Enough bitching.  Enough gloom and doom.  Let me pontificate for a moment, if I may, on why I love working with my team.

Aside from the fact that I what I do is cool.. I work on the program that is designing the next vehicle to make it to the moon and beyond.. it’s also cool to work with such a young, spirited team.  Seriously, almost every one on our team is under 45, which is nearly unheard of in the engineering world.  And even our “older” crowd is typically executives, and they enjoy being around the younger set.

Sometimes, though, there is a clash.

For example:

Our facility is OLD.  Like, seriously, the Saturn V rocket was designed in our building.  So the restrooms are, perhaps, not as strong as they once were.  So you will signs like this in every stall:

And obviously, even that wasn’t enough for some people.  Soon, we had additional information:

Now, look.  I agree that no one likes to walk into a stall that has bidness floating in there from some previous occupant.  But damn, there are only so many instructions one can be bombarded with upon entering said stall.  So finally, this post-it was left on Friday:

(I know it got cut off. I didn’t want to stand in the stall taking pictures for too long, because then I’d be THAT GIRL.  So anyway, here’s what it says: “Dear Helpful Instructions Flyer Author, Repeated Instructions Numerous Times.  Bowl refills with water despite efforts to empty.  PLEASE ADVISE.” )

I love watching soap operas unfold around me as I take a leak.

I really don’t even know how to start this post.

Because part of me wants to tell you that I am an empath; I truly absorb emotions of those around me.  You can scoff and think that those people don’t exist, but we do.  I can’t move things with my mind, I can’t read thoughts, I’m not Criss Angel.  But I can sincerely read people.  That’s why there are some people that it makes me physically sick to be around.  There are some people who cause me to shake uncontrollably whenever they’re in close proximity to me.  And this one person who I went to middle school with and then ran into later in life .. and he’s the only person to ever strike me so vividly .. everytime I looked at him, I could see his insides rotting.

Now you think I’m crazy.  That’s fine.  But I felt like I needed to put that out there to explain what happened to cause me to meltdown in the middle of Target yesterday.

I have had a week from hell.  My manager is out this week and I’ve been doing her job and mine and doing neither one of them perfectly.  My days have ranged from 10-13 hours, with visiting executives and offsite events in the mix.  The baby has not been sleeping through the night.  I have not had the energy, time, or wherewithal to exercise.  All in all, it’s been a really lousy week.

After working 10 hours yesterday and having our ceiling fall in and other various and sundry goodies, I made myself leave work and have some downtime.  This is always incredibly hard for me: when I leave work, I feel like I should pick up my kid.  Even if it’s early for his pick-up, I think that he should be with me and not there.  Mommy guilt is a bitch.  Anyway, I convinced myself to go to Target, if for no other reason than I could pick up a pot roast for dinner.

Driving over there, I was just stewing about work.  I’m one of those people who has long, violent arguments in the car with myself.  I used to pretend I was on the cell phone, but then I stopped caring.  I was having one of those conversations.  Loud, angry, frustrated.

I pulled up to Target and watched some of the perfectly coiffed soccer moms, with their Burberry scarves and SUVs that they can’t park and lambskin leather gloves holding their skinny non-fat half-soy no-caff lattes.  I HATED THEM.  I sat there, exhausted and drained, knowing that my day wasn’t even half over, and I coveted their lives so badly.  I want to be the stay-at-home mom who has a nanny and can go to the gym and drive a huge, expensive car and carry Kate Spade purses and all that stuff.  Why don’t I have that?  WHY DON’T I HAVE THAT?

I twittered something about it.  I parked.  I braved the cold and went inside.

A side-effect of mommy-guilt is that you are hyper-sensitive to other children when yours is not with you.  I was getting my cart when the tinkling voice of a little girl made its way over, talking about her “doll baby” and what she wanted to buy for her.  I naturally glanced in that direction, and what I saw has stuck with me since that very second.

There were two red carts sitting still by the doorway.  In one cart sat a baby carrier with a sleeping infant nestled inside and a three-year old blonde toddler.  The little girl stood in the buggy of the second cart, holding a naked bald baby doll and talking to a boy who looked to be about my child’s age, seated in the child’s seat of the cart.  The boy that was Binja’s age clearly had Down Syndrome.  The girl went on and on to the older child in the second cart, chattering a million miles a minute, and I wondered where their parent was.

Their mother was seated, which is why I couldn’t see her.  She was filling out an application for employment at the kiosk.

Those four babies, all blonde-haired and blue-eyed like my own, have struck me more deeply than perhaps any unemployment rate or foreclosure statistic or any other doomsday media we’re being fed daily.  That mother was so torn between the potential hope of receiving employement and the potential grief of not being with her children that it suffocated me.  The little girl waved at me happily, since I could not turn my head away.  The little boy with Down Syndrome smiled and pointed.

I don’t have an ending to this post, much like I didn’t have a beginning.  I do know that I spent the morning collecting Binja’s toys that he’s now too old for and clothes that he’s grown out of, and we’ll be donating those to a charity shortly.  I imagine we’ll do the same with The Boy’s things.

In reality, I want to find that mom again.  I don’t know what I could do.. I doubt I could do anything.. what could I say or offer to ease that pain?  Especially when, not but five minutes earlier, I had been cursing my well-paying, white-collar job.  I felt like karma had jabbed me in the kidney.  And I knew that I had deserved every single guilt pang of that one.