First Day on the Job

I've been trying to keep my head above water this week, and haven't made it to the blog, although lots of topics are—of course—flying around my brain.

Monday was my first day on the new job. By the end of the day I found I had experienced every emotion known to man. I had totally and completely run the gamut, as they say.

The day began with meeting my new boss for breakfast at Café Cimmento for breakfast. (By the way, if you haven't been following this blog and the recent changes in my life, you don't know that my new boss is my younger son. We are now a family business!) We sat there for a couple of hours, laptops by our sides, and talked about various upcoming tasks. Then I went and did the banking and came back home to get settled into work.

An hour later I called the Jazzman to see when he was coming over for our lunch date. Alas, he had totally forgotten our lunch date and made a spur-of-the-moment lunch date with his buddy. I immediately lapsed into old fear-of-rejection behaviors, which threw my mental state into the ditch.

I spent the afternoon working on tasks for the new job, with a few minutes' break to talk to my cleaning lady, who is accustomed to having the house to herself when she works—new patterns for both of us. About 6:00, the Jazzman came over for dinner and to try to redeem his reputation. I ran down to the basement to grab something before we left for supper at Station Square, and noticed there was standing water in the drains in the basement. I called upstairs to the Jazzman, who came down to survey the situation. After deciding it was just slow-draining water from the wash machine, we left for dinner.

Upon returning, we went straight to the basement, to find a pool of water about five feet across. And rising. Jazzman immediately got on the phone to the water department, and I called several neighbors to see if this was a situation reserved solely to me. It was. I ran upstairs and discovered the toilet in the upstairs bathroom was running. I jiggled the handle and it stopped, and by the time I got to the basement the water was receding. Hmmm. Cause and effect? I think so.

More calls to the water department to call off their people; calls to plumbers to see if we could get someone out with a snake; and a determination that we would just not flush all night and I would not shower in the morning until we got a plumber out. Pretty soon we heard a noisy truck outside and saw that the water department had not called off their people. Ten minutes later we heard banging on the front door, and I threw my clothes back on and ran down to open the door, setting off the security alarm. The city water guy declared an all-clear, confirming that the problem was mine alone.

By the time I crawled into my bed, I was brain-weary. I had felt elation over the new job; confidence and accomplishment at producing copy for a class announcement; depression over being tossed aside by my sweetheart; frustration at the problems with the house; fear about the financial hit of house problems; disgust with myself for buying this old house with all its problems; and anger at myself for taking in this kitten.

No, the standing water was not the kitten's fault, but he's caused me so much angst and cost me so much money in the six months I've had him, everything seems to come back to him. He's the convenient scapegoat!

Today? All is well. The plumber came yesterday morning, snaked out the pipe and installed a new flapper on the toilet. I had another good day at work, including another couple of hours with the boss learning how to prepare and send out the invoices. I did research for copy for a website, again feeling productive. And had a delightful evening with my beau, who has well and truly redeemed himself.

That's the thing about pushing 60: your brain doesn't work the way it did ten or twenty years earlier. You forget things. You frequently forget things.

It's not fun, but it's a fact of life, so you might as well accept it.

And all the changes and unknowns in my life right now? I think I'll live through it.

(And you're probably wondering why I chose a tornado as today's image. Because that's what my brain feels like right now!)