Diary of a MILF in Progress

And lo, another year passes

Ah, the inevitable year-end recap (I know there are still a few days left in the year, but who knows whether I'll be able to arse myself to post before Tuesday.)  As we say farewell to 2007, I lrealize...nothing's changed. 

I'm still hung up on my looks and have no concept of whether my hair cut/hair color/clothing choices are doing me any favors, and I continue to obsess about what the interweb or my co-workers or other party guests think of me.  To review: short hair is mostly considered not sexy, although my March haircut was not a complete disaster; this Fall's experimentation with a new brand was a bust, but the overall choice to be a redhead sets me apart (in a good way) even if it's a pain in the ass to find the John Frieda shampoo (Brilliant Brunette and Sheer Blonde, no problem.  Radiant Red?  Sorry, we don't carry that.); yes, these jeans do make my ass look good; damn, I sure know how to knit a sweater/tank top/color blocked dress.

My husband is sometimes a jackass.  I may  never live down the money stuff, and he still hasn't learned not to remark about my weight.  Sometimes he's a really good guy, and sometimes he means well and chooses an unfortunate way to express himself.

Casey is a category unto himself.   He of the dreams and chance meetings, and the studious avoidances.  Flirt?  Kiss?  Ignore?  Bail?  We did run the gamut.  In any case, our interactions (potential and realized) are never boring.

Natalie is my best work friend ever in the entire history of my life.   Whether she's my co-conspirator, the voice of reason, or the woman who tells her husband to flirt with me and check out my ass.  Our crazy-ass  CEO better not drive her to quit or I will jump off the roof of the building.

Farewell, my readers, until next year.  Unless something either  pisses me off or makes me laugh enough to post over the weekend.  MWAH!  You know I love you (all eight of you.)

Things I'm not so much loving this week

• I met Casey's wife, Lisa, at the company Christmas party.  She seems really funny and nice enough, but now I am convinced that she thinks I am a big dork.  We were all laughing about old Christmas specials, I said something about being able to recite them because of the age of my kids (9, 6.5 and 4.5, in case you're keeping track).  She got a horrified look on her face and said "That's way too many kids under the age of 10!  I'm so thankful that mine is 27 and only drops by for visits!" 
• During said Christmas party (sorry, Holiday party) conversation, I mentioned my annual baking fest, and how I take a day off to make a gazillion cookies and such.  Upon hearing how many people get their own batches to take home (as opposed to just feeding from the massive tray I put in a central location), she said I should send some home with Casey.  So, imagine my surprise when I dropped the container off at Casey's desk, only to have one of the other sales team people tell me that Casey and Lisa do not partake of sweets.  So I don't know if I totally missed the social cue, in which case I should take the cookies back before Casey comes in the office, or whether our co-worker was off-base, in which case taking the cookies back would look like I was promising my famous triple-chip cookies and not delivering.
• My boss sent me edits to a rules and regs document, but the version she used looks to me as though it was not the most current (i.e., it was the version from October '06, and we made a subsequent set of edits in June '07).  I took her edits and incorporated them into what I think is the right version, and saved it in its appopriate network drive with a filename extension so as not to overwrite the version she had saved, make sure that all of the applicable permutations of the document (i.e., the October '06, June '07 and December '07) are all saved in the same subdirectory with the proper filename conventions.  And I emailed her my revised version.  I didn't say anything derogatory or anything, just "I think your edits may have been to the October version, so I pulled the June and added the most recent changes.  I'll do another comparison of the documents to make sure I didn't miss any of the edits," but still- having to tell my boss (the second highest ranking member of our organization) that she goofed is not fun.
• We are going to my mother's house on Saturday, since it is her birthday as well as a perfect opportunity to do exchanges of presents and see the light show at the park near her house.  My sister just emailed me to pin down a time for presents, dinner and lights, since as the mom of the little ones, I am the one to determine how late is too late to be up and whether gifts can be put aside to eat without anyone having a meltdown and how early can be realistically be at the house to see the 'rents/g'rents after having done what needs done at home in terms of grocery shopping and house cleaning and the like.  Fabulous, one more thing for me to try to figure out, and one more thing for everyone to question my judgement once I do come up with a schedule!
• My pants are chapping my ass.  "Why do you dislike the pants, Dana?" you may ask.  I don't dislike the pants at all, actually.  They're a nice grey shade, with a bit of brown and off-white in the pinstriping.  Wide legged, quite flattering.  But I have really really dry skin.  And no matter how much I try to combat it (tepid showers, moisturizing lotion, whatever), I spend most of the winter with very tender and red patches in various areas of my body.  And I have a thong on today, so the pants are rubbing against a couple of tender areas of my upper thigh and lower ass.  Everything else may be figuratively chapping my ass this week, but in the case of the pants, I'm being literal.

Eye of the beholder

So, I was talking to Natalie the other day.  And the topic turned to perceived levels of attractiveness.  On the few occaisions when she has her husband on hand at a party or whatever, I confess that I flirt madly with him.  Natalie is totally OK with this, and even encourages the behavior, since we are secure enough in our friendship and our marriages that we all know nothing is going to happen so we can interact with no subtext or strange implications.  Apparently the two of them have discussed, as she delicately put it today, my "various attributes."

"That must have been a pretty short conversation," I said.  "There aren't too many things in the 'plus' column when it comes to my looks, and it goes even further downhill if you consider what I look like naked."  [Neither Natalie nor her husband has actually seen me naked, so get that thought out of your head right now!]

