La di dah

La di dah, here I am, back in the library again. I'm feeling much, much better than I was last week, or even Saturday. In the absence of actual classes to teach today, I've resumed my shelf-shifting project, which is moving reference books from shelf to shelf, compacting them, changing the shelf height, and so forth. Fun for me today!

I was just looking over an application to become a Google certified teacher. Yes, there is such a thing. I know someone who's been to the training, and there's a workshop coming up in DC in December, which is within my reach. I doubt that I'll be accepted -- they only take 50 per session from many hundreds of applications -- but it occurs to me that this is something I could do in retirement: give training in the google education apps at various schools. Anyway, part of the application is a one minute video about either "Motivation and Learning" or "Classroom Innovation." I don't have to be in the video, I just have to make it, and make it good. The deadline is November 9, which is, oh, hey, in a week. So I may or may not. I have to think about it. But it would be an interesting thing to do, and a day off from school, I guess. I could take the train, I like trains.

I brought in the leftover candy from Saturday and have it here on my desk at school for kids to take, but of course, I'm eating it as well. Talk about not well thought out, and I do it every year.

I have a short work week due to Thursday and Friday off for New Jersey teachers convention. Don't get me started; I think it's a scam, too, but it's a forever-long tradition in the state. For me, that means a doctor on Friday and a haircut and pedi on Thursday, and some sleeping late, I hope. I've been sleeping so strangely since the clock change. I never really understand that whole thing, I just go along with what's going on, but I don't really get it, the way I don't really get quarts and pints, or math. But it was nice that it wasn't dark when I left for work this morning. This evening, however, is gonna suck.

I think I'm going to give the new pain med a try again tomorrow. *deep breath* I'm only going to take a half pill, so I don't think I'll get stoned, but now that I'm off everything I was doing for the cold, including the round the clock tylenol followed by three or four days of advil -- bad me! -- well ... everything kinda hurts. I know it's just a matter of testing everything out until I find what works and in what amount. Today it's mostly the elbows and knees that hurt. (Hey, maybe I should go sit on a low stool and move more big heavy reference books!) I already warned the school nurse that I'll be doing this, so she'll have a place ready for me to lie down and sleep it off, if it comes to that (which it won't. I did once accidentally take sleeping pills in the morning and not realize it until I got to school, and I slept in the nurse's office for the first three hours of the day.)

Later that same day ...

Oy, I'm tired and achy all over. I need drugs! Okay, maybe just drug. Just one.

I have about forty minutes to go until the bell, and then a faculty meeting, with MANDATORY attendance. I usually just skip them, but I have to go today. Review to follow.

Newsy Me

I must really be back to my old routine because here I am, starting my entry at work. It's really the first time since school started that I've had a minute to breathe. I didn't even get to finalizing my last book order, checking the shipment against the order and submitting it for payment, until today, even though the books came in during the summer.

As for right now, they're having a board meeting here in my library tonight, so I've gotten my desk all cleared off of personal items and work in progress; I don't like anybody touching my stuff. I've had to relocate a lot of things, and will definitely remember to lock my desk drawers when I go. I've come back after meetings like this and found all my pencils gone, or my desk chair missing.

So, school. In one sense, the year has started off great for me. I've been very busy and have been getting a lot done. The problem is that they haven't been so good about putting someone here with me each period, so I've had to close the library at random times just to go to the bathroom, and every day during one of the lunch periods, since I'm required by contract to go to lunch, but they don't send anyone to cover so that the library can stay open. This is major suckage, folks. If I were the parent of a kid in this school, I'd be calling the superintendent daily. (Of course, my kids didn't come to the library during lunch, so I wouldn't have know. But you know what I mean.) I hope people are complaining, because that's they only way they'll do anything about it.

Kids. My kids are okay, I guess, improved since the trip, anyway. I think this is just a stressful time for R, and she lashed out a little, but I'm all good with all of it now. I just want her to be unstressed, and happy. As for K, still unemployed, but trying to keep her chin up, and still looking, and hopefully starting to sub next week, so that'll be something coming in.

Hubs. Happy as a clam, but not so much income rolling in, so that's tight. I'm doing my best not to let it bother me. Did I mention I'm going back to the therapist tomorrow?

The FIL. Not so good. Still in lots of pain, and the MIL says he doesn't seem to be interested in anything. That's seriously not good. I don't know how long he'll hold on like this.

My health. I am feeling better some, but I definitely have something going on, thus next week's visit to the rheumatologist, who is, essentially, a specialist in immunology, and therefore, in autoimmune diseases, which is most likely what I've got going on here, since Crohn's is one of those. My Crohn's is behaving itself, mostly, which means no pain and no nasty, constant D, but still, when I gotta go, I gotta go.

I was just down in our central office a few minutes ago, and someone was visiting there with a four month old baby. Oh boy, I want me one of those. Not my own baby, god forbid, a grand-baby. It doesn't even have to be R's or K's, one of my sister's kids could have one and I could just hold it a lot. That would be fine for now. But one of the twins wants only four-legged babies, and the other is only married a year, although I wouldn't be surprised by an announcement any day now.

Ach, I just shifted in my chair and now my back is spasming, but not big time, just a little. I wanna go home!

There you have it, me in a nutshell.




watching THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #2120
READING: The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Back in Muggle World

I've been reading a lot of Harry Potter lately, which tends to suck up my brain, but I finished the last book about an hour ago, so I thought I'd return to the land of real people (so to speak.)

Things are rolling along. I didn't wear a support on my knee today, but I took some Tylenol every four hours and it was much, much better. I have no idea what's up with that. No swelling, no bruise, just pain, and not where the break was two years ago. Huh.

As if you didn't already know this, I am going to Disney World with a pack of crazies. I was thinking of getting us some kind of matching t-shirts, just for a laugh, but now I just keep imagining what I might put on them, something about the crazy part of the family we're all descended from. I don't know. If one more person tells me that all the planning of the trip is in my hands and then tells me exactly how to plan it, I think I may scream.

I swear, I think of you guys all day long and plan out entries in my head, and then sit down at the keyboard and draw a blank. I haven't been commenting much lately either, in part because I read a lot of entries in school. Speaking of which ...

I don't know how many of you work with people who are completely clueless, but if you work in a public school, you do. There are always people who do not get the purpose of the whole institution, like secretaries who won't help kids and the like, but here's what we have going on. We have a technology department -- I generally refer to them as Computer Central -- staffed by Larry, Moe, and Curly. Each one is dopier than the next. (Their fourth member, new this year, is just a repairman, and he's the only one with a brain.) They have no sense whatsoever that there are people out there -- students, especially -- who actually need to use this thing they're working on, this network.

