Hawk's Foot Surgery II: The Other Foot

It's time to Lather, Rinse, Repeat on Hawk's foot surgery. That's because today premiered the sequel to October's foot surgery. Call it Foot Surgery II: The Other Foot. And yes, there were pancakes. 🤣

The surgery was this morning, and it went well. At least that's what other people told me. The doctor came by for his customary post-op pep talk before I was allowed into the recovery room with Hawk and before she was fully conscious. 😡 I swear, the man could have been giving the pep talk to a corpse except that The Machine That Goes "Bing!" (IYKYK) was still going bing. Though nowadays it's more of a boop.

At home we'd already prepared Hawk's nesting area.



She expects to stay mostly downstairs in the living room this time. Though she might migrate up to the dining room level because that's also where a bathroom is, and she needs to minimize stair climbs. Three months ago she camped out in the dining room, though that was also partly for easier access to food. This time we've stocked a shelf next to the sofa:



It's starting to look like a gas station convenience store in here! 🤣

Hawk's recovery is already going faster this time than last time. I mean, it's only Day One, so it's far too early to tell if it's meaningful. But today she was fully conscious a lot quicker and has less residual pain so far. We suspect the latter is because she went into this surgery with less baseline pain. The previous surgery seems to be helping already.

While Hawk is in good spirits today I have to keep reminding myself that this is only the start of the journey. Or the start of the sequel film. And though the sequel is now rolling the original hasn't finished playing yet! While the past two weeks have felt sort of like we're getting back to BAU (business as usual)— or its kin, Living As Usual— we were only at the start of that stage. And now we're back to the stage of Hawk barely being able to limp around the house for two weeks.

Former Boss Only Made it 9½ Months

Here's a thing I forgot to mention about the clown-show of my company firing my boss last week: He'd only been with the company 9½ months. I mean, I guess letting a person go after 9½ months is better than letting someone go after 7 years— which they did to another manager in my department a few years ago! But canning a guy after 9½ months seems a bit unfair because it's like they barely gave him a chance.

...Not that this manager was struggling, BTW. Quite the contrary. He hit the ground running in May and was helping people on deals within his second week. He brought some skills to our team we were weak on and helped us all become better as a result. I know I learned a few new techniques from him.

Ultimately, though, his dismissal wasn't about him. Or it was, but it was about who he wasn't. He wasn't an old friend of our new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). And that's why he was fired— or, more precisely, had his position eliminated in a minor reorg.

You see, one of the perquisites of being named to an executive position is that you get to pick some reasonable number of the people who report to you. If those positions are open, you sweep people in from your professional network. If those positions are occupied.... Well, you have to sweep the existing people out first. And it's churlish to say, "Your services are no longer required because I want to give your job to one of my friends," so instead the new boss does an immediate reorg, eliminating the positions. The tell that this is really a ploy to clear spots for friends is a) the exec cites highly principled rationale for the dismissals— in this case "efficiency" and "better business alignment"— then, b) a few months later, reopens exactly the same positions that were eliminated, sweeping in his buddies from his professional network.

I've seen this movie before at my company. I'm willing to bet it's running again now.

Of course, I don't expect I'll be here to see the finale of it this time.

Because fuck these self-serving, acting-sanctimonious-but-really-have-no-integrity clowns.