How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Getting in touch with my inner Viola Swamp

Somewhere along the line, students at my high school figured out that if they rolled pennies up the aisles when a certain sub was there, he would bend over and pick them up. In order to humiliate the man, students did this constantly. I never rolled a penny, yet I can't help but feel that I am being made to bear the combined karmic debt of every one of my classmates who did.

Subbing, it turns out, is pretty much exactly as unpleasant as you'd assume it would be. No pennies rolled so far, but I've already seen pretty much every run of the mill take advantage of the sub trick:

"We don't have a seating chart."

"I need to go to the counselor/the nurse/another teacher/my caoch/my locker/the dance team room..."

"We always get to leave early for lunch."

And so on. Fortunately, it turns out that I am neither stupid, nor sufficiently gullible. Unfortunately, I haven't worked with students in groups larger than six in a few years. While I used to be able to routinely command the attention of 200 high schoolers (albeit with a microphone) I am very much out of practice these days.

Maybe I need to take the advice that Tyra routinely gives to ANTM contestants to spend some time in front of the mirror. Except I'd be working on my mean teacher face instead of whatever pretty-ugly-dead-behind-the-eyes expression it is that the models aspire to. A whole different kind of fierce.

It's not all bad news. I did bring you presents from today's high schoolers in the form of this fascinating conversation:

Girl 1: Anybody who wears make up has a complex about how she looks. You need to believe you're beautiful.

Girl 2: I wear make up. Don't you?

Girl 1: Well, I mean girls who wear a lot of make up and they wear it all day every day. I only wear eye liner and lip gloss I don't put it on until after practice. I don't wear, like, foundation.

Devolves into a conversation about how girls who wear lip liner to make their skinny "duck lips" look bigger just end up looking like they have mustaches. I turn my attention to another student, and then listen in again in time for this gem:

Girl 1: There's someone for everybody. I mean, look at [redacted]'s girlfriend. She is butt-ass ugly and he loves her!

So it appears that there is hope for all of us, even the butt-ass ugly ones. Ladies, just believe you're beautiful, duck lips or not, and lay off the make up. Which could actually save me a couple of minutes in the morning, particularly when I'm called for a job around the time school is starting, leaving me precious little time to get ready.

One thing I know for sure: if I'm going to keep being woken up by the sub-finder phonebot, I am going to have to change my ringtone to something less jarring than the theme from Monday Night Football. Or else just hire some guys to dump Gatorade over me first thing in the morning. Because, you know, same difference.

We really can't hit them? Like, at all?

Yesterday, I tweeted about wanting to tell a guy at substitute teacher orientation that if he didn't stop clicking his pen, I was going to take it away from him. That was early on, folks, before I instead found myself fighting a very strong urge to turn around and say "YOU ARE BEHAVING LIKE A CHILD." Yeah, things went downhill fast at sub orientation.

First of all, we have people who have been told that business casual dress is required who have showed up in jeans, shorts, tennis shoes, rhinestoned flip flops or, in the case of a girl sitting near me, sequined flip flops with a beach-appropriate halter dress. I mean, sure, I wore boots that have been described as "hookery" but only because they are black, knee-high, pointy, and shiny. But I wore them with khaki trousers and you could only see the pointy toes.

This explains the time spent on the dress code during orientation. One man felt it incumbent upon himself to ask whether we are allowed to wear campaign buttons to substitute teach. He used a tone of voice that clearly indicated that of course HE would never do such a thing, but he didn't trust the imbeciles around him to know better.

Then we got to the "you are allowed to neither hit nor date your students" portion of the program. Pretty straightforward, right? NOPE. Most of the questions during this portion centered on the "don't take photos of your students" directive. This included a question from Clicky Nervouspen about video cameras in the hallways. He's a grandfather (Objection, your honor! Relevance?) and he wonders whether parents have problems with these video cameras. Answer: Uh...no.

Next, the part about being fingerprinted. This was the last thing before the break. As a person who had consumed one cup of coffee at breakfast, one Diet Dr Pepper on the way there, and most of a Coke generously provided by the school district, I desperately needed this break. There were lots of questions. For the most part though, these were valid questions because it was a complicated matter. Despite imminent pants-peeing concerns, I managed to wait out these questions patiently, at least on the outside. My pen-clicking colleague, not so much.

He loudly sighed and yawned, stage whispered No more questions! every time the HR person asked if there were questions about the fingerprinting, until the fifth or so time when he actually yelled "NO!"

The dramatics didn't stop after the break either. It was all eerily reminiscent of the two blonde girls, usually named Ashley, who were in every group of high schoolers I had in DC. These two girls spent the entire week rolling their eyes and hissing This is stupid! about everything we did.

But this was not a 16 year-old girl. It was a grandfather who wants to substitute educate children. And he couldn't sit through less than three hours of orientation without throwing a low-grade tantrum about it. Yikes.

Sure, I had some comically bad substitute teachers in my day. But it's a little frightening to see that there is no screening process whatsoever, beyond a criminal background check. We all go into the same system to be randomly selected by the phonebot.

Students this year though have a much better shot at getting a qualified sub, based on how many of us (at least half of the over 100 people there, I'd say) signed the "I'm certified and looking for a full-time job" sheet. I suspect these sign-up sheets were there merely to humor us and were promptly shredded after we left.

So, San Antonio-area students, perhaps I will substitute see you soon. Unless they call Grandpa Grumpypants, in which case, everybody cough at exactly 11:25.

To Whom It May Concern:

When I left my job in San Antonio over two years ago now, they hired someone full-time to do it.  He did a very bad job of it.  There is no longer enough left of my job to make a full-time position.  That’s sad on the one hand because I put a lot of time and work into making it what it was and we were helping a lot of kids.

But it is also very bad news for me right now. I was kind of counting on it as a back-up since it had been hinted that the job would be there if I couldn’t get a teaching job.  I found out yesterday that it’s not.

This has me back at the drawing board.  I could sub and tutor and try to do some test scoring or something all at once to scrape together a living wage.  Or I can go back to job-hunting in earnest.  I did it for a year in Austin and a year in Madison.  The job sites and the cover letters and the never hearing anything back from anyone anyway.  The never being able to do anything that isn’t looking for a job without feeling guilty.

The constant rejection is made worse since I’ve been rejected on the basis of a resume and a cover letter.  I’ve been rejected what has to be literally hundreds of times now on the basis of things I wrote.  And then I question that and, my God, if I don’t even have an ability with words, then what do I have?  Questioning my writing ability means questioning a part of the very foundation of who I think I am.

I don’t have too much more of this in me.  I didn’t really have it in me when I got here, but I had my sure-thing 99% placement teaching program.  They’re at under 50% this year, at least for the special ed group.  Of those with jobs, two-thirds are working in areas we were initially told we couldn’t do because we weren’t trained to work with the very high level needs among kids in those classrooms.  But there weren’t jobs in the areas we were trained in, so they started making exceptions, nevermind the kids who now have unqualified teachers.

What is really making me crazy is that when I was deciding where to go when leaving Madison, I made, for perhaps the first time in my life, the decision that was the most responsible.  I looked at what made the most sense financially and career-wise and I did that.

I came to San Antonio despite the fact that it has never really been for me.  When I moved here the first time, I tried to make myself fit it, and I was miserable.  I came this time knowing the challenges that this place presents for me, but hoping I could make some part of it fit me.  My family is here and some very good friends.  It would make me sad to leave them and it would be terribly hard not be near my niece and nephew after having gotten to see them regularly.  But I can’t stay for them either.

I guess what I’m saying is that all options are back on the table.  I'm applying for what jobs I can find here, but I'm not limiting myself to here.  As much as I can’t afford to move again, I can’t afford to keep not working either.  I can’t handle the idea of a third year of working multiple crappy jobs I don’t like for little pay and no benefits.  I used to do work that I was proud of.  I miss that.  I miss the person I was when I worked hard at something I enjoyed and considered important.

I’m tired.  I’m sick of the uncertainty and I am feeling utterly defeated.  

And I have cover letters to write.

How to start a superawesome day of looking for a job

Night before: your body stubbornly refuses to sleep before 2 am no matter what you tell it about being ready for when it has to wake up for a job and what if somebody calls for an interview in the morning? What then, body? It scoffs at the improbability, remaining awake.

