I've been at my new company for a little over a month now.  One of the interesting aspects of this job is my newfound participation in globalization.

I grew up in small-town Iowa, where globalization was about the farthest thing imaginable from our lives.  The world news on television was about thirty seconds long, and always involved shooting or bombing in some desert-covered country.

One of the reasons I was attracted to New Company is that over half of the company is in India.  This is not off-shoring like Old Company did - in a way, the business and executive side is sort of off-shored, since the majority of the workers are abroad.  I like to explain it that way, anyway, because I've noticed a few jaws drop at the concept.  There is sort of a negative connotation to offshoring in general, it seems.

So every morning, or at least it has been that way for the past two weeks, I haul my sleepy self over to my laptop around 7:30, and, as the little angel blissfully babbles to Baby Einstein, I chat with a graphic designer and/or developer in India.  It is around 6 p.m. there at that time.  They seem to stay at work much later than we do in the U.S., or maybe it's just them in particular.  I have chatted as late as 11:45 a.m. here and found them still pleasant at that hour.  That sort of blows my mind - I would be really grumpy if some Indian person was trying to talk to me about software development at 10 p.m. 

One of the funniest things about chatting with the graphic designer is that he uses all that hip-to-the-schiznit sort of IM shorthand that I don't know. It makes me feel very unhip that someone who already knows three languages to my one is jazzing up English to the point where I can't read it anymore.  How uncool are we in America that we only know one language?  Why WHY don't we insist kids learn two from preschool?  Maybe I will force another language upon the little angel.  K. (the graphic designer) says his life necessitates the knowledge of multiple languages, because they are all used regularly.  I think that's our problem - we don't do anything we don't  have to do, and we don't have to know anything other than English in the U.S.  Interesting.

For now, I feel gr8 that I am at least becoming rteously modern. UR turn!

My mother sent me an article this morning on the atrocities of diet soda.  Of course, that's totally hitting below the belt, since diet soda is really the only vice that is socially acceptable these days, and consequently one of the only vices in which one can indulge during the business day.

It got me to thinking about food, though. Last night, for instance, exhausted from a stressful day, I found myself at the kitchen pantry at 6:30 p.m., precisely the time the little angel usually eats, wondering what the hell to feed her.  I didn't want to give her another one of those Gerber nuke-a-meals - even though they have much less salt than other nuke-a-meals, they are still processed - so I try to only give them to her once a week (I know her father, my beloved, gives them to her any time he finds himself alone at mealtime).  I had some leftover steamed broccoli and cauliflower, about which I was feeling pretty good.  She loves cheese.  I thought maybe she needed some meat, though - she hardly ever eats it.  So -yes, folks - I gave her a few bites of tuna.  As I was spooning it up, my sister called.

"You know, tuna contains high levels of mercury."

"I know, I wasn't supposed to eat that much when I was pregnant. I'm only giving her two bites," I replied, feeling the guilty ire rising.

"You're the mom," she said.

Exactly.  Precisely the problem. I'm the one who's supposed to be making these healthy choices and setting a good example for the little angel, who would subsist on an all-Cheerio diet if allowed.  I'm also the one who brings home the bacon, then worries about how much fat and nitrates are in it to the point at which the family starves.

I know, you are probably thinking I am crazy.  Kids have been eating crap for years. But have you looked at kids lately?  They are fat.  They are unhealthy.  They don't like to run around and play. Well, some do. I just want my little angel to turn into one of the ones that likes the outdoors and thinks string cheese is yummy. In the meantime, there's now Food Guilt to add to Working-Mama Guilt.  My friend A. said it best when she said there's no time like baby-food time.  You just grab three jars and dinner is served!

Now that we have decided to keep This Old House, at least for a while, we have become obsessed with fixing all the things that didn't bother us in the least when we thought they would become someone else's problem. 