Last Friday was an in-service day, which meant staff in only, so naturally, the three stooges decided that this would be a good day to change the server. Oh yes, because there were no workshops that involved the use of the network or anything. I don't know how many people couldn't do what they were supposed to be doing because websites wouldn't come up.

Come Monday morning, guess what? Almost any website anyone went to turned up instead as a message that said that the site was blocked by our filtering software. Really dangerous sites, too, like CNN and AOL. Before 8:00, a half dozen kids had come to me in a panic because they had emailed homework to their AOL accounts but couldn't open them to print out.

So now it's Wednesday, and I can get CNN, but I cannot get most of your diaries at school. It's very frustrating. I have been very busy, but if I have ten minutes to spare between classes, I see nothing wrong with following up some stuff on Google Reader. But if I click something and it's blocked, then it's marked as Read in Reader, so I'm afraid I'll forget to come back to it. I have lost a few that way.

And did I mention that all the library resources that we use, and pay for via subscription, recognize our accounts by I.P. address? And that the new server, of course, has its own new I.P.? Why, I wonder, did they not wait until summer to do all of this, or do it when we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago? Because they have no sense that the network exists outside of their little world in which it is something to be repaired and tinkered with, never actually used by actual students and teachers.

So, swine flu. Are we all freaked out? Someone asked me that yesterday, and I said "Uh .. what?" Still, more people succumb to the regular flu. I understand why this is considered a pandemic, but I don't necessarily agree with what defines a pandemic. All things considered, very few people have been affected by this. I'm not saying it's nothing, but I don't feel personally threatened. (I hope that doesn't turn out to fall into the "Famous Last Words" category. That would be a bummer.)

I had to go to B&N after school to pick up a few books for the library. Suddenly today, we noticed that both our copies of Mien Kamph -- I don't want to get Googled for that -- were missing. No idea what that means. One of them just went out and came back a few weeks ago. With that title, I always fear censorship more than wannabees, so I'm a little concerned, but I picked up a replacement, as well as a few others. We'll see how long these all last.

Well, I finally got a full entry out, anyway. Looks like a good Lost tonight.



watching FRIENDS :: ENTRY #2034
READING: --- by ---

Finally Friday

It's been a long week.

I'm going to the vice-principal's wake right after school, since I think if I don't get there early, I'll never be able to park, and will be waiting on a line outside to get in. It'll be a big one. I always feel that I don't really know the rules of going to a wake, although I've been to many over the years, but I asked a couple of people and they said to go, so I'm going.

I think I've figured out where all my headaches are coming from: my jaw. I know I have TMJ (short for temperomandibular joint, I just looked it up), which is essentially trouble with your jaw joint, which can cause pain, headaches, etc., and I haven't worn the nightguard the dentist gave me in so long that it doesn't fit anymore. So I'll go to CVS or someplace after school and pick up one that I can fit myself and that will cost 20 something dollars instead of 300 something. Give it a week or two and see if it makes a difference. I feel pretty good, in general, but the headache thing is getting old.

My plans for the weekend include maybe a trip to Target, of course, and a vist from R at some point. Depending on how everyone's timing works out, she'd like to drop in on the Sibs and introduce her to the Gentleman Friend. Which would be awfully nice. She has yet to have the opportunity to introduce him to the ILs, who are, after all, her grandparents, and I kinda think they should have met him before she says "Oh, and we'll be living together in a couple of months." Grandparents can be funny people sometimes. My mother's reaction to such an announcement would have been "Wonderful! I'm so happy for you!" and my father would have said "Why? I don't understand. Explain it to me." Heh heh. I think the MIL will put on a brave and happy face and then start to cry as soon as R leaves the house, but that's just a guess.

It's very quiet in the library at the moment, but we had two classes in here this morning who had been bumped out of their classroom for some reason, and who had a guest speaker to talk about franchising. (He's a parent of students, and owns several Burger Kings.) He was a very good speaker, and interesting. But it was kind of all-consuming of the space in here.

New Judy is putting up a nice display of books in the display case, something I used to do religiously but haven't done much in recent years. And that's why they need to get new blood every now and then.

Supposedly, Amazon is going to make all their Kindle ebooks available to other devices soon, which would be swell for me. I do hope they go with one of the formats I use, or that I can easily get a reader for their format for the iPhone. It would be like hitting the jackpot.



FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1981
READING: ---- by ----

Don't Go Looking It Up!

When I was growing up, we had a World Book Encyclopedia in the house, which my father thought we should have for research purposes, or something. My mother was right on board with that, but for her, the World Book was the place she looked up all her symptoms to see what she had now. I have often thought that my mother with free access to WebMD would have been a frightening thing.

When K got sick in high school, and we finally got to the right specialist, he said to me at one point during the exam "Now don't go looking it up on the Internet!" Well, I waited a couple of weeks but then I did look it up and what I found out was that he had written some of the articles I found, so I didn't learn anything scary or new because he had already told us everything.

Now, last night, being tired and all, I did not go looking up fatty liver and all that, but I did this morning once I got to school, and the most amazing thing happened: I learned enough about it to realize that I am most likely okay, in fact, fine. Usually, you go to WebMD or someplace and then sit around all day waiting for your organs to die one by one and your limbs to fall off. No, this is much, much better. Here's what I got:

1. Lots of people have fatty liver.
2. High liver enzymes can be caused by acetiminophen (Tylenol) or cholesterol-lowering medications (in my case, Pravachol, which I've been taking for over ten years).
3. A small number of people with fatty liver will develop a form of NAFLD, which is Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. A small number of these people will develop NASH, which is Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis, a form of inflammation. For some of these people, when the inflammation goes away, it will leave scar tissue.
4. A buildup of scar tissue decreases liver function. This is what cirrhosis is.

Okay. So the only thing we know I've got now for sure is increased liver enzymes. The CAT scan could well show few or no fatty deposits, and no scar tissue. My biggest problem may be finding out that in addition to aspirin, ibuprofen, and whatever Aleve is, I can't take Tylenol either, which would totally suck, but it won't kill me. And maybe have to change to Lipitor or something, or maybe not; my cholesterol's been pretty good. So that's where I stand, and I'll have whatever tests I need and see the doctor again at the end of February.

In the meantime, I moved the router in the family room, and now I can Wii to my heart's content and it doesn't interfere with the Hubs' Internet. I had an excellent workout last night, 32 minutes and it burned about 150 calories, which I think is pretty good. And that's only with maybe ten minutes of aerobics. I need to do lots more of that, but I have some hearing issues with the free step program. That's the one that let's you just watch TV while you step, with a beat from the Wii remote to guide your pace. But I can't always hear the beat, so I need to work on that.