Wake up at 10:00.

Roll over, start computer, check email you've been using for all of your job emailing purposes. Receive email stating, "There is still a large surplus of special ed teachers looking for positions." Tremendous.

Get up. Make coffee.

Call district HR offices:

District One: "Your call is important to us...please stay on the line...your call will be answered in the order in which it was received...thank you for calling...we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes...please try your call at a different time CLICK"

District Two: "We can't tell you if there are any openings. You are free to contact individual schools."

District Three: Phonebot lists openings, most of which closed over a month ago, none of which are campus-specific teaching positions.

District Four: Voicemail.

Etcetera

Shower, dress, map location to lots and lots of schools. Schools that, per emails from principals and special ed coordinators, have no openings. Print resumes. Put on your "I'm perfectly fine with rejection" face. Go.

No, really. Go. Now.

Why they don't let first-graders have the vote

The scene: reading camp. Six year-old student (Hereafter, Six) and seven year-old student (blah blah, Seven) are coloring pictures of words that have the long-a sound, including a frame.  Six has drawn a person inside his frame...

Six: Guess who I drew!  He has white hair.

Me: Santa Claus?

Six: NO!

Me: Uh...my grandpa?

Six: No, the president!

Me: President Washington?  He had white hair.

Six: Yes! President Washington!

Seven: He's mean!

Me: President Washington was our first president a long, long time ago.

Seven: Oh.

Me (seizing on what we in the business call a "teachable moment"): Who is the president now?

Six and Seven:

Me: President Bush.

Seven: He's the one who's mean! (There was some unintelligible explanation here, which seemed to maybe have to do with the president making kids take tests?  Possibly?  Hard to say.)

Me: We get a new president in January.  Everyone will vote in November.

Seven: I'm voting for the black guy what looks like a basketball player.

Six: I'm voting for Indiana Jones!

Sadly, I'm not sure this is so far below the thought process of many voters in this country. I mean, hopefully most people know that Indiana Jones is not only not running, but also fictitious. Hopefully.

These two kids could have a future though in producing campaign commercials:

"Sure, he looks like a basketball player, but is Barack Obama ready to lead?"

"John McCain: He's no Indiana Jones."

It doesn't really matter to me, either way. I'm voting for Batman.

Plus, I get paid to read Junie B. Jones

I complain about reading camp. Always have. It's a lot of hours a day in small rooms making kids, who generally have attention deficits, do something that is terribly difficult for them.

But this line of work has its upsides.

Last week, when I was tired and crabby one day, I called a cookie break wherein my older kids and I ate M&M cookies from the snack box.

Today, I spent ten minutes of my workday chasing a 6 year-old around the gym, rolling a giant ball behind him while he screamed INDIANA JONES IS THE COOLEST!

I have spent other gym breaks being repeatedly arrested by this same student, who was at the time wearing a cop hat (apparently from the My First Village People Costume Set) and Batman belt. He'd take me off to jail and when I asked what I was arrested for, he'd say, "Tell it to the judge!" Then I'd escape from jail so he'd run around chasing me and get some energy out. Otherwise he'd mostly look at himself in the mirror, marveling at how awesome he looked in the Officer Batman ensemble.

My commute takes roughly three minutes. I could walk there. I don't, because it is generally one thousand degrees by the time I leave in the morning, but I could.

I have starred in not one, but two short stories this summer. In one, I was hit in the face by a pie, tricked into eating hot pepper pie, and subsequently bitten by a vampire bat. In the other, I turned into a grasshopper with the hiccups, but my faithful students found a magical talking cricket to transform me back into myself. Whew.

I can totally justify doing Mad Libs at work, under the guise of teaching parts of speech.

A sentence I said last week: EVERYBODY NEEDS TO STOP SINGING AND COLOR. (In all honesty, this is only fun in retrospect. I was not enjoying myself at the time. They were supposed to be coloring the pictures on the page that involved whatever sound we were working on, but were instead trying, between the two of them to sing the alphabet. Except they were missing about 1/3 of the letters and they were entirely out of order and it was making me a little crazy.)

Jeans, t-shirt, flip flops, hoodie. To work.

A 12 year-old student told me how he was reading a magazine article with his Grandma and when he came across a big word he didn't know, they wrote it on a piece of paper and he broke it into syllables, using the technique I taught him, and then he read it. And his grandma was so proud of him.

And so am I. And that is what I try to remember when I'm saying "SIT IN YOUR CHAIR [HYPERACTIVE STUDENT]." for the one billionth time. That, and the way that there are only four days of camp remaining. That's pretty good too.

Dispatches from Reading Camp

One of my students growled at another one today.  In his defense, the other one totally had it coming.

These are my little ones.  I have them every morning from 8:30-12:00.  One boy is six, has ADHD, and is not medicated.  He is a sweetheart, but he makes me crazy.  Apparently he makes his seven year-old classmate crazy as well.  The other little boy is the quiet, calm one in the group and struggles much more with reading.  While he was reading, the six year-old kept talking and trying to read for him, and he finally had enough.  I had had enough too, but I'm not allowed to growl at kids, I don't think.

The same hyperactive six year-old (who, let us all remember, I had just spent three and a half hours in a small room with, attempting to make him learn) was picked up twenty minutes late on Monday.  Which meant that I spend the first twenty minutes of my lunch break entertaining him in the waiting room.  I was not overly friendly in informing his mother that we do not have staff to babysit children, as we all go to lunch at noon.  She understood.  It wouldn't happen again.

The next day, I only sat with him for ten minutes of my lunch break before he was picked up.  I don't know how late she showed up today.  When his mom called at 12:10, claiming car trouble, I went to eat, only because our high school worker was eating at the desk and could watch him for me.

All of this would be annoying, yet not infuriating if it weren't for this little jewel: today, when our clock read 8:28, she went to the desk to ask our office manager Kathy when I was coming to get him to start camp.  Kathy, because she is awesome, coolly replied "At 8:30.  She still has two minutes." 

Seriously, woman.  I've lost forty minutes of my life in three days to waiting for you, but if I don't show up at precisely 8:30 on your watch, you're complaining?  This makes me incoherent with disbelief.

So let us move along.  Perhaps we could discuss my nine year-old student who comes for several hours a day, despite being above grade level.  His parents want him to be a doctor.  I think he'd rather be a nine year-old for a while first. 

Although perhaps not, based on the way that when I tell him he misspelled something, he types it into the computer and uses spell check before he'll believe me.  I swear to you, kiddo, "until" has only one l and "everything" really is all one word.  I neither joke nor lie about spelling.

Today I nearly made a Go-Go Gadget Arms! reference with him before realizing that he probably wouldn't get it.  He was also able to write about a three hour boat trip without singing "a three hour tour, a three hour tour..."  Kids these days.

And now, I must get to bed so I can get up tomorrow and do it all again.  I can still get eight hours if I'm asleep...crap, fourteen minutes ago.  Let's hope I'm not the one growling tomorrow.

There haven't been any unicorns. Yet.

I'm a hippo.  I was a giraffe earlier this week, but have since become a hippo instead.

Because my advisor in my teaching program has assigned us group membership via brightly colored animal heads placed in our attendance folders.  Yes, of course we have attendance folders.  They too are brightly colored.  We attach them to the chalkboard rail using brightly colored clothes pins.  We wrote our names on school bus stickers to put on the outside.

We work in groups.  We make posters using Mr. Sketch scented markers (Is it just me or does Mr. Sketch sound like someone who should not be permitted within 500 feet of a school?) to show each other what we have talked about in our groups.  Today we read a case study that made us angry, so we all stood up together and said RAAAAAAHHH!

We finished the first part of our training today, so we all went out in the hall and made a line, all of us standing on the first tile block next to the lockers.  Then we put up our hands like we were pushing a wall, jumped forward and shouted WE DID IT!

This morning the 11th Graders I am student teaching with read and discussed Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (the 11th graders seemed unconcerned) and then I went to my training in the afternoon, where we gave the other animal groups standing o's by standing up, making O's with our arms over our heads, and saying OOOOOOOOHHH!

To be fair, some other people in my training class seem really into this stuff.  And yes, we're getting firsthand experience with some things some people may want to use with their students.

