Why I will never ever ever do cry it out.

Tonight something magical happened, but before I get to it, a little history. Almost every night (sometimes multiple times a night) for the past 11 months I have put my son to sleep by rocking/bouncing/holding him.

My strategy for getting him to go to sleep is pretty much this:

• Turn on the spinny musical projector thing (not that he likes it, he used to, but now it’s more just a signal that it’s sleepy time. He actually gets upset when I turn it on, because he knows what it means and he doesn’t want to go to sleep)
• Hold him (I always start with him facing me with his head on my chest, sometimes he will fall asleep that way immediately, usually he will just squirm into some other random position and get comfy. This can include facing away from me. I try to be very cooperative and guess what he wants. The quicker he gets comfy, the quicker he goes to sleep)
• Move (usually I do half-squats semi-rapidly in time with the music. By the end my legs are BURNING. Usually about the time I can take no more he is asleep and I can switch to a sway/gentle-bounce combo)

This whole process takes about 5 minutes. Once he is out, I let “rock-a-bye baby” play three times through and I’m done. I take him to the living room and give him to his mommy to sleep while I get ready for bed, or I go sit in my recliner and rock while I read a book and relax (this used to be a very important step. If I didn’t do this for at least 30 minutes, as soon as I tried to lay him down on the bed he would wake up screaming).

Yes, this sounds insanely easy and almost pleasant. It didn’t always work out so well. I perused numerous “sleep” books (several of which are on my bookshelf) looking for “a better way”. What was I looking for? Well, if I think about it logically, I was looking for an “out”. I was looking for something that would make me feel ok about leaving my child to scream himself to sleep. I knew that the best way for my child to go to sleep was in my arms. What I also knew was that I was tired and bored. I spent a lot of time thinking about the fact that I could be doing “something else” and that I was tired and would too like to go to sleep. I was very frustrated and sometimes angry. Sometimes enough so that I would have to hand him to Julie while I went and calmed down.

I wanted to just be able to take him to his room, lay him in his crib and have him magically close his eyes and go to sleep for the night. Then I could go to my room and do whatever I wanted. Basically, when it comes down to it, I didn’t want to have a baby.

I mean, sure, I “wanted a baby”, right? I mean, “having a baby” is fun, right? Babies are cute and do cute things and make you smile. Except when it’s two in the morning and they are screaming for no discernible reason and you want to be asleep but instead you’re bouncing him and going “shhhh shhh shhhhh” and feel like crying yourself. That’s when you find out what you’re made of.

Just like I’d love to walk out back and pick money off of my money tree, and slice a piece of fat free, calorie free, guilt-free bacon off of my talking-flying pig, I wanted to just walk the baby into the nursery with no real prep-time whatsoever, plop him down on his mattress and watch his little eyes magically slide shut with ner but a lullaby.

Sorry Charlie, doesn’t work that way.

Once I realized that I was starting to resent Zeke for “impeding on my freedom/time/happiness/whatever” I really started thinking things over. Why was I getting mad at him? Is this really his fault? Why is he crying? Why can’t he sleep? Can he do anything wrong? What am I doing wrong?

What I realized is that I was “fighting it”. I hadn’t truly embraced being a father. Sad but true. You’d think that with God giving me NINE MONTHS to prepare, I’d have really committed to it. You’d think that 5 months into actually having him in the world I’d be caught hook-line-and-sinker. Nope, I was still balking. When’s he going to go to sleep on his own? Why do I have to do this? Why can’t he just sleep and stay asleep? Wah wah wah. I need I need I need, I want I want I want. Who’s the baby here anyways???

He is a little human being that I created. God gave him to me to raise. He is my most important priority and job and responsibility in the whole world. He is God’s and does not belong to me. Would I give him to someone else? No. Why? Because I love him. And yet God loves him a gagillion times more than I do and HE gave him to me. I’d better not screw this up. Of all the bad things I could do, that would be the absolute worst. It’s time to encase my feet in concrete and throw myself into the deep-end of this ocean called “Fatherhood”.

