Meander

I wonder why I've never really aspired to happiness...or, frankly, much of anything else. Is that why I'm (usually) not unhappy? My goals are small: get through today without making tomorrow any worse than it has to be without my assistance. I don't have--never have had--serious long-term goals. I sense that this is why I have what are essentially panic attacks every time I have major projects to manage: moving, major trips, work processes, etc.

Then again, I'm feeling extra-morose tonight, and cranky. Sucking it up, being the grown-up, doing my duty: it's not fun. It's incredibly important to do that, however, because I know that where I'd end up if I didn't "do the right thing" is an ugly place that I don't want to visit. Or live, God forbid.

Whatever. I don't have the energy or the interest in really delving into my psyche tonight. I have some tough days ahead this week. There is no way around them, so I might as well face them whatever courage I can muster up. Because that's what we Scots do.

If only my fucking eyes weren't all screwed up AGAIN now.

What will you do?

Innately wrong

These book titles, both by David Michie:

Buddhism for Busy People
Hurry Up and Meditate

At least, they seem that way to my somewhat ill-informed, outsider view of Buddhism. I realize that Buddhists can be as busy as anyone else, but..."busy" seems a very Western concept, somewhat alien to the culture from which Buddhism sprung.

But what do I know? Clearly not as much as some people, but they aren't Buddhists either.

I'd as lief...

The library is closed tomorrow.

I'll probably go in for a few hours and try to get some cataloging done in the silence. However, I intend to sleep as late as possible in the morning.

Sparky's spending the night at Z's tomorrow night. Beast and I are taking the opportunity to celebrate our anniversary eve at a nice hotel.

I don't think I mentioned that my sister Jean had her brain surgery last month:

June 4--from my niece Rosellen: A quick note because I just spoke to Dad - Mum had her brain op this morning - all went fine and she was "perky" and eating cake when Dad called. They kept her awake for the whole thing - eek!

No doubt Dad will give you more details sometime soon. I think she gets the rest of today to recover then tomorrow they do tests connecting the electrodes to see if it has any effect.

- - - - - -
June 5--from Reg: Just a quick follow-up from [Rosellen]'s email. I'm just about to go to the hospital again (11 am Thursday).

There seem to have been some improvements to her general Parkinson's symptoms although her speech is still pretty bad - I had trouble understanding her on the phone. She is eating well - a good sign. She has been seen by the surgeon and his entourage today already (they are such a great team!) and I expect that they will now be doing small adjustments to the stimulation and monitoring the effects. This will occur over the next six days and if things look good they will implant the permanent stimulator next Wednesday. We should then be able to return home that weekend (14th or 15th).

I'll keep you posted as I am able to connect to [their friend]'s broadband modem (where I am staying). And you can send any questions or messages to [Jean]!

- - - - - -
June 10: [Jean] speaking, [Reg] typing (and prohibited from editing). [Reg] has told you all the facts, now I get to do the feeling part.

I feel better just for having had the operation in ways I can't tell you. It is just like being back to the condition I was in six months ago. So it has given me back a little part of my life I lost. I was starting recently to find the meds would wear off and I would freeze. I no longer freeze and I have confidence to get out of bed in the morning knowing that I can make my own way to the bathroom without waiting for the meds to kick in. I seem to be straighter and until today I was drooling less. Now my brain is in the ricochet position of an injured brain which will gradually settle down. I shall come back in six weeks to be fine-tuned. I have a "therapeutic" setting which is at a low level while the the brain heals.

Being in hospital has been an interesting experience. Nowhere else do you get treated like a 5-year old child so consistently but it is all well meant so you can't do anything about it. The nursing and the doctoring are essentially very good but ... I guess I like to be my own person. At 58 I have little tolerance for other people's foibles. But I have to go with the flow. We are on the home stretch now. Tomorrow afternoon they will be implanting the stimulator in to the tummy area where they is some fat - there is very little around my collar bone!

