Oh to be a child again

At this time of the year, when somebody expresses the wish to be a child again, it usually means they would like to recapture the magic of the Season - or at the very least, not have to worry about bills. However, I have a much more mundane reason.

This afternoon my stomach developed mild nausea. It wasn't getting any better, so I went to bed. Even there, it wasn't easy to find a position where I felt good (I do hate nausea), but I finally fell asleep. Only to wake up AFTER I had a massive attack of diarrhea.

As I stripped the bed (and me) and stuffed everything into the washing machine, and showered myself off, and cleaned up the floors, etc. I found myself wishing I was a kid again, and that Mom was taking care of everything. I'm not sure she would have been particularly sympathetic. She probably would have been grumbling about people not making it to the bathroom in time, but she WOULD have cleaned everything up, including me. And I wouldn't have had to remake my bed either!

With four little girls, my daughter is probably used to cleaning up after things like this (the oldest is only 6), but it's been a long time since I was called on for this kind of duty. I can't help wishing I was a kid again, so I could concentrate on feeling miserable while the adults do the work.

Little Red Hen

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the story of the Little Red Hen, who finds the grain of wheat and plants, waters, weeds, reaps, grinds, bakes, etc. until she has a loaf of bread - and nobody is willing to help her until it comes times to eat the fresh-baked bread. At which point she selfishly keeps it all for herself and her chicks!

I have to admit that there are definitely times I feel like that little red hen. I'm the one who goes to work to earn the money to buy our food. I'm the one who does the menu planning on what we should make. I'm the one who does the grocery shopping. I'm the one who actually fixes the food, which is eagerly devoured by the rest of the family. I am then the one who does the dishes so that we have clean plates and bowls to eat our food off of.

The minimal amount of help that I get is that Bill will put the leftover food away (most of the time), and Tim will empty the dishwasher (some of the time). Needless to say, I get a bit grumpy about this occasionally, and feel that I am doing most of the work.

However, as I have discovered in the past, being grumpy doesn't change anything. The rest of the family puts up with my grumpiness and apologizes for their slothfullness (with sheepish grins), but nothing changes. I have tried going on strike, but it doesn't work. The dishes just pile up to such mammoth heights that it takes 3-4 loads to get them washed. Every bit of edible food that doesn't actually need fixing is devoured. People can live a long time off of peanut-butter sandwiches, potato chips and cereal. Not to mention ice cream!

So, when I find myself being ill-used and put upon, I now turn to the Savior as an example. After all, what did he preach? Service to others. Therefore when I 'serve' my family, I am also serving the Lord. This puts things in a different light, and makes life much more tolerable for me. Not that I can always cling to this rosy view of things. When I have put in several hours of overtime, and am really tired, it is hard not to feel upset when I view the stacks of unwashed (and not even rinsed) dishes. But most of the time it helps me to feel more cheerful about my role as a 'mother hen'.

Oh No - It's snow!

OK - so it doesn't seem like much to those of you who live in areas where it snows on a regular basis, but for us it's quite a bit of snow. The real problem has been the cold - it just isn't melting even though the sun is shining. Apparently there is air from the Antarctic hanging over us. It's had a long way to come, but it certainly has made the weather interesting in California on its way.

It has also been very, very patchy. When I came home from work Wednesday morning, everything was pretty clear until I got a few miles from home, and then the snow hit. Last night Bill went to take Tim to mutual. The church is only a few miles from here, but as he drove the rain turned to sleet then turned to snow, and when he got to church it was so slippery he couldn't leave the car!

A snowstorm hit Seattle this morning at 5:00 am - with thunder and lightening! The guy on the radio explained that a storm cell was moving through Seattle. When I left work at 6:00 the road conditions were really bad. Everybody was crawling at about 20 miles an hour or less. Ten miles down the road, it suddenly cleared up, and I cruised all the way down to Tacoma. I didn't really hit snowy roads until Fircrest, and it wasn't that bad. Then twenty minutes after I got home, it snowed like crazy again - but only for about half an hour. This is really weird weather!

Even when the roads look like they're going to be OK, schools have been cancelled as they don't know what they'll be like in a couple of hours. Tim's Christmas vacation seems to have started early. They had a late start on Monday, normal hours on Tuesday, and have been closed ever since. Tomorrow was only supposed to be a half day, so it wouldn't surprise me if they just stay closed.

So far I've been lucky in my commute from Tacoma to Seattle and back, but I still have another three nights, and they are predicting another storm this weekend. Maybe it will hold off until Sunday morning AFTER I get home.