Suddenly all the anger, resentment, and whiny-ness melted away. I realized there was NOTHING more important I could be doing than rocking my son to sleep at night. No matter how much time it took. No matter how much sleep I lost. No matter how tired I was. That was my job. So I did it, and I became happy. I learned some tricks too. I got GOOD at it.

What I discovered was this:

1. Babies need a schedule (step 1. Read a book, step 2. take a bath, step 3. go to bed).
2. This schedule in no way revolves around the made up construct we call “a clock”. It’s possible that at 9pm sharp, little Timmy will get tired and be easily put to bed each night for a month, but that’s just sheer crazy dumb luck. Depending on naps, level of activity, feedings, visitors, trips, etc. it’s more likely that sometime between 7pm and 1am little Timmy will finally be primed for sleeping. What matters is the order in which you do things leading up to (signalling) impending long-term night-time sleep. Maybe ~around~ 9pm you can get him to sleep, but he’s not an alarm clock that can really be “set”.
3. Everything will change. He used to like his projector; now, not so much. He used to like laying cradled in my arms while I patted his back, now he screams if I put him that way, except for tonight when he didn’t… Roll with the punches.
4. It won’t last forever. Enjoy it while you can. Every now and then something amazing will happen

Which brings me to tonight. Two amazing things happened tonight.

First I put him facing me with his head on my chest as usual. He starts fussing (he was really really tired. I waited too long to start trying to put him to sleep) and ends up With his head thrown back and his hands up in the air (he’s trying to escape). I counter attack by doing some squats while turning my entire body (up-left/down-middle/up-right). This immediately begins to soothe him but he stays in that position with my hand behind his head to hold it up. He then starts blowing raspberries at me while he is falling asleep. The sleepier he gets the funnier sounding they get until I’m choking back outright laughter trying not to wake him up. From the other room it sounds like sobs and my wife comes rushing in to see what’s wrong (which of course wakes him up). Mister Buddy: 1, Daddy: 0.

Next he settled with his feet in my left hand, and his head nuzzled into my shoulder with his face turned up towards me. I thought he was asleep. I leaned down and gave him a little kiss on his cheek. He smiled a big toothy grin. It was adorable. I kissed him again. This time he giggled. I kissed him again, now he laughed. His eyes still shut he reaches up and places his little hand on my chin/cheek as if to say, “Daddy, you’re so silly. I love you.” before he fell asleep completely.

Those two little things made me think back down the path that led me here. All the hard work and wondering if I was doing the right thing, and being the only one I know not letting my baby scream himself to sleep. Now here I am with a wonderful bonding experience with my son, him laughing himself to sleep (in under 10 minutes almost every night). I wouldn’t trade it for any other way. It’s harder, but most of the right things in life are.

One last note on cry-it-out (and co-sleeping/breast-feeding in general actually). My new argument against cry-it-out is “look at what a wonderful bonding opportunity you are missing”. One of my old arguments (which I still think is true) against it is, 10,000 years ago, when my great-great-etc-grandpa was living in a cave/ditch/hut/tree/whatever with wild predators lurking about. Would he EVER have just put his son/daughter down on the ground to scream themselves to sleep? NO WAY. The baby would have gotten eaten or something. That dude CLUNG to his baby through the whole night to make sure nothing bad happened. That’s how we were made. Babies were meant to sleep in their parents arms, or at least directly next to their parents. If not, breasts would be detachable, and kids would come with ninja-skills and wolverine claws. Seriously, rocking to sleep and co-sleeping are the absolute most-natural way there is. They just make sense.

Man, I’ve had so many awesome ideas for Sci-Fi stories recently. I plan them out in my head and think about how great they would be to blog about. Then I don’t do it. Crap. So busy. New kid. Long hours. Developing a mobile app course at IUPUI. Lots of work on my dev blog. Just no time for personal stories and short fiction or art I guess. Oh well.

