My Terrible, Horrible, Not-that-bad, Still-Kind-of-Good Day at Work

So this was a few weeks ago - my third shift, I think. To backtrack a bit, I had gone in to talk to the office administrator after my first shift and she had told me a place I could park where you're technically not supposed to park (by the dumpsters) because I'm out by 2:30. The second week I drove in and saw the spot I thought she meant, but it really looked like you shouldn't park there, so I parked on the street again and DOUBLE-CHECKED with her that it was the spot she meant. So today, I parked there.

I went into the library. Did I mention that the learn-to-play-ukulele club meets in the library at the recess that is just before my shift? So the environment is less-than-serene at the best of times? But today when I went to log in to the computer, it was stuck in an update. This means I can't check books in or out or look up whether anyone has books out. Did I mention that my first classes are all of the autism unit? Where routine is, shall we say, key?

So, okay. I will roll with it. The younger two classes come in and fortunately the teachers have a record of who brought their book back, so I just write down everybody's name and the bar code of the book they take - the autism classes are small, so it's not overwhelming. This all goes swimmingly. Then the older two classes come in. In the middle of the same routine, an announcement goes out that a black SUV is parked in front of the dumpsters and needs to be moved.

That was me. In front of the dumpsters. Where the office manager told me TWICE to park (I thought). So I tell the teachers I'll be right back and go out and the maintenance guy is standing there looking annoyed and I apologize profusely and say that I was told to park by the dumpsters, and he points to the back of the lot and says "she probably meant THOSE dumpsters", and honestly, as my friend Hannah says, how many dumpsters does it take to run a school ANYWAY?

So I rush back to the library, only to discover that the morning librarian has left and locked me out of the back room, where my purse is, with my key. Fortunately I realized I could beg to borrow one of the teachers' keys instead of having to go to the office and further humiliate myself (yes, I did go home and order a lanyard forthwith).

THEN, during the next class, another secretary asked over the speaker if "The Librarian" was there. I gaped for a minute until the teacher said (to me) "she can hear you" and (to her) "yes, she is". The secretary said there was a call for me on line 2. I went to to the phone. There were no buttons with line numbers. I stood there for a minute waiting for further instructions until the secretary came in and told me I had to come take the call in the office.

THEN, during the NEXT class, I have to throw down with some grade 3 chick over Amulet books. The other librarian who has been at the school for twenty years, has a shelf of more mature books and graphic novels that are only accessible to grade four and up. Did I mention that I have one class that's a grade three-four split? I had more or less determined to stick to the policy, but I haven't gotten entirely comfortable with just saying "because I said so". So one grade three girl tells me she's allowed to read Amulet books (graphic novel series) but she only has them at her dad's, so she'd like to borrow one to read at her mom's. So I say yes, like an idiot, partly because I'm wishy-washy and partly because I know what it's like to be a kid who reads above your perceived reading level - my dad used to have to come approve my books at the local library. Then this other grade three girl gets up in my face because if R. gets to take one then she should too. And I argue (again, like an idiot) that her parents have said she's allowed to read them and she has them at home. And the girl says "well if she has them at home, why does she need to borrow one?" (okay, solid point), so I blurt out (like an idiot, probably violating some kind of confidentiality rules), "only at her dad's!" And the girl says "oh, okay" and skips away happily.

Then there was another incident where a boy checked out an Amulet book, flipped through it and then brought it back in high dudgeon and insisted that I check it back in because of the naked blue man. So I said "oh, okay."

The good news is, ten to twenty years ago this would have sent me screaming from the building, never to be heard from again. Now? Meh. A lot of things went wrong and I handled them with varying degrees of skill, the lowest level being Very Low Indeed. Won't be the last time. I made stupid mistakes doing this kind of work for years as a volunteer. This time I made stupid mistakes and got paid.

Inarticulate Grunt of Exasperation

Why do I keep not blogging? Why? I don't want to stop blogging. I don't care that blogging is dead. I think of things to blog about daily. Then I go to bed and remember that I didn't blog. Then I  think that I'll just write a new post without mentioning the hitherto lack of blogging, but I can't seem to help myself there either. Also, as soon as I started writing this I realized the other problem - I have forgotten to upload pictures relevant to things I meant to post about, but if I go upload the pictures now, well we all know what will happen, right?

So I got a tiny little job. A tiny little job that is perfect for me in location, description and mostly duration (I could probably stand a few more hours, but whatever). For the past years while I've been home with the kids (and, increasingly, without them), I marveled at people with depression or difficult life events who said they liked having to go to work because it distracted them from their problems. I thought if I was having a bad stretch that having to go to work would make things worse.