I have been eating well but the food is stodgy. I might be able to go home as early as Friday afternoon. [Rosellen] and [Marguerite] are going to be at home from Friday to get the place ready for us to come back to. ([Marguerite], change the bed clothes in the little room for yourself! The manual for the new washing machine is in the kitchen! But it is dead easy to use.)

- - - - - -
June 12: It might look like this email is only going to you, but actually it is going to a very long list of people from a number of areas of [Jean]'s life. But I've sent you all a 'BCC' ('Blind Carbon Copy') email because of anyone who is not fully happy about their email address going all round the world! But the long list serves to emphasise how many friends [Jean] has and how grateful we have been for your concern over the last ten days. [Jean] has gratefully received so many messages of support and encouragement.

But tomorrow (Friday afternoon) [Jean] will be discharged and will return [home] with a bit of electronic gadgetry embedded in her abdomen which will keep kicking her two copies of the internal Globus Pallidus to suppress their over-excitation! In about five weeks time she will return to have the stimulator tuned to optimise its effect. It definitely has an effect as evidenced by a deterioration in her state while it was switched off for a day following its implantation. Now, on a low setting, it is reducing the PD stiffness and enabling her to keep herself more, but not fully, upright. We hope that over time and with careful tuning of the stimulator that the camptocormia will be much reduced - it could take six months or more - if the the initial promise is fulfilled. [Jean] feels right now, however, that a good six months of deterioration has been reversed - at the flip of a switch, as it were.

Please continue to send your messages. It might be a little while before we send another update.

So that's all good.

Meanwhile, my mom fell--again--and whacked her head last week.

There are things going on in other areas of the family that are equally up-in-the-air. I won't get into them, but the vortex continues to swirl.

Consequently, I am trying my best to eliminate external fripperies that are likely to piss me the fuck off again--as I was all winter and spring...and early summer. It's proving remarkably difficult, and yet relatively simple as well. I'm not quite as good at ruthlessness as I could be, but I'm improving.

---

Urban Word:

DFL: dead fuckin last, as in a sporting event or race. or anything else you can get last in.

Any time things get rearranged and reprioritized, someone has to end up DFL. My apologies to whoever, or whatever, that is.

---

Worldwide Blessing Generator
May your own peaceful life bring greater peace to the Earth,
and humble tranquillity inspire your words.
Grace comes to us as an unmerited favor. Be all ways gracious and you will be all ways favored.
Play and consider.

Psycho

I've only just realized that I've never explained PsychoBoss here. That's rather shocking; she was a major factor in so many of my work methodology decisions. So, here goes. I'll try to be as fair as I can. Believe me, if I wanted to be bitchy, I could go on and on and on about the daily weirdness that was my life for four-plus years.

When I graduated with my Master's degree about twenty years ago, I was working very part-time at the place where I'd done my internship. I interviewed a few places and was lucky enough (I thought) to be hired at a small public library about 15 minutes from our apartment. I started in early June.

Six months after I started work, the director went into the hospital. While it was clear that other staff members knew why, I had no clue. It was all very hush-hush. I concluded it must be "girl stuff." To make the situation weirder, the Board (with her direction) asked me to be Acting Director in her absence. I was the newest employee by years, there were two other older and longer-term librarians on staff...but I was Acting as Director on six months of experience, at age 25.

Any bells ringing in your head? They weren't, really, in mine. I was, disgracefully extremely 25, extremely sure of myself, extremely unaware of political undercurrents, and extremely stupid about what the hell was really going on here.

She was not hospitalized for "girl stuff." She was in a locked ward in a mental hospital, on suicide watch. Just before Christmas they started doing ECT to treat her. In January she came home, but wasn't able to work for several more weeks.

In the meantime, it was time to close out the annual budget. The municipal financial person forwarded the budget to the Board, and I was informed that we were hundreds (thousands?) of dollars over budget. The Board wanted to know why, but they were pretty kind: after all, the staff didn't know what the budget was so that must be why it had happened. The short answer was that we had overspent the book budget in a huge way. Somehow. Even though we had ordered nothing while the Director was gone. How had this happened? It made NO sense. And it was embarrassing for me to have to answer this, even if the Board was 'understanding.'