Christmas Decorations

Ever since the girls left, we haven't been nearly as good as decorating for Christmas as we used to. In fact, this last year we never took the tree down. Tim complained that he missed out on the fun of decorating the tree this year. I guess we'll have to give in and take it down this time. We do have other Christmas decorations that we keep up all year as well. And some of them are not your normal angels with halos. This is Edward - our mechanical butler - who is technically a Halloween decoration, but we augmented him for Christmas. He still scares people silly. If you read my previous posts, you saw my praises for the Festival of Nativities that we had. Because of that I have purchased several nativity sets. Only two of them have arrived so far. The first of these pictures is the nativity set that we already had, and I have to go on record as saying that I really, really like it.

The second one is my favorite of the three - because I have always loved stories about Indians. I'll have to see if I can find a few more animals for this one. And I really should get a spotted Indian pony in place of the camel.

The third one is Bill's favorite. Very simple, just Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus - Antarctic style.

In my daughter's latest blog she talked about Muddy balls. These were specially decorated balls made by Bill's grandmother, whose nickname was Muddy (her girls couldn't pronounce 'mommy' quite right). We treasure these. They have a prominant place on our tree. Unfortunately the pictures are a bit blurry, but hopefully you will get the idea of how beautiful these are. I decided to take them off the tree for the pictures, as you can see the details a bit better. The last red one I photographed both sides, since they're quite different!

This isn't all of them, but I have to save some suprises for next Christmas. Hope your holidays are bright, cheerful and not TOO white. Merry Christmas everybody!

Jazz Band Concert

When Tim started 5th grade, he had to pick an instrument. There were no trombone players, so Tim decided that would be a good instrument to play. We trooped to the local music store to rent one, and crossed our fingers that he wouldn't get tired of it too quickly.

To our surprise and delight, he has turned out to be quite musical. We have been having him take private lessons in addition to his school band practice, and he is doing very well. In fact, this year (6th grade) he has been a part of jazz band (which is mostly 7th graders).

Last week we went to a musical presentation at his school, which included the jazz band. We got to sit through an orchestra presentation, the 7th grade band and the special choir first (all of whom played "Jingle Bell Rock" in one form or another), before we got to the jazz band performance.

I thought they did a very good job. There were three trombone players, one of which had such trouble with his instrument that he had to borrow the teachers. Tim was the one who got into it the most. We could see his head bobbing in time with the music. And yes, they played a christmas medley that included Jingle Bell Rock!

Yesterday he was playing Christmas songs on his trombone, and he is really good at it! I hope he keeps it up through high school as I think it would be a big asset for him. I'm sure he'll be even better when his arms grow long enough for him to play all the notes!

Festival of the Nativities

This Friday and Saturday our Stake was hosting a 'Festival of the Nativities'. We weren't sure exactly what to expect, but we were blown away. I have never seen so many nativity scenes in my life. The entire central hall was filled, and two of the side rooms as well (although one of those rooms was art of the Savior rather than nativities). They had lots and lots of 'guides' on hand to make sure people didn't handle any of the figures.

I was especially pleased at the activity they had planned for kids. Tim was handed a sheet with a whole bunch of nativities that he needed to locate in order to answer the questions. One of them, for example, was "What color is Mary's robe in the duck nativity?" See the first picture for the answer. It kept Tim busy scurrying around, and also made him really LOOK at the nativities. He had a great time.

As for Bill and me, we could not believe how many nativities have been made. The names of the contributors were on each one, and there were some people who had dozens there. Obviously they collect them. We ran into one of these collectors - Cindy Van Zeben (daughter of an old friend of mine, Pat Van Zeben) and she told us that she has over 45 sets. Wow! She has been collecting them for some time.

I am including some nativity pictures. Some of them are pretty small because I got them off the internet and they just didn't blow up very big, but the variety is incredible. (Use a magnifying glass if you need to) This is, of course, only a small selection of what was there - and I picked some of the more unusual ones. Since Bill and I are collectors ourselves (not of nativities but of many other things), I am seriously thinking about buying a couple more sets for us - of the more unusual varieties. Pity I haven't found a dragon nativity yet!

We didn't actually see ALL of these nativities at the festival, but most of them. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the Fantasy Nativity, which was a one-of-a-kind hand-crafted item, but my daughter inherited my "forget the camera" genes from me. We are really hoping that they will make this an annual event as we would LOVE to go to this again next year. And maybe this time we can make a contribution. I have my eye on a nice nativity set of red cardinals . . .

Was it just Communication - or something more?

I have always thought of myself as a pretty easy-going person who can get along with just about anybody. In fact, in confrontations I tend to apologize whether it was my fault or not. Like George McFly in "Back to the Future" - I don't like confrontations.

So when our company hired a second night tech for our department a little over a year ago, I didn't anticipate any problems. I knew she had been a professor in the Ukraine, but had been in America for several years. I knew she had some clinical experience, and that she was very eager to learn.