It's just, I'd rather we acted like we were all adults.  I have no doubt whatsoever that my advisor is an excellent teacher of elementary special ed.  But with grown ups, there wouldn't seem to be a need for all of the bells and whistles and Sesame Street stickers.  There shouldn't be a need of gimmicks or techniques to keep us engaged in the lesson.  The desire to be good teachers and the thousands of dollars we're paying for a program to that end ought to take care of that.

So here's my idea: reading, lecture, note-taking, discussion.  I picked up the idea somewhere, oh I don't know, maybe college, that this is how you educate adults.  Particularly when there is a lot of material to cover in a short amount of time, as is the case for us.

Then again, I am cranky and no fun and wasn't even into WE DID IT! kind of stuff when I was an actual kid.  So maybe it's just me. 

But let me plainly state here that I absolutely will not take part in the Elmer's school gluing of macaroni to any surface whatsoever.  This is where I draw the line.  With a scented marker.

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me (You're welcome for that song.)

In case you hadn't noticed, I've had a bit of a month.  There's the stuff you know about, plus some that you don't.

Question: But Lori, isn't the stuff we know about more than enough to deal with?

Answer: YES.

The fact that Tattletale Coworker has now escalated to full-on spying is pretty much the living end.  I noticed her standing watching me today and then another temp came over to ask whether TC had needed anything from me since she saw her peeking over a cubicle wall at me.  (I wanted to give TC a nastier nickname, but if you think about it, how sad must her life already be if she makes it her personal mission to bust a temp for intermittent internet use?) 

Nevermind that I finished my entire assigned workload for the day by 12:30 and went back three times to get additional work.  No, the important thing is that TC most likely witnessed me printing off a copy of my Federal tax return from the H&R Block website since I forgot to bring it and didn't want to go home before the post office to mail my state return. 

(Yes, ok, I completed my state taxes in January, but I had to call to ask a question and I never, ever remember to make phone calls at appropriate times, which is one of the many reasons I vastly prefer email.  So I called last week and then mailed it today, complete with Ziggy return address label from the ones sent to me by The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  Really brightened up the taxes, I thought.)

Fortunately, I will only be available for TC's surveillance for two more days this week.  On Friday, I fly to Texas.  I'm going all the way to Dallas on a teeny tiny plane, which is not the model that has been grounded, so I'm hoping that means I'll actually get there.  I'm pretty sure it's another little guy for the rest of the trip.  If my large plane back on Monday got grounded, well it sure would be tragic if I wasn't able to return to the watchful eye of my favorite coworker on time Tuesday morning, wouldn't it?

In the intervening days, there will be babies to snuggle and margaritas to drink, although I will not do both concurrently.  My brother told me that he probably has to work all weekend, but he knows he's not the important one anyway.  That's right, you're not.  It sounds like Owen will be able to catch a ride to me with his mom.  And I am assured that Allie's schedule is wide open for this weekend.

I also see that the pollen forecast jumps from HIGH on Thursday to VERY HIGH in time for my arrival on Friday.  Awesome.  I guess we'll find out whether my new friend Zyrtec is up to the challenge.

In the meantime, I better try to get my internet fix tonight, lest I make TC's awkward attempts at espionage fruitful again tomorrow.  I mean to stymie that woman, if for no other reason than it will provide me another opportunity to say stymie.

Because one of us has to recognize that we're not in third grade

Instead of telling the boss, I'm telling the Internet. 

As I mentioned on Twitter, I'm pretty sure a coworker of mine went and tattled on me to my supervisor that she had seen my email up on my computer when she came into my cubicle.  She then went over to someone else and spent the next ten minutes discussing The Biggest Loser.  I failed to bring this to management's attention.  Because I am a grown up.

When you do the kind of repetitive, mind-numbing work that we do, you need the occasional mental break.  Most of my coworkers accomplish this by standing around talking, making personal phone calls, or going outside to smoke.  This doesn't bother me.  It's totally understandable.  But I don't do any of those things.  For my sanity, I turn to you, Internet.  Which apparently represents a whole different thing to the women I work with, despite the fact that I waste less time than they do and at least I'm quiet about it.

I therefore present to you, and not to my boss, this list of things that I have to listen to them talk about all day, every day:

What has recently happened on The Biggest Loser/Survivor/Big Brother/Dancing with the Stars/America's Next Top Model

Whose kids are learning to drive.  How it's going.  How it went with the people's kids who already learned many years ago.

Whose kids play for which soccer teams.  Which teams invited their kids but they declined.  When the games are.  How much they hope the games are rained out.

How hard each of their husbands are taking Brett Favre's retirement.

The new Taco Bell opening up by the Kwik Trip.  Who loves Taco Bell and to what extent.  Who walks by there during their evening walk and are therefore at a greater Taco Bell binge risk.  How their husbands reacted to the news of the new Taco Bell when they called them to let them know.

What they're cooking for dinner.  Whether and to what extent the husbands and/or kids will complain.  Whether, for what, and where they will need to grocery shop first.

Which store has what deal on which brand of cereal.  This actually turned into a lengthy and heated debate.  I am not kidding.

What diet they are currently on.  Weight loss potential of Slim Fast diet.  When they last did the cabbage soup diet.  The recipe for said cabbage soup.  Who actually liked the cabbage soup.

The current whereabouts of Johnny Depp, who is filming in Wisconsin.  Whose daughters have seen Johnny Depp.  Whether Johnny Depp will take photos with people (consensus: no).  Is Johnny Depp staying in Madison and if so, does he go to the continental breakfast in his hotel?  Could they make the rounds of breakfasts at Madison's nicer hotels and perhaps see Johnny Depp enjoying a bagel or some Special K?

Then there's whatever I miss when I have to turn to my iPod because the constant rattling of all of the snack food packaging is driving me out of my mind.  Cubicle life: not for me. 

I'm working on that, by the way.  Hopefully in the next month or so I'll be able to tell you when I'm leaving the go-go world of data entry and for what job.  I'm not being coy - I'm just not entirely sure yet how it's all going to shake out.  But when I figure it out, you'll be the first to know. 

Provided there aren't any middle-aged tattletales afoot, that is.

In layman's terms: "a crapload"

The official count is 13.3 inches of snow from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday evening.  That's the second most that the city has recorded, after 17 inches in 1990. 

I still came in to work yesterday, as I am a dedicated employee.  Plus, as a temp, no work equals no pay.  There is no way in hell I would have left the house if it had meant driving.  I do not understand why so many people thought it was a good idea.  I got to work and home courtesy of Madison Metro Transit and two bus drivers who were very nice, despite the stressful conditions.  (Take that, mean bus driver!  It was not even snowing AT ALL when you were mean to me!) 

Even the bus turned out to be a dicey proposition by 3:00 yesterday afternoon when I left work.  Buses were stuck all over the city.  My bus driver was the smart one, at times dropping people off a block or more from their stop in order to find a good place where he wouldn't get stuck.  I got dropped off a few blocks from my stop and then waded home through, at times, thigh-deep snow.  Which, in case you weren't aware, is a pretty good work out.  As will, I assume, be shoveling my car out tonight.

When I got to work, I found my supervisor becoming increasingly shocked about people not coming to work.  "It's not that bad out," she kept saying.  Then she left the earliest out of all of us and said this morning that she wouldn't have made it home if she hadn't been driving a 4-wheel drive truck.

That's the opposite of what normally happens around here.  Anytime there's serious weather (you know, pretty much every day for over two months now) people come in with increasingly scary reports of what it's like outside.  Then they go back to their cubicles and stay until their workday is over.

At first, the dire reports used to really freak me out and I even left early a few times as a result.  Only to find that it was pretty much like it always is these days: snowing, yet with no signs of the impending apocalypse, as I had been led to believe.

For example, here's a typical progression, this one from when we got some freezing rain last week:

"It's pretty slick out there.  Margaret did a 360 spin just trying to get out of the parking lot."

"Jim ran into the post office for 15 minutes and his car iced up again by the time he came out."

"There's no traction at all on the roads.  People are sliding down hills backward."

"Phil froze right to the pavement trying to walk to his car.  Then he got smashed by a runaway semi."*   

"Buildings are sliding right off their foundations and into on-coming traffic.  The Monona Terrace fell into the lake and caused a tidal wave that could have wiped out the entire city, had it not frozen in mid-air!"