And now I totally get it. Again, the hours I have to work are few, but whether I'm having a bad week or not, I LOVE going to work. I love doing the work. It makes me feel normal and productive and, wonder of wonders, it distracts me from my problems, real-world or head-type. Even the day where absolutely everything - EVERYTHING - went wrong (actually, I'll type that up and schedule it for tomorrow, for your collective amusement), I was glad to have been there.

Angus is settling in amazingly well at college. Well, okay, not amazingly well, but maybe a tiny bit surprisingly well. I thought he might be a little more homesick. I'm really glad he isn't. Matt and Eve and I went down with my parents for Family Week-end, which was on Canadian Thanksgiving, to watch an exhibition scrimmage game which was basically the team split into Freshmen/Sophomores and Upperclassmen. He was obviously on the younger half of the team, and they lost every game but not always by much, and he played really well.

Obviously we hit the bookstore to outfit the squad in team colours. Eve got a sweatshirt and fuzzy Elmira socks with actual little Soaring Eagles on them. She insisted on posing for a picture with her clothes on holding Matt's mug and sending it to Angus because "he will LOVE it, he will feel SO SUPPORTED."

I'm sure this brought a tear to his eye.

The next week-end he had a break so I drove down to get him and bring him home for a few days. We had a nice drive with some conversation and music discussion - we were playing music off my phone, which has every song downloaded by anyone on our family account ever, on shuffle. This means it's entirely possible to hear Billy Joel, Jay-Z, The Wiggles, Hannah Montana and Yo-Yo Ma within any given half hour. We each had veto power over whatever played next, but we could also ask each other to listen if we thought the song was worthwhile. It was fun. I still maintain that The Wiggles are nothing without Greg.
It was nice and a little weird having him home for a few days. Matt's in Asia for most of October, so Eve and I had settled into a nice little girly groove. I had to cook more stuff. There were Angus clothes in the wash. I had to see Venom (it wasn't that bad).

The kids spending quality time together.

They hated this. Hated it.

Then I drove him back. Didn't even get to use my well-rehearsed "no sir, I have never tried marijuana ever" answer, which is, I don't know, maybe a little insulting? I did declare my Red Velvet Oreos. 

There. That wasn't that hard. Why do I keep not doing it? Sigh. It's the Circle of Blog Life. 

Short and... Short

I went to bed exhausted and had vivid dreams about the kids being small again (and Matt wearing pink shorts, for some reason), and right now I don't feel like being rational and adult and phlegmatic about the whole thing - I feel like life has played a giant mean prank on me - here, have these tiny people, they're awesome and funny and will make you see whole new worlds, but they're also a giant pain in the ass so you won't be all that sad to see them go. NICE ONE, LIFE.

I've been trying really hard to live in the moment, realize that tomorrow is not promised, embrace the chaos - all your standard clichés. Being at this age where celebrities die and I'm surprised at how old they are and how young they still seem, seeing my parents getting older, feeling more and more mortal - I know how fast things can go if you don't pay attention. The thing is, they go fast even if you DO pay attention. And it's hard to know exactly HOW you're supposed to embrace the moment. I keep looking up from my book, seeing Lucy disappearing into Eve's room and trying to capture that moment - Eve still living here, Lucy still being alive, being halfway through this book instead of through five more - and then what do I do with it? I'm perimenopausal, I can't remember why I walked into this room, how am I going to keep all these moments? And then the moment you've captured the moment, you're into the next moment. It makes me start to feel panicky and weird. And panicky and weird is my default, I don't need to be piling on addition panic and weirdness.

Also, my allergies are turbo-charged and tyrannical right now. Wednesday as I was trying to get ready for my new job, about which I am ecstatic and excited, my right eye was watering so much it was like trying to stick a contact lens on a waterfall. I went through half a box of kleenex before stepping out the door. Is it possible to be mindful and grateful while also being unbelievably snotful? Well, yes - but it's a little less poetic.

Sometimes the Universe is a Dick. Occasionally She is Kind.

So my blog post last year on this day was complaining that I was overwhelmed about starting to look for a job and Angus was getting screwed around by the guidance office at school.

This week Eve is getting screwed around by the guidance office at school but today I had a job interview for a job - a very small job, a microscopic job, like a job that can barely be seen by the naked eye, but still, a job - and by the time I got home and texted by reference they had already called her, and then before lunch they called me and offered it to me.

I told Eve I was sorry if I sucked up all the luck this week.