At first everything was coming up roses. We got along just great - in fact my family even had her and her daughter over for Thanksgiving dinner. She did seem to be a bit paranoid (she thought people at work were doing things to get her in trouble), but she had a great deal of enthusiasm and worked very hard. Even though she was several years older than me, she had a lot of energy.

Then little problems started cropping up. Sometimes she would refuse to admit that she had made a mistake - and used that reasoning that people were trying to get her in trouble. I tried to be tolerant as I realized she had probably grown up in a Communist country where there was good reason to be paranoid, but although she had spent several years in America, she did not understand my brand of humor. As an example, when the supervisor emailed me about a problem that had occurred on night shift (which was pretty evidently her mistake), she flat out denied that she had done any such thing. So I rather wearily said, "Fine, I'll email the supervisor and tell him that it must have been me, since you're sure you didn't do it." Her response? With perfect sincerity she said "Thank you". My somewhat sarcastic comment went right over her head.

She had been with us for a few months when things blew up. We had both had a hard night, and I was trying to finish up the last of the work. She asked if she could help, and I told her that I could handle it, and she could go home as she was already into overtime. She responded that I was in overtime too, and I replied rather off-handedly "That's irrelevant". After all, I AM lead tech, so making sure the work gets done is my reponsibility.

A few minutes later I found her crying on the shoulder of the lab assistant. When I asked her what the problem was, she said she couldn't believe that I could be so rude and unfeeling. To say I was flabergasted is a gross understatement. When I asked her what she meant, she kept insisting that I knew what she was talking about. I eventually got her to spit it out, and was flabergasted all over again. In her eyes, the fact that I had said it was irrelevant meant that I didn't value her opinion at all. The fact that I had mentioned she was in overtime meant that I thought she wasn't working fast enough, and that her work wasn't good enough.

I tried to explain that the irrelevant comment was more of a joke than anything else, but she refused to accept that. I tried to explain that my concern about her overtime was because I knew her daughter picked her up. She wouldn't accept that either. She kept going on about how I was over her, and I'm afraid I lost my temper. It was at the end of my shift and I was very tired. I told her that I had been treating her like a friend, but evidently she didn't want that - she wanted me to just treat her like a co-worker. To my absolute astonishment her response was "Yes, I think that would be best". I felt like I'd been kicked, and my friendship spurned. So I stormed back to finish my work.

As I mentioned before, I don't like confrontations and I felt badly about this, even though I didn't feel it was my fault. Therefore I wrote a very nice letter of apology and re-explained what I had said what I did. I told her that I did NOT think she was not working as fast as she could, and that she couldn't expect to be as fast as me when she had only been there for a few months. I apologized for losing my temper. I told her I would continue to think of her as a friend, but would try to treat her as a co-worker.

She politely thanked me for the letter, but told me that there was one part that she did not agree with - she did not feel that I was faster than her! After all, she told me, she had clinical experience from a previous job. Once again I was totally dumfounded. Either she had an extremely high opinion of herself that she could master this job in so short a time that she could equal somebody who had been there for 24 years - or she had an extremely poor opinion of how much I had progressed in that amount of time. However, I was emotionally exhausted from the whole thing, so I just smiled and let it slide.

I want to add that months later when I mentioned this, she vehemently denied that she had said any such thing. Either her memory or mine was slipping.

For the next several months we got along OK - at least most of the time. She would often make little jokes with me, and when I didn't respond, she told me that I didn't have a sense of humor. I replied that I did, but the last time I had 'joked' with her, I had gotten into trouble. Mind you, she was making little remarks herself like, "Oh Megan, sometimes you are so kind, but not very often". To be quite honest, I did not know how to take her. She would get upset about something I had said because she would interpret it in a different way than I meant it. When I would try to explain this, she would stick to her opinion that I had meant it in the way that she had taken it. But she would continue to behave like nothing had happened.

She was also extremely emotional. The night that she couldn't get on the computer (new system), she finally started crying and asking "Why is this happening to me?". She even said that perhaps she should kill herself. I tried to be off-hand about it, because I didn't really know what to do. She had told me once before that every day when she goes home she cries and thinks about killing herself.

We got her into the computer with the new system, but she didn't really like the new programming. She was constantly telling me how I ought to change it, but would add in a self-sacrificing sort of voice, "But what I think does not matter". We were extremely short-staffed and I was putting in a lot of overtime as well as being the major programmer for our new system. Her constant complaining about how things were turning out got on my nerves, although I tried to be polite about it. However, I imagine I did sound exhasperated once in a while.

