You're in the middle of the ride
So. I've been largely MIA for the last couple weeks, for a variety of reasons. First, I've been busy. Second, I spent a lot of time in a place without internet access, so even when I wasn't busy, I couldn't update.
--Two Thursdays ago, I was at the afterschool and I got a phone call. It was Michele, my brother's girlfriend. She said that Ben was feeling pretty crappy, and wasn't going to be able to use his ticket to the SOX/YANKEES GAME at Fenway that night, and would I like to go in his stead?
I'm sure no one is shocked that I jumped at the chance. Yes, I felt a little guilty that I was benefiting from my brother feeling so awful, but mostly I was just gleeful about going to the game. There is nothing, NOTHING like a game against the Yankees at Fenway. Even though it was kind of raining, everyone was pumped. My voice was mostly gone the next day from screaming pretty much non-stop. Sox were trailing most of the game, but won, 4-3. Big Papi got a home run to start the come-back, and it was WONDERFUL. Goddamn, I do love the Red Sox.
--The next day, I started dog-sitting for some family friends who were going to France for 12 days. They did not have internet in their house (or if they did, neither I nor my computer could find any trace of it), and it took me a few days to figure out how to make their TV work (it was at least 20 years older than I am), so I was largely cut off from the world. This dog, Jane, was adorable, but very particular. For example, while I was there, she refused to sleep in her normal room--she had to come sleep in mine, about two feet from my head. That, combined with a different bed than I'm used to, meant that I got maybe three hours of sleep the next few nights. She was very insistent about getting up no later than 6 AM, which was much earlier than I'm used to. So yeah, I spent most of the next several days sleep-deprived.
--Lack of sleep + stress = weakened immune system. Thus, in an instance of stunningly fitting karmic retribution, I got the exact same illness that prevented my brother from going to the Sox/Yankees game. It was very, very unpleasant.
--This was just in time for my first day back at the office for the summer (i.e. getting paid on a regular basis again). I was only working until early afternoon so that I could get home in time to care for Jane, which turned out to be a blessing. It would have been nice to earn some more money, but it was nicer still to be able to go back to their house and take a nap while Jane played outside. We're prepping for the camp (which is being called an "Academy" this year--a change that got us something like 30K in grant money) and I'm running the college & careers club again. That would be no problem, except our enrollment has increased by about 60 percent, and we've still only got five weeks to fit every student into the club. Taking that many kids on the T and on college tours makes me incredibly nervous, especially since I'll only have one other person with me this year (last year I had two). Please, please let me find a way to keep all my kids together and keep them well-behaved.
I've also been assigning all the students to their weekly clubs: I'm trying to balance students' preferences, gender distribution, enrollment caps, siblings, etc. It's been difficult, but at the same time it's been so nice to be back at the office with my work friends. The atmosphere is so wonderful, and I'm grateful I work at a place where I actually look forward to seeing my coworkers. Plus, Pandora is awesome. And when that fails, GrooveShark picks up the slack.
--Where am I? I think I'm up to the middle of last week. Last week was mostly work at the office, caring for Jane (who started waking me up in the middle of the night because she was bored), and trying to stop being sick. My car almost died it's final death, but the faulty part had been replaced in Minnesota two years ago and was still under warranty. That was kind of a nightmare to finagle, but saved me $400 bucks in repairs. Other stuff last week? Well, there was rain. Like, a lot of rain. There was one day when we had some sun, but it was muggy and oppressive. Then the rain came back, and it's still here.
The big advantage to dogsitting for Jane was that their house was very close to the center of town. I could leave my car at their house and have a five minute walk to the train. It's almost 20 minutes to the train from my house, and since I have to take the 6:56 train in the morning, I usual just drive. I don't think that's going to work this year, though. The frickin MBTA doubled the price of parking since last year, and they've been jacking up the fares. Weekly, transportation is going to cost almost $70. I can cut that down with a monthly train pass once July gets here, and the Fellowship will kick in $50/month for transpo, but it's still going to hurt a *lot*.
--Friday was Can't Stop the Serenity at Coolidge Corner. Once a year, they re-air Serenity at midnight as a benefit for Equality Now. People come in costume, and the organizers have trivia and prizes during the wait in line. There's also a raffle, usually with some prop from the movie as the grand prize. This year, they opened by showing Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. There were people who not only sang along, but quoted-every-line-along, too. It was fun to be among fans.
