug was sooned to be overcooked like forgotten steak on a grill. But, I thought my skin oils would probably be bad for the slug and I should just let it live happilly until the moment of its crunchy demise. I have seen many baked worms in my time, but never a baked slug.
I began to think about the ill-fated plight of some of these ground crawlers; I thought about how rough it must be to just be going about your daily business only to find yourself cooking to death. I would walk out my front door hop in my minivan after several days of playing in puddles, pavement still wet, not noticing the change in tempurature and sky color, get half-way to work, start to sweat, and then begin to dry up as if I were in a fruit dehydrating machine. I would then die, and me and my van would become crispy in the sun, baked onto route 50.

Do you think that is what it will be like when the Ozone is depleted?

Choosing My Disease of the Day

My Insurance Company forced me to choose a primary care provider in order to have insurance. Therefore, I have no idea what my doctor is like, because I chose her from a list. I am thrilled to have medical care and coverage either way though! I called Dr. today over lunch to make my "new patient" physical appt. I came to find after chatting with a very pleasant receptionist that Dr. will not take first time patient physicals (for healthy people wanting a check up). The receptionist explained that Dr. only takes "ill patients for their first visit."
I asked, "So in order to make an appointment I need to have something wrong?"
                       "Yes."
I found this kind of odd. Since normally doctors do it the other way around, and while that does not really make any sense since doctors are supposed to make unnwell people well and not the other way around I still almost asked her:
        "So if i want to come in for a wellness visit I need to be a hypochodriac?"
I wished I did not actually have anything wrong so that I could make up a list of symptoms to the end of scheduling the wellness visit that I innitially desired:
           "Eh.hem. well. uh. I think... *cough* *hack* *cough cough*  I keep coughing, OUCH, so I have to sit to take a breather... and everytime I sit down my elbow hurts, so I squeeze it which then causes a lot of pain in my big toe... Do you think maybe the nerves are connected? There is no discoloration in my left toe and it is the right one that is hurting. Although, the odd part is, I had the 6th toe amputated as a child and that seems to be the one that is hurting."
                   "...."
            "No, no medical records, my mother believed in natural medicine so she removed it herself."

Instead I just got to say, "I have an injured knee, and a skin thing." That still wins me my wellness visit though!   Although, I am still unsure how I feel about my eye brow raising Dr. Anti-wellness who I chose from the mysterious Insurance Company list....

You Can Make It!

I did not take a lunch break today. I took a course on customer/employee satisfaction surveys instead. My speghetti and I joined some very entertaining slides with photographs of people who, I believe, are supposed to be employees for my company. As usual in web based training they were very generic, multi-racial, professional clad people in these photos. Now, this time around, two pictures stood out. Like I said, generally these photos are generic, most of them are calm and idillic gray. I clicked "next" to go to the slide that would describe customers who give negative feedback because we serviced our customer poorly. Here, we call those people detractors. For this section a photo of one of our "detractors" accompanied. The background was red which is out of the ordinary to begin with, and it was close up of a middle aged Asian woman's scrunched up very angry face staring me right in eye.  Picture my surprise when I kind of jumped startled and started cracking up in my desk chair. 

Second photo, three people dressed in suits, running through the finished line in a race. I think these were so supposed to be the good employees who have gotten us good feedback ratings. I asked myself, what if with every interaction I picture myself getting closer to finish line in my mind, so I can run through it, in first place mind you, wearing my business suit with that same look of relaxed acheivement and pride? Or what if everyday when I leave my office I picture myself running through that red tape in my stilettos, mission accomplished, number one? All the while I was imagining what it would be like if I took the innitiative to have the song "the distance" by Cake playing all through the day in my head... self-motivation, you know, so we can get good ratings and feedback.