You Just Never Know in These Foolish Things

Today I was chatting with a co-worker at the office (who I don’t see much) and was asking how she was doing and then I asked about her mom as I know her mom was elderly and had been having some health issues.

My co-worker paused for a minute and said, “Oh, you don’t know.”

And I immediately started bracing myself for a sad story of a heart attack or something like that.

But what she told me truly blew me away.

There had been an Amber Alert back at the end of September. A registered sex offender had abducted a little girl and someone recognized them and reported where they were on the road. A police chase ensued and the sex offender sped away down some country roads. At one point during the chase, another driver was driving towards the sex offender. The SO veered into the other lane and crashed into the other driver head-on at a high rate of speed, killing both drivers. The abducted little girl made it through alive.

The other driver was my co-worker’s mother.

I couldn’t contain myself when I heard that story. I started crying and then my co-worker said, “It ended up the way it needed to end up. My mother has always said that she never, ever wanted to be put in a home or need assistance. She was 85 years old and getting close to needing to go somewhere,so in a way this was as it should have been.”

But WOW. What a way to go!

I had therapy on Wednesday night. We ended up talking a lot about my family (my mom especially) and about how my parents are not going to live forever and that my brother depends on my parents and all that good stuff.

Bottom line is, my mother is very self-centered and my dad is a helper and enabler and I know that if anything happens to my dad - which it eventually will - my mom and my bro will be utterly lost.

And my therapist said that yes, they likely will, but you know what? They will adjust. And it will be just fine. I don’t have to worry about all of that stuff. It’s not going to be loaded onto me unless I allow it to be.

And sure, there are things that I will be able to do to help out if and when something happens, but I don’t need to carry this worry around with me.

That was freeing.

Also noting that I really don’t have to do certain things is totally freeing. I don’t have to take on the bullshit at work. I don’t have to do this interview if I don’t want to. I don’t have to worry about things that may or may not happen.

Speaking of this interview stuff, I had two interviews with the headhunter for this remote gig, one interview with her co-CEO, and then they asked me if I could meet with the VP of the company and gave me several options for dates. I selected the very last open date (which was within the range of dates and even requested to work from home on that day) and the headhunter came back and asked if I could have a phone call earlier with the VP. I said yes, as long as it is after hours during this week.

And I haven’t heard back from anyone at this point. They may have ghosted me!

Time to start researching other opportunities again. It’s a lot like dating and it’s 90% disappointment, but at least it started to warm up my interview chops again. I actually kind of enjoyed talking about myself in those interviews - ha!

I suppose I should get back into the dating apps, but ughhhhhhh. I did peek in the other day and matched with a guy and we started texting and he seems kind of gung-ho about it and I’m just like ughhhhhhhhhh. So I wonder if that means I’m still not quite there? Or should I just fake it? It just seems like so much work.

OK. Speaking of work, I gotta get back to it. I’m trying to take the last two weeks of the year off and I have a gazillion things on my plate and so…

Bye!
GS