First day back to work

Whoah, what a day. We had another long night with Claire (not too surprising, considering she'll only be 8 weeks old on Friday) and when the alarm went off at 6 am, for the first time in several months it was meant for me, too. I was so tired I felt numb. But I was also excited to be starting my new job today, and a little nervous, so I snapped out of it and got down to business. I was loaded down with stuff: my pump since I'm nursing Claire, my purse, a notebook, and a lunch that reminded me of elementary school. When's the last time I had pb&j with a cut up apple? Now that I know I'll have access to a fridge and microwave, I can bring something better, like leftover beef stew. Pb&j was pretty boring today.

Ironically, the new office is just 5 minutes from my former job (20 miles from my house). I made it there before the other new girl and the trainer, so that made me relax - I hate being late. And both women ended up being super friendly, so it made training very pleasant. The only problem: the IT department failed to have computers for us in the training room. So we spent the entire day, from 8-4, talking about what we were missing out on. "There's a screen in the system that does this....and then there's a button that does that...and this part turns blue when this happens, you'll see tomorrow." I'm an auditor and work in a queue, my entire job is done on the computer, yet they couldn't train us on a computer today. Why didn't they just let us go home?

The woman who was training us is one of those people who doesn't need to take a breath for 8 hours. And her segues were worthy of an award - she talked and talked all day long, somehow finding her way to new subjects without letting either of us get a word in about the last one. I finally had to interrupt her after 2 hours of solid talking to remind her that she offered to give me a tour of the building and show me where I could pump. Things were starting to get painfull and I needed to take care of it.

So now I know her life story, and those of her daughters and the kids she babysat after high school. I also learned that vinegar and baking soda are very effective cleaning agents, and that I need to see the movie Chocolat. But I was so tired from our long night that my eyes started to get dry. And the training room was really warm, and when she started talking about what the computer system would look like, I felt my eyelids getting heavy. I was sitting across a small table from the other two women, trying to stay awake and look interested when my head snapped up and woke me up. Woke me up?! That means I was sleeping!! But the trainer didn't even notice, she was still talking a mile a minute and laughing in her good natured way. I tried blinking and squeezing my eyes shut to ease the dryness, but I was too tired and the hypothetical topic too boring. I fought hard to keep my head from falling onto the table. Somehow 4:00 rolled around and I was set free with the promise of actually learning something tomorrow.

I woke up completely when I stepped out into the 7 degree weather, and picked up some dinner on the way home. And then I somehow had energy to run to the gym - another first since Claire's been here. It felt good to stretch and move around, but it was incredibly frustrating not being able to do what I used to do. I listened to my 'exercise' playlist, the one containing my most motivating songs that I used to LOVE working out to, and it only made me long to push myself harder than I knew I should. Maybe I should hold off on those particular songs, as the Pavlovian response is just too strong.

Aaaand somehow it's 11:00 and I have to get up in 7 hours to do it all again. Good night!