Wage War

November 22, 2006

Strategy, strategy. My original plan was to get an offer before approaching my current employer and ask them to match it. Well it worked. Now I'm waiting to hear if they'll match the offer, which has been driven up in a bidding war. There was a lot of room to grow, since my pay was way below market, due primarily to my never negotiating and to my time at Caterpillar in Miami, where they pay a pittance in exchange for a job where you don't really have to do any work if you don't want to. An excellent atmosphere for growth.

Anyway, here I am, sweating by the phone like a commodity trader, waiting to hear if they'll match the offer. Will they? Won't they? It would be good to know before a 4 day weekend, but I won't find out. I'll have to get grand ole drunk and hash out the details to all my friends and relatives of what happened when I became a hot commodity.

November 20, 2006

WEANING; and the Bitch

We're weaning, Olive and I, from our breastfeeding relationship. It started this weekend, when her face flared up with an evil rash - it was the dairy rash she had when she was a wee baby and before another mother suggested in yoga class that the dairy in my diet could be making her blotchy. (Our wholistic approach pediatrician had said nothing of dairy allergies.) After several weeks of laying off all dairy, Olive's skin was aglow. But for the past few weeks I've been sneaking in minute amounts of dairy into my diet. I cookie here, a pat of butter there on bread. At first it didn't seem to bother Olive and I got excited, thinking perhaps her system has matured to accept and digest cow milk stuff. But no, and it culminated this past Saturday with a rashy faced baby on the very same weekend we were supposed to have her x-mas card portrait taken. It's made me feel so very guilty - I'm poisoning her with my milk. So I fed her formula all weekend, except for just before sleeping, when she had a few sips from the breast. She guzzled that formula down, boy; we're learning to call it Duddu. It means milk in Urdu baby-talk, and is pronounced very differently from the English "doo doo."

Today is the first day at work I am not pumping. Instead I am sitting here dealing with a full and painful right breast.

Workwise, things are painful too. My suggested approach to SEBI, the Indian regulator, was like an "open kimono," says my boss. She's basically calling me a concubine. I'm thinking of ways to figure in "female dog" about her in our next conversation.

November 13, 2006

I'm bleeding at the office today - quite unprofessionally. I should plug it up with the modern invention of tampons. I don't use those anymore after reading "Cunt." Though I didn't go so far as to take the author's suggestion of staying home with a towel between your legs, but a pad, or "pussy hammock" as one insensitive ex used to call them, is a reasonable enough salute to feminism.

Speaking of feminism, I'm reading the Mother's Almanac, which made me feel utterly guilty by pronouncing that for the first 3 years of a child's life, at least one parent should be home a "great deal" of the time. I worked late nights last week, and really miss my baby daugher. Her bedtime is 6:30 - 7 now, so even when I do get home on time at 6, I have only time for a few stories and kisses and token breastfeeding, since she is full, filled up on dinner and soy formula. The weekends are so fun; we hang out lots, except when I'm cooking or organizing or doing laundry or exercising. Life is crammed up full of things. Nice things though and there is nothing sweeter than a little 9 month old breathing in your face at 6:30 in the morning planting a wet drooly kiss on your cheek.

She slept from 7 to 4:30 last night, missing her middle of the night feeding and leaving my breasts quite large and sore this morning. Though I suppose that could be the period too. Because I sleep on the left side of the bed, and therefore have been feeding her with the right breast (to avoid pushing her off the bed) at night, my right breast is visibly larger. That is why the tight Henry Bendel cashmere twinset didn't look right. That's what I'm putting down as the reason for return anyway. Now I'm back on the hunt for something to wear to our family photoshoot this weekend, or next, with photographer Roberto Flack, even though he does not know it yet. I was wondering whether it really was justifiable to spend several hundred dollars on this: a photo shoot and photo cards to send everyone of our little 3 some family unit. Shouldn't we just go to Sears, put Olive in a Santa hat, and $50 bucks later we'll have all the photo cards we could want. But I want something a little fancier, artier, so I'll take the money out of Olive's college fund.

November 7, 2006

Ran into Linda on the train today, my pilates instructor whom I haven't called lately. She was still polite and oh so thin. I am no longer thin. I have a mama body, weak stomach, hunched shoulders. But it feels so good to wrap my arms around my babe and rock her to sleep. She pinches the extra skin on my stomach. Yesterday, I even saw a flash of white in her mouth, though I've been feeling those teeth on my nipple for a few weeks now.

At work, work is crazy busy. There's no time to do anything, no spacing out or checking out the news or having long gossip sessions with colleagues about other colleagues, or even blogging. This is it, this is it, this is my chance to make my mark, I think as I plot how I will do good work and ensure that everyone knows about it.

The monthlies are coming too now. I feel a heaviness in the cradle between my hips. I feel contemplative, like lying down and watching Olive explore each little piece of fluff on the floor. She had a meltdown yesterday morning - she was angry because I kept her away from the lamp on the bedside table. She was screaming and throwing a tantrum. "She so much like you," said her daddy to me. Why do men think all women are ranters and ravers? Olive must be affected by my pms milk.