About Me

Decent wife. Good Enough Mom. (I think, but you’d have to ask my kids.) Sporadic blogger. Crazy person. Chaos Manager. Finder of stray socks and missing shoes. Loves to cook, wishes it wasn’t demanded of her daily. Runs on caffeine.

Monday, February 26, 2018

MicroBlog Mondays: #Me Too

I am a little late to jump on this bandwagon, but I have a #Me Too moment I have been wanting to write about. I actually have a few things, looking back, that I could count as #Me Too, but one in particular stands out where I can be 100% confident I didn’t encourage in any way.


Over the years I have worked in so many workplaces where the atmosphere is particularly sexually charged...the restaurant business was especially true for this, but believe it or not I have found the healthcare setting to have just as many inappropriate conversations...

About 10 years ago I worked at an Urgent Care clinic. A job I hated but needed until I found something else. It was an odd mix of people who worked there, and lots of support staff were younger females. There was one older, foreign, male doctor who had a bizarre sense of humor. He would make weird sexual jokes (like he would pick up a pen and use it to make weird sexual remarks about size, stuff like that.) I was new at this place, and everyone sort of laughed him off as harmless, like “Oh, DrZ...” and shake their head at him. He was foreign and tended to mumble and talk low, so you couldn’t really catch half of what he was saying, although you would just sort of know he was trying to be inappropriate.

In healthcare, we work in close quarters and have to speak quitely, so there is a lot of up close contact...and people tend to be more touchy-feely than they would be in an office setting. After working at this place a while, it wasn’t uncommon to be shoulder to shoulder with someone looking at patient charts, etc. One night before I left, I was standing in that manner next to this doctor making sure he didn’t need anything before I left. I had put my hand on his back while leaning over to look at the chart. He put his hand on my shoulder and was mumbling something in my ear that I couldn’t quite understand, and grabbed my other hand and put it on his thigh and held it there until I pulled it away. I was a bit stunned but I just finished up and got my stuff to leave. I was near the time clock punching out, when he walked past to the front to pass of the chart, and on his way there stopped by me, put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in to a side hug (I had a clipboard in my hands) and again he was saying something unintelligible into my ear. As he pulled away he grabbed my breast. I stood there shocked as he went to the front and handed up his chart, and on his way back past me, I confronted him. “What in the hell was that? Why would you do that? What is wrong with you?” He just sort of shrugged and said nothing.

I felt absolutely violated. I was clothed, I wasn’t raped, but it felt like a total invasion. I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt awful. I didn’t give him permission or said anything that would make him think I wanted him to touch me in that manner. I was also very embarrassed, as if I had somehow brought it on myself. I did not tell anyone close to me, other than my husband. To this day no one around me knows.

I did report him to my bosses, and because there are cameras everywhere, they pulled tape and fired him.

I also reported him to the medical board that licenses us. The first step is a write up...I filed a written description of everything that happened. The turn-around Time is slow. I wrote it the day after the incident and sent it in. It was months later they called me. In between this time I had cared for and lost my father to cancer. I wasn’t in a good place. I was trying to take care of myself and my small children while mentally falling apart.

The next step is the board calls you in to interview you, and you have to sit in a room of people and tell your story and then they can ask you questions. I got asked about things I had said or didn’t say, asked if I have kissed this man...and they played the security tape and I had to give running commentary about what was happening. Which was hard, because the moment felt (and still feels) like it lasted much longer than it did, but on tape it was seconds and so happened faster than what I remembered. I also had to grab a woman’s hand the same way my breast had been grabbed (what position was his hand in? Thumb on top or under your breast?)

It was horrible. I can understand why victims do not want to report and testify. This wasn’t even with police or attorneys or criminal investigators, just with people from my Licensing board, and it felt like my character was being called in to question. I felt like I was the one under investigation. I didn’t feel good about this at all. I left feeling even more demoralized and victimized than I had when the incident occurred.

Some more months went by after that and then I was visited by someone from the board. I don’t remember why, but after the interviewed him, they had some follow-up questions. I remember I was in a really bad place mentally and I did not want to participate in this anymore, and the woman assured me that this would be it, but they needed closing statements or something so the board could make a ruling. She offered to come to my home. I don’t remember much except that she told me when they interviewed him he had nothing but wonderful things to say about me, which I thought was weird that 1) he would say anything nice, and 2) that she would even tell me that.

I think he ended up getting probation and a fine, since it was a first offense, and had to take some sort of classes about professionalism and sexual harassment in the workplace.

So that is my #Me Too story. I don’t think about it too often anymore, but it took a while for that to go away. The reason I reported him was that even though I was so ashamed that it happened to me, I knew I needed to tell someone. He needed to face consequences of behaving in that manner. The people he works with deserve to go to work and not have to worry about being harassed and groped. It was easy to sit and write down my statement. It was much harder to verbally tell my boss what happened. Telling those people actually helped to lessen my anger to a degree. At least I had done something. I feel like I would have held onto that much longer had I not spoken up.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Busy, busy update

Life is just moving at warp speed, so here’s an update in bullets!!