Then we had another 'incident'. We had been getting along pretty well, and I forgot and made a little joke. She had enlarged the graph on the screen, and I said "Good heavens, your eyes must be worse than I thought". I said it in a joking voice, but I might have guessed that she would take it seriously. Sure enough, a few minutes later she told me that she found my remark highly offensive and did not appreciate me making negative comments about her appearance. (Eyesight is part of appearance?). When I told her it was a joke, she did her denial bit. I'm afraid I totally lost it.

I mentioned a couple of the negative thing she had said about me, and she replied in her stiff self-righteous voice that she had never said anything negative about my appearance. By then I was practically shouting (yup - I'd really lost it). I told her that I had forgotten and thought of her as a friend, and would have to go back to thinking of her as a co-worker again. I don't remember exactly what she said - something about not being appreciated. So I told her to switch to day shift - maybe they'd appreciate her there since she didn't think I did. And I stalked off.

I guess I should have apologized for losing my temper, but I was so tired of having my remarks misunderstood. Granted, she is from a different country, but she had lived in America for several years and should have learned how to get along with people better. It is so frustrating to try to explain what I meant, and to be told that I am wrong - that wasn't what I meant at all!

So she went out and found another job and gave notice. When she told the supervisor she was leaving, she made it very clear that it was because of me. Whenever I tried to ask her about her new job, she would get very weepy and sad and talk about how hard it was going to be to get there (4 bus transfers) and how it wasn't as good a job, etc. I tried to talk to her one night to find out why she was leaving, but the only thing she would say was that she 'Didn't feel appreciated". I don't know if that was a reference to the last argument we had had, or a commentary on the fact that I didn't praise her every few minutes on how wonderful she was. I often did tell her she was doing a good job, but apparently not often enough.

On the last night we worked together, she gave me a present and then proceeded to tell me how this had been her dream job, everything she wanted and she had hoped to retire from here someday, but the situation had become intolerable. However, she was sure I would be happy once she was gone. Wow - talk about a guilt trip! I drove home stunned and depressed. I didn't know if she felt that she couldn't take working with me anymore, or if she was being a martyr and quitting so I could be happy. She was so weepy that last week that it was hard to talk to her about anything.

I wanted to give her and her daughter Christmas presents. I thought quite a while about what to give them. The last really good conversation that we had had was about Dickens and his story "The Christmas Carol". Amazingly, she had never heard of it. So I bought a very nice copy of the book with illustrations. Both she and her daughter felt very strongly about all of the stray cats and tried to feed them, so I bought a cat calendar for her daughter. I wrapped them up in Christmas paper, attached a Christmas card to each with their names on them, and left them in her drawer on the last night I was working before she left. She was actually working a few more nights as I was taking some vacation.

Well, last night was my first night back, and I found both the presents shoved into my drawer. The cards had been ripped off, but I have no way of knowing if that was because she was going to open and read them, or she had thrown them in the trash unread. She had totally rejected the gifts I had left for her, even though she had given me a gift on our last night together. I was furious, mad, and very hurt. I allowed myself the luxury of crying as I was the only one there.

Since then I've been thinking about this a lot. I do feel that some of it is my fault. I definitely should NOT have lost my temper with her. I should have apologized after I shouted at her. Even though we were incredibly busy, I should have tried to take more time to talk with her, and find out what she was feeling. It is possible that there is something in her cultural background that exacerbated the situation without my knowing it.

On the other hand, I can't feel its 100% my fault. Her inflexibility, her emotionalism, and her refusal to discuss things with me made it very difficult for me to communicate with her. She would ask me questions about things that she had known just a few weeks ago, but would deny that I had ever told her. She was always so certain that she was right. And she didn't try to sit down and talk things over with me before she decided to leave.

Although I am still hurt by what happened, and feel considerable guilt (whether I should or not), I feel that her leaving was probably better for both of us. She was right about one thing - I will be happier without her being there. I won't be walking on eggshells wondering how she will take my next comment. Also, with the economy being what it is, there is a good chance that our business will downsize. As she was the last one hired, she would have been the first one to be let go, so perhaps getting another job was a good thing for her. And perhaps she can feel saintly about leaving so that I can be happy again. But I don't think she is very happy, and for that I am truly sorry.

But what I don't know is whether this entire situation was just merely a matter of miscommunication (or not communicating), or whether there were culture reasons behind a lot of what she said and did. I will probably never know, and I will always have a bit of regret in my heart for what happened. But as Uncle Scrooge's nephew said about his Uncle in Dicken's "Christmas Carol", what did he get by refusing to come to dinner with them? - a good dinner with a lot of friendly people. And what does she get by refusing what is offered to her? - she loses her 'dream' job, my friendship, and a couple of Christmas presents. And who is to say which would have had the most worth.

Thanks for letting me vent.