No news yet on getting my desk moved, but the new librarian is going to come in next Wednesday morning for a little bit of an orientation with me. The SCM will be out that day. His last day is next Friday, one week from today.

Home, evening. I may not do the Wii after all, but I did walk a vigorous lap around the building this morning -- inside -- so I did get some aerobics in, and I even got a chance to ask a phys. ed. teacher more about using the heart monitor thingy. So now I just need to collapse, although if I can still move in an hour or so, maybe then ...



WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1971
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

A Pleasant Day

My first birthday greeting of the day came from the Wii Fit when I started it up at 5:45 am. Followed shortly thereafter by the Hubs, and the Empress, via ecard. (Ecards came later from Golf and R, so, thank you to all!) And K, of course, but that was delivered in person.

My birthday gift from school, apparently, was that we interviewed and picked someone to be the substitute librarian come February when the SCM leaves. (Oh heavens! I'll have to think up a diary name for her!) Anyway, an uneventful day, pleasant enough. After school, K and I went out to buy lottery tickets, because if there's anything I really, really want for my birthday this year, it's a million dollars.

Anyway, I picked up a mini-Key Lime cheesecake for birthday dessert, and I see by the clock on the wall that the time has come.


WATCHING QUANTUM LEAP :: ENTRY #1962
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

Surprise!

So far, it's an unexpectedly pleasant day. It's unlike me not to post for two days, but with one thing or another, by the time I've gotten to the computer at night, I've just been too tired to think clearly enough. I did write a cranky, whiny entry at school yesterday, but it's just as well I didn't get to post it. Today is a lot nicer. I wonder if the sun finally coming out has anything to do with it. (Maybe. Probably.)

For one thing, I misunderstood when R mentioned us meeting the gentleman friend in the near future, and K meeting him this weekend. K met him on Wednesday, and the Hubs and I (and K, if she wants to go) are having dinner with him on SUNDAY! K said he was very nice and very tall and a little on the shy side. Which means, I guess, that I have to ask questions. Okay, no problem there. If he's on the shy side, however, I hope he isn't overwhelmed when he gets to meet the rest of the family, because Wonderful Niece and Eldest Nephew are, to say the least, pretty dynamic personalities. She has no filter and will say anything to anybody (although I assume not when she's in court) and is wacky fun. Her husband is quieter, but no less crazy. And Eldest Nephew is a phenomenon unto himself. Although R says that the GF has a lot in common with Good Guy nephew.

Ohboyohboyohboyohboy.

I had to go for bloodwork this morning since I'm having a physical next week, which means that I would be getting to school at the right time instead of the hour early that I usually do, and I didn't know if the SCM would be there, since he was out having oral surgery yesterday (and he's such a baby), but he's not only here today, but has been very pleasant. (I know, it must be the pain medication.) Anyway, I'm having the most pleasant day with him that I've had so far this year.

And the after-school hours for the library are finally going to start on Monday; I got all the names of the teachers who will be working and I set up a training schedule for them. I've been trying to get the principal to start this up again since I reminded him about it in August. So that's going to be a lot less stressful for me, just walking out when the day is over and not having to close up or make people leave.

And I finally, finally got my hair right today. You can't imagine what a major step this is for me. I am inept at this. When women's shaved heads come into fashion, I'll be all set. Of course, I have a nasty scar back there, but what the hell. I'll wear a hat.

The most fun today, though, is that we have five classes in the library taking out books just to read. This is so unusual here that it really is a treat for us. Most of our work with classes is research, and although we have individual students who take out books for pleasure reading, our teachers are so focused on getting through the curriculum that outside reading is rarely assigned. Tons of good books are going out today. Love it.

Home. Just before the last period of the day started, we got the computer we've been waiting for for a year and a half that we need to make presentations in the library's main room, which is excellent because we're doing that very thing 21 times next week, starting at 8:00 Monday morning. Wow. I was astonished. Really, all in all, a day of pleasant surprises.


WATCHING WIFE SWAP :: ENTRY #1882
READING: When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris

Little of This, Little of That

First, I have no comments whatsoever on the economy or what's going on with that because I don't understand a word of it, other than it's bad and bad stuff is going on. I'm not thrilled by the whole McCain trying to put off the debate because it just looks to me like he needs more time to figure it out himself. And here's an odd word on the campaign: I have seen no commercials, not for McCain and not for Obama, and heaven knows it's not for lack of watching TV. I think it's strange. It's as if neither one of them feels the need to enter the New York City market yet. (Our broadcast TV is from NYC.) Maybe McCain figures it's not worth it because he's not winning here and Obama figures he's winning here anyway, so why waste the money? I don't know, I just think it's strange.

Speaking of which, here's the strange thing that just happened to me. (It's 11:00.) The SCM and I finally had our meeting with the principal this morning about lots of things, and it went very well and all, and he assured me that he has no intention of losing any professional staff this year or next, which means the SCM will be replaced with a real librarian. YAY! I told him -- the principal -- that I had two former students in mind, and he said I could let them know because the job is going to be posted any day now.

Well, one of them is easy to reach because she and K are friends on Facebook, but I expected finding the other one to be a challenge. All I knew was that she was working at a high school in the northern part of the county, and her maiden name. I knew she had kept her maiden name after she was married, but I think she told me once that once she had children, she had taken her husband's name and I didn't know that.

I googled a list of high schools in the county, which was arranged alphabetically by the towns they're in. The first one was in the northern part of the county, so I clicked, and worked my way through the school's website. The librarian there, it seems, is my girl, who never changed her name professionally, it would appear. It may yet turn out not to be her, but it looks like I found her right off the bat. I sent off a goofy email -- we knew each other well -- and we'll see what I get back. I owe her the right of first refusal, since she asked me a long time ago -- when my other candidate was still in my Girl Scout troop, probably -- to let her know if there was ever an opening here. She may be happy and settled where she is now and won't want to move, but she deserves to hear about it first. And I wouldn't want these two people to be competing against each other because I would want them both.

I also got to teach my first class this year, which felt like ahhhhhhh....... , yeah, that's right, so that was good. Not that I had any concerns, but I was looking forward to it.

5:00

Home, and already had dinner, actually, because I was really really hungry. So.

I got email back and it was indeed my delightful student from twenty years back. We emailed back a forth a few times, exchanging what we knew about some of her classmates from back then. And she is very well situated where she is now, near where she lives, just got tenure, they're paying for classes she's taking. So she's off the list. K is in class now, but when she gets home, we'll talk about my other option. K doesn't have her email address, but can leave her a message on Facebook, so I'm thinking she could leave it Sunday night so the girl -- okay, I know, woman -- can get in touch with me at school on Monday, if she's so inclined. I mean, really, I could drive the six or seven blocks to her house right now, and if she doesn't still live there, ask her mother to have her call me, but that seems over the top a bit. I mean, the SCM isn't even leaving until the end of January.