"DOOM!  ICY FREEZING DOOM!  SAVE YOURSELVES!!!"

And so on.

We're all set for the moment though with sunny skies, newly plowed roads, and no more snow!  Until we get some flurries later today.  And snow showers tomorrow.  But then it's going to be beautiful except for the subzero temperatures over the weekend.  Followed by more snow every damn day until the end of time.  According to the Weather Channel.  As interpreted by me.

* (Not to worry, I made that up!  Phil is fine!)**

**(I made that up too - there is no Phil!  What you people won't fall for!)

Perspective

Overheard at work

Woman: Nothing pisses me off more than [trivial work-related thing].

Man: Really?  Nothing pisses me off more than genocide, but I see your point.

Now with far more backstory than the punchline actually warrants!

Recently the group I'm temping for moved from the fourth floor of one building to the basement of another.  So not only did we go from enjoying a very nice view to not seeing daylight all day, but my cube neighbor's radio station went from probable slogan South Central Wisconsin's Twangiest Country! to Now with even more static!  (Hello, Lori's iPod!  Now with Christmas music!)

Anyway, we're in the basement and the door nearest to my assigned parking lot leads into the basement (once you've swiped your badge and punched in your PIN code).  Except it leads to a part of the basement that is not connected to the part of the basement where I work.  I could instead walk farther outside in the freezing cold and then cut through a cold parking garage to come in to the correct part of the basement.  But in order to get into the heated indoors more quickly, I choose to go in the door closest to where I park, walk up two flights of stairs (or ride up two floors in the elevator, where you have to swipe your badge again, unlike the stairs - apparently this company is only concerned with security threats from lazy people), cut through the first floor to a separate stair case (stairs again, for I am all healthy-like!) and come back down two flights. 

You should also know that the other building offered free coffee.  It was pretty standard coffee, but it was there and it was caffeinated.  Here we have Starbucks coffee, but you have to pay for it.  Thus, I am bringing my thermal mug of coffee (Now with eggnog-flavored creamer!) to work every morning.

So, there I was coming down the stairs first thing in the morning when my boot heel got caught on the edge of the last stair and I briefly pitched forward.  Had I actually fallen, this would have put my face into rather forceful contact with the wall, most likely breaking both my nose and glasses.  But this was not my first thought.  No, no.  What immediately went through my head?

MY COFFEE!!!

And that, folks, is called having your priorities in order.

Blogger For Hire

I want to write you a blog post. I would like this post to be funny and coherent and make you all shake your head at the wonder that is my ability to be witty in writing.  Or at least my ability to do idiotic things and then tell the Internet about them.

I even have some topics in mind.  Except that each one would be roughly one sentence in length.  Or, because I am incapable of brevity, they would be one humorous and/or interesting sentence plus lots and lots of boring sentences in length.  And nobody wants that.  Maybe I will write them down and see if I don't have more to say about them later.

So I guess I'll talk about the job thing.

I couldn't begin to tell you how many jobs I have applied for in the past few months.  Some of these have been jobs I have really wanted, but I was pretty sure I wasn't qualified for.  But it doesn't hurt to try, blah, blah, blah.  Some I found interesting and felt like I had at least an outside chance at getting an interview.  And then there are that couple that I applied for just because I hadn't applied for anything else in the past couple of days and I need to get a job.

I applied over the weekend for a job that I really want.  And I am qualified for it.  I have done, if not everything on their very long list of responsibilities, then almost everything.  And I am passionate about the work they do, which is helping at-risk kids to succeed in school and go to college.  I am so sure that I will get an interview that I am checking my phone roughly every fifteen minutes to see if I have a message.

But I am also entirely convinced that they won't call, because I have been here before.  I was looking for a job for almost the entire year that I lived in Austin.  There weren't nearly so many jobs there and mostly they were in publishing where apparently they require previous publishing experience in order to get even the most entry-level of entry-level positions, but still, I lived with the bookmarking jobs and writing cover letters and submitting resumes and never hearing one damn thing for almost a year there, so I was tired of it before I even got here.

And yes, that worked out for the best, because if I had gotten some great job there that I loved, then I wouldn't have moved here, and most of the time (read: when I am not deep in the realization that winter is here and will be staying for far longer than I care to think about) I am happy to be here.  But the idea that I could end up spending another year at an unfulfilling temp job with no benefits, no job security, and very little mental effort involved, is just more than I can take.

I do realize, by the way, that this is my own damn fault.  I got a degree in Political Science, which is good for going to law school (my intial plan) or going to grad school (my second plan) but not for much else.  And I have had a series of jobs which, while interesting to me and generally doing some good for the world, are not entirely related and don't necessarily make the case that I am specifically qualified for much of anything.  A lot of these were contract positions too, which makes me look like I am a flight risk at any job, despite the fact that I took the jobs for a specific amount of time and stayed at them until they ended.

Probably some of you are wondering why I don't go back to school and it's not that I haven't thought about it.  I just haven't been sure what to go back for, and my experience of getting what turned out to be the wrong degree and then sinking a bunch of money into a masters that I didn't finish since it was in the wrong thing, makes me hesitant to rush into more education.  I do feel like I have it narrowed down now and am looking into possibly going back next year.

But that doesn't help me now.  Now I just want this one specific person to call me and schedule an interview and hire me so that I can stop looking and worrying and berating myself for having made bad choices that I have no power to change.

I'll see if I can't bring the funny on Monday.  Maybe I'll feel better as soon as I finish applying for this job that would allow me to write research papers for a living.  It would be a big, geeky dream come true if only they would hire me.  But I won't be holding my breath.

In order to maintain your sanity while unemployed:

• You MUST leave the house at least once a day.
• So, for example, if you have three errands to do, you want to do one per day. Efficiency is no longer your friend.
• You should shower every day, but feel free not to blow dry your hair. Now is the time to enjoy having no need of being coiffed, as you hope that this freedom will be short-lived.
• Become one with your pajamas. Taking them off before noon is not encouraged.
• You probably shouldn’t go to Target. At all.
• Under no circumstances should you allow yourself to become sucked into an America’s Next Top Model marathon on MTV. You will feel the IQ points slowly draining away.
• The only daytime programming that will not make you want to claw your eyes out or cause you to become stupider is whatever is on HGTV. It may also inspire you to rearrange your previously awkwardly-arranged living room. You will be thankful.
• You have got to mute the iPod Nano commercial or the Feist song will cause you to lay awake nights, cursing its brain-melting catchiness
• You should not yet begin to entertain thoughts of signing up for clinical studies. It has only been three weeks. Get a grip.
• Get your damn hair cut. Nobody is going to hire you looking like Carol Brady.
• Stop blogging already and write another cover letter.  Slacker.

How did he know?

Same kid.

Him: This guy is in jail.  He isn't happy.

Me: I don't think I'd be happy either if I were in jail.

Him: You're in jail too.

Me: Me?  What did I do to get put in jail?

Him: Drinking too much coffee!

Busted.  Take me away, officer.  Because if drinking too much coffee is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

For what it's worth, he also said I was skinnier than his mom.

I was working with a seven year-old student (seven and three quarters, he would want you to know) when the inevitable question of my age came up.  He had already asked me in our previous session and when he guessed (I always make them guess) 200, I said yes, I was 200 years old and was a sea turtle.  He asked where my shell was and I said that I had to leave it at home or people would know I was a sea turtle.  I was in disguise.  We discussed my sea turtleness for quite some time, but he didn't entirely buy it and he asked again on Thursday how old I was.

He guessed 18 this time, God bless him, and finally upped it enough to get to my actual age.  This is always followed by the question about whether I am married and/or have kids.  So I was prepared for that, but was pleasantly surprised.

Student: So that means you have...a driver's license?

Me: YES!  (internally: FINALLY!  One I can say yes to!)

But later that hour, he did get around to asking whether I had kids and I said no.  Then he realized that I couldn't have kids since I'm not married.  (Right...yeah, that's how it works.)  He asked if I wanted to get married and I said "someday". 

And then he asked: What if someday everyone hates you?