Anyways, all I wanted to say was, if I ever recommended t61 to you, and you listened, I am no un-recommending it. It’s like the cautionary tale of what NOT to do to your users or website. I don’t have time to tell the tale, but basically, those guys heads are big enough that goodyear is making them offers. Oh, and everyone is leaving the site, so pretty soon it will just be a wasteland of music scraped off of blogs and casual occasional listeners who have no real connection to the site because there is no social networking aspect. It’ll be like… idk, just another radio station that plays whatever the DJ (the site owners in this case) can come up with. No real motivation for artists to go there and post their own stuff.

So, looking for good music? Check out aurgasm.us, or even go where everyone who left the sixty one went, uvumi.com. Why is it that both of those names should belong to porn sites, and yet are home to cool music???

We’ve been watching a lot of Dog Whisperer lately. On one of the episodes, Cesar recommended that the people take their dog to sheep herding classes. We were amazed that such a thing existed, and a week later we too found ourselves at sheep herding classes.

I took this little video of it (This was the last thing she did during her second session):

I also took a few pictures:

Some thoughts:

1. The meeting between the woman and the dog could have gone smoother. Dakota was shy, and just wanted to sniff the woman. Dakota was very tentative, and the woman began petting her while she was in that state of mind, which only served to re-enforce her shyness. This caused problems throughout the lesson.

2. The woman was not very clear with her signals, or consistent with what Dakota was and was not allowed to do. I was never really sure as to what she was wanting Dakota to do, and I could tell Dakota was just as confused as I was.

3. At several points the woman hit Dakota in the face with the rake. Once she hit her pretty hard. I was not pleased. Cesar would not have allowed this probably. Maybe I need to be more assertive… Had I known the woman, I would have said something. Had she done it any more than she had, i would have said something. I could tell she wasn’t harming Dakota, but I could also tell that she lost all respect from the dog, and made Dakota simply afraid of her and the rake and want to just stay away from her.

4. Most importantly, I could tell that for at least half of the lesson (there were two sessions, each about 10 minutes) Dakota was loving it. It was like she had died and gone to heaven. There was this magical place with these magical animals that this magical woman let her chase!!!

5. All around, best $15 bucks I’ve spent in quite a while… We’re going to try out another place (which is twice as expensive) and see which we want to go to. One thing I know for sure is that I hope to do this at least once a month…

The place was called “Stock Dog University“. The woman’s name was Ferrah Hiatt. She was really nice, and I think if we had been able to take a little more time to get to know her and talk about what we wanted out of this and what was expected of the dog and what she was trying to get the dog to do, I would have enjoyed it more. I did like it enough at least to definitely consider going back, despite how negative some parts of this post may have sounded…

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The other place we are going to try next is Dogwood Farm. They are twice as expensive, and twice as far away…

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They had been running all day. Sweat dotted his brow. His breath coming in ragged gasps. She was practically dead on her feet. Her eyes long since closed in concentration at the effort of placing one foot in front of the other. There was no going back. She carried in her hand the seed they had taken from the valley of light.

In the crisp cool morning air the guardian mother had entrusted it to her. Floating as a spot of light, swirling downy feathers circling around the pulsating dot as she spoke. Not privy to what she had said to her, he knew at least that it was of utmost importance that they make it through before the last rays of light from sun left the peak of the mountain in shadow. She had told him the guardian mother had said that they must be out of the valley before the onset of night, or they would lose the seed.

He had watched entranced as the glowing orb had flashed green before emerged from it a gem so pure he thought he might weep at the sight. An emerald of the same green glow that had shone the light of the orb. It still held softly to this glow as it sat curled lovingly in her fingers. It seemed to glean its glimmer from the sun, always matching perfectly the radiance currently illuminating the ever-darkening forest they charged through with reckless abandon. He knew with utter certainty that if they didn’t reach the foot of the mountain soon, that radiance would be gone forever; the stone crumbling to dust in her hands. He couldn’t let it happen. He would give his life to ensure it’s safe passage. That is, of course, why she had chosen him.

