Lump to Professional in 60 Seconds

I'm now in my third week at my new job, and I am hopefully adjusting relatively well.

I've found myself spending what to me feels like a LOT of money getting ready to really settle in at this job--I'm trying to treat it like a career where I will be here for the indefinite future, which means one thing: clothes.

Before my first day, I went through my work clothes, such as they are, and threw out everything that was just too old, dingy, or stained to wear to a new job. This left me with exactly one pair of pants, maybe 4 skirts, 4 tops (not the band, sadly), and a dress or two. This may sound like a decent amount of clothing if you are a dude, but not everything GOES with everything else, and I also have a sad lack of decent shoes to go with everything. Lots of my pre-existing shoes have proven to be life-ruining blister-causers and shopping for shoes is an enormous pain...

The strangest part about this is that I usually try to tell Ben what I am spending money on, and so I have found myself explaining a lot of generally unexplained, unspoken, gender-coded rules for professional women. Ben doesn't expect me to update him every second I spend money, but we both have the habit of just letting the other party know if we spent or are planning to spend, say, over $100 on something--it's just to make sure we both have a handle on how much money's in the system.

Here is what I have figured out:

1. Professional women wear separates. This one's less of an unspoken rule because I specifically remember my mother telling me this years ago. If you're wearing a dress, then you need to be wearing a cardigan or a blazer or something.

2. Professional women wear outfits. This means that you've got shoes and jewelry that coordinate with what you're wearing.

3. You can't wear the same thing every day.

4. What this means is that you have to set yourself up so you have a working rotation of clothes (up to 3 pieces if you're wearing a jacket, shirt, and pants or skirt), shoes, and jewelry that all go with each other. Plus stuff like tights and stockings and whatnot.

So right now I am working on putting together a collection of crap I can wear to work so that I send the right kind of messages about myself to my students and coworkers. It ain't cheap, especially because I generally mail-order a lot of my clothes because I am both a chunk and particular about what I wear.

Anyway, I have been shopping a lot more than I am accustomed to, a fair portion of which consists of me putting things into online shopping carts and then never buying them because I really hate getting stuff when it's not on sale. The silly part is that we have the money for me to do this--with our salaries together we're certainly comfortable enough for me to spend some money to make sure I am presentable at work.

I wish I didn't feel quite so neurotic about this whole being able to pass as a Professional thing, because then I probably wouldn't feel the urge to write about it in my blog. But job stuff is what I've been doing recently, so there you go.

Mom vs. Blog

So this blog sort of has two things going on--two things that war. They can kind of be summarized as Mom vs. Blog.

So one of the main reasons I started this up was to share pictures and stories of what I am up to with parents and other people who are concerned with how we are doing here in Montreal. To that end I feel like I want to tell stories of things that I did and then add context within Montreal and all that sort of thing. That part is "Mom."

The part that is "blog" is the bit where I want to treat this as a blog and write about the things that I want to write about because it is my blog. Initially this was going to be a B & me kind of undertaking, but I've got more time to write these days and stuff is really starting to ramp up on the Mass Effect 3 release. I think Twitter has ended up being more of his speed, anyway. The "Me" aspect of the blog is the part where what I really want to do is to write about me, me, me.

So anyway, I think I am going to work on a bit more of a balance between the two M's. More complaining, less tour guide, but overall more writing so hopefully more of both.

So one unifying theme I've found since we moved here (other than things dying) is not one that I expected: blisters. Since we arrived I have been getting horrendous blisters. Heel blisters, top-of-toe blisters, bottom-of-toe blisters, bottom-of-heel blisters, ball-of-foot blisters. Now, I am doing a lot more walking here in Montreal than I used to, but I've found that I have been getting blisters over periods of time and activities comparable to things I did in DC.

For example: today I put on some low-heeled cute dress shoes I got a few years ago and went to a mostly-a-formality interview with HR at Dawson College. I walked a block to the bus, walked a block around the corner, into a building, up some stairs, and arrived. Feet began to hurt. I was like, "Craaap...I have worn these shoes before but now they are giving me a zillion blisters." After the interview I needed to go and talk to the dude who will be my boss and I probably said something awkward because my feet hurt, I don't even know, and I started to SWEAT like nobody's business.

Luckily, across the street is a mall where I hobbled to attempt to find some sandals; the shoe store I went to had apparently gotten rid of all of its sandals for fall and I wasn't going to cram my poor throbbing feets into a boot, so I got some of those foamy flip-flops and just wore them with my suit. I was all sweaty and probably looked like a hot mess at this point, but I couldn't go home because I needed to do some banking stuff with B.

The stupidest part of this is that this isn't the first time I have done this frantic hobbly quest for shoes at this same mall. A few weeks ago I went to meet B for dinner near there and threw on some old comfy ballet flats I hadn't worn since last summer, and promptly had all of the skin abraded off of four of my toes. I hobbled into a Zeller's (it's like a crappy Target) and picked up some black flip-flops which did not match my outfit but also did not cause me to experience excruciating pain.

So I don't know why the hell I keep getting blisters but I wish it would stop. I am not at a weight that exceeds where I was the last time I was wearing those shoes, so it's not like I'm too fat for my old shoes, and the shoes are not particularly worn out, either.