Well then.  Probably under those circumstances I wouldn't get married, would I?  Among all of the potential impediments to my hypothetical future marriage, everybody hating me had not entered my mind as a possibility.  On the upside, my student did assure me that he didn't think he would hate me. 

One down.  Everyone else to go.

It's true, what they say about me.

I mean the thing about me being a mean teacher who won't let you.  Why, what else are they saying about me?

I say this because it took me eight days of teaching here to make my first Madisonian student cry.  To be fair, it was only this student's second session with me.  What can I say?  I work fast.  Also, some of you people are clearly coddling your kids WAY too much.

This child has his own personal system for doing math.  It is backwards.  It was my attempt to make him begin adding at the ones place that started the tears rolling and him chanting "I don't WANT to learn that way."  Oh, it's going to be a long summer for that one.

Like riding a...well, a big wheel, I guess.

Here's a sentence you've probably never heard before: there's something so comforting about a nice auditory processing disorder.  Dyslexia?  Sigh.  ADHD with a side of Asperger's?  Like coming home.

Maybe it's because everything else in my life is so unfamiliar and up in the air at the moment that teaching reading feels so darn good.  It has been over a year since I have taught anything.  (Well, aside from "teaching" Madisonians that Texans drive like total idiots.  Or at least people masquerading as Texans by keeping their Texas plates after moving here.  Shhhh...don't tell.)  And yet it all came rushing back to me as soon as that first kid demonstrated poor phonological awareness.  People, I can fix that.  I already know which kids will mix up b and d, was and saw, what and that.  While every kid is different, reading disorders are fairly predictable.

That, and they are just funny little people.  Most of you adults have no chance whatsoever of being anywhere near as amusing as special kids.  It is not your fault.  It just would not occur to you to tell your teacher that you have a secret and after beckoning her close to you, whisper that you have ADD.  This despite the fact that your mother has asked you repeatedly since you arrived whether you took your meds.  And that you are possibly levitating.

Plus, when a special kid is being REALLY annoying, you can say, "UH UH.  Enough."  Grown up co-workers will never let you get away with that.  You know, I guess I never tried though.  Could you all give that a whirl and report back?

What is not familiar is this not having time at work for the Internet.  How do you people with work-intensive jobs maintain blogs?  I have a whole new respect for you.  Please be patient while I figure out this Work at Work, Blog at Home lifestyle.

(Oh, that post title?  I don't bike.  As a kid, I started learning, fell down, and hurt my ankle.  While many very stubborn children would apply their stubbornness toward refusing to give up, I applied my rather considerable stubbornness toward flatly refusing ever to bike again.  And I haven't.  Just TRY making me do something I don't want to do.  I dare you.)

Five...Four...Three...

Two days of scoring left!  People, it has been a LONG nine weeks.  But, as with anything in life, there have been opportunities to learn things along the way.  Things that I will share with you.

-There exist, among high schoolers, only about six styles of handwriting.

-High schoolers believe that "quite" is interchangeable with both "quiet" and "quit".  They also believe that "conversate" is a word.

-Under the right conditions, grown people will wear their hoods up indoors.  Yours truly included.

-At some point, I apparently started using the word "dude" in traffic.  I don't know how that happened since I never use this word in any other context.  This is, of course, only used for minor offenses, not worthy of a "rat bastard!"

-When I thank-you wave to people in traffic, I say "thank you".  Out loud.

-When I let people in front of me and they don't thank-you wave, I get seriously irritated.

-If you think you can work 14 hour days with no problem based on the fact that you did this when you were 25, you will quickly discover that you are no longer 25.

-If you think that you did this with no problem when you were 25, you are probably wrong.  You just liked your job more then and have clearly romanticized the suckyness of the hours.

-Sometimes there is construction on I-35 overnight which causes bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Sometimes the traffic hotline will give you this information so you know to take Mopac instead, but  sometimes it will not.  You can bail and cut through downtown, but this still adds quite a bit of time to your drive home.  At 10:30 when all you want to do is go to bed, this is Deeply Wearying.

-If you work in a quiet environment and are prone to getting songs stuck in your head, you need to be VERY CAREFUL about what songs you allow yourself to hear during the day.  Even a few notes of a horrible song will get that song irrevocably lodged in your brain and you will have to sing The Fray's "How to Save a Life" to yourself to get rid of it since you can tolerate that song even though it too is relentless once it gets in your head.

That's all I can think of at the moment.  Then again, I am only about 11% awake.  I'm going to quite writing now since it is probably quite enough in here for me to catch a nap.  Perhaps we can conversate more once I've woken up.

Until 11th grade, I thought the expression was "for all intensive purposes".

More gems from the high schoolers:

• Maybe it was my women's into wishing.
• He was taking me for granite.
• I had a new leash on life.
• I had a master bedroom with a walking closet.
• The buzzard sounded, and the game began.

Apparently, that last kid was playing Flintstones-era football.

And now, a note to craigslisters:

If you are trying to sublet your apartment, POST A PHOTO.  And before taking said photo, for the love of God, clean up!  I don't mean wax the floors here.  If you could just get your laundry into a basket or at the very least one large pile, it would help.  Maybe even open a curtain so that your "sunny" apartment does not resemble a cave.  Also, no, I do not want you to throw in the futon, but thanks for offering.

Perhaps I am too old for campus-adjacent housing.

His nemesis: The Archduke of Glad Tidings

You see some interesting stuff when you spend 20+ hours a week scoring high schoolers' essays.  Actually, to be quite honest, most of it is pretty uninteresting.  There's a lot of "I remember it like it was yesterday" and "it was a Friday just like any other Friday..."  No dark and stormy nights yet, but give it time.

There are some boys who will go on at length about the beauty of their (often ex-) girlfriends.  One girl had the body of a goddess, one had skin that made porcelain look cheap.  Interestingly, I find that roughly 9 out of 10 of these girls are named Jasmine.

But some kids do give you a little something more original.  Like the one who said that, when called down to the principal's office, he contemplated escape until he realized that it might mean missing lunch and a portly kid wouldn't get far without lunch.  Extra points were awarded for honesty and outstanding word choice. 

Or the kid who wrote that something was "faster than Superman with a hooker" and then followed that with "come on, test reader, laugh.  You know that was funny." 

I was also highly impressed with one boy who was sure, when he asked a girl out that he would "go down in flames like the campaign of Michael Dukakis".  You'll be glad to know that apparently he was wise enough to choose one of the more discriminating females for whom intelligence and geekdom are sexy, and he fared much better than a certain former Massachusetts governor.

But my favorite image to come out of these things was entirely unintentional.  One kid wrote that he didn't want to be "the baron of bad news".  Since I am a visual learner, this immediately conjured for me the image of a smartly-dressed British guy walking around with a storm cloud over his head, thoroughly depressing everyone he meets.  Sort of the Debbie Downer of the nobility set.  Nobody wants to sit next to this guy at tea.  On the other hand, his wife, the Baroness of Nasty Gossip, is quite popular indeed.

What are the chances that I would actually be FIRED for sleeping on my desk?

I am so very sleepy and let me tell you, the coffee is just not keeping up.

The thing is, even with the second job, I get home well in advance of the time that I normally go to bed.  So there should be no problem.  But as much as I have tried to convince it otherwise, my body will just not buy the idea that it is perfectly ok to go to sleep within one hour of arriving home from work.  My body feels that it has a good four more hours of awakeness to look forward to at that point.  This is not working so well for me.

I didn't used to have a problem with this back in my non-profit civic educator days of working 8-10 on a daily basis.  Because that job was mentally and physically exhausting and I was therefore capable of falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.  Or a seat on the bus, a chair in the Hard Rock Cafe, or really even a bench in a park on Capitol Hill.  (I have just come to the sad realization that I did that job for LESS THAN HALF of what I make in a week at these two.  But I did get the free Hard Rock Cafe hockey-puck burgers, so it probably evens out.  Don't you think?)

The essay reading is at least mentally draining.  I can't tell you what the topic is or I'd be sleeping with the fishes, if you know what I mean (what I mean is that the TEA would chain a copy of No Child Left Behind to my ankle and drop me into the Gulf of Mexico to drown and eventually become encased in the tar that coats the bottom) but I can tell you that of the 200,000 11th graders who have written these essays, approximately 199,892 of them have written essentially the very same thing.