Today we have a tree trimmer coming to cut the limbs in the backyard through which our main power supply is running. The power line has been hanging precipitously since the ice storm of 2001.  Though it may seem incredibly irresponsible that we have let this much time pass withouth fixing it, understand that I have actually been calling the power company every six months for the past four years. They just never explained until this last time that THEY would not cut the limbs, but that WE had to do things like that. Then they FINALLY explained how to go about coordinating such a task.

I grew up in small-town Iowa, where one either a) owned a chainsaw or b) had a relative with not only a chainsaw, but probably a cherrypicker as well. The sheer effort and knowledge of the Yellow Pages one needs in a city to accomplish the task of limb removal blew my mind.  Oh, and you have to coordinate the entire thing with the power company, keeper of all things unscheduled and difficult. 

We finally got it worked out, I think, and there should be a guy named Tim arriving at 9 a.m., just as I am leaving for Bowels of Corporate Telecom, to fix the problem. He swears he will make the power company stay so that I do not have to coerce them to return and turn back on my power after he is finished with his work.  We shall see how that turns out.

Next, we need to have significant electrical rewiring done to make all the outlets in the house work, as well as adding fancy features like outdoor outlets.  Apparently there was little need for Christmas lights when This Old House was built before WWII.  This requires shutting down all the power in the house for at least eight hours the first day and sporadically for the next two days.  After much research, I landed three locations where I could do my work (my beloved seemed to space off for a while that I now work from home and kind of need things like power).  He came to his senses when he realized that the power being out not only inconvenienced me but also meant the refrigerator would be shut down.  I begged him to wait until after my big deadline to banish me to Barnes & Noble for a day.  He is now thinking a generator, which we have intended to buy ever since the first ice storm, might be a better solution.  Who knows - men and power have never ceased to amaze me as a bad combination.

The third project will be terracing this weird weed patch we have growing in the front. After many arguments over who would actually do this work, we are tentatively investigating hiring a handyman to help us out. The handyman seems a better use of the money inevitably spent on a babysitter so that I can help my beloved.  The little angel is not YET up to hard manual labor.

Ah, spring - the season in which you realize everything you own is slightly sub-par.

The little angel may be acquiring plastic jewelry before her time.  This morning, she woke up with icky pooey and gooey eyes.  I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that she had yet another ear infection.  I am starting to hate being right all the time.

I made an appointment for four, hoping she would have some sort of miraculous recovery.  When I arrived to pick her up from the Emerald City, her teacher informed me that the little angel had been having a horrible day.  Apparently, she also fell into the high chair and one of her pointy little teeth cut her lip.  "There was blood," the teacher said solemnly.  "Do you want me to fill out an accident report?"

While I pondered that question, I noticed the little angel was sweating like a Ren Fest actress on a hot September morning.  "Has she been sweating like this long?" I asked.  I mean, she was SOAKED in perspiration. Her hair was actually crunchy.  "Yup," said the teacher.  "Even just walking around. Sweating, sweating."

Things did not bode well.  We got in the car, the little angel still sleeping, and drove to the doc's office.  She clucked a bit as she walked in.  "This is the third time in three weeks," she said.  "I wish I didn't see you quite so often."  She peered in the little angel's ears.  "I'm so sorry," she said.  Then I knew...another 14 days of oral antibiotics, given twice a day with food. DAMN!

"You know, this makes her a candidate for tubes," she said.  "This is the fourth time in six months."  I felt my knees grow a bit faint.  "It's really easy, but there is general anesthesia."  I wondered if I could get some, too.  I'm not normally weeby about operations - I've had more than your average Joe myself, but she's so little!  What if they screw up the dosage and hit her with their best shot?  All the ridiculous mama fears began welling up and dancing in my head.  I have an extremely active imagination.

"Come back in ten days," the doctor said, folding up my chart.  "We'll make the call then." 

After that, we got the fun of getting the little angel's blood drawn to see if she has enough iron in her blood, or something like that.  The little angel shrieked like the hounds of hell as the medical-type thwacked her little finger and SQUEEZED all the blood out.  Sixteen drops - I counted every one.  But then she put a nice, big, fluffy gauze pad around the little angel's finger and taped it on.  Hours of fun! Fun to put in her mouth!  Fun to ask Mama to put in HER mouth for 30 minutes at the pharmacy!  Fun for EVERYONE.