(He said it was odd for him to be sitting in the room as the principal and I discussed his replacement. I'm sure. Get over it.)

So K is in class, and the Hubs is having dinner with a former boss, and my house, to be blunt, is a shit-hole. This was one of my mother's expressions, that when her house didn't meet her standard for cleanliness, it was a shit-hole. Here's what that meant to her: she hadn't vacuumed or dusted within the current calendar week, and the dining room table had papers and things all over it that she needed to put away. That's it. Other than the table, there was no clutter in this house. (Except, of course, in my room when I was a kid.) There was no laundry basket on the living room couch for two weeks because no one felt like bringing it down to the basement. There was no pile of clean dishes in the drainboard waiting to be put away. (My father refused to have a drainboard in the house for this very reason. You ate, you washed, you dried, you put away.) There was no trash in the kitchen waiting to be taken out because you know there's room for just one more thing, and then maybe someone else will take it out. (My father took it out every night while my sister and I were washing the dishes, so that would have been, say, 5:50.) There were no crumbs in the toaster oven because, seriously, neither Shirl nor Jack would have stood for such a thing. My house, on the other hand, is indeed a shit-hole. I just made an appointment for some cleaning people to come. I am seriously not up to doing this myself. I mean, I never wanted to before, but now that I wouldn't mind it as much, I just can't. Bending over to tie my shoes leaves me short of breath. Scrubbing the tiles in the shower are certainly out.

This feels like it has been the longest week ever, but it has also been the only full week of school I've had so far, and will have for another two weeks. No school next Tuesday and Wednesday, and the following Thursday, for the Jewish holidays, which I do not observe, so for me, they're just days off. I've already made numerous appointments, as I do.

It was chilly today, definitely an end to summer weather. It was only in the low sixties, but no sun. We're supposed to be in for a couple of days of rain now. Not that I'm looking forward to it, but my car could use a rinsing off.



WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1863
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Still Crazy After ...

I changed my career today. You'll never believe what I did.

I spent the whole day being a *gasp* librarian.

I catalogued stuff. I checked out books. I helped kids with computer issues. I worked on the new signs that finally came in. I even fixed the damn laminating machine.

In other words, three weeks into the school year, I actually got to start doing the work I was hired to do, the work I'm paid for.

I really have to see if I can unload this I.D. card thing for next year. I'm working on it.



In other news, let's see. I'm having a fairly political day again, and I'd like to share something with you, but with some comments on it as well. R never forwards me Internet stuff, but today she sent me this article. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait.

la di da di da la di da di da ... what's the name of that song?

Okay, now, the odds are you are having some sort of response to this, and that's what I want to talk about. When I read this, I wrote back to her "When did I write this?" because bingo, she was the kid who went to Europe and South America with the Scouts, not to mention taking her own trip to Australia as an adult and going to graduate school in Wales, and yes, she performed in plays -- Shakespeare -- when she was stage manager of the drama club, and yes, she has seen her own plays produced. She works for a very large non-profit that is educational in nature. She happens also to be a beautiful girl -- so others have told me -- and we have done our best to raise her to have many experiences. (She has also done extensive camping and hiking, and I don't mean with tents and latrines, I mean with a sleeping bag, a backpack, and a little shovel. She did the longest trail at Philmont; if there are Boy Scouts among you, you know what that is.)

All right, so that was my reaction, and I wasn't naive enough to think it would be everybody's, but when I read the comments, I was blown away. Many comments were supportive, as mine would have been, but some were just mean and vicious. Here's one (#15, excerpted):

You should have bought her a shotgun and gone out shooting with her. It would have broadened her cultural horizons, taught her some cultural tolerance, and rounded her out enough to understand how the other half lives.

Ya know, maybe a good moose hunt, and getting her hands bloody actually processing the meat rather than buying it pre-packaged in the store, would have taught her to be a little less pretentious and self-righteous.

Tell me, why does this thought follow the first? Why must it be that "getting her hands bloody" is necessarily good for her? How would this "broaden her cultural horizons" and "understand how the other half lives" unless the other half is the just-killed animal? I'm not saying hunting is wrong for people who do it, or teach their children to do it; it's just another one of the possible choices people make for their lives. Where in the original "letter" did it indicate that the daughter was pretentious or self-righteous? I must have missed that part. Here's another one (#29, also excerpted, because it rambles like hell, although I left some of it in):

it seems you have trained her to live off the donations of others, seeking attention and self esteem, while sneering down at the "common people." good show.

many kids do not have the sort of spoiling parents she was blessed with-some actually have to get jobs.

but that sort of thing often interferes with a path of suckering others into believing up is down, and left is right.

when my kids were small, they used to demand to go up gold mining in the sierra. they got out of the city, and they could partake in the magic of gold flakes, never before seen by man, appearing in their pans. they also learned how much worthless sand and gravel one had to shovel through to find those few tiny nuggets, and that stood them in good stead later in life.

they learned about buzz worms, poison oak, berries off the vine, how chinese coins could wind up on a hillside in the foothills, fossils, geology, earth history, people history, weather predicting, cooking over an open fire, etc.

even barbecueing fresh rattlesnake they skinned and cleaned on their own.

and these are the stories their own children demand in return. my 6 year old grandson gets wide eyed. "wow, mom! you did that when you were my age? i wanna go do that, too!"

so far, he has not expressed any interest in being a faceless member of the mob that makes up mass movements. he learns personal responsibility instead, and paying for one's own mistakes. he likes the poetry of robert service.

my kids missed the dark musty museums with a thousand flavors of dead christs, and monuments to inbred, intolerant rulers with hereditary blood diseases. they missed out on the dogma that the common folk are just worthless peasants to be directed by their betters, the stringpullers and their media lackies.

they suffer under the delusion that one can pull oneself up by their own bootstraps, working harder and smarter to create, rather than working dad's network of connections(which their dad never saw the point of assembling).

but they did learn to appease their own curiousity, with libraries, and a hunger for knowledge and books, and the refusal to accept the pat statements of others, without checking it out for themselves..

they're not real big on tv, either. so sorry.

they often miss tuning in for their programming as well, being too busy living life, instead of watching others fake it.

So do we all agree, at least, that this guy is nuts?

I think his whole panning-for-gold thing is charming, and a lovely experience and set of memories for his children. (Except for the rattlesnake thing, but that's just me.) We happened to choose to give our children a different set of experiences that they will never forget. (We were once trapped in the Lincoln Memorial during an unbelievable storm, and if you think sitting in a marble cave with Abraham Lincoln and his wonderful words for an hour with lightning every few minutes is something you can forget, think again.) I don't understand at all what's wrong with museums; can someone explain that to me? And I happen to enjoy Robert W. Service and Shakespeare; they're hardly mutually exclusive. And my kids worked plenty, from an early age.

