I'll Do Better in the Future

I miss the good ol' days.

I had two solid years of being incredibly spoiled. Alexis, she who was born to act as a human alarm clock, was more than happy to wake her sister every day and get her dressed. Everybody was happier for the arrangement. I didn't have to be the jerk who wakes up a baby. Alexis got to do something she enjoys. Mila was less angry about being awakened because Alexis. Everything is more fun with Alexis.

But then came middle school. The middle school bus departs from our neighborhood at an hour that is so early NOBODY should have to be up and moving. It's complete craziness, so I can't really convince myself that Mila should be awake in time to see Alexis in the mornings. The Tiny Human does not cope well with mornings, so the later we can start them, the better.

Thus, I have to get Mila up and going in the mornings now. You should feel sorry for me because IT SUCKS. I miss that sisterly love thing like crazy.

But, I mentioned that thing where Mila is bad at mornings, right? She's so bad at mornings. It's hereditary, so we make quite the couple. Neither one of us is capable of getting up and out the door in a  reasonable amount of time.

With Mila, though, there's a routine that has to be followed OR ELSE. She has to start with a really long hug, then she'll sit on the couch and watch Paw Patrol, then she will eat a bowl of cereal (but not that cereal -- THAT cereal), and then she might be willing to get dressed. You can't cut anything out of the routine. If I get her up late and need her to skip the Paw Patrol portion of the events, TOO BAD. She can't. It's against her religion.

Thus, I follow the rules each and every morning. Mostly, anyway.

There's just one little thing that's been adding an extra wrinkle to the game - I nearly have Mila convinced she can get herself dressed in the morning. She really can. It just requires a layer of patience that I'm not sure I possess. It takes her fooooorrrreeeevvvver. But, it's worth it. If the kid gets good at dressing herself, I get to tap out on part of the morning. I've been suffering through the 20-30 minutes it takes for her to pull on some leggings and a dress because it's good when I get to tap out.

This morning, though. This morning I got up an hour early and needed Mila up an hour early because I needed to be at work a little earlier than I usually am. The goal was to end up just 15 minutes early than normal, so SURELY allowing an extra hour would be good enough.

It wasn't.

Mila found a way to move even slower. There are sloths who have finished marathons faster than the kid managed to put her pants on today. I was generally patient, but eventually I couldn't do patient any more so I put her socks on for her.

Her plain white socks.

Apparently I put them on the wrong feet.

Except, I was in no mood to argue about things like that, so whatever. Mila screamed at me and threw a fit and I didn't care. I shoved her in the car anyway, where she promptly fixed her own damn socks which FINE. GO AHEAD AND FIX THEM.

The very first words out of Mila's mouth this afternoon when I picked her up from daycare were, "Don't touch my socks. You always put them on the wrong foot."

Hold grudges? What? MY KID?

A Wicked Good Time

It was of the utmost importance that I take Alexis to see Wicked because The Wizard of Oz has been ruined for her. The last time she saw it was a local production that yinzerfied it. Yes, yinzerfied it. Dorothy was from Pittsburgh, not Kansas, and there were little Pittsburgh jokes all through the show and ZOMG DON'T DO THAT, PEOPLE. Some things are not to be tampered with and your dumb Baltimore Ravens joke does not belong in the midst of the majesty that is the fantastic original story that is Wizard of Oz.

But, like, Wicked is better. I've seen it before so I already knew that so I had to take Alexis.

(Just for the record, this isn't a sponsored post. I paid for the tickets, which was no small feat because I think EVERYONE bought them before I did.) (In other words, if you want to go, you better get on it. There are very few tickets left.)

The goal was to share a great story, beautiful sets, and an overall amazing production with Alexis. Which, that worked. She is now all in on all things Wicked. I expect she'll have the soundtrack downloaded by this time tomorrow and will already have memorized at least three of the songs. What I wasn't banking on was discovering something myself.

The conductor.

We had seats near the front because it turns out that the seats that are waaaaay off to the side are less expensive than some of the ones that are much further away. There are times when you can't see all of the action on the stage, but WHO CARES? I'll take an obstructed view when it means I get to be close enough to closely study Elphaba's green hands and decide if they're makeup or gloves or what. (I actually didn't decide. BUT I TRIED.) That means I had an unusually good view of the conductor.