So I brought home my battered, bruised angel and gave her the present of wiffle balls that I purchased at the drug store.  She really likes all things wiffle.  And then it was all okay.

Last night I went to teach my composition class.  One of the girls came up to me and turned in her paper late.  She said she hadn't been able to turn it in because her fiance was in the hospital. I mentioned to her that her larger problem, in my humble opinion, is that she missed the midterm, which is worth ten percent of her grade.  She was unperturbed.  She then informed me that her sociology teacher had just let her make up the pop quiz she missed in the office later that week.

I was a little stunned, I admit. I am naive. I assume if one is going to miss a significant test, one will be horrified and immediately call the teacher to beg for mercy.  Not only did she not call, she just assumed I'd let her make it up?  My teacherly ire frothed to the surface.

"Well, I don't have a make-up policy," I said.  "The syllabus states you need to make arrangements ahead of time."

"What do you mean?" she asked.  Blink, blink.

"I mean that I don't know if you'll be able to make it up."  Pause.  "I suppose you'll need to get a note from the hospital."

Blink, blink.

"Oh...but..."

"If you get a note, then perhaps you'll be able to make up the test," I said, warming to my cause.  "I do feel bad about your fiance, after all."

On the break, I immediately rushed down to the department office, and sure enough, the dean was still there. I explained the scenario and asked for her advice.  She smirked.  "Was her finger broken while her fiance was in the hospital?" she asked.  I stared, not getting it.  "Because if not, she could have called you."

She is so much tougher than I. But it gave me the strength I needed to stick to my guns.  This is my problem. I watch Supernanny every week, delighting in the naughtiness of America's children, but who knows if I will be able to be tough with my little angel? I can barely ignore bad student excuses. What will become of me?  I must be strong.  Must be strong.  I certainly don't want her to grow up to become a holy terror, incapable of informing teachers when her fiance is in the hospital.

I had a bit of a crisis of the technical type this week.  It seems that Microsoft has gotten smarter.  I admit, I had been using a copy of Office 2000.  I think it was actually legal, because you get a certain number of licenses for each copy you obtain, and I know this copy was only on one other computer, but still, Microsoft calls in your sins pretty fast these days.  Apparently I hit something on my desktop that tipped them off, and they locked me out of my applications right as I was trying desperately to construct a document.  EGADS!  I admit it, I threw a plate.  It broke. I had to clean it up.  Combining PMS with MSN is a battle of the wrong acronyms.  I felt really stupid cleaning up that plate.  Thank goodness the little angel was not around to witness her mother's complete lack of professionalism in the face of crisis.  (Of course, if she had been, I like to think I would've responded with more restraint. One doesn't really know.)

So off to the store my beloved and I went yesterday, to purchase a new and too-legit-to-quit version of Office.  I was pretty sure it was going to set us back quite a bit, until we discovered that Microsoft, in an apparent bid to get SOME money instead of NO money, has put out a "teacher and student" edition that is the SAME THING as normal Office.  The only caveat is that someone in your family has to be a teacher or student.  Having been both and currently being an adjunct professor, I decided we qualified.  I talked to the salesperson, who assured  me no proof of studenthood or teacherhood was necessary and yes, it is just Microsoft riling against people like me who borrow their father's CDs on a regular basis.

I took it home, popped in the CD and VOILA - new Office. Just like that.  It was ridiculously easy.  The price of penance?  $150.  My pride?  Let's not talk about that right now.

This morning when I dropped the little angel off at the Emerald City, I noticed the helium balloons that I had taken in after her birthday party were dragging on the ground.  Then my mind started spitting out warning labels and worst-case-scenario articles from parenting magazines. The sequence went like this:

• What is one of the kids popped one of those balloons?
• Then, what if they put one of the little balloon shards in their mouths?
• Then what if the balloon shard closed over their esophagus?
• What if the daycare lady wasn't paying attention as some child (maybe even the little angel) turned blue and DIED?
• What if this was all my fault?