What it means is that wearing close-toed shoes is going to be painful for the next couple of days, right when my parents are coming to visit and I have just started to make progress on an exercise regimen.

All in all, this has been a year of crap-ass stuff and stressful stuff that I have had no control over happening: moved to a new country, dog died, dad died, and ONE ZILLION BLISTERS. There's probably something else in there but I don't feel like thinking of it because there's no call to angry up my blood if I don't have to.

For what it's worth, though, I am sailing through with flying colors. But my feet hurt.

Good news and bad news

The good news is...well, I don't know what the good news is.

The bad news is that Nemo has to go back to the good folks at the rescue. He started manifesting some of the problems that Penelope experienced, and we're just not ready to deal with that right now. I think he'll make someone else a good pet, but he's not for us.

For once, it's not the cat's fault, either.

A new addition to our family

This is Nemo:



Nemo is a rescue greyhound.

He is very calm and well-mannered, to the point where someone asked me the other day if he was old. No, I said, he's three.

Getting Nemo has been like having a puppy with a large bladder--he's never lived inside a home or been by himself (greyhounds live in kennels when they race) so he's housebroken and hesitant to be by himself.

The first few days with him were HELLISH. Ben and I had both gotten sunburnt while visiting the rescue kennel, he didn't sleep at all that evening and cried and cried, and then the next day we were both feeling sick. We both also missed Penelope something fierce.

Since then he has calmed down and begun to sleep through the night, although Ben accurately accuses me of having "separation anxiety anxiety." I worry about him getting stressed and barking or crying while we are gone and disturbing the neighbors.

So far I have been working on "away training," where I leave for just a minute or two at a time, to teach him that yes, I am in fact coming back when I leave. Ben wanted to go across the street for breakfast this morning, and I was too worried to go out :/

He is a very sweet pup, though, and I think in the long run it's going to be worth it.

So it looks like I might have found myself a job tutoring at Dawson, a local Anglo cegep. More news will be forthcoming when I have it. Academia gets a touch of the South about it in the summer, when things get ruhl slow-like and things will get done in their own sweet time. Y'want some iced tea?

Speaking of things being Southerny, it is hot as 3-syllable Hell (hay-ell-uh) here this week. It got up to 35C/95F yesterday, setting a daily record for Montreal. Luckily today looks like it will be more in the 31C/88F range, which is much more bearable but still pretty unusual for Montreal this time of year.

Nick and Sara visited us at the beginning of July, and I felt guilty because we got hit with another heat wave, albeit slightly cooler than this one. They were hoping to come up here and get some of our gloriously temperate summers, but no luck--of course, in our defense, it was like 10 degrees F hotter in DC that weekend.

After one night of roasty-toastyness during their visit, we went out and bought an air conditioner. It's relatively small in the grand scheme of things, and while it doesn't keep the apartment super cold, it does cut down on the humidity and cool things off on days like today. Last night we ended up moving out onto the futon in the living room to be cooler, and were able to sleep well. Except for the cat playing with her crinkly ball at 4:30 am. I solved this issue by putting it under my pillow when she wasn't looking and she mellowed out. Such is cat.

Yesterday, some people from greyhound rescue came and did a home visit, which a lot of rescues (dogs especially) require before you can adopt. They want to come and make sure that you're not a crazy pet hoarder who is going to let their dog run off-leash and eat the neighborhood cats and the contents of the medicine cabinet.

I busted out with some dog-savvy lingo and they announced that we were the easiest home visit they'd ever had. She asked if the dog was going to be allowed on the couch or bed and I was all blah blah blah resource guarding and she was all like have a zillion of our dogs please. See how I let you in on a variety of secret tips and tricks in my blog? Also, rubbing alcohol is really good for getting the chrome on your bathroom faucet really extra-spotless. Try it--it's fun!

I was 17

My father passed away sometime last night.

It's funny--I've spent the past couple of years working on remembering the positive things about my childhood instead of the negative ones, but I had not thought to remember anything good about my father.

So here is something:

I don't remember when it was, but at some point, when I must have been in my teens, my father and I went to Fallingwater, about two hours away from Pittsburgh. I wonder if the only reason I even remember this is the photos that I have of it--he wore a bright pink Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.

My father had esophageal cancer. A little over a year ago, I accompanied him to a lot of his treatments at the VA hospital in DC and Martinsburg, WV. They were able to remove the cancer, but it eventually spread into his liver and, as I said, he died last night.

I did not have much of a relationship with my father over the years.

Now that my relationship with my mother is no longer so fragmented, I can think of a vast sea of actions and moments that point to the fact that she cared very much about me and did the best she could, despite both of our defects. The best I can come up with for my father is my hazy memory of our trip to Fallingwater. I remember being surprised at how ugly the faded orange furnishings were after having baked in the sun for years and years of nobody living there.

I traveled back to the US at the end of June, in order to sell our car and visit with my father before he died. We spent maybe three hours together at a restaurant in Western Maryland. He had become...small.

Perhaps I am too practical, but it seems to me that if I was only going to be able to make one trip down to Maryland, visiting my father while he was still alive did him a whole heck of a lot more good personally than going to his funeral. This, and all of the other decisions I made concerning him in the past year and change, are now mine alone to remember and negotiate.