Here's the upshot: I'm not criticizing any of Palin's life or family choices; she has hers and I have mine. I definitely do not like the polarization in the country that seems to be occurring because of this. But the bottom line is that her life choices, fine as they are, do not qualify her to be president of the freaking United States of America. She happens to be lacking the particular qualifications for this.

Is she just a regular old Joe (so to speak), just like common folk, and didn't go to some high-falutin' Harvard or Yale? Yeah, she is. Forgive me. I want my president to have gone to Harvard or Yale, if that's an option; there's a reason that they're considered two of the top universities in the world. Having a president who is proud of her ignorance and just-plain-folkiness is not an asset, it's a liability. Even that idiot Bush went to Yale, if you recall, and Annapolis isn't exactly a joke school, either. Damn. Don't we want our president to be the best he or she can possibly be? How stupid would we all have to be if we didn't? Isn't this how Warren G. Harding got elected? Look how that turned out. (Not well.) Who are we going to elect next time, Carrot Top?

And now, to quote one of my favorite all time just-plain-folk, "Ah has spoken." (Be sure to let me know in my comments if you know who was known for saying that!)


WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1859
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

Festina Lente

This was a a favorite of my high school Latin teacher, the phrase "festina lente", and she applied it to the class from time to time. It means "to make haste slowly." In other words, I seem to making progress, but I'm sure not in a hurry about it.

It only took me a month to read less than a hundred pages and finally give up on The Yiddish Policeman's Union. I don't know if Faulkner is going to be any easier, but I would like to read another book or two before the summer is over, and I wasn't getting anywhere with that one.

I also decided today to finally get a handle on what schoolwork I need to do before September, all of it involving the library's website, and so now I have a plan for that. I thought I would have to go into school to use my computer there because I don't have FrontPage at home, but with a little creative thinking, I realized that I can log in remotely and do what I need on my school computer from home. This is good, because it's really only about five minutes of work -- changing three URL's in links to online reference sources that have been changed -- and really, when was I going to drag myself in to do that? My other school project is a great big one, I can do it from home, and if I don't finish by September, I'll finish it in school. I have many pages -- I'd guess 25 -- that provide links to various websites, all broken down by subject category. For example, I have a page called "Math" and it links to several math-related websites. Some pages have very few links, like math, and some, like science, have A Lot. Anyway, I'm transferring them all over to a site called PortaPortal, where all the subjects will be listed on one page and then have dropdown menus, more or less, to the actual website links. So that's a lot of work. And I've got a month.

I'm also keeping a two day food log, which I need to bring when I go to the nutritionist on Friday. So far, I don't think I'm eating anything weird, but I'm not eating anything good, either. I already have a list of my questions and concerns.

I won't know until tomorrow if I'm actually meeting those old friends. I wish I didn't have the doctor's appointment in the middle of the day, because then I could have made plans. It's not even a big deal appointment, just the annual follow-up with the cardiologist, and its not like I'm having any problems, but I made the appointment months ago and it's too late to change now. I'll see what happens.

WATCHING L/O: SVU :: ENTRY #1822
SUMMER BOOK #3: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Stop the Insanity!!

Oh, wait, the insanity stops tomorrow, at least until September. But it was in full force today. Get this: the SCM and I got into the library this morning and it had been re-arranged.

Here's what that means. Several posters, as well as a framed portrait of George Washington, were taken down, and left in random places. Some of the tables had been turned so that they were now sideways. Many smaller pieces, like the sign-in desk, were on the other side of the room. The small clock and the fire drill instructions were missing, at first. The photocopier was unplugged and moved over about eight feet. And the best of all: the ten or so stacks (each stack is one vertical six-shelf bookshelf) that we had left empty because of the flood a few weeks ago and the work on the ceiling to be done above it were filled with books. The books that we had arranged on carts so that we could re-shelve them properly had been randomly put on the shelves for artistic effect, the way you would arrange shelves at home, but never in a library, with some books facing forward, some on their sides, some at angle. Even weirder, several frames photographs had been taken from the SCM's desk -- he's a very good photographer -- and placed here and there, some in the stacks with the books, one on the so-called circulation desk.

WTF?

Several deep breaths later, we learned that the same architects who had brought us this nightmare of a library had been in on Saturday to take pictures of their beautiful creation. They wreaked all this havoc, and did not put a single thing back. (They also moved two chairs and a coffee table out of the lounge area and blocked the entrance to the computer area with them.) The principal knows, but was pre-occupied with graduation today (in? out? rain? shine?) and so I need to address this with him tomorrow. In the meantime, the SCM took lots of pictures.

(It was an indoor graduation, btw. They didn't set up outside, and then it never rained a drop.)

In other news, I picked up some Wii toys and have to return one thing -- the baseball bat/tennis racket/golf club thingy -- because it doesn't work. What surprised me was that I didn't really find a good store to get the stuff in; I started at Circuit City, which didn't even have one game, then tried Toys R Us and finally Best Buy, and wasn't happy with any of them. Target, where I started on Sunday, probably has the best stuff. Who knew?

And now my arm is very sore, but in a good way. But time to lie down anyway.


WATCHING KEITH OLBERMAN :: ENTRY #1787

We Almost Lost the Civil War Today

So we're all there in the library, minding our own library business, when the waterfall started to gush. It was 9.00. Water was pouring down the back wall in sheets, falling back behind the bookstacks and running out underneath them, soaking the carpet into puddles. Within minutes, drops started falling from the ceiling into the puddles, splashing up onto the lowest shelf each of about four bookstacks, all in the American History section.

Oh, btw, no rain today, not a cloud in the sky.

Our two-pronged approach was to call the office for the head custodian pronto, and to start pulling books off those bottom shelves. Media Girl made the call, and then she joined the SCM and me in the book-saving process. Within minutes, the custodian was there, went up on the roof to see wtf was going on, and came back with this report:

There were roofers up there, trying to locate the leaks in the roof. They thought a really good way to do this would be to flood the roof and see what happened.

The flood slowed down a bit, and I beat it down to the principal's office and told him we were in semi-crisis stage because, although the water was slowing down, it was still coming, but we had saved the books. He was like "Huh?" and I told him that the roofers had flooded the roof. And he was all "There are roofers here?" but not puzzled and duh-like, more pissed-off, because the roofers were there without his knowledge or permission. He asked when the flood had started, and I looked at my watch and said "Twenty minutes ago."

