Tuesday,
January 21, 2003
At least it was warm
We
had the biweekly FutureClassics
meeting at Jerry's tonight, and it was a full house since Elizabeth was able
to make it, along with her son. Colin is a sweet little three-year-old bundle
of energy, and he was having a whale of a time running around eating cookies,
watching TV and playing with various toys while we were critiquing stories.
At some point, Colin wandered into the dining room (most likely for easier access to the cookies) and sat down on Gloria's chair while she was in the bathroom. Elizabeth explained that he'd have to move when Miss Gloria came back, so I sat back a bit and made a lap for him. He settled in quite cheerfully and we drew pictures on the back side of a story page and ate cookies while the crits flew back and forth.
In the middle of explaining why he wanted me to draw a lava lamp on top of his house, I felt a gush of something warm course down my leg and puddle into my sandal -- and it wasn't from me.
Colin turned to Elizabeth calmly and said, "Momma, I have to go!"
Oh, sweetie, you already went, I thought, bursting into giggles at the thought of my squishy, pee-soaked sandal (and yes, I thought it was funny. Hey, he's a little boy -- they pee. It washes off). Gloria, who was sitting next to me and saw the whole contretemps, cracked up laughing, and there was a forced break in the proceedings while Elizabeth hauled Colin off to one bathroom to be wiped down while I headed to the other one to rinse off my leg and foot and accept a pair of sweatpants from Becky.
"I'll never forget the look on Derek's face," she said, grinning.
I'm not surprised -- we can get a little boisterous in our critiques, but nobody's ever peed on another person until now.
So that was the entertaining portion of the evening -- the less fun part was when I came home to give Lyndon a consolation cuddle because they got their final notice today. His last day of employment at the Sign of the Three Blue Sausages will be on March 21. Intellectually, he's calm -- we knew this was coming, and he's been checking the job boards for both tech and non-tech jobs and found a number of jobs he could do, so we're going to start submitting his resume around this week.
Emotionally, however. . .well, he ain't happy, and with perfect reason. Not only has he worked for TBS for eleven years, but he's also used to the British system that makes sure everyone has medical coverage, housing, food, etc. no matter whether they're employed or not. The American system (and I use the term loosely) is scaring the poop out of him.
But the severance
is decent, we can get by on my salary, and he's willing to do anything to bring
money into the household. I just keep telling myself that we're relatively young,
moderately healthy and disgustingly multi-talented -- we'll get through this
one way or the other.