First of all, he's adorable and animated and clearly passionate and everything that a conductor should be. But the thing that I noticed a billion times over was that he really enjoys his job. His face lit up with pure joy multiple times during the show. A smile spread across his face as he sang along with the cast during a number of songs. Mostly, though, he was just plain happy.

Everybody should be having that much fun when they're working.

It was such a delight to see someone having SO much fun while working that I made Alexis pay attention to him for a few minutes. I watched as his face lit up and then her face lit up and then I'm sure mine did too because obviously. Alexis leaned over and whispered, "I hope I love my job that much when I'm older!"

Me too, kid. Me too.

In Retrospect, It's Still TOTALLY WHACKED

I have no idea what would remind me of sitting quietly while someone OBVIOUSLY puked out lie after lie (::cough::cough::), but here we are. I find myself reminiscing about the weirdest situation I've ever encountered in my professional life. I've never written the story because I don't mix work with blog, but enough time has passed. I can tell you about the time my path crossed with that of a serial liar.

My first hint came my second week into the job at the place that was the most toxic place I've ever worked. The fact that the whole place was toxic was a part of why it took me that long to start to catch on, by the way. When EVERYBODY is off, it's hard to spot the offest thing around. The offest thing around was, however, the woman who kept telling me about her employees.

For a little perspective, I think it's worth noting that the woman who claimed to have an army of employees had the same job title as me. I probably made more money than her because experience and general competency, but even if she somehow made more than me, SPIDEY SENSES ALERT. Why would someone employ a bunch of people but then work somewhere else for peanuts?

To hear her tell the tale, she owned a consulting business and had 300 employees. They had an office on the east side of town, but everybody worked remotely because she didn't care where they worked as long as they got it done. By the way, her husband worked for a Pittsburgh-based retail company, so both of them held middle management positions while paying 300 people top dollar. TOTALLY MAKES SENSE.

The stories about the fake business ran deep and were thorough. There was a website. There was a physical address that was definitely fake, and which was easily proven as such. There was even a list of employees, none of whom existed outside of the web page ... no LinkedIn, no Facebook, nothing. But, it gets better. She recruited people to work for her. There were offer letters and everything.

People quit their jobs at Toxic Place, thinking they were going to go have a dream job working for her, and then figured out the truth. There have been all sorts of legal shenanigans over the thing, but as far as I know, nothing has gone anywhere because SHE FAKED HER DEATH.

Seriously.

After weaving the tale about owning a business, she added some new layers. There was the part where she was moving to a new house because someone passed away and left her this giant mansion and a pot of money for maintenance. There was the other part where one of her employees was in a car accident and hurt his leg and was hospitalized so she had to go visit him.

Then she got cancer.

Seriously. She stood in the office and told everyone that she was in chemo because she had throat cancer.

Two weeks after she started in on THAT story, she went to Ireland for vacation. That part I think was true because there were photos and stuff, but chemo ... vacation ... I mean, COME ON.

And then she came back from vacation and quit her job. Her explanation was that she didn't want to be a drain on the company and she wanted to focus on her treatment, but then a few weeks later, her husband posted all over social media that she had passed away.

THE HUSBAND WAS IN ON IT.

That part still makes me blink wildly. I don't understand.

For what it's worth, her adult son then posted photos on Facebook showing her alive and well. Like, he just ignored the whole shenanigans thing. What actually happened is the whole family picked up and moved to Florida. According to her recently updated LinkedIn profile, she worked for a Big Huge company for a few years and is now working in Human Resources for a small family-owned business. Her time working at that Toxic Place I also worked is not listed on her profile ... it's as if those years don't exist in her head.

I legit hope she has gotten the help she CLEARLY needs because none of that whole story is the sign of a healthy person. I also legit hope she has stopped taking other people down with her. That was always the part that I found the hardest - it wasn't that she had created this world she wanted to live in that bothered me, it was that she ruined other peoples' lives in doing it.

There's a whole bunch more, but that's the gist of the the six months of my life when I learned that it really is possible for a person to become so entrenched in their own lies that they end up believing the lies. It's a thing.

I just wish it weren't a thing with our government officials. ::sigh::