When PsychoBoss returned, she couldn't explain it either, except to say that we'd overspent while she was gone. My confusion increased. I asked questions. I was stonewalled, by a pro. And her attitude toward me generally chilled.

That year after she returned, the children's librarian left to become a Director elsewhere. A new children's librarian was hired and I fell further into pariah-hood while L--the new librarian, who had close to 20 years of experience in the field--became Queen.

Fast forward through disillusionment. Our book budget was 100% spent by the end of March every year. New people who didn't ask nosy questions continued to be elevated to royalty. I was told at one of my annual reviews that I was like a terrier when I had something in mind: I couldn't give it up and the implication was that this was bad. That was the moment when I realized everything she said was code. This was not about my job; after all, reference librarians are supposed to be about sticking it out until a solution is found. This was about my questions about her, the running of the library, etc. Another year, my 'review' was a notecard left on my desk with my COLA.

She was a clean freak: public desks had to be empty before we left for the day. All current magazines were to be retrieved and put on the racks in order and neatly. All shelves were to be "faced" (even edges). She checked. She left us notes when we failed to do everything. No quarter was given. When we complained about Sundays being incredibly busy, that we needed more staff--it was one librarian and 4 teenagers for the three hours we were open--she worked every Sunday for two months as a punishment for us, to prove it could be done. Some punishment! It was a great two months for us! One note--which I still have in my files--left stuck to the in/out board simply read "You are all trying to bring me down, but you won't succeed." (paraphrased) By the time this one showed up, I was photocopying notes and tracking every odd interaction. I called an employment hotline in tears at one point, looking for suggestions on how to deal with the work environment. I was in counseling for a year; thank God Beast had insurance I could work through for that!

Then she announced she hand found another job. She would be leaving! Hurrah. I think the Board asked me to step in again as Acting Director. I thought it over for a few days and turned them down. They asked the librarian who had been there longest to do so and she thought for a long time as well and quietly talked to the other two professionals; we committed to back her with the Board and PsychoBoss when things hit the skids, and she agreed to fill in till a new Director was hired.

The first day that PsychoBoss wasn't there, the support staff mutinied. They flat out refused to accept J, the Acting Director, as any kind of authority. This was communicated directly--"You aren't my boss"--and indirectly--refusing to discuss issues with J or the other librarians. We all had always had fairly collegial relationships, but now the workplace was split distinctly into "professionals" and "circ staff." It was bad. Very bad. We couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on. J talked to the Board about it; they said it was all in her (our) head(s), and things were FINE.

As part of her resignation, the Board had agreed to allow PsychoBoss to continue to organize the bills until the new Director was hired. So, one of the circ staff members would collect all the mail and deliver it to to PsychoBoss who would figure it all out and submit bills to the municipality. Or she would come in and work while the library was closed.

Can you say FUBAR?!

What we figured out rather quickly is that the circ staff was calling PsychoBoss regularly, sometimes four or five times a day, from work, to fill her in on what we librarians were up to. Then, as part of the bills, PsychoBoss would have a conversation with the Board Director that would include a comment or discussion about the workplace as a whole, thus poisoning the Board against us.

Finally, about a month before the new Director was hired, I called the Board President, who was a lovely woman with a heart of gold doing her best to keep the whole hiring process on track and doing all the right things with the assumption that everyone involved was on the same team. We had spoken multiple times over the years and she knew all of us pretty well. I called just before lunchtime, from the Reference Desk, and laid out the whole situation. Loudly. In tears. Sobbing. While patrons browsed the library, and probably looked at me in wonderment; I was crying too hard to notice. She was ... stunned, to put it very mildly.

Within a couple of days, PsychoBoss was no longer paying bills. The municipality had taken that over. I think she had to give up her key (fortunately, it was the kind of key that said NO COPIES ALLOWED on it, so she really had to give it up). She, finally, was out. Of course, the phone calls from our circ staff continued to fill her in on gossip, but her fingers were our of the day-to-day business. Life returned to semi-manageable. The Board hired a new director, someone very different from PsychoBoss in every way possible (though I'm sure that's not why they hired him).

