4 posts tagged “cookies”

Wife was out of town last week on business.

Back for the weekend.

Then left again yesterday for a full week of business.

I went shopping for my usual moping food to see me to the other side,

but found my desire straying from the usual frozen pizza selection.

Fried chicken.

Bacon.

Fried chimichanga frozen burritos.

Chips.

Cookies.

Cigars.

Domestic macro brew (more on that later.)

OK, and one token frozen pizza.

Things that I don't buy when she's around to scold me.

And that is how I know that she's a positive influence.

My wife; the anti-vice.

What sites show up if you type "S" into your browser's address bar?

Nothing, not a thing.

Browser auto-deletes history, cookies, authenticated sessions, and cache upon exiting.

And I exit each time I'm no longer using the browser window.

Residual paranoia from the strangely alien corporate world.

After graduating college together in Arizona, the wife and I got married in California and then moved to Seattle.

All within a month.

It was the early cusp of the dot-com boom there.

She was hired on her first interview and got me a job at the same place within weeks.

My qualifications, in their eyes, consisted of the fact that I was married to her, and they thought that if she thought I was good enough to marry, then I was probably good enough for them to hire.

The average age at the company was mid-20's.

There was copious amounts of drinking on and off the clock.

Free snacks, soda, and yes, beer in the company kitchen refrigerator.

Even for breakfast.

My usual was a two-pack of Grandma's chocolate chip or fudge cookies, an orange juice (Sunny Dee I think), and a beer, all before the 8am morning sales meeting.

The company grew fast and all office meeting space was converted to work stations, which led to all meetings of any sort larger than two people being held at the coffee shop on the corner.

With the exception of afternoon meetings.

Anything after 2pm was held at the tequila bar across the street, where just received "spiffs" and commissions were applied to bar tabs.

Company meetings included a local micro-brew keg of one variety or another.

Then the company went public, because that's what you did in Seattle at the time, if you were a technology company.

Very much celebratory drinking and calculating of stock options.

Then being public sucked ass, what with the constant reporting.

The free food and drinks went away.  The company drinking was strongly curtailed.

They installed for-pay vending machines.  The company grew exponentially and the average age increased to the late 30's or early 40's.

The stock price followed the company's spirit... down.

So the company went private, because that's what you did in Seattle at the time, if you were a technology company.

There was much celebratory drinking and calculating of stock loss tax write-offs.

Yes, the drinking came back in force once the company was private again.

What I'm getting at is that during our combined years at the company, we've had gallons of varied alcoholic beverages bought by the company.  It's just part of their culture.

The company birthday is St Patty's day.

They hand out yearly customized pint glasses to each employee on said birthday, filled (repeatedly).

I left the company and they relocated my wife out of Seattle to the MidWest office, but the group out here were largely transplants like us from the Seattle office, so the culture continued here.

Then, say about a year and a half ago my wife left the company to work for her client company (and her old company was now one of her vendors.)

Not much changed on the drinking front, as she was now their client, we still received dinners and booze as part of account entertainment.

Which brings us to the present and last night.

My wife is now leaving the client company and we're relocating, changing industries.

The free booze on the company will finally draw to a close.

So the director of client accounts and the COO of the company took us out for one last dinner.

We selected the local microbrewery.  Fitting we thought.

I savored my two pints (seasonal strong IPA, then a stout) and steak dinner on the company dime reminiscing with the COO who joined the company a few months after I left it, about all the old good/bad wild days that he'd missed.

Then we had dessert, they wished us luck, and the bar door swung slowly closed on an era.

Mask

A question of concealed identity.

When asked how things have been going with me,
my usual answer involves my kids, home projects, the dogs, or my wife's career.

That wasn't the question.

And I know this.

My own identity seems masked of late by my responsibilities.  They take priority over me.

By staying at home my career achievements are now filtered vicariously through my wife.

Raising children is a noble enterprise.  I understand its importance.

It's just not where I'm used to channeling my self-esteem from.

It's a different animal from my previous goals and accomplishments.

My self-image is unfocused.  I've been buried in the shell of my various roles.

Is there a reason for this? 

I don't know.

Is the shell for protection? 

I don't know.

Am I retreating inward from something, or protecting the outside from what's inside?

I don't know.

Can I reconcile the dichotomy of who I am with that of my current role?

I don't know.

Is who I am who I want to be?

I don't know.

When will raising kids my way, incorporating me into them, come into conflict with mainstream childrearing?

Probably around 2nd grade, maybe 3rd for my eldest.

Most importantly, who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?

Daddy, definitely Daddy.