oh, no, not i!
i did survive. thanks for everyone's well wishes for today. happily, yesterday's dam-breaking floods gave way to the merest trickling stream of bleeding today, making the workplace logistics easier than i thought possible.
but it did suck. when i got to work and went to see my boss, he regretted to inform me that i was not eligible for grieving days, at which point i began crying. he felt awful about it, and the h.r. counselor felt awful about it, but it was not their policy to grant grieving days when "well, it had been such a short time." i snorted through my tears. "so, what's the cut-off point?" i asked him. he didn't know, but at least he acknowledged that it didn't make much sense.
ah, nothing like crying in front of your boss.
my co-workers gave me some space for the first couple of hours, since i arrived crying and brushing everyone off, but then at lunch time they circled in and started asking questions, and by then i could talk about losing the tadpole and it made everything some better. sometimes they drive me nuts, but my girls rock.
apparently, my girls also didn't talk while i was gone, so no one knew where i had been or why, which caused much staring at my belly but no awkward questions from the masses, to which i say, hallelujah. there are a couple of field reps - the one who just started who lost her daughter a few months ago, and another one who's just been a good phone friend to me and whose wife had a miscarriage before their now-toddler-aged son was born - who knew i was pregnant, and i told them today, and they were both just lovely about it, although the woman who just lost her daughter sent me a lot of stuff about god in her e-mail to which i had no response.
what could i possibly say? good for you, that you have your faith? i hope it keeps you warm at night? i just didn't reply to that stuff. but i do envy her. at least it's something. and the fact that my faith is pretty much non-existent doesn't mean i don't look for some crutch. exhibit a: the multiple indulgences in sausage this last week, culminating in the sausage sampler at the brew house on saturday while justin was bottling his scottish ale he brewed for our party. exhibit b: 2 1/2 bags of reese's miniatures consumed in the last 2 1/2 days. (these exhibits would appear to be a certain obstacle to the "ten pounds in ten weeks" plan we had going here.)
and you know what? i went church shopping today. justin and i went to the local quaker outfit for a while a couple of years back, but i never felt like i connected with anyone there, which is a big part of what i want out of a church experience. i looked at them online today, but it's so hard for them to actually do anything there - it's so annoying. i looked at the local english-speaking buddhist temple, mostly to see what they offered locally in the way of a water baby ceremony, which appears to be nothing, plus there's too much lingo that i don't speak. i also looked at a united church of christ that a friend of ours attends and is less than two miles from us - really just in the next neighborhood. it's an inclusive place with much emphasis on social justice, and that element is appealing to me. i'm talking to justin about giving it a try.
i also decided it was time to take the advice i gave catherine. i e-mailed david and asked who he and/or toni saw after they lost calvin, so when i call the mental health preauthorization line at my insurance company to set up some more therapy, i can tell them who i want to see rather than vice versa.
and in other insurance news, when i got to work i had all kinds of propaganda awaiting me about insurance options for next year, and i saw that my employer is trying to push everyone away from my plan and into plans with 80% coverage and big deductibles. such a plan would be fine if i had no medical concerns, but i really hope to be racking up some regular medical bills next year, and such a plan is most definitely not fine. also, if we stay on my insurance, and if we try to conceive again soon, i am stuck with my sorry employer all the longer. we have to sit down and crunch the numbers, but justin is on board with us both going on his insurance, even if it costs a little more, to have the coverage i hope to need and to free me up to look for another job. i'm not really up to it just yet, but i will be soon, and i need to be free to do it.
wish me luck.
*****
to jeff w - welcome to our blog - nice to get a little whiff of testosterone around here! are you a blogger?
but it did suck. when i got to work and went to see my boss, he regretted to inform me that i was not eligible for grieving days, at which point i began crying. he felt awful about it, and the h.r. counselor felt awful about it, but it was not their policy to grant grieving days when "well, it had been such a short time." i snorted through my tears. "so, what's the cut-off point?" i asked him. he didn't know, but at least he acknowledged that it didn't make much sense.
ah, nothing like crying in front of your boss.
my co-workers gave me some space for the first couple of hours, since i arrived crying and brushing everyone off, but then at lunch time they circled in and started asking questions, and by then i could talk about losing the tadpole and it made everything some better. sometimes they drive me nuts, but my girls rock.
apparently, my girls also didn't talk while i was gone, so no one knew where i had been or why, which caused much staring at my belly but no awkward questions from the masses, to which i say, hallelujah. there are a couple of field reps - the one who just started who lost her daughter a few months ago, and another one who's just been a good phone friend to me and whose wife had a miscarriage before their now-toddler-aged son was born - who knew i was pregnant, and i told them today, and they were both just lovely about it, although the woman who just lost her daughter sent me a lot of stuff about god in her e-mail to which i had no response.