At the end of that budget year, we were a h u g e amount in the red, more than any other year. The following year, I quit and we moved out of state. I heard through the grapevine a few years later that the Board had asked for an audit of the books during the PsychoBoss's tenure and found that there was a great deal of money that was unaccounted for, and some really bizarre places had received large checks that were difficult to understand.

I dunno about all that, except that she continues to be director of the same library she went to just after she left my workplace. Working for PsychoBoss was at once the most educational and the most heartbreaking job I can imagine. Over the years, I've come to understand that some of the issues over which I struggled are part of starting out in a career: high ideals meet the reality of the world. And I have said all along that working with this person taught me a great deal about how not to be a boss. She also taught me that politics exist, and CYA is a great career strategy. Let's see, other things I learned...well, a lot about mental illness, much of which I have omitted from this. Beast has warned be to be oblique.

There were certainly good times: one of my baby showers was hosted at the library, we ate huge amounts of PsychoBoss-subsidized M&Ms, we did a lot of awesome programming and provided great service a very complicated community. I learned how to hire and fire people--that was fun (hah)--even if they were just teenage pages. Although for many years, I looked upon that four-year period as a complete loss not to mention a nightmare, I've come to recognize that situations are what you make of them. Sometimes you have to make a beeline for the exit, which I really should have done sooner, and I certainly would do so now. Live and learn. PsychoBoss no longer haunts my every waking work moment, though I do track her movements on Google et al. ;-)


So, that's the PsychoBoss story. No, I'm not naming names (not a shock, eh?), locations, or dates.

Good deed

They can be fun AND educational. If you go play with words at Free Rice, you are donating food for every right answer to the UN World Food Program. It took me less than 10 minutes to donate 300 grains of rice. I think that's probably lunch for someone...hell, that's probably the entire day's food for someone!

Anyway. Go. Learn. Do something for someone else. I'm off to do just that right now.

(found by the hat)

Hello, Big Guy

One of the reasons I believe in God is that confluence of events that happens once in awhile where you get the same message from every direction at once. I'm sure it could be argued from another standpoint, but for me that's a clear sign that I need to Pay Attention. Sometimes, unfortunately, I don't get the subtle hints and I need to be whacked upside the head before I notice that there is a message coming through.

The whacking occurred a few weeks ago. I'm not going to track all of the events, conversations, situations...that would be really boring to read. Suffice to say that This Week's Lesson is accountability. I think. Or maybe it's that we all see the world very diffferently, and to assume that the way I see it is universal is wrong. And decidedly unsafe. Selfish? Stupid? Inconsiderate? Do Not Do It.

So it's pretty clear with that intro that I try to hold myself accountable to God. Not everyone does because not everyone believes in God. I also try to hold myself accountable to my family and friends, and to myself. That's a lot of bosses. Sometimes--quite often--not all the bosses agree. That's sucky. In the big stuff, fortunately, all the voices tend to agree, most of the time.

I do think that most people--most non-sociopaths anyway--do try to hold themselves to account at some level. We know when we've followed (or gone against) our principles, we know when our parents, for example, would (or wouldn't) be proud of us. Or at least on the Big Stuff we do.

However, I have a question, a legitimate question that is NOT meant to start a religious flame-war. If you don't believe in God, how do you know when you're really right? Or wrong? Who do you report to in the event of a Situation? Yourself? What about debriefing after a Situation? This may sound flip or studiously silly, but with my background as a lifelong Christian, I just don't know.

And that ties into the second part of what I mentioned above: we all see the world very differently. In the past couple of weeks I've either made assumptions, or had assumptions challenged, that I thought were "what everyone thinks/does/assumes."

In the theoretical sense, of course, this is not news. Even in everyday interactions, if I don't see eye-to-eye with someone I don't know, this doesn't cause me any angst at all. But when it happens--as it has lately--with good friends, with people I respect, with people I like, it's a whole other kettle of fish. [the hell with grammar] It's really a whole NOTHER kettle where I grew up! See what I mean?

