This afternoon, I was at work madly writing away in effort to meet a major deadline that I have next week. I had a question about configuring file extensions in the netx.cfg file, so I emailed one of the engineers I work with asking if I could discuss it with him tomorrow morning. Just so you know, I already mastered that 5-minute-15-minute bin thingy; thus, it’s so yesterday’s stressful documentation task.
Since the issue was assigned to an engineer in the UK, who was long gone from work at 3pm EST, I hoped that this engineer might be able to answer my questions and quickly. Instead of emailing me back, within 5 minutes, he was at my cube. He said, “Can we discuss this now?”
I said, “Oh, well, I need to transcribe my notes from this morning’s meeting about dynamic thresholds before I forget everything. I was supposed to do it this morning, but I had to update the Installation Guide and then tell the engineering manager that I have no time to devote to updating that appendix that we removed from the v2.1 guide, because we had no time to devote to it, and we still don’t!” I babble sometimes; I totally babbled to him in that moment.
Of course, it wasn’t the first time. He stopped by my cube one day just to see how things were going, and we started talking about our kids. He told me his daughter, who is the same age as Iz, had the next day off due to some teacher enrichment day before the Columbus Day holiday, and I said, “Gee, I wonder if Iz does?”
After he left, I immediately went to Iz’s elementary school’s website. Lo and behold, she had the day off due to some teacher enrichment day. I went by his office later and said, “Thanks! My daughter has tomorrow off, too. I would have totally missed that hadn’t it been for you!”
Due to being a single parent most of the time, I posted her school calendar in a prominent place on my cube wall. Later, this engineer and I joked about it. And when he came to my office today, the first thing he said was “Half day tomorrow!” I said, “Oh, we’ve got the whole day off!”
Anyway, feeling badly that I just verbally vomited my day to him, I then quickly said, “But, now is okay, too!” He said, “What are the issues?” I proceeded to explain them to him; he gave me answers.
At one point, one of the issues required an action item on his part. He said, “Let me write this down.” He went to grab a pen from my pencil can, well, one of three pencil cans.
He chose one, pulled it out, which was pink, glanced around my desk, and then said, “Everything is pink here.” I laughed out loud. Then I said, “You should talk to Amrit about that.”
Amrit was one of my friends. She was an engineer at work; however, we didn’t work together. We did run together and were good friends.
Amrit always wore brown or black. I had always encouraged her to explore her pastel side, specifically pink. She fought it tooth and nail.
Her sking was dark; there really wasn’t a color she couldn’t wear well. She and I had a very friendly pink rivalry. She thought I was too pink; I thought she wasn’t pink enough or at all as the case may really be.
Anyway, after his pink comment, I reached for my Post-It Note container. "Hello, my name is Jean, and I’m an office supply addict, specializing in pens and Post-It notes." Like my BFF Brenda, we loved office supplies!
I reached into the container and pulled out a small pad of notes. I handed it to him. I said, “Perhaps you might like to make your notes on this?”
He looked at the pad. I had handed him a pink Hello Kitty Post-it note pad. He laughed and continued to write with my pink pen on the paper he had brought with him.
I exclaimed, “Pink is the new taupe!!!” I threw the Hello Kitty Post-it notes back in the container. I then said, “Obviously, I’m 48 going on 8.” He laughed.
Childish as it seemed, I was proud that I was older yet still young. I didn’t have to think too long about who made me that way. After he left, I looked at the picture of Iz on my desk. Besides the unconditional love you give me, my darling Iz, you make me a great Mom and a much better and younger person. ♥
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