Gender Neutral; Google it.

When I found out I was pregnant I did what any normal woman does.

I went shopping.  I mean, I had to find some way to tell my hubby that he was going to be a Daddy. 

Evidently, there are very few department stores (in my town at least) that will carry gender neutral baby clothes.  I was perplexed.  How EXACTLY am I supposed to surprise the love of my life with a baby outfit, if I can't find something that is not pink with ponies, or blue with Monster trucks?

Even if I am having a boy, maybe he won't like monster trucks, maybe he will be more concerned about the effect these monster trucks are having on the environment.  Or maybe it’s a girl, and she would like to see monster trucks on her little pink t-shirt.

I was immediately distraught over the rampant sexism in newborn fashion, and deeply distressed over the lack of yellow and green outfits.  I asked, what I thought to be, a nice looking attendant with a super chipper smile, and an “I CAN HELP" button on her vest where to find gender neutral baby clothes. 

Her super chipper smile, faded slowly from sincere to frozen, she stood there looking at me, with her head cocked slightly to the side, as though deciding if she was imagining me.

After a really long, intense silence, I said, “Do you work in this department?"

"Yes."

"Okay, great! Where can I find gender neutral baby clothes?"

More silence.

"You know, for people who don't know if they are having a boy, or a girl, and want to buy something. Gender neutral.... Like yellow or green...?"

At this point she slowly turned her head to the rack that was right beside us.  A rack jam packed with bright pink outfits, all covered with ponies.

Then she turned her head to the other rack, where the clothes were blue and monster-truckish.

Then she looked back at me.  Still nothing.

"Do you understand me?"  Just in case I had slipped into Klingon because apparently that happens to me every now and then.

She assured me in her most-not-so-customer-friendly voice that she most certainly did. Then she continued to stare at me.

So I asked her for the THIRD time, "Where are the gender neutral baby clothes?"

Again she looked at me as though my hair had turned to snakes and I was silently willing her to become stone.  Finally she opened her mouth and said "We are in the baby clothes section."

It was right here, some tiny little thing in my head popped.  She no longer had her super chipper smile, and she was certainly not using her most helpful voice. 

“I am aware that we are in the baby clothes section.  In fact, both these racks have a sign that says "Girls" or "Boys". What I am looking for are clothes that are yellow, green, maybe even white because, believe it or not, at 5 weeks I have no idea if I'm carrying a boy or a girl, and I want to surprise my man by buying a super cute little outfit for our currently GENDER NEUTRAL child.  Do you think you can direct me to where I might find something like that?"

After another few moments of intense stare-down time, I determined that this was certainly not going to work.  Either this girl did not understand the words that were coming out of my mouth, or she simply wanted to see how far she could push me before I bludgeoned her to death with a teething ring.

Work Article--Without Telling You Anything About Work

It's Wednesday. That means I'm at work. That also means that there is a good chance there will be a new blog. Guess what! you win. There's a new blog. And since I've had this planned out in my head for the last couple hours, this should make up for that whole last post.

We'll start with a touch of back story. This is a re-cap of the interaction between myself and a Team Lead at work. Team Leads are a lot like supervisors, but instead of supervising, they literally lead a team, which I think is super awesome. Also, I'm more likely to capitalize Team Lead. So I will refer to him as TL.

(Just a note, this is not a change to Tinkerbell's name; he is and forever will be called Tinkerbell, he had his chance he doesn't get to change it now.)

TL: "Hey can you work on something for me? Y'know, instead of texting."

Me: "What do you need?"

TL: "Can you write an article for the newsletter about our internal online information site?"

Me: "Ummmm... creative writing isn't really my thing."

TL: "Says the Blogger." (Touche)

Me: "Have you read my blog? It's stuff that I see and then I make people laugh about it." (Satire! not stuff for the company newsletter!)

TL: "It doesn't have to be long."

Me: "Can we use my blog about Two Digit Entry? That's work related."

TL: "No."

(This is where I made a little bit of a sad face. I liked that entry.)

Me: "How long are we looking at here?"

TL: "Half a page, single spaced in size 9 font."

Me: "Size 9!! Are you kidding me??"

TL: "No."

Me: "Oh. How do I get to said internal online information site?"

TL: "Are you kidding me?"

Me: "No." (I sort of was, because I had received an email telling me to go to the site, and I did go, but haven't really had to use the site since then ... but it was worth the look on his face....)

I was kinda worried about this, I mean don't get me wrong I enjoy doing little projects on the side at work, it makes me feel special (Juvenile? Maybe, nah-nah-nah). It wasn't even the fact that dozens of my co-workers would be reading my writing, I like getting attention, which I suppose is abnormal for a introvert, but true for me nonetheless. The thing that worried me was I would have to use a different style of writing.

As you can probably tell, I'm a little sarcastic. I like to make people laugh at the stupidity of the world around them, usually MY OWN!! How was I supposed to write an article that people with important titles would likely read. People like "Director" and "Senior Vice President of Security" and "Guy that Signs Your Cheques". (Internally I was totally hyperventilating). 

Luckily I was able to find a balance between informative and funny. That, and the site wasn't nearly as scary as I had thought it would be. In the end I really enjoyed writing the article. I hope that people will enjoy reading it at work. I also hope that whoever edits it, won't make too many changes. After all, I just discovered I can be funny AND informative.

AT THE SAME TIME!!!

My Apologies

So it's been a while since I posted. I have to apologize. Apparently nothing interesting has happened around me lately, and I certainly did not want to just post crap.

I want to post stuff that will actually make you laugh or cry or think. But alas! life doesn't always give us what we want. If it did, I would be posting all day every day with all the funny stuff that has happened to me.

We have finally hit winter here in Alberta. Or rather; winter has finally hit us. Hard.

When I came to work, I was immediately asked why there is nothing new on the blog. Again, I'm very sorry.

My friend, Proti, told me that I should blog about the winter. I did that already in the post entitled Dear Winter.

I have to say that since that posting, winter has been very cooperative. There have been some very windy days, but overall we have been very lucky this year. And as I look back on winters gone by, I realize that they are no where near as bad as they used to be.  Maybe they just seemed so much worse because I was younger and lived in the country. Everything seems worse when you are young, have no transportation, and live in the country.

This week we are hit with incredibly cold temperatures. A base temperature of -27 degrees. I don't even know what that is for you Americans, but it's cold.

Very. Very. Cold.

Proti wanted me to talk about how her delicate brown skin is not equipped to handle this cold. I assured her that my Canadian white skin was no better equipped than hers. Which now that I read it, was way funnier when it happened due to our utmost mutual sincerity.

At least it hasn't been windy, and there isn't four feet of snow. Much to the dismay of my children who wish to go sledding. They'll appreciate this when they are older, I'm sure.

Surprisingly, the buses, both school and public transit, are running on time. So far. Evidently there are some people that have had their furnaces break. Coldest day of the year, and the one item that is supposed to keep you warm decides it needs a day off.

So while this post hasn't been the funniest, or the saddest, or the most thought provoking, the over-whelming number of people wondering if I have died will be appeased. 

Maybe something funny will happen to me on the bus, or later on today. Or maybe tomorrow.  I promise I haven't gone away, and I certainly don't intend to. I just don't want to be posting stuff that won't make you sit back and go: "I WISH I had thought of that first."

Thank you to everyone who is out there reading this, and waiting so patiently for the next post. Your support means a lot to me.