These are the sorts of issues, too, that are not generally discussed in public: abortion, religion, ethics in general, homosexuality, ANY sexuality at all!.... I know better than to bring these subjects up unless I'm absolutely positive they aren't going to start a face-to-face confrontation; I bring them up online primarily because 1) it frequently feels like the only place I CAN bring them up, and 2) if I get flamed by people I don't know, I have no problem kicking them out of my "house" online. I could go on about my online behavior differing a great deal from my IRL behavior...suffice to say that there is a difference. A huge difference. Ya'll have NO IDEA!

Just about every day this week, however, someone has managed to (generally unwittingly) two-by-four my assumptions about "what normal people do" or "what everyone thinks." The difficulty is not so much that I disagree with them, it is that they are doing the exact same thing back at me! There we sit, two (or three) people all seeing eye-to-eye, and then suddenly...NOT! Suddenly, I feel like we've slewed off the road and I've been thrown from the vehicle...and they don't know. They've gone rocketing on their way, and I'm rolling down the asphalt trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Or maybe I'm driving and they fell out and haven't realized it. The kicker? I can still hear their voices talking to me even though we're no longer in the vehicle together.

Of course, this has happened before now to me. Several years ago, I was talking to a pastor's wife, someone I liked but didn't know well, when suddenly she was telling that she knows all about the "homosexual agenda" and the trashy and horrible life "all homosexuals" live because of a personal situation she was tangetially involved in... I very calmly said I didn't agree with her and thought we should not pursue this conversation. She pushed...I pushed back. It caused a rift. But, as I said, I didn't know her well so I was able to at least start handling it rationally, even if it ended badly. In any case, it was unexpected but not earth-shattering.

Much more recently, I was speaking to a colleague about the enormous changes that were coming in the way our work situation was going to be done. We were both whining and complaining and generally venting, when all of a sudden my colleague was no longer just whining. The conversation became absolutely vituperative, mean-spirited, and VERY very personal about some other colleagues. That was several months ago, and I think it may be the precipitating event in this cascade of WTF that all came to a head for me this week. I (still) cannot figure out where this person is coming from. I thought that we shared a belief that THIS is the Right Thing, only to find out that she absolutely wanted NOTHING to do with it. I stood there with my mouth gaping like a hooked tuna.

So the second question that I'm faced with, that I'm throwing out to the universe (oh, believe me, God is so hearing about this!) is: what is the right thing to do when this happens? Do I stop everything and listen quietly and carefully? Do I respond with my take on the subject, even if it means saying hard things and possibly alienating someone? Do I hold on to it all and try to see the other person's point of view, sort of let it settle in, and then revisit the subject later? Or is the answer really, truly different in each situation?

Honestly, the response I tend toward is saying hard things, usually without thinking them through. This is the way I was raised, and most of the time I prefer having other people deal with me that way. However, as the years pass I'm getting better at stopping and listening (Beast is now snorting--stop that!). What I seem unable to do is the letting things settle and re-visiting later.

At the church I grew up in, our pastor closed nearly every worship service with the same words. Apparently, I didn't hear them enough, or I haven't heard them recently enough, or something. I guess I still haven't gotten the message: "Be kind to those around you. Remember, everyone you meet is carrying a heavy load."

Parenting

I've just done a meme elsewhere on parenting. After writing a long post-meme comment on my original post, and then reading other things other people have written in response to the meme questions, I'm beginning to wonder what the hell is going on here.

On the other hand, I'm extraordinarily grateful for several things:

1) Great parenting mentors.

2) I'm not old enough (yet) that I'm saying "Kids these days..." or "Back when I was a kid, things were different, by God!" Or, rather, if I do say those things, I am usually saying things like "We were pure hellions, and kids nowadays are just the same as ever."

3) Sparky is/was an easy-to-raise child most of the time. He wasn't ADHD, LD, ED, BD, sickly, mental, emotional, or name-your-problem.

