Ragin’ CAJN

CAJN. Those are Claire's initials, and sometimes Ragin' Cajun is a fitting nickname. Poor thing is still fussy on and off, and I still think it's teething (or pre-teething) pain. I took her to a La Leche League meeting on Thursday and had to stand and bounce her almost the whole time. I was meeting a few friends there, and one of them has a 6 week old who is already visibly sprouting teeth. And although it's rare, some babies are even born with teeth. So I don't think it's too early for that to be the case with her at 10 weeks. I just hope it stops soon, because I hate seeing her in pain. At least between the painful periods, she's her cheerful and smiley self. I live for her smiles and coos.

I'm looking forward to attending a baby wearing meeting sometime in the next week. I have a sling and a wrap, and have tried both with her a few times, but she hasn't liked either yet. I think it's because she loves looking out at the world, but doesn't have the required neck strength to be worn facing out yet, so she squirms when I wear her facing me. Maybe in the next month or two it will get easier when she can face out. Or maybe it's because I'm still new at this, and she's uncomfortable while I fumble to get her situated. I'm hoping I can figure it out at a meeting with women who are pros at this, or maybe I can try a few other types of slings/wraps to see if another style works better for us. Either way, I really want this to work out - I love having her close AND having both hands free!

I've been emailing back and forth these last few days with Karen, the other woman who just started at work and trained with me. So she was there the first day and a half when we didn't have computers, and she's endured our trainer's motormouth with me, and she also sat in her car outside of our boss's house the day we trained there together when our boss was late to her own house. Neither of us have ever worked for a company quite like this before, so it's nice that we have each other to talk to when something happens. I told her about my latest experience on Tuesday.

I trained at our boss's house again while Karen went somewhere else to train. My boss told me to arrive at 8 (which required me to leave my house by 7 because of rush hour), and when I did she was still getting her kids ready for school. We didn't get started until around 9, and then she told me that she had a 1:00 coffee date with a friend that she had forgotten to cancel, and would I mind hanging out at Target one exit up the highway for a while? I would have just gone home for a bit, but my house is a good 45 minutes away without traffic.

Being new and wanting to make a good impression on my boss, I told her "no problem!" and headed to Target. I pulled into her driveway at the agreed upon 2:15, noticing only one set of tire tracks leaving her garage stall. She wasn't home yet. So I sat in my car on her driveway - again - with the heat blasting for 10 minutes until she rolled up. Pretty tacky when she's the one who planned this training session, and it was her second time making me wait outside her house for her.

So then Karen told me about her latest experience. Since we're WAHs (work at home employees) we were given computers. Unfortunately, that's about all we were given. We had to remind the several times to give us log-in info and passwords, and then when we got home we had to figure out how to set everything up and find the necessary programs on our own. Karen was having trouble with her router at home, so she called the help desk. Apparently the guy she talked to was so impatient and unprofessional that at one point she could hear him banging his phone against his desk. Nice! I have such a hard time believing Fidelity is as succesful as it is, and that it's a Fortune 500 company. How is anything accomplished when nobody knows what they're doing? I just hope they'll give me a break and flexibility if I ever need it, because I've certainly excused enough from them these last few weeks.

Ok, time for bed.