In a way, it seemed like it would never get here, but yes. My last week of maternity leave is upon me. I have mixed feelings, of course, but not in the way you might thing. Maybe I’m just not like other women, but I did not spend my maternity leave cuddling with my baby boy the whole time. He is definitely cuddly, though — he is chubbier than Mikey was at this point, with tree trunk legs and super chub cheeks.
Don’t you wish you worked with me?
Six or so years ago, my Glendale News-Press coworkers and I were so sick of hearing about the proposed Americana at Brand. We’d done seemingly millions of stories abut the project — traffic impact, projected revenues for the city, and most importantly, the conflict with the company that owns the neighboring Glendale Galleria. The project was so controversial in Glendale, they had a special election about it.
Maybe we had just finished an assignment together. But Tammy Abbott, who worked as a photographer at the Glendale News-Press toward the tail end of my stint at the newspaper, and I had decided to stop at a Coffee Bean to enjoy a quiet moment before going back to the newsroom. That was when she told me she was fighting cancer, and even though she was so exhausted from the job and so stressed out from the constant berating she was getting from our managing editor at the time, she was grateful for her job. Not only did the job give her much-needed health care benefits, she was able to do something she loved — photography.
I’ve kept in touch with most of my News-Press cohorts, through Facebook, and have managed to have lunch with one or two and even attend the wedding of another. But it grieves me to say that since I left the News-Press, I haven’t seen Tammy. I did keep up with her and news of her health thanks to another former coworker, Jacqui Brown. Jacqui posted this message early Sunday morning:
I’ve had way too much fun at work lately.
One of our daytime producers, Jessika, has been bringing in all sorts of guests for in-studio interviews with the anchors. Is it pathetic that I got crazy excited when a Tyrannosaurus Rex from Walking With Dinosaurs came to visit? Or when I chased after Mickey and Minnie, who were promoting the Disney World of Color Road Show?
Whatever. I tell you what — at least I didn’t freak out and go all fangirl on Apolo Ohno when he was in my newsroom for a satellite link to Seattle. I might have ended up getting slapped with a restraining order.