4) My friends, parents or non-parents, rock. Thank you for your support, those of you who are online, and a general prayer of thanks to the ones offline has been issued to the Universe at Large.

Trust me: my parents were strict. Our friends' parents were strict. We respected our elders on penalty of pain and humiliation. Apparently, I'm the only person who remembers things like this from my family's storybook :

1) [I mention this in my meme] My sister being tied to a pole as punishment for walking to grandma's house without telling anyone. The plan was for a full day; Mom untied her at lunchtime. My sister was three. THIS IS GOOD PARENTING, from the olden days??

2) Another sister went through the garbage one day, found several pill bottles that had been thrown away with pills still inside, and proceeded to dose the neighborhood kids with the outdated drugs.

3) My brother tried to burn down our neighbors' house. Or maybe our house. Anyway, he was caught by our neighbor trying to start a fire between the two houses. The same neighbor who gave all the girls in our family expensive Christmas presents while ignoring him. Because they didn't like boys. That's why they never had kids of their own: they might (gasp!) end up with a son.

4) Every kid in 6th grade in my town lived in terror at the end of the school year--for DECADES--of being scrubbed by the 7th graders. Hazing much? And, after at least two decades, couldn't someone in the school administration have attended to this? My sister was in 6th grade in 1954; I was in 6th grade in 1975. We share this memory.

5) Playing Frisbee across our street was a favored game for my brother and his friends. They consistently tried to scoot the Frisbee under, off of, and THROUGH cars driving by.

And kids today are so horrible? Kids today have no discipline?

Do you know how many times I had comments made to me while shopping because my son was either crying (usually a result of my unwillingness to buy him junk), or because he had stepped in front of someone, or because he was laughing loudly?? If I had left the store immediately on each occasion--and there were times when I did leave the store, abandoning a full cart at least once--we would have never had groceries. Or clothes. Or...well, anything.

Kids, young kids especially, cry. They are noisy. They are impatient, self-centered, emotional little bundles of energy. They somehow manage to move at the speed of light and yet stand perfectly still at inopportune moments. They get hurt, they get annoyed, they are frustrated. And guess what?

Nevermind, you'll never guess what.

WE ALL USED TO BE KIDS!! Yep, even those of you who achieved sainthood as adults, you used to be kids. And I'll bet your angelic mother and wonderful father wanted to murder you (or themselves) at least a couple of times a month. Get over your perfection and get over the neat, tidy little shell you've built around your life.

Kids are messy (unlike we tidy adults), and don't always follow directions (unlike us conscientious adults), sometimes they are just frickin' ANNOYING (also unlike us perfect-in-every-way adults). Get-the-fuck-over-it.

Without kids, we die as a species. There's no other way around it. Kids are the chaos theory of the universe. They are also a joy to be around, beautifully open to anything happening, aware of the amazing things all around them in a way adults have forgotten, and just COOL.

Yes, it's no fun to be around screaming, out-of-control kids, I'll grant you that. Can ya'll perfect people just spare a half-second to be grateful you don't have to go home with those demons everyday, and/or feel a little empathy with the exhausted people who DO have to go home with them, whether they want to or not? In ten minutes, your perfect controlled environment will be back to normal and you can pretend the noise and mess never happened, since you're already living in some sort of weird fantasy that you know best about a subject you are apparently unable to actually tackle yourself. Kinda like George Bush and the military....

/rant

Always something

We just had a new 'friend' removed from the library by two of our city's peace officers.

Said 'friend' wasn't really doing anything wrong, except maybe not sharing his gin with the library staff before he went to sleep under a table in the nonfiction area.

Still, he was able to make it out of the building under his own steam, to be cited for ... something. Public Nuisance? Public Drunkenness? Snoring in Public? Not Sharing?

Apparently, this library is not the place to go to cool off as you heat up. Poor guy.

Summation (Part 2)

In response to a really stoo-pud (IMNSHO) ignorant and self-centered comment on someone else's blog, I wrote this comment. It's a decent summation of where I was, both physically and metaphorically, during last week's trip:

I live in an area that is, on the surface at least, predominantly white, middle-class semi-rural/pseudo bedroom-community-suburb.