--Saturday was spent recovering from midnight Serenity. Sunday was Father's day. It was also the wrap-up ceremony/party for the afterschool (which I only went to once last week because of conflicts with doggie and office duty). It was supposed to be a barbecue, but it got moved inside because of the rain. I made a salad (I'll post the recipe at the end--it's really, really good) and despite the fact that I quadrupled the salad, it was completely devoured. I'm sad that the afterschool has ended--I'm going to miss the kids. Some of them I'll see at the camp over the summer, and some of them will be back next year, but some are going into 10th grade and will be too old for the program. There's one student in particular that I'm going to miss a ton. I've got this friend Sabrina--she used to work with my brother, and is more than ten years older than me. Despite that age difference, we're fantastic friends. That's how it is with this student. Yeah, I help her with her homework, and yeah, she calls me "Ms", but we always end up laughing our asses off about something. I think I probably distracted her from her homework more than any student there. Anyway, I hope I still know her in ten years.
Anyway, between the wrap-up ceremony and dogsitting, I missed large chunks of Father's Day. I was home for dinner, but my mother did a lot of snippy passive-aggressive guilt-tripping. Now, Father's Day and Mother's Day have never been big deals in our house--we do cards, we tell the appropriate parent we love them, and that's that. For the last several months, my mother has been nagging me about the job search, encouraging me to spend less time socializing with friends and family and more time focusing on what I need to be doing with my life. And yet as soon as I start working, she's pissed that I'm not spending enough time at home with family. *sigh* I think I'll have enough money saved up by January to move out into someplace that isn't a hellhole. One of my bosses (with whom I get along spectacularly well) rents out the apartment above her. Her current tenants' lease is up at the end of August. It's 2-bedroom, $1200 a month, and I'd be able to get a ride into work with her some days. With a roommate, that's almost doable. The downside is that 1) the closest T stop is more than a mile away, 2) I'm not sure who I'd get for a roommate, and 3) I'm not sure I'll have enough money saved by then to have a suitable cushion. Still, it's nice to fantasize...
--Yesterday was the last day of caring for the pooch. The dog was adorable, but I'm happy to be back in the world of the internet. Today was my first full day at the office, and it was all about the club assignments. Seriously, that was all I did the entire day. I finally finished just after 5, and came home.
Okay, that's all I can remember, and my computer battery is about it die. Remind me to post that salad recipe tomorrow.
--Two Thursdays ago, I was at the afterschool and I got a phone call. It was Michele, my brother's girlfriend. She said that Ben was feeling pretty crappy, and wasn't going to be able to use his ticket to the SOX/YANKEES GAME at Fenway that night, and would I like to go in his stead?
I'm sure no one is shocked that I jumped at the chance. Yes, I felt a little guilty that I was benefiting from my brother feeling so awful, but mostly I was just gleeful about going to the game. There is nothing, NOTHING like a game against the Yankees at Fenway. Even though it was kind of raining, everyone was pumped. My voice was mostly gone the next day from screaming pretty much non-stop. Sox were trailing most of the game, but won, 4-3. Big Papi got a home run to start the come-back, and it was WONDERFUL. Goddamn, I do love the Red Sox.
--The next day, I started dog-sitting for some family friends who were going to France for 12 days. They did not have internet in their house (or if they did, neither I nor my computer could find any trace of it), and it took me a few days to figure out how to make their TV work (it was at least 20 years older than I am), so I was largely cut off from the world. This dog, Jane, was adorable, but very particular. For example, while I was there, she refused to sleep in her normal room--she had to come sleep in mine, about two feet from my head. That, combined with a different bed than I'm used to, meant that I got maybe three hours of sleep the next few nights. She was very insistent about getting up no later than 6 AM, which was much earlier than I'm used to. So yeah, I spent most of the next several days sleep-deprived.
--Lack of sleep + stress = weakened immune system. Thus, in an instance of stunningly fitting karmic retribution, I got the exact same illness that prevented my brother from going to the Sox/Yankees game. It was very, very unpleasant.
--This was just in time for my first day back at the office for the summer (i.e. getting paid on a regular basis again). I was only working until early afternoon so that I could get home in time to care for Jane, which turned out to be a blessing. It would have been nice to earn some more money, but it was nicer still to be able to go back to their house and take a nap while Jane played outside. We're prepping for the camp (which is being called an "Academy" this year--a change that got us something like 30K in grant money) and I'm running the college & careers club again. That would be no problem, except our enrollment has increased by about 60 percent, and we've still only got five weeks to fit every student into the club. Taking that many kids on the T and on college tours makes me incredibly nervous, especially since I'll only have one other person with me this year (last year I had two). Please, please let me find a way to keep all my kids together and keep them well-behaved.