He had been just about to leave the building for a meeting at the Superintendent's office, but within another twenty minutes, the principal, the superintendent, and the super's assistant were in the library telling the roofer to turn off the water and not to make any damn holes in the ceiling (which had been his plan.) The roofer was kind of dopey, hardly a surprise to anyone concerned. He had been authorized to repair the roof in the summer, when there were no kids in the building. He had also been authorized to come by this afternoon and look the situation over, no more.

As far as we go, they shop-vacced up the water and left fans going to dry everything off, and we have the whole section blocked off. Something in the area of maybe 800 books, starting with North American native peoples and ending somewhere around the Cold War, are on various carts or tables or the tops of nearby low bookstacks. It'll be like putting a really big jigsaw puzzle back together.

So, how was your day?

WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1772

Take Two

I wrote an entry at school today that turned out to be quite morose, which was not my intention when I started writing it or when I took the pictures to go with it. So here are the pictures:



This is my desk at work, which I rather like, unlike a lot of the other stuff in that joke they call a library. *ahem* Anyway, my desk is nice and big and has lots of drawers and a lot of room underneath to hide stuff. I could sleep there, a la George Costanza.


These are the shelves behind my desk, all for my own stuff, which I really, really like, because in the old library I had two horrible sets of bookshelves that were 30 year old shop-class rejects. I have lots of nice room now for all kinds of stuff, books, and the I.D. card system and book processing supplies and the four volume set of the Dewey Decimal system.



And, oy. This is what I see when I sit at the main part of my desk (not the side part where the computer is.) Is this just the stupidest thing you ever saw? There are seven such pillars in the library, but this one is the most strategically placed. People walk in the door (on the right end of the picture) and kind of just disappear. That would be the same people I'm supervising, and whose parents expect me to guarantee, more or less, that they will come out of my library alive and in the same condition they were in when they came in.

So there, those are my library pics for the day. Other than that, I've done little besides argue with medical billing people and/or health insurance people, and go back to the supermarket for more Greek yogurt, which is apparently my newest food obsession. Try it. Fage yogurt, with honey. Mmmm good.

I'm off to nuke me some dinner.



WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1769

Hello!

Hello! My eldest nephew, JJ, answers the phone and says Hello! and sounds just like the MovieFone guy and when he does it I can't answer him because I can only laugh. I'm just sharing.

I am just soooooo tired today and there's no reason for it at all. I fell asleep around 9.30 last night, cracked open an eye at 10 and again at 11 to change the channel, and again at 3 to turn the TV off, but I never got out of bed that I can recall (or, as it were, off the couch) and I woke up with the alarm, which is maybe the third or fourth time that's happened this school year.

Ooh, I just had fun. It's first lunch in the library, so I'm here -- the SCM is at lunch -- and in the last few minutes I was asked for stuff on the Beatles and hippies, anything we had on the Salem which trials, and a basic summary of Andrew Jackson. And that's where the fun is, if you're a dork, I guess. This is the fun part of being a school librarian, jumping from one topic to another, seeing what it is they're looking for. As I've said many times, I don't like my job, but I love my work. So there ya go.

Okay, back to the exhaustion. I have had three cups of coffee today, although sadly, my experiment to see if I could have a cup of real (aka, caffeinated) coffee for my second cup was a failure. (Which means I had three cups of decaf today, but hey, it's got some.) I thought I could have just one cup of caf a day, hours after my blood pressure med, and it wouldn't interfere. And it didn't. No shakes, no feeling quivery or anything. But the heartburn! And it only took me two weeks to make the connection! So I'm back to just decaf, and as little chocolate as I can get away with, including no chocolate at all at night because that will just kill me. Really, I'm going to be a joy one day in the little old tattooed ladies' home when they have to cope with all my special diet needs, not to mention my plaid blanket problem. (Although, I've recently realized that I don't sleep under a plaid blanket in the family room, so what's up with that? I've justified it in my mind by deciding that the family room is two steps down from the rest of the house and it's a well-known fact that *ahem* serpents cannot go down stairs. SHUT UP! Leave me alone with my fantasy rationalizations!)

Today is pedi day which means that tomorrow is tattoo day. I have already said that this is my last one, but god help me, I'm reconsidering. Wonderful Niece expressed her amazement that not one of my tattoos is Mickey related, and you know .....

My day continues to amuse. Here it is, almost time to leave and a boy came in and asked for a book by title. I looked it up and asked him "The one about the siege of Stalingrad?" and he pumped his fist in the air and said "YES!" and ran to the shelves to get it. He was very cute.

And now, home after the pedi, and listen: I know what I want for Mother's Day. The Sibs and I have been getting our pedis here forever and until today, neither one of us thought to turn on the massage in the massage chair. Ohhhhhh ..... heaven. It was wunderful. Well, they're always asking me to tell them what I want, and now I've got something to say.

However will I stay up for Lost tonight?

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1743

I Was Out Friday

As I mentioned once or twelve times, in order to avoid the teacher-training day, and as it turns out, a good decision. They did do a variety of "bonding" activities, including drawing pictures of teachers (one group drew a math teacher, one drew an English teacher, and so on) and then inviting comments via Post-It from everyone. The pictures of the children were posted on the walls of the room and everyone was invited to look at them to see all these children who were special to someone.

Excuse me.

BARF.

So, a good decision. As I commented to someone earlier today, had I been here on Friday, I would have been on the front page of the county newspaper today: LOCAL TEACHER GOES ON BERSERK MURDEROUS RAMPAGE.

In the meantime, today, not so bad. I had the most wonderful class in here this morning. There were only five students in it; this was the advanced level English as a Second Language class, and the teacher wanted them each to find a novel to read. I took out several, just for starters, and described, I think Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises to start. And one of the boys said "Oh, I read that, I liked it." The teacher asked if he had read it in English or Russian, and he said Russian, and I thought, Cool. So these were all very good readers in their native languages and becoming very good readers in English. They ended up with a real eclectic list that included The Sirens of Titan, Gone With the Wind, Catch-22, The Godfather, and something by Robert Grisham. The teacher and I have decided to base a year-long project on this idea next year, so I'm looking forward to that.

It's a lovely sunny day today. The last few days have been more sunny than not, despite predictions of rain. It was windy yesterday, but all in all, not a big deal. I'm going to the mall after school today, armed with the Chico's gift card the MIL gave me for Christmas, and then somewhere, maybe Best Buy, to get a new mouse for my school computer, since the old one has somehow been crushed to pieces by me in a rage disappeared.

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Later. Yada, yada, I got the mouse, I got the jeans. First, a mysterious announcement upon which I cannot elaborate: my sister is one of the best people now living on this planet. I don't mean this in the she-bought-me-chocolate kind of way, but in the spiritual she-is-a-quality-human kind of way. Not my story to tell, but I'm very proud of her today.