25% of the students in my son's school are Hispanic. They are nearly invisible in the community EXCEPT in the Police Blotter, the headlines, and "gangs." [White kids travel in "groups;" Hispanic kids travel in "gangs."] A lot of them come to my library to study, use the computers...and yeah, goof off. Sure, there are a lot of morons. There are a lot of non-Hispanic morons, too.

OK, so I'm a little fragmented tonight because I just spent a week serving on mission trip with 60 teenagers, teaching them not to become morons. I hope. Part of our group ate in two different urban soup kitchens, once for dinner Wednesday, once for lunch on Thursday. I learned two words in Ojibway and found out some fascinating info about ... stuff from a well-spoken woman with a great deal of pride in her heritage. We also met a man who called the lot of us out, asking if we were "yuppies" on vacation, sight-seeing among the homeless as a lark. He had every right, and in spite of that harsh-sounding introduction, he affirmed what the teens were doing, going to far as to tell one that he could tell she "got it" because he could see it in her eyes.

I met a woman whose adult son was beaten up last January with a sewer pipe and after spending 8 hours crawling home, has bankrupted his family with the medical bills: she was at the soup kitchen waiting for a "handout" for the necessities for this month. She could not have been more upbeat in spite of this. So was another woman who was waiting for the first time ever in a soup kitchen...at age 50. Mortified? Yes, but very cheerful in spite of that. I saw grandmas with their grandchildren, telling them to "eat up those vegetables!" I saw a blind man carrying all his earthly belongings in a backpack.

Part of our mission was with children. We met a crew of 9 children in one family; there is another on the way. We're pretty sure one of the kids in that family is diabetic, untreated. They were, actually, the best-behaved, most well-spoken children of the week. We met ten-year-olds who can do outstanding gymnastics (no expensive equipment required to jump around, you know), one of whom is completely deaf in one ear--they all have smiles that could rock your life and scars on their bodies and minds that could break your heart. I met a woman who has single-handedly raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the poor in her town, and washes the feet of vagrants on a daily basis. [I'd add that she is currently raising money for a children's home/orphanage that will be arranged in households rather than 'wards' and will also have its own school, park, rec center, etc. Let me know if you're interested and I'll tell you where you can find out more.]

One of the other groups talked to a woman who was homeless because when she got leukemia she lost her job because she couldn't work, which meant she lost her insurance, and within months, after selling her possessions piecemeal to pay for rent was evicted and moved into the Salvation Army shelter. [whew--Can you say vicious circle?] She was--at the time of her diagnosis--a practicing pharmacist and just about to go to Julliard on a full scholarship.

Any guesses how many of these people were black/white/Hispanic? Does it matter? They are all people. Would you want to sit in an emergency room with your feverish-for-the-fifth-straight-day child and be ignored for hours, whether or not you have insurance or speak English? Would it make it more fun to know the whole waiting room was looking down its collective nose at you because you don't belong? What, exactly, would you do for a seriously ill family member, whatever your economic status??

Part of the deal with being poor in this country is having to face people who, consciously or not, think poverty is a character flaw.

Poverty is a circumstance, NOT part of your personality. Most of the people who are poor in this country remain poor because of the stigma of poverty. It's HARD being poor in ways that people who have never been destitute can never understand. I certainly can't, not fully. For that failing I am profoundly grateful and also profoundly aware that there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Yes, I was a little incensed, and a pretty tired, too.

If you can't say something nice...

...please don't sit by me (passim. Dorothy Parker).

I've been extraordinarily restive and cranky all day today, since reading the local paper's front page this morning at work. I don't want to go into it--I've been avoiding going into it here for several weeks (months) (years). The whole situation has been roiling just under the surface for nearly a decade, and recent events have caused the boil to finally be lanced. Suffice to say that I don't like the theory of going to court whether it's personally or as a corporate body. That's one side of my brain. The other side of my brain is pissed . Or, beyond that, I'm

P I S S E D!!

