Ring, phone, ring.

At 9:30 this morning, Ian and I signed our final paperwork as officially certified foster parents. I had lunch with my bosses to talk to them about taking paternity leave whenever I get the phone call, be it tomorrow or months from now, and what is funny is, they had no official policy towards maternity or paternity leave, despite the company being around for over ten years now. The reason is easy to understand: I’m in the video game industry, and it is largely dominated by men, and most of those men are single and straight. It’s pretty unusual for them to reproduce, and it’s still fairly unusual for men to take paternity leave, even in this day. So I’m the test case.

I have to say, they’ve been awfully supportive about this, particularly since I can’t tell them when I’m going to suddenly take off for a couple weeks to bond with my baby. We could be in the middle of a busy time at work – in fact, we are always in the middle of a busy time, so that’s guaranteed to be the case. I volunteered to have SVN file-sharing software installed on my home computer and all the editors so I could do work from home, but my boss stopped me and said, “No, if you’re going to take paternity leave off, you shouldn’t be working. You should be spending time with your baby.”

This coming from a straight non-breeding breeder, by the way. Pretty incredible.

Now, ring, phone. Ring.