Their feet were bleeding. Panic was beginning to rise in his chest. He glanced back at her tear-strewn face. Her eyes still tightly closed as she clutched the stone to her breast. She trusted him. Maybe she shouldn’t have. He had gotten them lost. Then the deartch-den-whites had found them. She was no help in the fight. How could she be? He knew the pain it caused her to grip the stone. How it burned her flesh. Such was the price they paid. Such was the price that all paid to bring a new soul into the land of the living.

The guardian mother had bid him to fill his water skin from her well. They had spent the morning walking happily through the valley dripping the cool water over her fingers to keep the stone from heating to the point of pain. Their happiness had quickly turned to staggering fear as they realized they had lost the path in a broad field in the vast valley. They had gotten confused and begun following a dear path instead. That was when the beasts had begun to chase them.

His sword now covered in dried blood, as well as his left arm. Two of his fingers there were broken and he had a nasty gash from where one of the beasts’ claws had torn his flesh while ripping asunder his shield as if it were kindling before he had lopped it’s nasty head off. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be quick and relatively easy. But as sometimes happened, they had become lost. They should have been out of the valley hours ago, before mid-day even. Now they were being pursued hotly by an enemy intent on not only eating their flesh, but on burying the seed in the valley floor, where instead of metamorphasizing into a youngling, it would twist into a gnarled beast. Then it too would become intent only on preying upon others trying to make the sacred journey. Better to let the light extinguish in her hand than allow that.

He knew, however, that if the sacred glow did dwindle to nothing clutched that way in her fist, it might well take her with it. The despair at having failed the sacred stone entrusted to her, could well break her heart; literally causing it to fail. He’d always feared such a thing might happen. No one liked to talk of such things, but it was a warning solemnly spoken of when such matters were brought up and advice was being given.

He could almost see the light moving up the mountain towards the peak. The sun having disappeared from his view some time ago. It’s lustrous rays moving steadily towards the peak; towards the mark of the dimly glowing seed’s doom. Already the line of light was reaching the tree line where disappeared the towering evergreens that climbed the mountain to where the air was too thin to any longer sustain them. The orange glow made the shrubs that dotted the mountain glow as if on fire. The fiery colors a warning beacon to him, urging him to quicken his pace, to hurry.

She cried out in pain. They heard her. They were coming. He could hear their lusty growls for his flesh. Their slobbery teeth chattering as they salivated to gnaw on his bones. Then he saw it. The marble stone archway. Glimmering in the dusk light, lit mostly by the torches ensconced on either side. Beckoning him with a warm glow, delicately framing the well of life, lit and waiting for their safe return and the conclusion the journey. It was their goal, and the safe harbor for their precious stone.

He set his teeth in resolve and with what strength he had left gripped her hand. They were almost there. If they could just reach the gate before the deartch-den-whites got them. The guardians there waved to them, beckoning them onward. Still too far away to clearly see that he was wounded and desperately fleeing for his life.

She cried out again, this time stumbling and going down. The gaping maw of a deartch-den-white filled his vision as it leapt from the brush at the side of the path behind them. It’s fangs on a collision course with the exposed flesh at the back of her neck.

Not on his watch.

He let go of her hand for a better grip on his hilt and stepped into the swing. His whole body committing to the motion of his attack. Blade level with his shoulders, sword cocked sideways as he twisted and dedicated all of his will and strength to the cleaving blow.

Contact.

It sliced cleanly with nearly silent deadly accuracy. Catching the beast square at the hinge of it’s jaw and happily separating the top of it’s head from the hideous body below before sailing free from it’s quarry into the quickly cooling valley air with a swiftness that almost didn’t give time for a trail of blood to follow it’s beautiful deadly arc as it rounded from it’s masters right side to his left.

He marveled at the delicate beauty of what he had done with his sword, nearly without thinking, for a fraction of a second before the world again exploded with the menace of new threat. Death was almost upon him.