"You're delusional," she shot back.  "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Should I go head to toe, or in order of magnitude?  My hair is frizzy and can't hold a style- it's not smooth enough to be straight, but not enough body to be curly.  I've got dark circles under my eyes, no matter how much sleep I get each night.  These..." I said as I indicated the vertical wrinkles between my desperately-in-need-of-a-tweeze eyebrows, "... make me look like I'm pissed off all the time.  My complexion is blotchy because of the rosacea, so I look like crap if I don't have my make-up on.  Unless pear-shaped is making a big splash these days, the difference between my non-existent bustline and my childbearing hips is not at all appealing.  I've got a poochy tummy from the c-sections, no matter how many Pilates sessions I've done in the past four and a half years, and don't even get me started on the stretch marks that come from three pregnancies.  My legs are short, my calves are so chunky that I can't find boots to fit except at the plus-size stores, my butt is all cellulite-y.  I can't get a tan, so all my freckles and moles are nice and prominent against my sickly-white skin.  Between the scars from the moles that were removed and the moles that are still there, you could connect the dots on my back to make every constellation visible to the naked eye.  My triceps are saggy, so I don't like to wear sleeveless blouses..."

"STOP!" Natalie admonished me, rolling her eyes. "Really, just go ahead and shoot yourself now and put us all out of your misery."

Brain droppings

A year ago, when the opportunities were presenting themselves left and right for Casey and I to be wildly, unbelievably unprofessional, nobody seemed to blink or act as though anything was out of the ordinary.  Now that we have both moved past whatever temptations existed before and are nothing more than friends, people give us funny looks and drop pointed remarks to us (or about us) in conversation and are acting as though there is something going on.  WTF?

I've been hiding in my cubicle for most of the day because I badly need to do a color-correction on my  hair.  So why is today the day when everyone is coming out of the woodwork and seeing me during those rare moments when I venture into the hallway?  On a normal day, I can be all around the halls without encountering anyone for ages.  It's hard to fly under the radar when you look like Ronald McDonald.

If I started honestly answering the question "So, what did you do this weekend?" would folks stop asking?  "Well, I cleaned out my underwear drawer, went to the grocery, and sat on my fat ass reading blogs and TWoP recaps while eating leftover Halloween candy."  Yep, that's compelling conversation.

We got an extra hour of sleep this weekend.  Why am I still so tired?

Is there life out there, so much she hasn't done

Listening to country music while I was already hormonal was the first mistake.  I'm kind of a sap anyway, and when you add the moodiness that the extra rush of estrogen brings on, it's a bad scene.

She married when she was twenty/she thought she was ready, now she's not so sure
She thought she'd done some living/now she's just wondering what she's living for
Now she's feeling like there's something more
Like so many girls of my age, I always dreamed of finishing school and getting married and raising my children while following some fulfilling career.  Except the school-girl dreams don't factor in how to handle the nights and weekends when he is working and you are at home with the kids.  And going out for happy hour is a production because you can't get a babysitter on the spur of the moment.  I've never been single in the workplace- I was engaged before I started working.

She's always lived for tomorrow, she's never learned how to live for today
She's dying to try something foolish, to do something crazy, to just get away
Something for herself for a change...
There's a place in the sun where she's never been
where life is fair and time is a friend...
When The Daughter was a baby, The Husband was playing softball twice a week during the summer, and bowling one night a week during the fall and spring, and had music rehearsal on at least one other night all year round.  Sometimes there were baseball games, and music performances.   My outings were few and far between, and hard to schedule based on all the committments he had already made all the time, especially once we had another baby.  And no matter how many times he told me that he was happy to take care of the kids for me to go out with work friends, or my sister, or whatever, there never seemed to be a time that had been left open for me to do so.  Until I was suddenly staring at being over 30 and already being defined as someone's wife and someone's mother and someone's secretary, and nothing else.

Would she do it the same as she did back then?
She looks out her window and wonders again
Is there life out there, so much she hasn't done
Is there life beyond her family and her home
She's done what she should, should she do what she dares?
She doesn't want to leave, she's just wondering if there's life out there

Dream a little dream

The dream started tame enough, although still a bit peculiar. It took place at my office, but the layout was much larger, so my cubicle area had a lot of empty floor space nearby. Which is kind of strange, since space is at such a premium right now. I was sitting on the floor with some of the meeting planning staff (one of whom, in reality, has left the company) putting together some sort of...holiday gift boxes or something. Whatever.

And in the dream, Casey passed by. You remember Casey, don't you? Casey from the hotel bar at the conference last fall? Casey who commented on the pencil in my hair? Casey who held our good-bye hug after the Christmas party happy hour a bit longer than typical co-workers do? Yeah, that Casey. Anyway, the dream turned a bit more...interesting after that.

Casey walked by, and he breezily said hello to the people I was working with. And he tightly said hello to me, as though it was an effort to do so. And I awkwardly said hi to him, as if I wished he hadn't spoken in the first place. That, too, was a bit odd. I don't recall us having every really been tense with each other like that. Our last conversation ended a bit abruptly, but our brief hallway meetings since then haven't been awkward at all. So, back to the dream.

I had to go to my cubicle to get something from my purse. And who did I find there? Why, it's Casey. Leaving me a note. A note to say...something. I don't know what, I didn't get a chance to read it. Because he stopped writing it and said "I was just leaving you a note." To which I replied, "But now you don't have to because...I'm here."

And then we were kissing and leaning against my cube wall. Right in the middle of the marketing department. And people passed by on their way to the printer, and no one seemed at all taken aback by the make-out session happening in front of their eyes.

Then my alarm went off.

Oh, and guess who was unexpectedly in the office today, for the first time in two weeks? Hello, Casey.