Beastmomma

I am terrified about experiencing my New England winter; I am nervous about constantly being cold and breaking something when I fall.  A few weeks ago, we lost power for two hours during a heavy rainstorm.  Partner started freaking out and telling me to put on more layers.  Last winter, he lost power for a week during an ice storm.   Since he grew up in Buffalo, New York, his fear of the impending winter does not make me feel good about my chances of thriving.

Fortunately, our local city government sent a notice in the mail with their plan for handling the winter weather ahead.  It included instructions for how the city prepares for snow fall and then removes the snow.  The more I read, the calmer I felt.  Who would have thought that a city's plan would make me feel much better about facing winter?

Today, I had lunch with one of the women from the book club that I started in town.  She works near Back Bay station, so it was relatively easy for me to get to her from my internship location.  Over lunch I was complaining that I do not have enough work to do at one of my internships; I spend so much time surfing the Internet that I feel like I am running out of things to do/look at and that makes me feel miserable.  She commiserated.  When I got back from lunch, I had a meeting with one of the attorneys who had been on vacation when I started.  My plan was to ask him how he got to the department and what projects he works on; I was going to offer to help and then smile politely when he told me that he had nothing for me to do.  Instead in the first few minutes of our conversation, he said that he had thought of a few things that may be of interest to me.  I listened to the project ideas and then felt EXCITED! We set up a time to meet again on Monday, so that I can have more of road map. A supervisor who wants to check in with you about a project is really such a simple thing, but I have come to realize that the simplest things really can make a difference in the quality of an experience.