“Go!” He screamed, as the whole of the valley floor cried out with a deadly wail of the triumphant cry of the beasts that had now, finally, found them again. She, gasping sobs back, stumbled to her feet, fleeing down the path. Those waiting guardians had gone from happy calls of beckoning to terrified urgent cries for them to flee.

She would make it. He thought he would not. He stood to fight. Happy in the knowledge that she would be safe. He, committed now, and acceptant of the fact he would die, set about the grim task of reaping down her foe with a certain solemn satisfaction of the work set before him. His mind finally, and for the first time, cleared of all fear. Time slowed down as he saw to the killing with almost lazy certain strokes. He thought he would fail in the end of course, but with a quite confidence also he knew she would reach the gates.

Time to stand. Time to fight.

He could feel them coming. The bushes again exploded into a tangle of leaves, claws, fangs and death. He didn’t even give the monster time to clear the brush before running it straight through with his blade. It yelped in surprise before falling flailing on the ground as another came charging directly behind it. He flicked his blade from the side, catching it in the arm-pit and pivoting around letting it’s momentum carry it into another of his quarry coming flying down the path for him. They collided into a furry bloody mass as he lunged forward running the first the rest of the way through sliding the sword cleanly between the second’s ribs. This is the fight he had been preparing for his entire life.

She cried out. He looked back, newly stricken with terror. There between him and her, tearing with mad abandon toward her back, was one of the fell beasts. He shot like an arrow towards it. Urged on by her frantic screams. There was no way he was going to get there in time. The creature leapt through the air landing heavily on her back, knocking the cries from her lungs with a heavy thud as she tumbled to the ground.

His vision went red. Rage filled his mind. She would not die this day. Not while he yet breathed.

His legs churned. His lungs screamed. His arms ached. He watched in horror as the beast crouched on her back. It’s claw coming up in the air, pausing (it seemed for an eternity), then plunging down to rip flesh from her back. She gasped and coughed. The wind still knocked from her lungs preventing her from crying out. The beast tipped its head back in triumphant laughter as it brought its now bloody claws up for another torturing swipe. It was toying with her. That was it’s last mistake.

He slammed into the nightmarish creature with all of his might. They sailed off the path and into a tree. The beast bearing the brunt of the impact. His sword went flying. In his rage it only took three swift motions to render the creature unconscious and beyond recovery. It would not rise again.

He turned to see her bleeding and stumbling towards safety. He glanced toward the mountain. To his horror he saw the shadow now beginning to swallow the bottom of the snow line. They had very little time, and very little chance.

He grabbed her behind her shoulders, sweeping his arm and his ruined hand beneath her knees, gathering her in his arms. He staggered under her weight. She was light, but he was dead tired. He could still hear them coming. The rest of them were charging through the woods toward them. Placing one foot in front of the other with all the strength and swiftness he could muster, he trudged towards the arch with a pace that surprised him. Fear, adrenaline, and resolve adding strength and swiftness to his exhausted legs. If the nightmarish monsters caught him now, they were both dead.

They were almost there. They still had time. They could still make it through the gate and plant the seed in the sacred well. Arrows sailed past him, thunking into their quarries with deadly accuracy. Bringing them down smoothly and surely. They would make it. He and her both. He couldn’t believe his fortune.

They stepped through the archway and the gate came slamming closed behind them as the watchmen grasped his and her arms helping them on toward the well were she would plant the seed. They had but moments before the icy peak above plunged into darkness.

Her eyes opened as she stood at the brink of the ring of stones surrounding the mystical soil waiting to accept the stone from her tender hands. He looked at her expectantly and she stared at the flames below. Flames! He reached for the water the guardian mother had given him from her well. He was to throw the icy water on the flames to give her the moment she needed to plunge the seed into the soil without being burnt.

The water was gone. Sometime in the fight he had lost it. His moth dropped open. Anguish gripped his heart.