I was determined not to get my hopes up, not because I thought I wasn't qualified, but because the job is so absurdly, stupidly perfect for me at this point in my life that it just seemed impossible that I would actually get it. (I don't mean by this that it pays a whole lot or anything, you get that, right? I mean it's close by, and a few hours in the middle of the week so I can manage it even when my brain is broken, and at a really lovely school where I love all the people I've met so far). I still don't really believe it.

So Eve's situation is that she got both of her easy electives first semester, making her semesters wildly unbalanced. A few of her friends were in the same situation, so guidance told them to make appointments and then we they got to their appointment they were all told that everything was full and nothing could be done. This was doubly disappointing for Eve because she has cooking with Chef V. this semester, and Chef C., who she had last year and adored, is teaching cooking next semester and said he would make room in his class for her, so she would have had better balance and the preferred teacher. It's frustrating, because obviously it's hard to balance a billion courses between a billion students and have everyone be satisfied, but in our experience the school seems to be exceptionally bad at it.

She's handling it really well, though. She made her own guidance appointment, talked to all the teachers, and when she found out it wasn't possible she started looking for positives in leaving the situation the way it is. Also, Chef V. is the 'mean chef', but by the end of the first day she said they were already 'kind of buddies' because she got 'Angus points'.

Matt and I are in an extremely petty battle of seeing who can hold off from texting Angus for the longest, and making fun of each other when we cave. The first day I said I wasn't going to text him at all he texted me first, which made Matt very bitter. Yesterday I said "did you text him?" and Matt said "yes, but I had to get him to--" and I yelled "IT DOESN'T MATTER, YOU FAIL".

And now I'm experiencing extreme adrenaline withdrawal from an early interview and a celebratory happy hour with my parents, and I might need a nap.

Roller Coaster of Emotions

A couple of weeks ago, two friends and I took our younger kids to Canada's Wonderland. We went down to Toronto on Monday, went to Ripley's Aquarium (it was magical, would go back in a heartbeat), walked around, had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, spent the night in a weird hotel in Richmond Hill, and hit CW early on Tuesday. A rainy, rainy Tuesday. Like, the forecast started out rainy and got rainier, with multiple chances for thunderstorms. But we were committed, and, like Eve's friend Rachel said, hey, no lines.

So we marched into the (totally empty) park (every person at every checkpoint kept saying "you know there are no refunds, right?")  got sorted with lockers and rain ponchos, marched up to the Leviathan, filed on immediately (because no lines) and started chugging up the long, long, high hill. This was my thought process: "Hang on. I just got on. I wasn't sure I was going to get on. I'm just here because Eve wanted to come. Do I even like roller coasters? Did I ever like roller coasters? Did I just go on them to impress my boyfriend? Am I just doing this to impress my daughter? Or Collette? Perhaps I could have thought about this BEFORE I SAT DOWN IN THE FRONT ROW OF THE BIGGEST FREAKING ROLLER COASTER IN THE PARK?" Regrets, people. I had so many regrets.

So all summer we were preparing for Angus to move to Elmira New York for college. We washed stuff, we ordered stuff, we packed stuff. We went to all the summer action movies (that new Mission Impossible movie was way better than I expected). We went camping with all our friends and had a really great time. We went out for dinner with my parents. We assembled an assload of paperwork.

Then suddenly, here it was. We packed the van. We drove across the border (fairly smooth process that my husband stressed about for two months. The guy at the next desk with his 'simple assault charge' was having a way worse time). We unpacked and carried a bunch of crap up to the third floor of a residence in incredibly sweaty weather. We bought a bunch of stuff at Target (which has so many more different flavours of Oreos than we do, it's SO not fair).

And then... wait. Now we leave him here? He just lives here now? He doesn't live with us? Am I okay with this? Is this what I agreed to? This is the natural order of things. Right. Fine. It's good. It's right. It sucks a little bit. It's a little bit frightening. It makes your stomach feel a little bit weird. But it's also exciting. And hey, we're on this ride now. Might as well throw our hands in the air and embrace it.

(Metaphorically, I mean. Not on the actual roller coaster. There I was clutching that bar for dear life the entire time. Those things are really, really scary.)

Words and Food and Going Away

Since I started my last post talking about Lynn, why break the streak? I deleted Twitter from my phone on the strong urging of my sweet and wise friend Hannah - she detected that it was both making me angry all the time and giving me another excuse to sit brooding instead of getting off my ass and doing something constructive. It was good - when I felt the need to check Twitter I would remember it wasn`t there, and I would literally force myself to stare into space until I got bored enough to get up and do something. Then Lynn mentioned this game that she saw someone playing on their phone on the bus that involves words and trivia and.... DAMN YOU LYNN.