Next. I am inching closer to my next tattoo. I think I've got a place for it, a bit strange perhaps, inside of my right arm, just below the elbow. At an angle. Words, I've known for a long time that I wanted words for my next tattoo. Here are my two possibilities:





Here's the story. Imagine, of course, is the John Lennon song and is a wonderful expression of hope for the world, and was one of my mother's favorite songs. (I just read an article in Newsweek about how corny it is and so many baby boomers will have Imagine tattoos, and fuck it, I already have a peace sign so I'm hardly unique.) Que sera, sera, if you're old enough to remember, is the name of a Doris Day song from the fifties. The words are supposedly Italian for "what will be, will be" which they're not. Real Italian, I mean. But in the context of the song, that's what it means, and this was one of my grandmother's favorite songs and I used to sing it for her when I was a wee one, and I do very much subscribe to the whole "what will be, will be" philosophy, especially now with the Crohn's and stuff. (These are also the fonts I'd like it done in, typewrite for Imagine and handwriting for que sera, sera. And at an angle.)

Whaddaya think, guys?


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1727

Yet Another Day

Tired, but not as unbearably tired as I was yesterday. I've been sleeping weird, nothing new for me.

I've been very busy at work, which I like to be. I said something on Twitter yesterday about work and someone replied not to let the kids get to me, but really, the kids are almost never the problem there. Here and there, of course, but mostly the kids are very nice and fairly polite, at least to me. My current project involves other teachers in some ways, and some of these guys are just dopes. ("Can you confirm that you still have the four videotapes signed out to you?" "Well, I have one of them. I don't know where the others are." Uh ... really? How nice for you.)

Anyway, K is still pretty sick, although she's taking a good antibiotic. She's giving serious thought to the sinus surgery she needs; we just talked about it a little while ago. She promises to be okay through her recuperation as long as she has enough pain meds. Amen to that, sister.

I managed to spill my guts, as it were, to my sister just before without emphasizing any aspect of the stress affecting me physically. (I feel fine, actually; I only know it's aggravating my condition because my tongue is acting up.) So we're in a good place now, no secrets. (Except that one, but she doesn't know about it so it doesn't count, right?)

Okey dokey. The Hubs is out to dinner with his boss tonight, so things are quiet. I've only got the one of them hacking up a lung instead of both.

I must have had something else to tell you all tonight, but it's passed right through my head. Another time, perhaps.

WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1715

So Here's What It Is

I've been saying all along that Hillary Clinton was not my candidate of choice, and now I'm going to tell you why. It's the truth/secrets thing. She sees nothing wrong with either keeping secrets or distorting the truth about things, and does so with an air of certain confidence that she will never be found out. This is not different, in essence, from the way most politicians operate, and it is certainly how Bill Clinton operates, although I liked him as president, and all thing being equal, would vote for him again. But all things are not equal, and it's time for us to expect better from our president, and she is not showing us better, she is showing us the same old politics-as-usual. (So is McCain, who, did you know, has widespread melanoma? It's not a secret-secret, it's out there, but you don't hear a lot about it.) Anyway, Obama does seem to be different, and I think he's the different we need at the moment. We need to have our faith restored in our government. Hillary is not up to that task, however up to the other tasks of being president she might be.

So there.

Last week at school, I decided to pick up my videotape cataloging project from last year, and I could see that there was enough work there to keep me busy for some time, maybe til June. I finished it this morning. :( Oh, I still have some tinkering and tweaking to do with it which I couldn't do today because Media Girl is out sick and I need her input, but pretty much, done. We have got some really strange items in our videotape collection, that's all I have to say.

I decided last week that I deserved a present. Here it is:



I have had a great many Mickey Mouse watches in my day because I have always believed that if you're wearing a watch, it might as well have a Mouse on it. My very first watch was not a Mickey but a Cinderella; I remember one night sitting on my father's lap as he taught me to tell time and then taking me out and buying me the watch. (It probably cost $7.99.) I've had many Mickeys since then and a few not-Mickeys, but the Mickey I was wearing most recently, when I've been wearing a watch, had thin silver hands (as opposed to white-gloved black hands) and I just couldn't see them well enough anymore for me to read the time on the watch. I like a Mickey watch with mouse hands, goldarnit. So I got this one through Amazon, not much more than my original Cinderella watch, because I could also never see the point in wearing an expensive watch. This one is very cute, with a bit of a 3D feel to the Mickey, and of course, has the gloved hands. And numbers, I see no point in wearing a watch that doesn't have numbers on it. I don't want to decipher a watch, I just want to see what time it is.

Once again, it is a cloudy, gray day. The temps are inching up, slowly, but we've had heavy winds and overcast skies for what feels like weeks. And allergy season has started early, even before the trees start to bud. I don't know how many people I know who are already having terrible allergy troubles. Although my eyes are slightly better this week, I think. For now.

I keep thinking that I should be twittering from my phone, just because I can. Ah, toys.

WATCHING OPRAH :: ENTRY #1712

Nothing New

No news on Edith today, but I'll call my cousin tonight and see what's going on.

Bluesleepy posted the cutest picture of Gracie today in her Oshkosh B'Gosh, so I had to share this picture of R with you, which is roughly 25 years old:



Her hair isn't even really longer now, and she looks pretty much the same, although slightly less elfin. I would post a current picture of her if I didn't think she would have me hunted down and killed for it, so it isn't really worth it. But she was sure cute as a button.

Otherwise, a quiet day of cataloging videotapes, occasionally interspersed with reading bits of nephew JJ's master's thesis. (It's his second attempt; I'm proofreading.) It merely confirms my belief that all graduate level theses are deadly dull and boring, even when well-written or about a basically interesting topic. I've got 20 pages read. Only 65 to go.

Okay, K and I are running out for a few supermarket items --

Being a Goof

So now I have this great project to work on at work, and I'm already bored. What I have before me this afternoon is several videotapes that have to be entered in a kind of library code-language (it's called MARC, which stands for ... something ... machine ... accessible ... record ... I don't know, ceeping? Okay, it's Machine Readable Cataloging, no idea where the A came from.) Anyway, I don't care for MARC coding, but it's what I've got. So I thought I would write you all instead.

My stress level is considerably lower today than it was yesterday. Most of this is due to less stress with my offspring, always good. Had a long chat with K last night about a variety of things, including her desire to move out on her own, but she doesn't want me to feel bad about her moving out. Uh ... really, no problem, no problem at all. I love her dearly and enjoy her company, but it's time -- past time -- for both of us for her to be on her own. It's the financial issue, though, and graduate school, but she's examining options. As for the other one, I hadn't really spoken to her when they got home Tuesday night, other than a quick hug and a hello when I went to pick up K at R's apartment, so I was stressed over worrying if she'd had less than a good trip, since K had some issues (which was part of my Tuesday night stress.) But no, R was tickled with every minute of the whole trip, so I breathed a sigh of relief after talking to her last night.

