Sticks and Stars

My house smells so sweet. I never notice until days like today when I’ve been gone for a month day and I walk in the door to smell of my home that is comparably foreign compared to the smell of campfire and woodsmoke and hotdogs and grass and trees that has surrounded me until now.

In other words, I took my boys camping for the first time this weekend. We had very moderate ambitions, planning as we did to camp out in my dad’s yard (in the woods), and I must say it was a success. Given the fact that it drizzled the entire day today, we opted to leave this evening instead of early tomorrow as planned (in order to get home in time for swimming lessons), figuring that it didn’t make sense to spend another uncomfortable night in a tent just to leave first thing in the morning.

No trip is perfect, of course, but my boys had a blast (always most important), hanging out with my family, roasting marshmallows over a real campfire, running freely all over my dad’s property, playing with the hose, riding (with my dad) on his riding lawn mower, and eating a diet of almost exclusively crap (barely supplemented by the fruit I brought from home). And, of course, my dad has cable, so there was some prying away from the fifty or so cartoon channels.

I can’t believe we were only gone a day. Or a day and a half. Maybe a day and three quarters. Anyway, a short while. But camping, especially camping for the first time in probably ten years, is pretty damned tiring. Although camping at one’s dad’s house, where he took care of the fire, the wood for the fire, the food, the cooking and serving utensils, the outdoor furniture and eating area, and provided the on site bathroom (and backup beds should we need them), is a hell of a lot easier than “real” camping (and of course, by “real” camping I mean car camping, which is pretty non-real, but was a very, very regular part of my childhood summers, so that’s as real as it gets for me). I thought that this would be a good way to try out camping, to see if it was something I could handle alone with my boys, but now that I can see the convenience and benefits of camping at my dad’s, I kind of don’t see a reason to do anything else, at least until my boys are, I don’t know, adults maybe. If nothing else, there’s no way in hell they could run and roam like they did if we’d been at a typical campground. I would have constantly worried about cars and strangers and river banks and sasquatches, etc. But instead, I got to sit by the fire and chat with my family while I watched them run and run, stopping occasionally to peer at bugs in the grass, excitedly point out berries in the woods (ah wild blackberries and thimbleberries, the fruits of my childhood summers), and playing any number of shouting laughing games that wafted over to us on the breeze.

And let me tell you, if I had had to manage that whole camping experience and deal with the fire and food and all the hasslesome little details, I would have been a hell of a lot bitchier than I already am. And my regular level of bitchy impatience is quite enough, thanks.

Right now I am exhausted after a five hour trip home that should have taken slightly over two (which was comparable to our trip there — again, five hours instead of two…damned parades, delayed ferries, sports game traffic and car trouble) so at present I can only feel a bit melancholy about the trip and can only immediately recall the times I snapped at my boys for no really good reason and feel worried that maybe they didn’t have a good time, but I think that tomorrow, once I’m reasonably rested and once I hear repeatedly from my five year old what a great time he had, I’ll feel better. And maybe I’ll post a photo or two — don’t worry, just the cute ones…and the ones that will impress you with our wilderness survival skills.

I shouldn’t be blogging at the moment because I have a ton of work to do, but today at our team meeting our boss, the director of our department, announced that he’s planning to leave at the end of the year. This is big news, he’s been with our agency for quite a long time, and it’s largely been his vision that has brought Information Services at our agency from pretty much nothing to the very cool set up we have today, almost exclusively using open source software and recycled computers, tracking massive amounts of data in our database software that we built ourselves. I work for a large social service agency (about 350 employees) and we have a pretty amazing tech setup. It feels a little scary that the person who put this all in place is leaving.

However, more immediate to my own selfish little frame of mind is the fact that he’s leaving so soon! I fully admit to having designs on his job. It would have been a logical and reasonable next step for the person in my position. But I think that the possibility of my being able to take over his job in a mere six months is a little lofty, even for me. It did work out for me in the past, my loftiness. I mean, the person in the job I have now gave his notice when I had been in my first IS job for only a couple weeks, yet I still managed to get his job. But that was a stretch, and getting my boss’ job would be a stretch, and I think stretch plus stretch equals …I don’t know, too much stretching.

When we got back from the meeting one of my coworkers exclaimed disappointment that the announcement came so soon because she thought I should take his job, and that made me feel a little encouraged. When I agreed (about the disappointment and my own interest in the job) she became even more enthusiastic, telling me that I should apply anyway. I don’t know if I will. As I sit here I keep thinking that I could sit down and talk to my boss about it, ask him what I could learn in the next six months that would make me more qualified, and then take the chance, but I’m not sure. Too much stretching or whatever.

People who love me (or even who just like me, like my coworker) are going to encourage me to apply, knowing how something like this would make me happy, knowing how something like this would be such a coup for me. And really, I suppose there’s no reason not to apply…except that they might well laugh me back to my cubicle…or at the very least laugh in secret to each other about my overblown estimation of myself. I remember when I applied for my current job and how sometimes I would feel like there was maybe a good change they’d hire me because of my extensive knowledge of our very unique and complicated data and how other times I’d feel like my knowledge paled in comparison to my lack of programming knowledge and that there was no chance in hell they’d hire me. That’s how I feel right now, except way, way, way more on the lack side.

I’m a climber, I can’t help it. I’m ambitious and I am always planning for the next step. I doubt I was in my current job for a day before I started thinking about where I’d go next and how that might work out. I really kind of expected that my boss would leave in a couple years and I’d step into his position. Or, after, say, four years in my current position, I’d move on to get a private sector techie job and see what it’s like to make a lot of money for once (and, considering how very saturated this area is with well qualified techie folks, I’d likely consider moving away too, so that my qualifications might not seem so bottom of the techie barrel). But I preferred the first option, staying where I am, gaining in responsibility, doing work for an organization that’s doing work I think is important.

For now it’s all neither here nor there, I suppose. I think I will talk to my boss though…although I’m not sure what I’ll say.