My parents came over to babysit so Matt and I could go out to dinner.

We went to the Trellis, because after all, it was our anniversary. (Mmmm... Steak... and Death By Chocolate...) And after dinner, we went to the bookstore and browsed for a bit. After all, our anniversary wasn't all we had to celebrate.

I didn't mention it yesterday, because it would have messed up the flow of the writing, but Matt has a new job!

He'll be staying at his current spot through the end of this week, and then (probably) taking next week off, and then starting the new job on May 1.

I'm very excited for him -- the current job is terrible. Maximus embodies the worst excesses of the souless major corporation, but isn't nearly big enough to justify treating its employees like faceless cogs. Matt came back from New York at the end of March, and hasn't had any actual work to do since. He and his officemate have both been twiddling their thumbs for the last two weeks.

When he went to his supervisor to let him know the resignation letter was coming, his supervisor said, "It's probably for the best. Congratulations."

That office is going to be gone in the next three years, I can practically guarantee it. It's been on shaky legs since it took over, what with the annual layoffs and the lack of work and the employees deserting in droves. I'm glad Matt is getting out now, under his own power, rather than having to scramble for a job unexpectedly and having to compete with his former comrades for jobs.

Better still, he already knows a lot of the people at the new office -- Braz is the sysadmin, and the office manager used to work for Maximus, too. (They dumped her in one of the layoff rounds because she was charging her time to overhead instead of to actual projects -- um. OFFICE MANAGER, people. Acquire a clue!)

I don't know if the new place is a perfect fit -- it's a cubicle farm, which is sort of annoying -- but Matt seemed to really like the people he met during the interviews. And it's in New Town, which is a really nice section of town, and convenient to Rt 199, which is handy for him to get back and forth between Penny's daycare.

(Penny does not handle change with aplomb. We're figuring on keeping her at the same daycare with all her friends for at least a while. Maybe when they're ready to transition her to the 3-year-old room, we'll think about transitioning her to another daycare or the Montessori school instead. I'm not looking forward to the switch, even remotely. But it'll have to happen sooner or later.)

So, yeah, anyway -- new job for Matt. YAY! We were expecting a pay cut, but it was a much smaller cut than we thought he'd have to take; only a few percent. And it's worth it, totally utterly worth it, to have him OUT of the enormous stewing pot of stress and horrid management that was Maximus. It's been driving me quietly crazy, the last several years, watching him get more and more tense and irritable, simply from having to spend half his waking hours there.

Which was probably way more than you wanted to know about Matt's new job, but it was either that or me whining even more about my diet (or more precisely, my lack of diet). I thought you'd agree.

We got home to discover that my parents had put Penny to bed with a plastic Easter egg and a book, then left the rail down on her crib and the lamp on in her room.

...Maybe they were remembering me, as a kid. Even as a baby, I liked to "read" myself to sleep, and they'd come in after I was out and make sure I was under a blanket and turn off the light. But Penny almost always lays down and goes right to sleep, if we turn off the light. She's not a solitary reader. Or maybe they asked her whether she wanted the light on -- she'll always say she wants the light on, given the choice. Even when it's bright and sunny out and the windows are open, she wants the light on.

And maybe they left the rail down because they know she can climb out of the crib if she wants to, and they figured it was safer if she dropped down from the lower height. But after proving to us that she could get out, she really hasn't done it much.

So when Matt went up to peek in on her, she bolted awake, and then -- because she does not react well to being woken up -- she was upset and clingy and sorrowful until we finally managed to get her calmed down and back to bed (properly, though I couldn't pry the Easter egg from her hand) a little after 9.

Ah, well. It was our first attempt at letting someone else put her to bed. Next time, we'll leave more explicit instructions, I guess.

--Liz