what could i possibly say? good for you, that you have your faith? i hope it keeps you warm at night? i just didn't reply to that stuff. but i do envy her. at least it's something. and the fact that my faith is pretty much non-existent doesn't mean i don't look for some crutch. exhibit a: the multiple indulgences in sausage this last week, culminating in the sausage sampler at the brew house on saturday while justin was bottling his scottish ale he brewed for our party. exhibit b: 2 1/2 bags of reese's miniatures consumed in the last 2 1/2 days. (these exhibits would appear to be a certain obstacle to the "ten pounds in ten weeks" plan we had going here.)
and you know what? i went church shopping today. justin and i went to the local quaker outfit for a while a couple of years back, but i never felt like i connected with anyone there, which is a big part of what i want out of a church experience. i looked at them online today, but it's so hard for them to actually do anything there - it's so annoying. i looked at the local english-speaking buddhist temple, mostly to see what they offered locally in the way of a water baby ceremony, which appears to be nothing, plus there's too much lingo that i don't speak. i also looked at a united church of christ that a friend of ours attends and is less than two miles from us - really just in the next neighborhood. it's an inclusive place with much emphasis on social justice, and that element is appealing to me. i'm talking to justin about giving it a try.
i also decided it was time to take the advice i gave catherine. i e-mailed david and asked who he and/or toni saw after they lost calvin, so when i call the mental health preauthorization line at my insurance company to set up some more therapy, i can tell them who i want to see rather than vice versa.
and in other insurance news, when i got to work i had all kinds of propaganda awaiting me about insurance options for next year, and i saw that my employer is trying to push everyone away from my plan and into plans with 80% coverage and big deductibles. such a plan would be fine if i had no medical concerns, but i really hope to be racking up some regular medical bills next year, and such a plan is most definitely not fine. also, if we stay on my insurance, and if we try to conceive again soon, i am stuck with my sorry employer all the longer. we have to sit down and crunch the numbers, but justin is on board with us both going on his insurance, even if it costs a little more, to have the coverage i hope to need and to free me up to look for another job. i'm not really up to it just yet, but i will be soon, and i need to be free to do it.
wish me luck.
*****
to jeff w - welcome to our blog - nice to get a little whiff of testosterone around here! are you a blogger?
posted by laura at 10:27 PM
5 Comments:
The fact that you are even considering a church tells me you haven't given up on the idea of God yet. The fact that you're considering another job is a GREAT idea. And the fact that you are considering a therapist tells me you haven't given up on the idea of happiness. There's hope in them there words.
I wish you much more than luck!
I know the therapy thing is tricky, but it really did help me. It didn't erase everything or make it all better, but it did give me ways to cope, and helped me work through a bunch of shit and identify some other shit that I need to work on. It gave me a place to talk, and I was 'lucky' to have a therapist who has two dead children and really understood.
I'm so glad your first day back was better than you expected.
I am so with you on the looking for another job thing. And in a nice little tie-in, I discussed that with my new therapist, whom I really like, and she suggested that I send out resumes - even if it ends up not being feasible to take a new job, she thinks just doing it will help me feel like I'm moving forward somewhat and not so trapped.
So I can recommend both the looking for a new job, and the therapy. I've only been to two sessions so far, and I already feel like it's helped me.
I'm glad it wasn't too bad.
Coming from the "wish I were anywhere but working here" department I know all too well how it feels to want to look for a new job and not yet feeling up to it. I hope you get the feeling back sooner than I haven't. :(
Hi Laura, thanks for the little note there at the end. I am indeed a blogger, but you'd probably find my blog boring. I'm a Unitarian and my blog is really geared toward that particular audience. Plus I'm too darn busy to update it. Me bad blogger.
Anyway, I want to offer y'all some help, if you feel like taking me up on it. I'm a PhD student whose research focuses on American Buddhism. My dissertation is going to be about water baby ceremonies in the USA. If you'd like some help learning about where you can go to get one performed for you, I can offer you some specific tips. This ritual is only performed at a handful of temples in America (in Japan it's done all over the place, in June I saw water baby ceremonies being done at virtually every temple I visited). I can save you a lot of time, and for that matter a lot of money since y'all were thinking of maybe going all the way to Japan.
Anyway, just let me know if you'd like to discuss it. I don't consider this offer part of my research, it's just to help out a couple of folks who might benefit from my extremely obscure body of knowledge. You're welcome to email me at jwilson403@hotmail, I'm afraid if you just leave a note here I might miss it.
Hope y'all are having a good night.
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