For a multitude of reasons, that's very unhelpful, and I don't like trying to suppress, or at least manage, this feeling, and be adult and mature. It's extemely fortunate that I haven't actually run across any of the people involved or it would really really really hard to keep from literally run across and over them multiple times. The one time I did spend time in their presence, sorta, I managed to greet them with a "Hi. What a lovely day, isn't it? Happy Easter!" and sound passably cheery.

This "taking the High Road" shit is just no fun at all. Being this angry is not good for me (I know, Molly, I know), but I'm determined--and STUBBORN--enough to not be slugging it out in the mud.

All I can say is that Loch Lomond better freakin' be worth it, even if I get there last.

Anger

I've been lurking around Hugh's take on reading Matthew.

Today's post is about anger. Good heavens: the only kind of anger we Christians--at least in my upbringing--are "supposed" to have is Righteous Anger! Yes, there's a time and a place for that. But regular run-of-the-mill, spitting nails and the Evil Eye? Nope. Stuff that down; we don't "do" that. That tends to lead to a lot of lying to oneself about what really is Righteous in one's Anger. If one is honest, one admits that this is bullshit, but that's hard to take.

WWJD? Indeed, what would Jesus have us do:

The answer - undeniably frustrating as it is and unbelievably difficult to comprehend - is ... wait for it ... forgiveness. NO! NO! NO! THEY WERE WRONG! They are ebil ebil fucktards!

The Good News? Yeah, they probably are. The Bad News? You just have to give up being Right. Jesus tells us to become something bigger, bigger than the Human Need to be Right, something Godly. God, for example, doesn't exactly go around needing to prove "Rightness".

"Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court".

The question is, "Who's zooming who?" The accuser becomes the accused. Where does blame ultimately lie?

I don't wanna give up being Right. I like being Right. I like being Right waaaaay more than I like being Good.

Oh shit. That's the point.

Oops--she did it again

I think our scheduling person has turned into Britney Spears. They seem to be on the same mental wavelength lately.

Today, I thought Schedule Dingbat was actually here for the afternoon, since she wasn't crossed off her hour at the desk at 2 (normally, my name is written in there). So, at 2:10 even though she hadn't appeared to relieve me from my 1-2 shift, I came back to my desk and did some cataloging. At 2:45 I happened to see someone standing at the Ref Desk and no Dingbat in sight. I went out to see if I could help him (he's one of our nice regulars) and took a closer look at the schedule.

Dingbat, as usual on Friday, took the afternoon off (which is obvious, if you can read her psychotic writing). But she left herself on the schedule. Here's what her time today looked like:

9-9:45 work
9:45-11 meeting (offsite)
11-12 work
12-6 off

She's salaried. Where do I sign up for this job?!

And, my nose just started bleeding again. Stress-related? Naaah...couldn't be....

Not hallucinating

I've removed (well, it's still here, just in my 'drafts' folder) a post I had up this week about an incident at work. If you saw it, great. If you didn't you'll now be thoroughly confused.

Here's the thing: the local paper got hold of the story and published a short article this morning. This local paper has some sort of agreement with one of the television channels out of the Giant-City-Nearby so the same article has also appeared on the TV channel's website (and possibly their broadcasts).

I found both of these news blurbs while skimming around my RSS feeds this morning and logged onto my work email to pass it along. My next step was to take the post down from my blog, but before I did that I found a note from the staff member I'd just written to. Here is part of the note (she was apparently the one who talked to our out-of-town director):

We do not know what angle the reporter is going give to the article..... Officially and unofficially we cannot comment about the incident...[the city manager] says to refer inquiries about the matter to the police department because it is a police matter.

...Do not talk about the Monday incident; simply state that it is being handled by the police. You cannot say [anything to the public].

Please do not make light of the incident.

...Please have the video camera monitors pulled up on all staff desks....

Quite obviously, there are a million reasons why the original post needed to be removed. No one at work reads my blog, and I don't want to get subpoenaed or otherwise 'found out'. Anonymity is good.

Ahh, the realities of the world have hit my corner of Blogville. Damn.