Professionalism on the job and at home.

The atmosphere in my office today is toxic. It looks like a law firm – everyone is all suited and booted; looking very professional and, hopefully, employable. Walking by the office next to mine, I could see on my colleague’s computer screen that she was working on her resume. Yes, it’s merger season around these parts, and today lawyers from our acquiring company are here interviewing lawyers and paralegals and staff for positions with the combined company. Ouch. Our general counsel made some noise early on about how these meetings were not interviews per se, but all pretense around that has been dropped and the 30-minute slots are now being called what they are.

I’m as lucky as an employee could be here right now; I don’t have to interview because the person who would be my boss in the new company is the same person who is my boss right now. There is no guarantee I’ll keep my job, but at least she knows me and has given me great reviews for the last eight years. Nonetheless, I am all tarted up like a real lawyer today – or should I say, tarted down. Looking in the mirror this morning, I saw all forty-one years of me staring back at me from a somber shell of expensive, well-cut fabrics. It was so jarring I had to remove my pearl earrings. I still looked like somebody’s mother.

In other news of being somebody’s mother, two people asked me yesterday whether our trip to Asheville had somehow gotten the kids to sleep through the night. I was able to reply joyously that YES, somehow they were doing much better and we had now enjoyed a solid week of decent sleep.

Naturally, I jinxed myself.

I was up 4 times last night with those little rats – responding like Pavlov’s dog to Eeyore’s bellows from the comfort of his toddler bed.

Eeyore: “MOOOOOOOOM!”

Mom, shuffling like a blind mole into their baby cave: “What is it?”

Eeyore: “I’m cold.”

Mom: “Jesus Christ, Eeyore. You know how to pull up your covers yourself. One more time and you won’t get your magnet in the morning.” (Reward system for not bothering Mom and Dad during the night = special magnet, 2 days of magnets = 1 lollipop.)

An hour later:

Eeyore: “MOOOOOOOOOOM!”

Mom, seriously pissed off: “Eeyore? What is it? You’re going to wake your brother.”

Eeyore: “I tee-tee’d. Can you change my diaper?”

Mom, sighing: “OK.”

So there it was, 4 a.m., and I was changing a tee-tee diaper on the bed. There are a few things wrong with this picture, but the one I’ll focus on is referring to a wet diaper as a “tee-tee diaper.” I am an adult and yet this is how I refer to a certain object. I’m southern, which is where the “tee-tee” versus “pee-pee” thing comes in, but still. It’s just one of those sad little reminders of who I am at this stage of life. A lot of cutesy talk is just the way it goes.

Meanwhile, I wonder if today’s southern children still say tee-tee or if that is some sort of 1970’s anachronism. I certainly never thought I would say it again in my life, since once I was old enough to just say that I needed to “pee,” tee-tee was not an expression that just cropped up in my daily conversation. Yet as soon as Eeyore was old enough to have any reason to discuss the matter with me, “tee-tee” popped out of my mouth (the expression, that is) and once again, that’s what it’s called.

Wow, that’s a fairly jarring juxtaposition between my two topics of choice today.