I've also been assigning all the students to their weekly clubs: I'm trying to balance students' preferences, gender distribution, enrollment caps, siblings, etc. It's been difficult, but at the same time it's been so nice to be back at the office with my work friends. The atmosphere is so wonderful, and I'm grateful I work at a place where I actually look forward to seeing my coworkers. Plus, Pandora is awesome. And when that fails, GrooveShark picks up the slack.
--Where am I? I think I'm up to the middle of last week. Last week was mostly work at the office, caring for Jane (who started waking me up in the middle of the night because she was bored), and trying to stop being sick. My car almost died it's final death, but the faulty part had been replaced in Minnesota two years ago and was still under warranty. That was kind of a nightmare to finagle, but saved me $400 bucks in repairs. Other stuff last week? Well, there was rain. Like, a lot of rain. There was one day when we had some sun, but it was muggy and oppressive. Then the rain came back, and it's still here.
The big advantage to dogsitting for Jane was that their house was very close to the center of town. I could leave my car at their house and have a five minute walk to the train. It's almost 20 minutes to the train from my house, and since I have to take the 6:56 train in the morning, I usual just drive. I don't think that's going to work this year, though. The frickin MBTA doubled the price of parking since last year, and they've been jacking up the fares. Weekly, transportation is going to cost almost $70. I can cut that down with a monthly train pass once July gets here, and the Fellowship will kick in $50/month for transpo, but it's still going to hurt a *lot*.
--Friday was Can't Stop the Serenity at Coolidge Corner. Once a year, they re-air Serenity at midnight as a benefit for Equality Now. People come in costume, and the organizers have trivia and prizes during the wait in line. There's also a raffle, usually with some prop from the movie as the grand prize. This year, they opened by showing Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. There were people who not only sang along, but quoted-every-line-along, too. It was fun to be among fans.
--Saturday was spent recovering from midnight Serenity. Sunday was Father's day. It was also the wrap-up ceremony/party for the afterschool (which I only went to once last week because of conflicts with doggie and office duty). It was supposed to be a barbecue, but it got moved inside because of the rain. I made a salad (I'll post the recipe at the end--it's really, really good) and despite the fact that I quadrupled the salad, it was completely devoured. I'm sad that the afterschool has ended--I'm going to miss the kids. Some of them I'll see at the camp over the summer, and some of them will be back next year, but some are going into 10th grade and will be too old for the program. There's one student in particular that I'm going to miss a ton. I've got this friend Sabrina--she used to work with my brother, and is more than ten years older than me. Despite that age difference, we're fantastic friends. That's how it is with this student. Yeah, I help her with her homework, and yeah, she calls me "Ms", but we always end up laughing our asses off about something. I think I probably distracted her from her homework more than any student there. Anyway, I hope I still know her in ten years.
Anyway, between the wrap-up ceremony and dogsitting, I missed large chunks of Father's Day. I was home for dinner, but my mother did a lot of snippy passive-aggressive guilt-tripping. Now, Father's Day and Mother's Day have never been big deals in our house--we do cards, we tell the appropriate parent we love them, and that's that. For the last several months, my mother has been nagging me about the job search, encouraging me to spend less time socializing with friends and family and more time focusing on what I need to be doing with my life. And yet as soon as I start working, she's pissed that I'm not spending enough time at home with family. *sigh* I think I'll have enough money saved up by January to move out into someplace that isn't a hellhole. One of my bosses (with whom I get along spectacularly well) rents out the apartment above her. Her current tenants' lease is up at the end of August. It's 2-bedroom, $1200 a month, and I'd be able to get a ride into work with her some days. With a roommate, that's almost doable. The downside is that 1) the closest T stop is more than a mile away, 2) I'm not sure who I'd get for a roommate, and 3) I'm not sure I'll have enough money saved by then to have a suitable cushion. Still, it's nice to fantasize...
--Yesterday was the last day of caring for the pooch. The dog was adorable, but I'm happy to be back in the world of the internet. Today was my first full day at the office, and it was all about the club assignments. Seriously, that was all I did the entire day. I finally finished just after 5, and came home.
Okay, that's all I can remember, and my computer battery is about it die. Remind me to post that salad recipe tomorrow.