He could tell by the set of her jaw, the resolve in her eye, that she was determined. She drew a deep breath into her lungs before dropping swiftly to her knees punching the ground in the center of the ring as she came down. That breath that had so quietly and calmly gone in, came out in a blood-curdling scream as her fist sank into the burning soil mixed with coals. The flames licked and danced up her arm to her elbow, crisping the fringes of her sleeve. Her scream chilled his blood and seemed to freeze the moment in eternity. He realized he had fallen to the ground with her as she came down and was now looking up at her crouched figure framed against the peak as the last light of the day glimmered from the icy mountain tip, and then was gone. She quickly withdrew her hand and collapsed beside him.

Had they made it?

Well it’s day 7 on the new job… So how is it???

It’s good. I’ll just do pros and cons since this is from my iPhone…

Cons:
Can’t access email
Can’t access facebook
Location (22 minute drive!)
EJB (since I don’t know it)

Pros:
Can’t access email
Can’t access facebook
Location (only a 22 min drive!)
EJB (get to learn great tech!)
Love my manager
Love my co-workers
Jeans & tennis shoes
Good chair
Best cube yet
Dual monitors
Version control
Great team of EXPERIENCED programmers
Java
Really nice office
Great pay & benefits

“Dangit! My hand itches! Hrm… it looks kind of dry… I wonder if there’s some vaseline or lotion or something I can put on it around here…” Was my thought this morning as I sat typing away at my keyboard.

I sort of ignored it until a while later when I went to use the restroom. As I was washing my hands, I looked down at the other side of the sink. You know, the side that doesn’t have the soap on it. There was a “body product” there that looked like it could possible hold some toothpast or soap or something. I’d always sort of ignored it, but now, with the cracks in my skin getting burned by the soap and water, it brought to mind my need of lotion.

I read the label, “Bath & Body Works PLEASURES” hrm… I don’t like where this is going, sounds like some sort of erotic intimate product sitting on my sink… I continued cautiously, “magnolia blossom body cream”.

OK… what the heck is “Body Cream”??? My first thought is that it was some special gentle girl soap that my wife used when she washed her hands. That’s what I had always assumed when I saw it sitting there. She has “Shower Gel” instead of “Body Soap” in the shower (I think…)

But now that I needed some lotion, I wondered what “Body Cream” was. What do you do with it? The name implies some sort of conditioner or something you would put on and then wash off… Is this what Julie shaves her legs with? Like shaving cream for not your face? I mean, a cream is something you wash off, right? Surely this isn’t some sort of lotion?

It’s location on the sink seemed to indicate you didn’t use it in the shower… I picked it up and flipped it around to look at the back. I began reading:

“BEAUTIFUL The romantic” I stopped reading there and almost put it back down, as I’m typing this, I am for the first time reading the rest of that paragraph, but at the time I skipped to the next one (The rest of that paragraph reads “scent of magnolia blossoms is blended with sweet honeysuckle, white sandalwood and soft amber.”)

I continued at the next paragraph:

“Daily Beauty Ritual: Smooth over skin, focusing on dry spots like elbows, heels and knees.”

Daily Beauty Ritual??? Are you worshipping your body and offering this cream as a sacrifice? what the HECK!? Ok, so I guess it must be some sort of lotion? Will it work on your hands, or is it only good for elbows, heels and knees? At this point I was just pretty much disgusted.

Do girls really like this crap? Like, seriously, why can’t the front of the bottle say in huge black letters:

LOTION

Preferrably, if it is targeted towards men, right above lotion, in half the font size of the word “LOTION” it would say “MENS” (that’s right, not even an apostrophy to show possessive, keep it simple).

Ok, so:

MENS

LOTION

Then, when you flip it around it says:

“Fixes dry, itchy skin.

Apply to problem area as needed.

Not Nasty.

Not Smelly.

Not Greasy.

Tested on animals and humans to ensure safety.”

I’d buy that and use it in a second. BODY CREAM??? Nope. I’d never even give it a second glance on the shelf. This crap has been sitting in my bathroom for at least a month and I’ve never even given it a second glance.

