um…has anyone seen my brain?

i swear it was here just a minute ago, minding its own meandering business and picking its nose trying to look vaguely competent. it had just come home from eight hours of meetings and project ‘familiarization’ and was trying to juggle the dirty diapers and figure out whether babies like frozen pizza, when i lost sight of it. and now…nowhere. all gone. whooosh! vamoose! skedaddled.

(apparently when i’m left all alone to write with no supervision from my brain, my little closet fetish for funny-sounding words comes out to fill the void.)

i will admit ye olde brain looked a little shell-shocked and overstuffed at last sight, like one of those unfortunate foie gras geese right before they…oh goodness, there it is! was! went! oh dear. oh my stars. oh, the humanity!!!! the howwor!!!

my brain has exploded.tribbles

tribbles

and now there are tribbles all over my house. bugger. who’s going to clean all that up while i’m at work?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ okay, kidding. but seriously. the surreality of suddenly sitting at a desk for long, unbroken stretches but with no proper freedom to blog aside, this working stuff really isn’t so bad.

it’s just kicking my ass. or more accurately, my head.

so. much. new. stuff.

with all. same. old. stuff still needing to be done. it’s busy. and weird. i keep wondering if my coworkers need a diaper changed, or something. not that they smell. more just…i’m not quite sure how to sit still and focus for that long anymore. and i’m really not used to being accountable to anyone who weighs more than twenty-five pounds, except, erm, myself.

i hadn’t noticed, over the sixteen months or so that have passed since i last spent eight or nine hours at work in one stretch, how much i’ve changed in the interim. being at home with Oscar, i’ve become a more flexible person than i’ve ever been before in my life. i’m in the middle of something and have to drop it and run before my child eats cat food/discovers gravity/smears shit on the refrigerator/self-destructs? i’m gone. i can multi-task, and remember all seventeen things O needs before we leave the house…and i can also slow right down and spend ten minutes staring at grass if the mood so strikes him, even if there are twelve other things burning a hole in my to-do list. but in doing for O, and with O, i am still doing for a big picture that’s very integral to me. and there are nap times, bless their little restful windows of peacefulness for my soul.

i kinda forgot that at work there are no nap times. i kinda forgot that it’s not all about my big picture, my judgement calls, my need to find self-expression and validation in writing to all of you, dear readers.

instead, it’s about stuffing my brain very full of interesting new project plans and strategies, until it blows up and tribbles leak out. eventually, i think i’ll find my stride with this, i really do…once i get past the vacuous, stunned phase and get my brain, kicking and screaming though it may go, back to a mode where it remembers how to really value things that happen outside my house.

it better. because the inside of the house gets a little scarier every day that i’m not here, ministering to my OCDs its tidying needs.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

in all the kind, generous, supportive comments to my previous post, many of you mentioned that i might want to, say…try blogging at work. yes. mmm. there’s a little problem with that. see, i’m very lucky. and spoiled. i’m not working for The Man. i’m, ummm, kinda working back at the local university…and i’m working alongside…ahem…Dave. my Dave. who reads my blog. as does our boss, sometimes. so, um…gee whillikers! am i workin’ hard!!!

you might wonder why my fine, supportive partner would care whether or not i fuck the dog at work by blogging, rather than focusing diligently on my nice duties? vested interest, friends. and pride, on my part. i’m now the project manager for a grant Dave…um…wrote. (insert blush here and plug ears while the walls ring with shouts of “nepotism!” um, yeh. then…hold head high and recount with dignity my staggering qualifications for job. then…spit. it’s PEI, people. everyone ends up being related to their coworkers/bosses/brother-cousins at some point or other).

i can’t have Dave think i’m not working harder than him at work, folks. how then will i get him to do everything when we get home?!? ;)

i now go to re-assemble brain. happy hump day.