•Working on several house projects. Just got the attic finished (one side was already done when we moved in) and we got the extra room in the basement cleared out and everything put in the attic. Next up is to clean the room and paint, and makeshift an open space into a closet. We are going tonight to pick out the paint and closet stuff. Undecided on flooring, but may just use throw rugs for the time being. Next up is the garage...getting a bigger outdoor fridge and need to make some room, get rid of stuff, re-organize some of the shelves.

•Discovered our dishwasher broke after during the load we were running Monday night. We lived 5 years in a home without one, but it’s a real pain to not have one now. We keep a home warranty, so they have been out, found the problem, and we are waiting to see if they are going to order the parts or replace the unit. Either way we are looking at a couple weeks without one, so it’s back to paper plates we go. And I need to get out the bleach because it’s the height of flu season here.

•I have a meeting in a couple hours with my teen’s advisor to go over her senior year schedule, which feels crazy. When she started high school I was very pregnant with baby boy...so much bittersweet here. Hoping we can get her a few fun classes to end her year with, since she is entering the Navy right after graduation.

•We are also going prom dress shopping tonight. This is new for me because I wasn’t into it and never went to my prom (zero regrets, it’s not my jam) and I don’t do dress up at all. I also have zero clue where to shop and am floored by the prices people pay for a freaking prom dress. There is a local bridal shop that does prom stuff and you can book an appointment for a stylist to help you, so that’s what we are doing. They also had some stuff that was more modest (Plunging necklines and thigh-high skits on prom dresses?? Plus this new 2-piece crop top variety? Last time I checked these were still high schoolers...just UGH. That’s a whole separate post. But this place also had some more reasonably priced dresses, sonwe will see.

•It’s hard to be a mom of girlie-girls when you are not girlie yourself. I didn’t (and still don’t) but into the conventional need to be girlie and get a dress and worry about a date and go to prom and do All the high school things. I wasn’t typical and still am not. I didn’t have a wedding I eloped and I don’t regret it. I don’t need/want jewelry (the real, fancy kind) I don’t chase my kids at the playground wearing tight jeans and those little heeled bootie shoes. I’m much more dark and cynical that all roses and sunshine. I’m a nice person, but I guess I’m very edgy. Prickly.

•Baby boy earned himself a crib tent to keep him contained and his zip-up pjs put on backwards. He pulls his junk out of his pull-up and pees all over himself otherwise. Wish it was a phase, but it’s been months of this. Playing with his junk is like his comfort thing, and proving impossible to break him of. (He does it in his sleep!!) We have tried everything. Switching out of a diaper to pull-ups worked briefly and can sometime still help contain the leakage, onesies worked until he found a work-around, and then the zip-up one piece pjs worked until recently. He isn’t quite ready to potty train, he doesn’t get it just yet. Before it got super cold we were leaving him in a pull-up all day because he was wetting so many clothes. Regarding the crib jumping, he will be moved to a toddler bed as soon as we get the other kids shifted around and have a space for him. So we are just doing our best to contain him, and his junk.

•One of my dogs has a nasty ear infection. She is more prone to them, but by the time I noticed it was already super bad so off to the vet we went. She is on 4 different medicines, including medicated ear was, oral and ear drop antibiotics, and an antihistamine. It’s getting better, but I will still be cleaning it and doing drop for several more days.

•I just ordered a box full of new board games so we can start doing family game nights again. We have a ton of games already, but we needed something new. We got out of playing for a while because some of the older kids weren’t as in to it, but now Toddler boy has actually started wanting to sit and play games, so that’s been more fun. We played Hearing Things (thanks to watching Ellen’s Game of Games) and it was a freaking RIOT. SO MUCH LAUGHTER!!

•Planning a few fun summer “trips” and also looking at taking the girls back to NYC this winter. Trying to see if financially I can make it work out. The last time we all went and drove and packed our food for the weekend and stayed not in Manhattan, but if I am the only adult going I am not sure I am interested in driving in NY. I mean, maybe?? But if I remember, taking a greyhound was MISERABLE, so not sure what the plan should be. Flying would be great but seems like would be more expensive, but maybe not?

•Hoping that we get one good snow that we can play in before winter is over. We have lots of winter weather, but it has all been icy, or just enough snow to cause delays/early dismissals but not enough to do anything in. It took us until the end of March last year to get a real snow, so wait we shall.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

10 years

It has been 10 years since you passed away, Dad. 10 years. It feels like a lifetime ago, and also like it was just yesterday. I try hard to remember, even though it hurts. I never want to forget your voice. Sometimes I am afraid that if I don’t remember to remember, that I will forget forever. My life is very much the same as it was when you left, but also so vastly different. I lost something when I lost you that I have never been able to get back. I don’t know how I have been able to live without you being here. You were the only one who I ever get truly understood me and always had my back, the only person I ever believed loved me unconditionally. Every single day of my life I notice in some way that you are gone. Sometimes, the memories ore more happy than sad, but when the laughter stops, it’s just the silent reminder that you are gone. I am so glad that you are not suffering or in pain anymore. I wouldn’t ever have wanted that for you. It’s just that I guess I wasn’t done needing you in my life. I don’t feel stronger for what I went through, not at all. I’m not stronger for losing you. You were my rock. Saying I miss you doesn’t begin to cover it. God, Dad, I miss you so much. It still hurts. You were everything to a lot of people, Dad, but especially to me. I love you Dad. 10 years. Oh, my God.