The Last Week is Also the First Week

**sigh**

A. is playing a show tonight, I'm home with sleeping Birdy. I have beer and a couple of cigs, but what I really want is some company. So get ready! Because I'm talkin' to YOU.

My Last Week of Work in the Big House.
Not a dramatic week, as I’ve been officially on my way out the door for a couple of months now, unofficially out the door longer than that. I’m tempted to be unprofessional and make a gripe list about the way my official exit went down, but it was kind of what I expected, and that’s even more disappointing in some ways. At the same time, though, I’m kind of relieved that my leaving was kind of an afterthought for some people, because I don’t like to make a big deal and do the thing where you have cake or something and everybody gets really excited for a second but you end up staring at each other in the conference room over your cake, making uncomfortable conversation.

It’s probably unhealthy, but I like to feel needed at a job. It probably comes from all of my psychosocial rehab worker years—who knows—but if you don’t have hang-ups before you enter mental health work, you are sure to leave with some. And when your boss doesn’t realize it’s your last day, and people you don’t even work with are the ones that put together your “drinks after work” fiesta, you don’t feel so needed or important—at least not to the people who write your paycheck. I know we all have miscommunications and calendars get screwed up, but when you’re a four-person (now three) company, it’s good for the right hand to know what the left hand is doing, and to get it freaking together. Not even a card that everyone signed. It was definitely time to go.

Brief history: we all worked in an ad agency together, the company dissolved (in my 9th month of pregnancy) and other companies were formed, but we all stayed in our offices in the big house. I went from busy writer to bored but grateful-to-have-a-job secretary. At one point it felt like family, and by the end it felt like a step-child divorce.

To be clear, though, I’m not running from the building with my middle fingers extended or anything. The people I work for are, at the end of the day, good people. I had my little breakdown and got my feelings hurt a couple of months ago, and at this point I’ve made all kinds of peace with walking away. But it’s the people I don’t actually work with that were the hardest to leave. Harder because now that we don’t work together, we remain friends by choice. One in particular was a difficult goodbye, as we spend a full eight hours a day together in a weird hallway-office at the base of the stairs, even though we work for different companies. He's gone from being my former co-worker to my dear friend, daytime entertainment and inside-joke guy. I give him a lot of shit and he gives it right back, like a brother. My work days are about to get much, much quieter, and I am genuinely sad about that.

I also, this week, wore the most uncomfortable pants ever created, which I bought at the “Free Panties With Purchase” yard sale. The lesson: thrifty isn’t thrifty if you’re going to buy crap.

First Week of Massage School, Day 2.
Day two was way better than day one. I still don’t feel like I’m finding the pressure points exactly, or rather, I haven’t figured out a way to gauge my accuracy, but all in all it was a good class. I had a much better partner this time. And on my break, I listened to motorcycle lady talk about how kids go to Bonnaroo and get “tripped out” and die. Hmmm. Also, guess who’s in my class? The girl who was waiting to get her nips pierced when A. got his birdy tattoo. Small freaking world.

I’m getting better about touching people. I thought I wouldn’t even flinch, after so many years of trimming nasty toenails and dressing wounds in butt-cracks (yep, that happened) and teaching people how to bathe. I’ve found this to be different, though, in a boundaries-related way, and I think I’m getting better. Realizations mid-way through class :

1. I realized I have chosen a life path that involves frequent nudity, lubrication, and touching people for money. So that if I were ever in one of those small-group icebreaker situations and had to describe my line of work so that someone else could guess what I do, I could easily be mistaken for a whore.
2. While my partner trying to find pressure points on my feet, I realized I had to fart.
3. I did.
4. And I think she noticed.