Not Your's

-For Teri-

Thursday was my last day in an office for the foreseeable future. Starting this week I'm officially a home worker for the next 6 months. I'm of mixed feelings about the whole thing really. I've never worked from home before and don't tend to function well without supervision. I get distracted fairly easily and being at home just seems a little bit like playing with fire.

I suppose I should be thankful that I've still got a job, Out of some 60 people in my office I'm one of around 8 people that are still employed after the 30th, but I'm finding it hard to be thankful given the circumstances.

Over the last couple of weeks the office has been a strange environment. There's an aire of panic and contempt among my co-workers that's meant that not a great deal of work has been done throughout the entire month. While many have plans to move on to other jobs, or early retirement, some haven't managed to find anything yet.

The last week I brought in my Nintendo Wii complete with Guitar Hero and Mario Kart. It was amazing to see the same people that continually condemn my video games becoming almost violent when hit with a red shell moments before they would have taken 1st.

Last thing on Thursday I cleared out my desk. I packed everything I needed for home working in my bag and everything else went into the recycling or got donated somewhere. A co-worker was filling a box of supplies that were going to be donated to a school. Most of my desk contents ended up in there, including my stapler.
It was a momentous occasion, giving up my stapler, almost as momentous as that fateful day that I broke my mug. Like the mug my stapler has been with me since day one, I've defended it aggressively from those that might seek to borrow it without returning it. It's been my weapon of choice against my co-workers, especially the smaller ones, throughout my employment and also like my mug one of the few things in the office that I considered 'mine'.

There was a hush in the office as I carried the stapler over to the box, at least I was quiet. Comments were muttered as I dropped it in. As I somberly made my way back to my desk a colleague asked me if I should have scratched off the typex writing on it before hand to which I replied, 'No, that way they'll know it's not really theirs'.

I like to think that somewhere in a school somewhere hopefully a teacher of similar character will snatch the little black stapler out of a recently donated box, muse as the typex writing over the top reading 'Not yours' and the treasure it as I did. On second thought I'd rather they just gave it back.

Things You Never Though Possible.

Jack loves sweets. What child doesn't? Cakes are probably his favorite but he asks for chocolate most often. Considering he's my child it's not surprising that Jack has a sweet tooth really. Anyone who's known me for very long knows that I can consume an inhuman amount of sweets in any one sitting. Jack is certainly heading in that same direction. Snacks and treats are always at the forefront of his thoughts.

A while back we took Jack to Cadbury World. For those of you who don't know, it's basically a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. It's good fun to walk around the factory and see how it all came about and how it's all made. There tour is mostly video guided, they give visitors a bunch of free chocolate and there's a cocoa bean ride that bares a striking resemblance to the 'Small World' ride. At the end of the tour there's a gift shop selling discount chocolate etc.

We arrived at 10am and Jack wasn't impressed. Despite our telling him otherwise he was pretty convinced that we were going to Thomas Land so you can imagine his reaction when we pulled up in front of a fairly non-desrcript factory estate.

Jack was reasonably entertained by the gift shop while we waited for Helen to get the tickets but it was clear that he wasn't hugely happy. So in an attempt to lighten his mood I bought us all a piece of chocolate. Jack was pleased with this and pretty soon had chocolate all over his face and hands.

Helen then arrived with the tickets and after a quick clean up we headed out on the tour. Jack was quite receptive to the tour, he liked all the machinery and the dancing cocoa beans. There's a ride toward the end that very closely resembles the famous Small World ride, only it's dancing cocoa beans. But Jack seemed to enjoy it. There's a few virtual reality things that he played on too. All in all we got through the tour hassle free. At the end we headed to the part of the day that I knew Jack was really interested in, the playground. It was hot so I bought each of us a carton of chocolate milk and we set about playing.

The first thing I noticed was Jacks reluctance to drink his milk. Normally with a drink of any kind he's quite happy to just gulp it all down as quickly as possible, instead he just had a few sips and then headed out to play. Helen and I drank our milks and then noticed that the Essence show (a brief history video of Cadbury and make your own chocolate) was opening. So we called Jack back and got in line where we tried to encourage him to drink his milk. After a couple of minutes in line Jack started to grow impatient. Being that we were at a chocolate factory we tried to persuade him to come with us using our biggest motivator, 'Jack they give you more chocolate on this one' to which Jack said something that I honestly never thought I'd head him say, or any other two year old for that matter. 'I don't want chocolate, I've had enough chocolate today'.

From then on the rest of the day was turbulent, the sugar probably played a pretty big part in it. We went to the Essence show and got our chocolate cup, Jack actually spit his out, but he did pick chocolate and Jelly Babies as his flavor which I would have had a hard time with too. Jack renounced his chocolaty ways and ran off to play in the playground. Five minutes later he was eating chocolate off the ground.