Note to high schoolers: The phrase is should HAVE, not should OF.  Also, "past" is not a verb.  The word you are looking for is "passed".  Thank you.

Note to all English-speakers everywhere of any age: "Theirself" is not any kind of actual word.  Cease and desist.

At this job, we get a fifteen minute dinner break.  This is just long enough, I find, to eat a standard-sized Granny Smith apple and exchange a few "you're not going to believe this essay I just read" stories before heading back.  In the actual scoring room, only gum and hard candy are permitted.  Unless, apparently, you are the guy sitting in front of me.  Then you can eat Cheetos and later, when you are supposed to be scoring, go and get yourself a candy bar and proceed to eat that too.  This bothered me far more than it should have.  See, I am a rule follower.  That's not to say that I don't constantly speed or occasionally have the urge to walk on some grass only because I see a "Keep Off Grass" sign, but in general if I hear a reasonable-sounding rule, I follow it.  And I expect everyone else to do the same.  And if they don't, I would like them to be punished.  It was obvious to everyone in the area that the eating rule was being broken since we work in silence and a chip bag is quite noisy.  I wanted a supervisor to tell him to stop.  Why?  Why should I care?  I didn't want to eat Cheetos.  I think it's just the idea that this person doesn't feel like rules apply to him and no one bothered to disabuse him of that notion.  I bet he is also one of those people who races up the Exit Only lane in front of me, even though he has no intention of exiting, and then slams on his brakes at the last minute to get over so we all have to stop and wait for him.  Those people are a menace.

What was I talking about again?  Oh yeah.  I could really use a nap.

The End

There was a time a few years ago when I had four jobs at once. That only marginally relates, but I like to point it out.

I started training this week for a second job in the evenings. 

(What, you ask, how can you possibly do that?  Aren’t you working hard enough already?!?!  Oh, Internet, your concern for my wellbeing is sweet, but bear in mind that I do little to nothing for the first eight hours of my working day.  It’s true.) 

This is just a temporary job scoring the essay portion of state standardized tests.  (Wait, do you think that by profiting from the Testing Industrialized Complex, I am tacitly agreeing to No Child Left Behind?  I had not thought of that.)  (Oh crap.)

Starting next week, I’ll sit and score essays for four hours every evening, but first I must sit and receive training for four hours every evening this week.  It seems like an interesting group and I've met some nice people already.  BUT.  We have assigned seats and unfortunately, I have been assigned to sit in front of the Complainey Twins. 

So, ok, they're not really twins.  They are of different races and genders and are roughly thirty years apart in age.  One bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Yuk while the other, in a word, doesn't.  But my, how they share their love of complaining.  Much, someone else in the class pointed out, like these two.  Except far less amusing.

The Complainey Twins have done this scoring thing before.  They know all of the answers better than our trainers do.  I know this because they loudly answer every question that anyone asks at the very same time that our trainer is answering it.  They openly disagree with most of what the trainer is saying.  They complain about every damn thing that anyone says or does.  They are worse than the sixteen year-old girls I used to teach who at least had the decency to mutter this is stupid under their breath rather than saying it right out loud.

Last night we did our first exercise.  The Complainey Twins did not do so well.  This is not because they were wrong in any way.  No, the many people from the scoring company and state education association who set the answers are incorrect.  See, the Complainey Twins can and do loudly explain why each of their answers was, in fact, correct.  It is all of the rest of us who are wrong.  Obviously.

I, on the other hand, got mostly the same answers that we were intended to get.  Almost all of them, in fact.  It turns out that I am a test scoring prodigy!  Who knew?  Too bad that my one gift can only ever result in seasonal work.  I suppose I will just have to content myself with the knowledge that I do possess latent genius, even if it will never bring me wealth or glory.  Tragic, yes, but such is often the plight of the extremely gifted, I suppose.

Don't worry about me getting a big head out of all of this.  I still have my friends the Complainey Twins to remind me that I probably just suck.

What Princess Leia might have been doing, had she been an administrative assistant rather than a princess.

I just requested a purchase order for a Space Transformer.  I bet that is no where near as cool as it sounds like it is.

XOXO

Dear Expedia Corporate Travel,

If you must keep me on hold for over an hour, could you please, for the love of God and all that is holy, get some new hold music already!  Because those six bars of crappy imitation "music" you play in between frequent reminders that all of your agents are helping other customers, please stay on the line and you will be with me shortly, are etched into my brain.  Permanently.  You people are holding me hostage to my phone and I think the Geneva Convention and even President George W. Bush would have something to say about this torturous soundtrack.

Or, here's an idea: make your website ACTUALLY HELPFUL.  Then I would stop calling you all together and I bet a lot of other people would too and you might not be experiencing increased call volume causing longer than normal hold times.

I would not mind so much if I were ever arranging any of this international travel for myself, but as you very well know, it is never for me, so give a girl a break already and PICK UP THE PHONE.

And may your dreams be equally haunted by the strains of muzak.

Your valued customer,

Lori

In an effort to keep up with the mad daily posting insanity of this week

I gave blood yesterday.  Our company had a blood drive at the downtown office and the incentive was a pint of Blue Bell ice cream.  A pint for a pint!  (Not the sort of pint I think a lot of people were hoping for when they heard that slogan.  While my employer is not shy about workplace drinking in the form of company-sponsored happy hours, apparently they didn't think it was a good idea to serve beer to blood-deprived individuals.) 

I had no trouble with any portion of the blood-donating process.  Blood pressure?  Exceptionally low.   Why yes, I do weigh over 110 pounds, just barely.  No, in the past 10 years I haven’t accepted money or drugs for sex--thanks for asking, Texas Blood & Tissue Nurse! 

They typically have quite a bit of trouble locating a vein in either arm (I would make a terrible junkie!) but this time it went smoothly and I was done in a flash.  I tell you what, I am one speedy bleeder.  If there were ever a competition for who could most quickly fill a pint bag with his or her own blood, I would totally win!  (It's all about squeezing the little squeezy thing every 3 seconds, folks.  I give away my secret since I doubt I will ever have the opportunity to realize my blood donation championship dreams.)  I ate my complimentary cookies and then went home for lunch, pint of mint chocolate chip in hand. 

I heard today that someone saw two engineers come in, swipe cookies and leave without giving blood!  The audacity!  I earned my Nutterbutters, thankyouverymuch.

Despite having given blood many times before, I was surprised by the no caffeine for the rest of the day instruction.  And since I am an afternoon caffeine drinker, yesterday was my first totally decaf day in recent memory.  They also say not to do any kind of exercise, except I was home alone with the dogs last night and they would have driven me insane staying inside all night, totally ruining my cozy rainy night of reading.  Our backyard was one big mudpit after the rain, so I threw caution to the wind and took the dogs for a walk.

And then this morning I was fairly certain that I was going to pass out in the shower.  The other thing about mornings and me is that I have my morning routine stripped down to absolute essentials, so there is no fat to trim should I find myself running late.  (Ok, I wore glasses instead of contacts, but this saves me, what 45 seconds?)  Due to all of the sitting-still-rather-than-getting-ready time necessitated by the fainty feeling, I found myself in a serious time crunch.  So I just blowdried my hair without doing it by sections around a brush, and I swear it does not look that much worse.  And I saved probably 8 minutes.  Guess who is going to have a lot of flat hair in her future?  That is one whole extra snooze!

I figured the wooziness (woozy – another great word!) was probably caused by dehydration from walking the dogs and then not drinking enough water, so I attempted to remedy this with lots of extra water drinking this morning, with the result that I’ve been peeing every thirty seconds today.  Meaning that I am, if possible, even less productive than usual.

Not that my frequent trips to the Ladies’ are interfering with my ability to complete my actual work-related work, since there is as always very little of that.  Am I using all of my work free time to, say, write a plot outline for my quickly approaching novel?  Heck no!  I am reading about the badly-dressed celebrities!  Which is something I should probably not tell you that I enjoy quite so heartily as I do.  I’m not sure why that is, since I’m not particularly celebrity obsessed and don’t read People Magazine or Us Weekly or anything.  Maybe I just feel better about the boringness of my ubiquitous jeans and a plain colored shirt outfit, since at least I'm not wearing this.  No, Linda Hamilton.  No.

