Okay but this is officially the best hiring story ever. A company in Mexico rescued an orange stray cat and decided not only to keep him… but to hire him.
They named him Engineer Miauricio and gave him the title of Emotional Support Director. His responsibilities include smiling at coworkers, gently meowing, and walking around the office making everyone’s day better.
We were in the middle of the most exhausting, financially terrifying month of our lives. My business was undergoing a massive, stressful pivot, and he was working brutal overtime at his job to cover the financial gap.
A friend of mine stopped by to drop something off. She walked into our apartment and found us sitting on opposite ends of the couch in complete silence, both wearing sweatpants, staring blankly at the wall and eating takeout straight from the plastic containers.
She gave us a pitying look. "You guys don't even seem like a couple right now. Where's the romance? Who is spoiling who? You guys just look like two roommates trying to survive."
I looked at her, and then I looked at him.
What she didn't see was the silent, flawless ecosystem we had built over the last 30 days to keep each other from drowning. She didn’t see that when I was completely paralyzed by administrative anxiety on Tuesday, he quietly took my laptop, sorted my emails, and mapped out my schedule so I could breathe. And she didn't see that when his body finally gave out from a 14-hour shift on Thursday, I didn't demand he be a stoic provider, I forced him into bed, handled the house, the noise, and the logistics, and stood guard so he could sleep completely undisturbed for an entire day.
The internet is absolutely obsessed with the "prize" dynamic. We are constantly debating who should be the provider and who should be nurtured, who is the infrastructure and who gets to live the "soft life." We are taught to keep a toxic, microscopic scorecard to ensure we aren't doing 1% more than our partner.
But a real, lifelong partnership doesn't have a designated hero and a designated dependent. It is a completely fluid exchange of weight.
I realized right then: You don't build a 50-year marriage by deciding who gets the privilege of being carried. You build it by seamlessly passing the heavy end of the couch back and forth so neither of your arms snap. It’s not about one person sacrificing their humanity for the other’s comfort; it’s about two people acting as a synchronized survival system.
@TheModerateCase I have a whole playlist of songs, some Spanish, some French, some Irish, and a number of other languages I don’t speak. I don’t need to understand the language to feel the beat and the energy. I don’t need to understand the words to be moved by the moment. #badbunnysuperbowl
I don't know why this hasn't received more publicity, but this fifty-foot sculpture was unveiled recently in South Dakota.
It's called 'Dignity' and was done by artist Dale Lamphere to honor the women of the Sioux Nation
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