Updates

I am deep into my classes and have had some crazy stuff happen at work this week. The week seems like it flew by. Everything seems to fly by, doesn't it? Milo is going to be 2 next week. How crazy is that? He is evolving every day... learning new words every day. We were leaving to run some errands earlier and I was following behind. He stopped, looked at me and said, "Coming?" I didn't even think about it until Mark pointed out that he had never done that before.

We realized earlier in the week just how much he takes what we say literally. I pointed to one of his pictures on the computer and asked him "Buddy, who is that?" He answered "you" and continued to answer "you" to all of his other pictures too. Apparently we have said, "Milo that is you!" a few times too many.

The thing about things being so very busy at work is that I have a hard time devoting much of my extra brain space to writing in the free time that I do have. That said, I did have one crazy experience this week that doesn't need much thought to write out. One of my properties is for sale and we had a meeting with a potential buyer at the property. I was the only woman in a group of about 7 men - not really unusual for Dallas real estate. We were meeting a group of people that represented the buyer who had not arrived yet and we were going around shaking everyone's hands. I walked up to the first person and introduced myself with my hand outstretched. Not only did the guy not shake my hand, he did not acknowledge me in any way and actually looked over my head to one of the other men. To make it even better, this happened right in the middle of the entire group. Lovely. What are you going to do?

Well, I just paused, said "O-kay..." and moved on to the other people. Throughout the tour it did give me a relatively large amount of enjoyment that I was the only one that knew anything about the buildings (not surprising since it was almost everyone's first visit there). The guy in question actually asked me a question directly by the end rather than going through the other men. After they had left, one of the men from my company told me that the jerk was an Orthodox Jew and couldn't touch women other than their wives. I am all about religious freedom but I don't believe the excuse. When the actual buyer showed up he was clearly an Orthodox Jew and he was very pleasant to me the entire time. I am pretty sure the other guy was just a jackass.

You can't work in this business without experiencing some level of gender discrimination. It is so much better than it used to be but still... there have been lots of times that I have fought to get the attention rather than just doing the work unseen. This was different though. It was a blatant snub. I talked to Mark about it and he has had similar experiences - recently even. Crazy, isn't it? I do like to think that we have moved into a new era but apparently that is not completely the case - at least not to the level I hoped. The times they are a-changin' and, for all of us - Milo especially - I hope that progress flies forward.