So I just linked to Lynn`s blog, which naturally led me to read her latest post before coming back here because I am a champion procrastinator, and she mentioned that she made a meal and her family ate all of it. This is a huge deal because she has myriad food allergies and underweight children to deal with, so the exciting thing it reminded me of is much less exciting comparably, but whatever. I don`t have a huge problem feeding my kids - Eve has a texture issue and a lot of things she can`t eat without barfing, and she doesn`t like pork or beef, but she eats many vegetables (some I don`t even like) and you can do a lot with chicken or fish, so it`s cool. But she doesn`t like a lot of casserole type things where everything`s all mixed together, so when I make something in the crock pot I generally do something else for her. Not a big deal. BUT, the other day I made a quiche with spinach and red peppers in it and DUDE - EVERYONE ATE IT. A one-dish meal. With vegetables. Every. Single. Person.

This, of course, reminds me that it would have been good if I`d made this discovery a year ago or more, because there are only three months before all of us don`t live here anymore. Which is a strange feeling. I keep saying that it was always pretty much a given that my sister and I were going to go away for university. Both my parents went far far away from home when they started their schooling. It was a family tradition. I assumed my kids would go away. Then when he was sixteen and only a couple of years from probably going away, I realized how much it sucked.

But I`m okay so far. He was talking to some people from my book club last week and he said he feels ready to be away from home. So that`s good. Of course there are times when I still miss my little boy who ran around in superhero costumes and sat on the stairs fully suited up for three hours before every baseball game and could talk about the dynamics of Pokemon for forty minutes straight (okay, I don`t miss that part so much). But I had that. Now it`s time for this. I`m excited for him. I think.

Okay. None of that was what I meant to blog about today. Maybe that means I`ll blog again tomorrow. ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Still Here, Still a Zombie

I just commented on Lynn's blog, which reminded me that she commented on my last post and made me think I WILL keep posting Lynn, I WILL. And then I didn't.

I'm tired today. This is sort of sucky because I haven't done that much to be tired from. BUT I did go to a play Friday night, a birthday party Saturday night, a dentist appointment Monday morning, a physio appointment Tuesday afternoon and several errand-ish places with Pam yesterday. SO this means I'm tired from doing SOME stuff, whereas for the past several weeks before this one, I was exhausted from doing almost nothing. A tiny, barely-discernible, possibly-invisible-to-the-naked-eye amount of improvement has taken place.

Soooo, what has flitted through my mind recently that I thought I might blog about and then didn't? I worked a little bit. There was a pair of twins in one of the classes at a Glebe school whose names were so wondrously harmonious that I immediately wanted to write a series of books about their madcap adventures. Then the next day I found out that they had an older brother whose name was just as fabulous. I texted Hannah and Nicole, but I probably shouldn't reveal their names in their glorious entirety here, but guys, I REALLY WANT TO.

Matt agreed to give a talk about possible careers in science to some high school teachers on a professional development day. He paced around musing about what level to pitch the talk at, what things to include, and kept saying he felt like he was overthinking it. I said "hon, you sound just like me trying to pick a book for storytime".

I read a French book about octupuses for storytime. Did you know that octupuses have one brain in their head and SMALLER ONES IN EACH ARM? Is this one of those things that everyone knew and I didn't? I would erase it for fear of mockery, but if I can share this with even one person, it will have been worth it.

I revisited my intention to read all the Newbery award winners, realized how few I'd actually gotten to and how very many were left and felt a little discouraged. Then I found three or four on the shelves at one of my schools, borrowed them over the week-end and felt better. Zombie blog - no deadlines. I will review them soon. Probably.

Every few days I go on Twitter and try to go to bat a little for my Twitter friends who are gay or trans and take a lot of shit on social media - not because I really believe I'm going to change anyone's mind, but that whole thing about it being more important for the others who are listening, you know? This invariably results in a few troglodytes calling me unsavoury names. A couple of weeks ago when I objected to someone characterizing trans people as sick and perverted, he retorted "and you are a fat, ugly slob." Isn't that, like... I dunno, almost quaint? I mean, yeah, it's stupid that men especially think that the very worst thing you can call a woman is fat, and the fact that he would think that some Trump-supporting brain-dead red-neck asshole not finding me attractive would be upsetting to me is weird, but I was kind of like, hey, the 1970s called, they want their insult back. What's this weak sauce, man - you can't even bestir yourself to muster up a "bitch" or "cunt"? And then one of my very sweet friends reported him and he got suspended! For fat, ugly slob! I reported someone on Facebook for saying that women soldiers should be used as human shields for male ones and nothing! WHERE IS THE BALANCE?

I finished rereading this book today and it made me cry again. It is a very, very good book.

So. How are you?