I'm not being stressed much today, but I haven't had the chance to call the therapist yet. I'll call tomorrow, since there's no school (Good Friday) and I can call from the privacy of home, as opposed to calling from school. I am very, very psyched about sleeping past 5.45 am tomorrow. Less so about going to the gynecologist at 10.30, and having mixed feelings about going to the accountant in the afternoon. I am such a numbers and money dummy that I just never have any sense of how taxes are going to work out each year. If they tell me I owe, I'm not surprised; if they tell me there's a refund, I'm delighted and amazed. Since I didn't do anything overtly stupid this year, a refund is a better possibility, but again, I never know. I just like the accountant thing to be over. (Although I'd really like a nice refund to put in the Hubs' new car fund, so we could get that whole debacle over with at last.)

Oh, oh, get this. In the period before I went to lunch, I got a call from one of the school social workers, who tells me that she has a girl there with her who needs to find information for an assignment on anorexia. The S.W. says to me, very hesitantly, "Do you have ... anything ... on that?" I bit my tongue and did not reply, "What are you, a freaking moron?" and instead I said sweetly, "Yes. Of course." So then she goes on and says "So what should I have her do?" Uh ... didn't you go to college, lady? "Tell her to come to the library and see me." "Oh. You'll help her?" Why yes, yes I will. That is the condition of my receiving a salary. People come to the library and I help them find the information they need. And what is it that you do again?

Anyway, the kid, thank god, was way more on the ball, and remembered how to the use the library catalog when I reviewed it with her, and had no trouble whatsoever locating the information she needed in the books we found, and even explained to me why one of the books was better than the others, and so on. Why she didn't just come here herself I have no idea, but it probably had something to do with the assignment being late and needing an excuse on file with her caseworker. Even so, just another case of people who should know better having no idea whatsoever of what a library is or what I'm here for. You know, it's disheartening after all these years. I shoulda been a fireman; everybody knows what they do.


WATCHING GEORGE LOPEZ :: ENTRY #1706

Good News, Less Than Good News

First, the less than good news. I believe that I am sinking into a depression. There are a variety of factors here, my illness, stress-inducing family, and so on. This morning, I was feeling very, very sad, and trying to get a handle on what to do about it. I think what I need is to go back to therapy, and I even looked up my old therapist on the Internet, but I don't think going back to her is an option. Although I'm sure she would see me, the group she's in is now specializing in treating eating disorders, and I think I would feel very out of place there. They had already started to move in this direction before I stopped going, and just sitting in the waiting room was sometimes awkward, and I was always concerned about running into a kid from my school there. (Not that I would have cared if anyone knew I went to therapy, but I thought it might be very stressful for the kid to think a teacher knew she was going there.)

Anyway, I was thinking about that, and how on earth to find a new therapist, and how I feel I am without someone to talk to, as I wrote yesterday, and then a very cool thing happened. The phone rang.

On the other end was my dear Colleague, she who was formerly the library secretary and who is now banished to another office in the school. (She's not actually banished; she got promoted away from me.) She called up to see how the girls liked their trip to Paris. And stuff just started to spill out of me. I realized that she is the person I'm missing in my life. She is the one I always talked to about anything, and she to me. We've gotten accustomed to being separated, but not really adjusted to it, if that means anything. As we were talking, I couldn't believe how much I was missing her -- yes, she's only in another part of the same building, but we rarely cross paths -- and it felt wonderful to talk to her. (We do talk on the phone, but not often enough, and then it's all we can do just to catch up with each other's lives.) And then I remembered something else: her daughter, married, in her thirties, goes to see someone for therapy, based mostly on my success and recommendation that it would be good for her. So, the upshot is, I got the name of someone to go to.

It's a good decision to go to therapy, and good to have a name to start with. I don't feel like I need to dig as deep as I did last time, I just feel like I need some support for awhile. When I first got my diagnosis in January, even then I thought that I might want to go see someone after a couple of months. So that's the good news. (Being depressed is the less than good news.)

I also kind of traced back a little of what's irritating my stomach, so hopefully I will stop eating that -- edamame, which I love -- and it will clear up this little bit of a flare I seem to be having. So I felt good about figuring that out, too. I hope it's not the apples that I've started eating again, because I really like apples, and it's easier to give up the edamame. I think that's it, anyway.

(Crohn's, btw, is one of the two major inflammatory bowel diseases, the other being ulcerative colitis. The main difference between the two, as I understand it, is that U.C. occurs only in the colon, but Crohn's can affect any part of the entire digestive system, including *ahem* both ends, the mouth/tongue, and ... the other end. Also, because these are auto-immune diseases, they can also cause rheumatoid arthritis [the big auto-immune disease] reactions in the joints, particularly of the hands and feet. I could go on, but that's the basics, that's why I get sores on my tongue when it acts up. I didn't have the ankle and wrist swelling until I got very sick, but the tongue is apparently an early sign for me.)

I also undertook a pretty big library project this morning, one that we had started last year but had to put off due to the change in the library software over the summer. (I'm cataloging our video collection. We have about 900 videotapes.) So that was a good decision too, to immerse myself in work that needs to be done, is somewhat interesting, and just the right amount of challenging. I'm also weeding out old and/or never used videos while I'm at it. I'm up to about 480, which includes all the ones we got done last year, so I guess this should keep me busy until June, at least.

(Why do we still have so many VHS tapes, you wonder? For one thing, we've got them, and we don't have the budget to replace them all on DVD at once. For another, many of them won't be available on DVD, maybe ever. Not to mention that we have relatively few DVD players to go around in the building, but we still have VCR's in many rooms, and many VCR's on carts to move around. The newer or remodeled classrooms have computers connected to video projectors, so they can just show DVD's through that system, but it's not widespread enough to make our videotapes obsolete. Yet. Although anything new that we buy is on DVD.)

I do feel better than I did this morning. I can't say that what I was feeling was despair, but I felt very, very sad. Oddly, I slept very well last night, which surprised me, so that didn't contribute to the morning's mood, but I woke up feeling like I'd gotten to my last straw. Better now, some. Of course, I do still have to go home (whence I shall post this) and talk to the people who live there (or used to live there), and I do still have to spend some time in a car with them on Sunday so we can go have Easter dinner with the ILs -- mm boy, looking forward to that -- but there you go. You gotta do what you gotta do, n'est-ce pas?

(K did indeed bring me a copy of Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d'Azkaban, which I could even read, some. It made me giggle.)


WATCHING ----- :: ENTRY #1706