So *that* was 2012...

My new boss started two weeks ago and I'm having to remind myself constantly, CON-STANT-LY, to settle the hell down. Curb the enthusiasm. Stop vibrating. Put a sock in it. Say what you want to say in 25 words or less. Get that IDIOT GRIN off your face this freaking instant. Seriously. Do not eff this up by wriggling right over a cliff like a blithering idiot.

New Boss:     You know when you were a trainer at The Castle?

Me:    Yeah?

New Boss:    Did you teach a custom class for x-corp?

instantly beginning to sweat because you have classes and you have *THOSE CLASSES*  and you never, ever, ever forget them. On a scale of 1 - 10 with 10 being, oh shit, am I going to get fired and 1 being, well that was marginally embarrassing, x-corp might have been a 4  but came nowhere near the time I compared Pillar Reports to an incurable STD: you think you're the only one with a small infection but your admin wakes up with a raging case of... I used that as a metaphor in the classroom and was perfectly clear that it was time to get out.

Me:    Um, yes, I did. I think that might have been mid 1997 or even 1998, I'm not sure but I know we were in the lower level of building 1 where the internal classes were normally held and there was a class in the adjacent room and the instructor had a really unruly class...

New Boss:    I was in your class.

Me:    I was afraid you were going to say that (what? were you 12?).

New Boss:    I figured I'd just get that out of the way.

Me:    So, yeah, and there was that class next door...?

New Boss:    Right, the consultants class.

Me:    Uh huh... all that yelling...

New Boss:    (big grin on his face) 'SHUT THE HELL UP AND SIT THE EFF DOWN!!!'

Me:    Yep. That was the class.

New Boss:    So, did you write that material?

Me:    (crap. I don't even remember that book. I know I didn't write it because I didn't even know the product yet and that's kind of how I learned it but maybe Florkow wrote it and that means it HAD to be good)    Nope. I just taught the class.

New Boss:    That was a good book.

Me:    That's good. Custom training is always the best option.

New Boss:    So we were a pretty good class....

Me:    ......

New Boss:    ......

Me:    No. No you were not.

New Boss:    Well. I figured I'd get that out of the way too.

Me:    For a good time call Alecto on the white board after break? Really? What? Were you all 12?

New  Boss:    It's not like you didn't sit us down on our asses pretty damn quick after the fact.

Me:    True. I withheld the afternoon candy and threatened to keep you until 7.

New Boss:    We learned a lot.

Me:    I didn't know the product. I just figured I'd get that out of the way.

New Boss:    uh.

Me:    Well. I knew more than you did  by the end of the class.

New Boss:    We gave you really high marks.

Me:    Thank you. {smiles} I perform really well with positive reinforcement.

New Boss:    But you got it at the end of the class.

Me:    I knew you would.

Things have been changing rapidly. There could be some semblance of sanity in the very near future. Maybe. Sanity, of course, is relative but I'll take what I can get. This brings me to the year in review because the last two weeks have been such an incredible shock to the system. Hell, this guy could be utterly mediocre and at this point he'd be walking on water.

So what the hell happened this year? Really. That's what it's been about.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!!! What WAS that? OMG!!!

 

what WAS that?!!!

 

If New Boss hadn't been such a shock to the system I don't believe I'd have made the barest twitch of the head in terms of looking back. I'd have just marched on ahead.... eyes forward.

Here goes:

1. I jumped off a cliff with my eyes wide open.
2. I went to work for the BigBank (that isn't really a bank) that is culturally so different from anything I've ever been exposed to that the navigational learning curve has been treacherously steep.
3. I landed in the lap of Psycho Boss.
4. I found myself nose to nose with a predator and I wasn't the prey. Elizabeth was. My, wasn't that exciting.
5. I took on Psycho Boss and The BigBank and lived to tell about it.
6. I lived (so far) through the aftermath of taking on Psycho Boss and The BigBank.
7. I lived a year without chickens, garden or Bikram. That has been less than pleasant.
8. I've lived a solid year, one step away from financial ruin and learned to live with that as well.
9. I've learned to live with and accept the consequences of setting some pretty firm boundaries.
10. I tossed Nomans off the island fully accepting the consequences, foreseen and yet unknown.

Here's some more totally out of order:

1. I up and drove 260 miles round trip to dance at the Contra Mecca in the Northeast.
2. I went to the Peterborough Fall Ball in New Hampshire and danced for 6 straight hours and then drove 45 minutes to the hotel through the dark, dark, dark listening open mouthed to a 20-something faery princess from an entirely other world.
3. I watched Cletus launch herself in an incredibly spectacular way beginning in June and, well, she's still in flight.
4. I discovered a whole new definition of the concept of parental sacrifice when Elizabeth decided to continue dancing this year. And I do not mean sacrifice in a negative way, although I think for a lot of parents it is experienced as a negative. That would be tragic.
5. I went nose to nose with the old school order called look the other way. OK, I guess I did that twice this year. Women. Women will protect men who hurt other women. I guess I've always known that. I don't even want to get into the why of it past the unwillingness to have a confrontation but it's beyond that because I'd have handled the confrontation. I did it publicly and it's still resonating, best I can tell from the outside because I haven't gone back.
6. I started baking and cooking again, purely out of the blue. It just started to happen. It doesn't happen a lot yet, but it happens and as long as I don't *think* and just *do* then the *being* is right there. Just like that.
7. I let my dog go.
8. I watched my daughter in The Nutcracker. Or more importantly, I sat in a cold vestibule for five hours a day while Elizabeth rehearsed for The Nutcracker in the final days post (sort of, her lungs may or may not have crackled now and then but the doc said GO) pneumonia holding an inhaler listening for her lungs to give out. They never did. We chose dance over school in the wake of a devestating illness that left her too weak to do much of anything for more than a few hours at a time. One of the best decisions I've ever made as a parent. Her legs and arms shook, her brow sweat, her focus never once wavered. She came home and passed out, got up the next day in time to eat and go back to the studio.
9. Elizabeth and I went camping; shedding a little more skin and growing something new.
10. Oh, and there's this. I spent the summer mostly alone. The girls being off and about for the most part of the summer. Well that was odd. Just that. Odd. The house was way too damn big. Seriously. What the hell are people thinking? Don't answer that.

oh, yeah, you know, this didn't happen this year. This happened a real long time ago, before the world moved on and I just found this. Again. I found it again in 2010 apparently because that's when it got scanned and posted to facebook but it was Cletus's last year of dance and Elizabeth's second as it turns out so Cletus has to be almost 14. Almost. 2005, right before we left Stamford, right before the world moved on and then on again.

Comments

[jules]

What a year eh? Can you talk yet about what happened with your dog?

Glad you made it. May your New Year be joy filled.