It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, over which I have posted approximately zero times. So I’ll just start typing, and maybe this post won’t be as long as it seems in my head.
Last Sunday at midnight (I guess that’s Monday, but whatever), we got a call from Mrs. Zimm saying that it was time to go to the hospital (if you’ve read Zimm’s blog recently, you know what I’m referring to). This was great news for them, because she wouldn’t have to walk around pregnant for two more weeks, and he wouldn’t have a pregnant wife for two more weeks. It was not such great news for me, because it meant I was cutting my vacation short and going back to work in 12 hours.
I’d been teasing Mrs. Zimm over the past couple of weeks, saying things like, “Don’t have the baby until the 25th [the day I was to return to work], and if you feel like you might, just hold it in.” Things like that. I only did that because I didn’t think she would go early. So now I felt bad for having said those things. Anyway, the more immediate consequence was that I’d be going over there for the rest of the night to sit with mini-Zimm (or I guess that’s mini-Zimm #1 now? I’ll have to think of something better than that). My only hope was that he wouldn’t wake up until Mrs. Zimm’s sisters arrived in the morning from Michigan. He likes me and all, but telling a sleepy two-year-old that his parents went to the hospital to get his little brother wasn’t what I felt like doing. So anyway, I lucked out and the sisters arrived at about 7:00 (minus the usual chatter—they must have been pretty tired).
I spent the morning not wanting to go to work and being tired. It was good times. Then at work, it was the worst day in recent memory. I’m not even kidding. I’d go into detail, but none of it would make any sense to anyone but Zimm, and I already told him about it. So just take my word for it. Then, to top the day off right, I picked my mom up from the airport (she flew straight here for Thanksgiving from Shanghai). But this was more of a process than one would think. I’d been trying to get her itinerary for the last week that she was in Shanghai, but I was unsuccessful for the most part. I told my sister to tell my mom the next time she called to email her itinerary. So my sister says just to email it to her, and she’d forward it to me. Just chew on that for a minute……….Ready? Ok. So my mom emails the itinerary to my sister (I later found out that the thought actually did cross her mind to just email it straight to me), who subsequently accidentally deleted it. By this time it was Sunday, and she was coming home the next day, most likely without any communication to home before then. I was left with the information that my mom would be arriving from Chicago some time between 10 and midnight. I didn’t know what airline. However, one thing did happen to go right among all the mess. At 8:30, my dad called and said that he just saw an email from the airline confirming an upgrade that my mom had bought for her flight from Chicago. The email had a flight number, and finally there was rejoicing in my house. So I didn’t have to go to the airport and sit and wonder where my mom was for two hours. Did that story seem confusing? Good. Because I’m still not exactly sure what happened.
On the bright side, it ended up not being such an awful thing that I wasn’t on vacation last week. I worked the early shift, which got me out at 2:00 at the latest. My mom slept until about noon on Tuesday (a 13-hour time change will do that to you), and my dad and sisters didn’t arrive until after I got home on Wednesday. And to top it off, I have another week of vacation to look forward to (I’m taking that when Zimm gets back from his vacation).
Now here’s where things started getting weird. In my job, it usually takes a little while to get into “work mode” after one arrives at work. It just takes a few minutes to change the thinking and terminology all around so that it’s possible to focus on work. This is especially true when coming back from vacation. It might even take a whole shift before you’re running on all cylinders. Now last Monday, after expecting to be on vacation and being pulled back in, I thought the lag would be pretty severe. For some reason though, it wasn’t. I jumped right back into work mode as though I never left. I can write that off as a fluke, but now when I came in this past Monday, it was like I hadn’t been to work in a month. My thought process was considerably slower, my motor skills were off, I couldn’t type very quickly, etc. Even now, on Wednesday, I’m having trouble focusing entirely on work when I’m here. My mind is wandering and I’m just not as efficient as I usually am. I think what happened, to use a bad analogy, is that when I came back last week, my emergency generator kicked on and I was cool for a week. Now the juice has run out and I have to walk to the gas station and get some gas, then bring it back and fill up the generator again, because the main power is still off.
But back to last week, Thanksgiving went really well. My wife was quite concerned about the food and whether everyone would like everything, but everything was delicious. I’m still eating turkey. Maybe that’s the cause of my out-of-it-ness. I’m overdosing on tryptophan.
That's all I have time for right now. I'll continue the post later. In the meantime, my mom updated her Shanghai diaries. She's still got a lot left to post about that trip as internet access there wasn't readily available for her at all times. Till next time.
9 years ago
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