I took the balloons out to the dumpster in the parking lot. Again, here was the mental model:

• It's a windy day.
• What if the balloons fly out of the dumpster and are littering the parking lot?
• They'll know it was me.

I decided to pop the balloons with my car keys. 

Background:  My rings are too big. My engagement ring, which is smaller, normally holds on my wedding ring. The prong on my engagement ring is broken, so my engagement ring is currently in my purse, waiting to go to the jewelry store for repair.

See it coming? 

As I vehemently popped the fourth balloon, my wedding ring shot off my finger, hanging in the sky for just a moment, before it slid into the dumpster.

It was raining. Cold rain. And the dumpster was filled with bags, some open, of the following items:

• Food remains from a week
• Dirty diapers
• Paint cans
• Glass

Aghast, I tried to keep calm as I went to find the director. She went to find the janitor.  She grabbed her digital camera as the janitor lowered himself into the dumpster in the cold, wet rain. Parents dropping off their children stopped to watch.

After about twenty minutes of this, I begged him to get out of the dumpster.  He sighed.  "I don't think we're going to find it," he said.  At that moment, his fingers hit paydirt, and he triumphantly raised my wedding ring from the putrid abyss.

Thank God they don't have a cleaning service.

The little angel's first birthday party is over.  Ah, how good it feels to write that.  We had a good turnout - probably at least thirty people, including seven in-laws, two of whom stayed in my house. 

It didn't start out to be a perfect experience.  My beloved went to pick up the balloons.  He called on his way home from the grocery store, saying cryptically, "You get to pick up the balloons."  When he arrived home, I learned that after he put one bag of twelve helium balloons in the car, he then snagged the second bag on the car door.  As he wrestled with it, it got away, hovering deliciously for a second about three feet above his head.  Of course, he jumped for it and missed.  Just as he was standing in the middle of the grocery store parking lot, feeling dejected, he heard a slight rustling sound.  He turned just in time to see the other bag float heavenward.

Of course, his immediate reaction was to pretend nothing had happened.  He walked back into the grocery store, pretending to talk on his cell phone.  "Yes, dear," he said.  "Twenty-five more," he told the counter people.

When I went back, I took the cake to the car first, then returned to the counter, determined not to let history repeat itself.  When I went to pick up the order, the counter lady looked at my kindly.  "I gave you a discount," she said. "Someone in the parking lot told me what happened to your husband."  Ha.

The little angel properly covered herself in chocolate birthday cake, went willingly to anyone who would hold her and did not melt down until shortly after the bath, when most of the guests had already left. My mother- and father-in-law fell asleep sitting up downstairs as I chatted with the remaining guests.  Then, the house was quiet, the silence broken only by the rustling of the beautiful balloons.

Well, on the eve of the eve of the little angel's big first birthday bash, she has come down with a disturbing combination of symptoms. I had a premonition when I planned the party at least a month in advance that she would inevitably be ill on the big day. Still, there's time.

Most of the symptoms are the sort most parents would ignore.  Stuffy nose, slight cough. It's the eye goopies and diaper issues that have me a bit concerned.  Oh, and the fact the Emerald City sent her home today.

Tomorrow we have her big one-year well-baby appointment. I'm planning to connivingly also make it a sick-baby appointment to see if this is the ear infection I fear.  It has been over a month since we battled the medicine dropper.  I was growing smug and well-satisfied with its absence.  Hubris.

Still, here is a notice to all blog-reading friends - I will probably decide whether or not to have the party based on the little angel's condition; whether or not she would have fun will be the criteria.  However, anyone afraid of germs is welcome to stay home and no hard feelings will be taken.

So, I ask you, cyberspace...to party, or not to party?  When to decide?  The bubbles are bought and the cake is ordered.  My parents-in-law will be here regardless, so the cake won't go to waste. I can always use the bubbles as bribery when she gets old enough to understand such things.  But should I wait and see?  Or call it tomorrow based on her wake-up condition?