Pondering

As I sit here in my cubicle, slowly freezing to death, I can’t help but wonder…what if I were skinny?  Like, what if Nicole Richie worked here?  Might she actually die of the cold?

Maybe Nicole would be fine and it really is just me.  I do tend to be cold-natured (temperature-wise only…at least as far as I know.)  Would this be exacerbated if I got thinner?  Would I be roasty-oasty warm if I went ahead and got really fat?  Like a cubicle-dwelling seal or polar bear?  Or maybe it would make no difference whatsoever. 

Like most things of this nature, I don’t really understand the science behind it.  I do not intend to experiment with the really fat question.  But if Nicole Richie wanted to stop by and let me know how it feels to her, I would give her candy from the candy bowl.  Or take her to Subway even for a nice sandwich and Baked Lays.

For now, I think I'll settle for going home for lunch and changing into non-sandal shoes due to concerns I have regarding the loss of toes to frostbite.  I did just paint my nails, after all, so it would be a real shame.

Temps: Underachieving, a few days at a time.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank Austin area temps for setting the bar so incredibly low.  Because, wow.  You people must require some serious hand-holding.

I say this because of two temp-related incidents this week.  The first began when I was awoken a little after 8:00 on Tuesday morning with the offer of a receptionist gig to start that same day by 9:30 please on the opposite end of town.  Which I eagerly accepted because, you know, bills and all.  So I've been receptionisting all week, which if you'll recall is something that I hate to do.  Partly because if you'll recall even further back, I hate the phone.  Also because I am just generally very bad at it.  And yet, I had my supervisor yesterday telling me how great it is to have me here because I am so good and also so infinitely much better than the other temps they've had in this position.  Which confused me because I do practically nothing here.  Here is an itemized list:

1. Answer the phone and transfer calls.  Easy enough, right?  It is true that I only hung up on about the first two or three callers while attempting to transfer them, which I think represents a fairly decent learning curve.  If you look next to the phone, you will see a business card and a post-it note.  Because without the business card right there, I cannot remember the name of the company.  There are four words, two of which are names (including the president's name which, yes, I have mispronounced more than once) and two of which are the function of the business, one word of which I have completely changed, altering the nature of the business despite the fact that the business card was right there.  The post-it note is so I can write down the name and business of the person calling because otherwise I seriously cannot remember it long enough for the person to pick up.  I've found that abbreviating is ineffective here since when someone called, let's call him Joe from a design firm, which we'll call Smith design, I wrote down "Joe Smith" and then three seconds later when transferring the call, identified the caller as Joe Smith.  When I say that I have no short-term memory, I am (for once) not exaggerating.
2. Find mileages for an expense report.  My ability to do this quickly was quite impressive to my supervisor despite the fact that all I did was google the places and mapquest directions from the office.  Apparently my time with you, the Internet, has paid off.
3. Go through files to make sure they are up to date.  Which is what I am, ahem, doing right now.
4. Call some people to ask specific questions and get that information back to my supervisor.  She gives me the name of the person to call, the phone number, and the information to request.  Pretty challenging stuff.
5. Order pizza for a meeting.  Decline free pizza.  Actually the most difficult task so far.
6. Eat Birthday cake.  I tried to decline since I thought it was weird to be going to someone's Birthday party on my first of 4 days at a place of business, but I was cajoled "come eat some cake", encouraged "come on, eat some cake!" and strong-armed "EAT THE CAKE!" until I went, sang, and had homemade chocolate cake.

And that, folks, is setting me apart from the masses of incompetent Austin temps.  So much so, that I was offered the opportunity to stay on here until I found something permanent.  Which would have been wonderful, had that offer not been made just after an interview that I had for a different temp job, an administrative assistant gig that I was told was a long-term temp thing. 

So I got there for my interview and then was told by all three people that they had decided to make it temp-to-hire!  I could have this job permanently!  So then I was forced to admit to all three people that I was not interested in a permanent admin job but I was perfectly willing to temp there just until something better came along.  At which point I was asked whether I was willing to commit to a certain amount of months, to which I honestly answered no, I'm pretty much just here until I get something better.  I also honestly answered that I had no professional experience with several of the primary tasks involved with the position. 

And they STILL hired me.  Despite their reservations about the fact that after they invest in training me, I could still walk out on them at any moment. Despite having had candidates who were actually looking for a temp-to-hire position.  And despite the fact that I have limited related experience.  I ask you, how unqualified was everyone else?  The good news here is that I have a steady job until I find something better and cut and run on them.  It's close to home and the workplace, I was told, is 80-90% male.  Hopefully my administrative incompetence will somehow continue to be a non-issue.

And to all of you temps out there, keep up the sub-par work!  You make us mediocre temps shine like the stars!

Reasons why this is the Best Temp Job Ever

1.  Free soda, tea, hot chocolate, and powdered cappuccino mix in the kitchen!  (Also a half empty bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, but I'm assuming that's not a help yourself beverage.) Except why would you want any of that when there's

2. freshly ground Starbucks coffee!  At least there was until I got here and DRANK IT ALL.

3.  Breakfast tacos from a meeting on Tuesday and Krispy Kremes on Wednesday.  A donut was even brought to my

4. own office.  All private and everything like I'm some kind of important person rather than some girl here to do the data entry.

5. Everyone here assumes that I'm a college student.  Who needs TLC when I clearly already look Ten Years Younger?  Plus, the pressure is way off.  Like, I'm 18 and I've never worked in an office before, ok?  This is, like, so hard!

6. I've just been instructed to kill time on the Internet.  While getting paid!

7. And if, when the guy who gives me work gets here and there's not enough to do, they will send me home and pay me until five.

In the world of temping, it just doesn't get any better than that, folks.

UPDATE:  Sufficient amounts of work to keep me occupied until 5:oo seem to have been found, so apparently I won't get to miss the going-home-time Traffic (yes, capital-T Traffic, which, as defined by me is traffic in which your primary means of forward propulsion is briefly removing your foot from the brake pedal.)  Also, it appears as if I really seriously have drunk all of the Diet Dr. Pepper that was in the fridge, reducing me to free Diet Coke for lunch today.  Perhaps with a free Starbucks coffee chaser?

Slacker, Inc.

After all these years, I have finally decided what I'm going to be when I grow up.  And it only took me so long because this job doesn't actually exist.  I had to invent my job.  I am going to be...drumroll please...an Un-Motivational Speaker!  Pretty cool, right?  I will help people let go, chill out, and generally care a whole lot less.

It seems like there would be a big market for this among aging heart-attack-prone Type A baby boomers still engaged in stressful jobs.  Maybe I could get cardiologists to refer at-risk patients for my services.  I could do corporate retreats for upper management or seminars for professional athletes who take themselves too seriously.  Terrel Owens comes to mind.  And I could help those new moms who make themselves sick worrying about every little thing they do "right" or "wrong" according to everyone else.  (There is of course no actual right or wrong answer to anything in life except math problems and math, for that reason, should be avoided at all costs.)

Ooh, and those people who do the extra credit if they get an A- and raise their hands to remind the teacher about the homework.  Those people definitely need to chill out!  I could teach them about skipping exactly the allowed number of classes before it adversely affects their grades and earning the minimum number of points necessary to qualify for the A.  I was a HUGE slacker in school, and yet I got As.  Very, extremely low As.  Because it makes no difference whatsoever to your GPA or anyone looking at your transcript whether you got the highest A or the lowest.

I will teach high-strung clients my own personal life philosophy: "Eh."  It is useful in almost every situation.  Just say it right out loud with the slightest of shoulder shrugs whenever you start to worry, stress, or freak out over anything and voila, inner peace.  Say it with me people.  Eh.

And if you didn't actually say it out loud, that's cool too.  No biggie.

Unemployed

Yesterday was my last day of work.  It was nice and there were hugs and promises to come back and visit and gifts from some students including a pin with a big apple that says School is Cool (Please, please don't buy your child's teacher anything with an apple.  I promise you, it will only end up at Goodwill.)  And then I left and it was sort of sad but also good and I had surprise going-away dinner with a bunch of friends and we came back here and played Imaginiff.

And now I have no job.  I have no job.  NO JOB!  I HAVE NO JOB!!!

