2 Mommies and 2 Boys

Thank you to all the wordly and wise mommies out there.

You always think that you can totally handle anything and be this perfect parent. Then, well-intentioned friends make comments about how “they’ve never seen a baby angry like that” or “never heard such blood curtling screams from such a young baby before” or “never seen such an overactive/impatient/distractable 7 month old”, etc.

We know that he will be a “SPIRITED” child! And I know that many of my friends out there have spirited children and have done amazing jobs raising them.

 I must admit, that we do feel a little pressure by the family to raise a well-behaved child.

Lois’ mother is embracing Drew as the second coming of Christ. This will be the grandchild that won’t be a screw-up. Something like that.

My mother is a superintendent in a local school system. In her former career, she taught (and helped co-write books on) Assertive Discipline workshops to teachers and parents. I know she won’t come out and tell us if we are doing a bad job, but I’m sure that she will be watching us handle his behavior.

The pressure.

But, we think we are both rational, intelligent people and should be able to raise this child without losing total control. I guess it’s just admitting to ourselves that this is going to be an adventure.

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On the work week front (I know I rarely write about work), it’s been a long short week.

I’ve been negotiating a deal which we usually have an upper hand on because we can always play the eminent domain card (I know, I’m working for the man but that’s a defensive post for another day).

This particular matter needed, absolutely positively, had to be resolved by August 31st. I’ve been working on it since May.

We were negotiating up from our purported value of $2,000. Other Company (OC) finally came back with their number = $250,000.

During this process, our client rep and other subcontractors (engineers) began a “Holly, if you close this for under $75,000, we’ll buy you a lobster dinner.”

As negotiations progressed, I was demoted to a McDonald’s Happy Meal and just last night was told by one of the engineers on a conference call that I might get a bottle of water from their fridge.

After many conversations, I was told by the client’s representative that we got the OC down to $100,000. I came back with $60,000 and a full explanation of the rationale behind the numbers.

On Friday, the client and I were joking about our anxiety attacks over what number they would come back at. She was panicked about them raising their offer. I talked her off the ledge “they’re not going to raise their offer. That would just be ridiculous. That’s not how you negotiate.”

Tuesday morning, balls to the wall, we had to wrap this up in a matter of hours. We missed the deadline, documents were being FedExed back and forth and all we had left to do was resolve the money argument.

At 8:20 am, I received a call from the OC’s lawyer. “$150,000.”

What??!? (I had mentioned to the lawyer that I was “of the understanding that we were negotiating from $100k” and he said “nope, we are negotiating down from $250k.”)

The next 24 hours consisted of some massive compilation of a counter offer along with some swooning of the client, panic attacks, higher ups in management blowing some fuses, etc.

After some craftiness, we got them down to $130k. Fine. Close the fucking deal already.

Now, I am enduring a slew of conference call which include some comments from the peanut gallery engineers such as “when I buy my next car, I’m not sending Holly in to negotiate it for me, I’ll end up paying 2x sticker price!”

I was a high school teacher before I went to law school. Somehow I thought this career would involve less abuse. sigh.

This is only 1 of 16 matters on my desk this week. I now have 1 down, 15 more to go.

 Is it Friday yet?