Oh, I did rub a little on, and now my hand smells funny. At least it’s not as itchy… So I guess it was probably lotion…

I’m sitting at a shared work station trying to figure out a confusing piece of code written by a co-worker. I had rolled my chair over from my desk and was sitting off to the right of the empty main chair baffled by this horrible code I was trying to maintain. My supervisor rolls his chair over to the other side of the station and we are both getting rather frustrated.

Finally we hollar for Jenni since she is the one who is supposed to be working on this in the first place. She sits between us as Jeff and I continue intently focusing on the code on the screen. The piece of code we are looking at starts to make sense, and we watch as it untangles and the problem we were having is fixed. It gets sorted out and Jeff and I are anylizing it and discussing it. We look towards eachother to congratulate Jenni on fixing the problem, but the middle chair is empty. We look over towards her desk a few feet away, but it’s empty and her computer is off.

“Oh yeah, she’s supposed to be out today” Jeff says, “Lucky we caught her before she ran out.”

“Wait, why was she even here?” I asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know. She got out of here real quick too…”

A few hours later Jenni calls to check in, and Jeff thanks her for helping us with the problem we had earlier. She gets confused and says she’s been out of town since the night before, so she hasn’t been at work all day.

Jeff and I are baffled. We puzzle over the problem for a while before realizing that we imagined that Jenni had been there, when in reality we were so focused on the problem, and so in-sync as a team that our subconcious tricked us into thinking Jenni was there, and taking over our movements. I had been controlling the mouse with my right hand and typing in the right handed keyboard position with my left hand, while he typed in the left handed keyboard position with his right hand. The only way this was possible was by our brains telling us that Jenni was there and that she was the one doing the typing, when really we were typing concertedly. I’d heard about this happening with siamese twins (being able to each type on one half of the keyboard, and even though they can’t talk through their minds, they know eachother so well they know the letter they are supposed to type next). We laughed about this, but were utterly shocked that we were able to pull it off. We must make up a really really good team. We marveled that we could even type on the wrong handed position on the keyboard. How the heck did I hit “enter”? My left thumb? How did we decide who hit “space”? The whole thing was kind of scary actually, and our laughter was more nervous than anything.

The wedding was starting outside, and the barn we were sitting in was getting hot. The hay on the floor was dirty and smelly and making me sneeze and I was tired of working on this old computer in the middle of the rotting floor anyways, especially since they took our desks away and left only the empty chair Jenni’s ghost had been in.

Jeff was urgently talking to Jenni on the phone about whatever the newest problem was. I was confused about why I was wandering aimlessly around the barn, trying to avoid the giant holes in the floor, and why there were giant chucky-cheese style posters of all of my co-worker’s faces on the walls with huge cheesy grins. I decided I should probably rejoin the wedding party who were now following the limo along the dirt path, and the band was about half way through the dirge. I was amazed the bride’s dress wasn’t getting dirty as she walked along mournfully with her head bowed in reverence next to the groom as the limo carried the body to… wait, what the heck??? Dangit! This is a dream…

I’m standing at my mentor’s desk waiting for them to get back. It’s 9:40… We have our Mentor Minute’s every day at 9:30, so she’s 10 minutes late. Not a big deal, it’s hectic because it’s the last day before the first 1/3 of the office leaves for mandatory 11 days off (including her).

Finally, she comes zooming around the corner but then passes me saying something about “sorry… chicken with it’s head cut off…”

I see she is a bit too busy for our minutes at the moment, which is fine. Happens at least once a week. So I go back to my desk, and having those words fresh in my head, wonder what exactly a chicken with it’s head cut off looks like?

This, apparently:

It’s Halloween and everyone in the office has dressed up.

I’m Goku. I worked on the hair for like 20 minutes this morning and it still doesn’t look right. I wish I knew how to make a mo-hawk…

Just wanted to say, that at almost the end of my first week, I am happier than I have been in a long time.

I noticed a weird sensation in my face. My cheeks are growing tired of smiling.

Riding around the office on a razor scooter, listening to my iPod all day, tossing stress balls around, chatting with people, laughing, working, just generally having fun.

This is gonna be awesome.