I spent this week enduring 5 days of new hire orientation. You know… That full week that they spend telling you about the organization, haphazardly gathering the ID numbers and badges that you need, and killing so many trees with handouts that you fear the birds will have no homes when they return from Florida (if the spring ever decides to arrive).  We’ve all been through this, yes?

So to answer the question– how’s the new job going?  We’re gonna stick with the short and sweet response… ‘the people have all been very friendly’.  But I’ll be extremely happy to start moving things along at any rate that’s faster than this.

The perks of this week o’ training… Having more time in the morning than I could ever know what to do with.  This week I hit snooze more than usual, enjoyed a cup of coffee (my small daily allotment of caffeine, don’t freak out), ate breakfast in my house rather than my car, curled my hair!!!, managed to sneak in time for daily outfit pics, and still arrived 5-10 minutes early?!? I know, I can’t believe it either. Noone thought I was capable of this ‘early’ thing.

It’s kind of awkward, right, that I happened to be looking for a nursing job, and thank the heavens, securing one while pregnant.  Do they know? is the FAQ.  I was lucky enough to have had a successful enough first interview that I felt comfortable divulging the little secret from the get-go. It was a major weight off my shoulders (…still is) and hey, I’m currently employed so it allll worked out as well as I could’ve hoped. However, I still didn’t exactly feel right about walking in on day 1 with an inadvertent arrow pointed right at my stomach.

That + the extra morning time = adventures in bump hiding.

I actually enjoyed strategically choosing my outfits to best cover up the bump.  After all, no one knew me, or what size I was 5 months ago so I’d say each outfit just made me look bulkier than my normal self. All those shown below are combos of maternity pants, a maternity tank, and the flowiest, non-form fitting, non-preg shirts I could pull out of my drawers. Topped with a variety of cardigans and voila! All belly attention averted!!

Let’s be clear, I’m a maxxinista… This is not to show off some fancy pants new clothes (except the sale maternity pants that I’m obsessed with) because there’s barely anything I own that didn’t at one time meet my TJ maxx/ Marshall’s rule of averaging $10 an item at checkout.

BUT, I am pretty pumped that I was able to pull off a weeks worth of this

Front view: 

Side view:

And this is what was hiding under all of those flowy wonders:

And for your enjoyment and my sheer embarassment. These are the pants I was wearing on day 3.

Yyyyyyyup. I felt a slight beeze as I was walking into the building and looked down to see this ridiculous hole in the front seam of my pants. Amen amen I say to you that I was wearing the longest of all the flowy wonders and it was computer training day. I shamelessly asked every person in orientation for a safety pin and vowed not to leave my seat!! THEN, I got crafty and found a small paper clip in the depths of my purse. I made my way to the bathroom, awkwardly pulling my shirt down to my knees like a nervous child whilst walking, but was SO excited to clip the front of my pants shut. I truly wish I could say that this method worked.  It did not. So I stayed seated for the rest of the day and ran to my car and drove directly home and changed before even the dog could see. The end. Crisis mostly averted.

Welp, that was the week. Succinctly, it went just fine.  I’ll let you know when I actually start training and you’ll get to hear all about how much I wish I was back in orientation week.

Laters!