Which, yes, is freaking me out just a little right now.  But right now there are more important things to be freaking out about.  Like a trailer which may or may not be here tonight to be packed up for the move tomorrow.  And all of the many things that I'm sure I've forgotten to pack.  And whether my car will pass inspection later on today.  Because unemployed people cannot afford costly car repairs!

If you'll excuse me, I need to go breathe into a bag or a brownie or possibly a large margarita.

The big move! Over! Finished! Done!

No, not that big move!  The company, for which I will be working for exactly one more week, moved to a new location as of yesterday.  Predictably it was fairly chaotic and everyone was tense and frustrated and complaining about everyone else.  Except me!  Because the new place is less than one and a half miles from my house!  AND I have my own room which does not also function as a conference room/lunch room/storage space so I haven't yet had to end a meeting, clean up other people's lunch trash, or try to keep a student's attention while multiple people saunter in to search for things.  AND the temperature does not hover around a consistent 32 degrees like it did in my old room.  My fingernails haven't turned blue once!  Yes, all of my stuff is still in boxes and I only have tiny plastic little kid chairs which don't work so well with my not-kid-sized hips and yes, I now share my desk and computer with five other people.  But I can get to work without dealing with this one spot where I had to exit and people were supposed to yield and instead would slow to the exact speed at which I was traveling so neither of us could get into the other's lane which we were both trying to do.  What will I do with all of my pent-up fist-shaking fury?

Steady progress seems to be happening on the other move.  The leasing agent has almost all of the information that she needs to approve us for house rentership, so it looks good for us to have a place to move into on our target move date of June 3.  We have a friend with truck and trailer lined up to transport our stuff and numerous helpful friends and relatives who will no doubt volunteer their time that day to actually move the stuff (hint, hint.) 

Oh, and I've packed things.  Many boxes of books, photo albums, and office- and kitchen-type stuff are packed and sitting in our front room awaiting more packed box friends.  For whatever reason, I always like packing.  At the beginning anyway.  I suppose it's the quick feeling of accomplishment.  The boxes stack up and you can stand back and behold the evidence of your labors.  I always start out so well, too.  Each box has a label indicating contents ("books") and location ("office") for I'd say, oh about the first ten or twelve boxes.  And then things get fuzzier, evidenced by a box from the last move labeled "lamps, pillows, and games" going downhill until the label becomes simply "random."

This whole starting packing two weeks in advance thing should not be construed to indicate that a) I am not a HUGE procrastinator or b) I do not know for a fact that I can pack up my every earthly belonging in 48 hours.  Because I can.  I think it's just the excitement of a whole new beginning that's motivating me to get on the packing stick.  Also it distracts me from thinking about how I don't have a new job yet.  Oh my goodness, I've managed to turn the act of packing into a form of procrastination!  Now that's procrastination genius, if I do say so myself.

You may have your knife back now that I have finished removing it FROM MY HEART.

I told her last week that I was leaving.  She acted a little bummed but not like it was any kind of really big deal.  Then, a week later, I heard this from my eleven year-old student who I have been teaching for almost two years now and who always plays it cool as if she really couldn't care about anything one way or the other: 

But why are you leaving me?  Why do you have to move to Austin?

And there was just no good answer to that.  So I told her that I would miss her and then some crap about how she'd be starting a new school next year and making new friends and would do so well because she had been working hard and how she probably wouldn't even remember me, which I'm sure was the exact wrong thing to say. 

I know that it would really be best for her at this point to be working with someone else anyway because we get along so well and have been working together so long that she's started to see me more as a big sister figure so she has a hard time doing the work I'm telling her to do instead of chatting with me and telling me about the boy in her class.  But still. 

And there is one more little girl who will, I assume, understand even less.  The little girl who painted "polka bots" on a mug for me for Christmas and is so proud of reading chapter books that she carries around whatever book we're reading to show off.  (Because of Winn Dixie, people!  I am reading it!  By MYSELF!)  She is completely lacking in guile much more child-like than her peers and therefore, I suspect, has few friends at school.  So the people she has in her life, namely her parents, brother, baby sister, and teachers, are very important.  And this one is deserting her.

Of course I know that I can't stay here for the benefit of two kids that aren't even mine, but it doesn't make it feel any less crappy.

Resume

Objective

To obtain a position paying enough to cover rent, bills, shoe purchases, overseas travel and to finally get an iPod.

Education

Earned a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in English - Writing Emphasis.  Demonstrated finely honed ability to produce A quality essays containing no actual information.  Successfully completed rigorous coursework including: Survey of American Jazz, Exercise Walking, Social Dance, and four credits of Marching Band.

Professional Experience

Customer Relations Coordinator

• As a result of two-hour parking restrictions on streets surrounding office, acquired expert-level parallel parking skills.
• Developed ability to convincingly pretend to remember who Mr. Eldridge is and to what call from last week he is referring while simultaneously inventing elaborate explanation for why his problem has not yet been resolved.

Non-profit Civics Instructor*

• Overcame difficulty with remembering 22 new student names every week by using strategies such as name games, mnemonics, visualization, and calling students "you" or "Ashley" (which had a one in four chance of being correct on any given week.)
• Discovered body's ability to survive on four hours of sleep and all French fry diet, provided caffeinated beverage consumption exceeded body weight.
• Singlehandedly created such educational (and fun!) games as Colonial Freezetag, Conference Committee Telephone Game, and Suspicion to Conviction: Search, Seizure, the Supreme Court, and You.

*I realize that this phrasing makes it sound like it was me who didn't profit!  Well, I didn't.

Reading Instructor

• Memorized such crucial phonics rules as, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and says its name!"
• Maintained consistent level of mediocrity to avoid the "curse of competence" in which the highest-performing instructors' schedules were loaded with the most challenging and potentially violent students.

Office Temp

• Learned to slow typing speed enough to use entire allotted time to complete data entry projects.  Because when you finish early, you don't get paid anymore.
• Cultivated ability to remember complex coffee orders for seven attorneys during up to a three block walk to Starbucks.

Two-Year College Adjunct Professor

• Instituted fifteen minute "journal time" at beginning of class, giving self time to figure out what in heck we'd be doing in class that day.
• Created what can only have been the least math-intensive grade calculating system in all of academia.

Non-Profit Civic Education Program Supervisor

• Discovered innate ability to crack suspects in underage drinking/marijuana possession interrogations.
• Earned Most Favorite Boss honors by streamlining staff meetings to a succinct "Good job this week.  Any questions?  Now let's order pizza so we don't have to eat this crappy hotel chicken again."

Ann Taylor Sales Associate

• Forced reluctant self to use such pretentious terms as client, wardrobing room, and cash wrap.
• Transitioned seamlessly from caustic backroom conversation to sales floor fakey smile and exuberance over new line of linen coordinates.

Learning Institute Coordinator

• Obtained complete knowledge of whether each letter appears on a fish, crab, or mermaid in preschool alphabet game A-B-Seas.
• Gained ability to judge 25 pennies (within 2) by weight alone due to several hundred games of Vowel and Consonant Bingo played using pennies as markers.

With mad skillz like these, who wouldn't want to hire me?

I WON'T LET YOU

I've been called a lot of things throughout my teaching career, from the adorable, all the way up to, I imagine, things that would melt the paint clear off the walls.  There was one eight year-old girl who inexplicably called me Plum for an entire summer.  And a little boy from India who called me by the name of some sort of Indian dish, which he sang repeatedly in a high-pitched voice.  (All of his teachers were assigned food items as nicknames, each with a corresponding ear-splitting song.  Except Jennie who, by virtue of her ponytail, reminded him of a girl from his school.  Her song went, "you look-a like-a Tiffany with your pony taaaaaaaaaail!") 

I do tend to get "mean" and "evil" on a semi-regular basis, sometimes jokingly, sometimes not.  Nothing irritates a kid like a nonchalant, "yes, it's true" when he has just called you mean or evil.  Or when his threat to tell his mom exactly how mean you are does not cause you to stop fiendishly torturing him with spelling words.  Good times.

My all time favorite was a six year-old who I saw for two hours twice a week in DC.  She was a tiny little blonde girl whose angelic appearance masked the beast within.  We'd do alright for an hour or so, followed each night by an explosive tantrum w