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Mar. 6th, 2006 11:01 pmAh, life. What's been going on?
Saturday is probably the hardest day of the week, since I have to be at the Clinic at 8.30 and it is the single hardest thing I do to get up at 6 in the morning on a Saturday. Once I'm actually there and working, it's fairly easy to keep going, but getting out of bed with the sun just over the horizon and knowing that this is what you're doing on the day of rest - bad times all around.
At least Clinic is going well. I met my kid's foster mother, and she seems to really love him a lot, which is fortunate for him. He was a lot more vocal and active this week, and it turns out that last weekend he was not only on a new medication, but that his social worker, who had him for the day, may have given it to him closer to the time of his arrival than usual, so that he was still lethargic and sleepy when he got there. Either way, we had a fairly good time and I think we're going to have a good kid/clinician partnership.
After, even though I was working on very little sleep, I went over to my brother's house for a little bonding time. He's home from school this week on Spring Break, the lucky bastard, and most everyone else has theirs the week after that. I have mine the week after that, so my break is probably going to be pretty lonely, what with everyone else already being back at school. I suppose I could look at it as an opportunity to get some work done, but I've lived with myself for 20 years now and can no longer be fooled by my lies.
I had a really, really good time with James. I find that just riding in his car listening to music and talking or not, it's just the most refreshing thing. It's got all the benefits of social activity with none of the work that usually comes with being 'on' for people. That is I think what all intimate friendships should aspire to be, and I'm lucky to have that not only with James but with several other people as well.
We wound up running a few of Jamie's errands, and then went antiquing at Bay 50, the big antiques mall right before the Bay Bridge. The place is huge, and they sell literally everything that's old or looks old, vaguely piled according to type. I don't know who would ever want a half-filled can of paint thinner from the 50's, or commemerative Coca-Cola bottles from 1985 (still full), but if you do want those things, they're there, along with some actual worthwhile stuff. I'm always pawing through the stacks and stacks of old books. Usually they're things like biographies of Richard Nixon or whatever, but I live for the day when I find vintage erotica or something. This time I made a good find, a first-edition copy of Rudyard Kipling's The Seven Seas. Lesser-known book of poems, and I'm having trouble finding information about it online, and it's certainly not Captain's Courageous (which is my favorite Kipling novel and which I had memorized nearly by heart when I was 10). But it's a good start to a collection, and I was extremely pleased to find it only $25.00. All in all, a good way to spend a Saturday.
Sunday... what happened Sunday? I think I slept until noon (that being the only day it's possible to do so), and then meandered over to my father's house sometime in the evening. I lazed there for a while, communed with my dog, poked at the avocado plant we're growing on the windowsill of my dad's room. An executive decision was made to go to IKEA for supper, so off we went.
I know I've written before about how much I love IKEA, but one of the things I love best is the cafeteria. I like that you can go through all the little room mockups and then when you're tired have grilled salmon with dill or a shrimp salad or lingonberry mousse cake. I like that they try to have things that are Swedish-inspired, and I always get the most outlandish thing I can (which, since it's IKEA, means the Manager's Special - 16 Swedish meatballs, three boiled potatoes, cream gravy, and lingonberry sauce, plus a mousse if there's any left, and a lingonberry-flavored drink). I love that you can get all that for $6.99, and it's good. In theory I love that you can buy packages of all the food they serve in the cafeteria downstairs in the 'cafe' area, although I've never wanted to miss out on the whole IKEA experience by having the stuff at home. I still like the fact that it's available.
I don't know if we're weird, but maybe once or twice a year my dad and I go to IKEA just to eat in the cafeteria. A few times we've walked in and out without even once gazing upon their fun, funky, visually pleasing merchandise. This time, though, we wandered through their cooking stuff, looking at things like an ice shaver that is vaguely but not explicitly shaped like a penguin, or little spring-green ceramic espresso cups that are so cute they should not actually be allowed to exist. Seriously, IKEA is Disney World for adults. If I could, I would run away from home and live in an IKEA store forever and ever.
Then it was Monday. Oh, Monday. I got 2.5 hours of sleep last night due to a paper being due in Lit. Usually that tired-and-fuzzy zone is where I work best (also the only place I work at all generally), but this time it just fell through. Part of the problem is that the only guidelines were to write 3-5 pages on one of the works we read in class since the last time we had a paper. Unfortunately, we always go over, discuss, rehash everything in class to the nth degree, so I always feel like kind of a hack talking about poems that we already analyzed to a fare-thee-well a few days ago. So I try to make up innovative, new analysis, usually based on comparison between two small works that we didn't explicitly tie together in class, and this time given my tiredness and the time constraints, I think I just overstepped my grasp. Hopefully Gavin won't be terribly disappointed.
I came home and pretty much collapsed after school, only waking up for dinner. There was a brief spat over the food, that went something along the lines of,
Me: "If I don't get into Saint Mary's, I can't go to community college again next semester since I have 64 credits already and nowhere will accept your transfer with more than 70 credits."
My mother: Looks shocked and amazed.
Me: "I've explained this to you before."
Her: "I know that, don't treat me like I'm stupid."
Me: "Then why are you acting like this is the first time you've heard this?"
Her: "Because it's not true."
I was just... so, so mad.
Me: "You're right. You know everything about this, and I haven't done any research at all."
I would talk about the abject idiocy more here, but the memory is making my temple throb. So I left and went to my room and started reading the next big novel for Lit class. It colored my evening, but somewhere along the line I took a bath and it got rid of a lot of the irritation.
I should just move all my stuff into the bathroom and take up primary residence in my bathtub, assuming the IKEA thing wouldn't work out. Life would be so much simpler.
Erin
Saturday is probably the hardest day of the week, since I have to be at the Clinic at 8.30 and it is the single hardest thing I do to get up at 6 in the morning on a Saturday. Once I'm actually there and working, it's fairly easy to keep going, but getting out of bed with the sun just over the horizon and knowing that this is what you're doing on the day of rest - bad times all around.
At least Clinic is going well. I met my kid's foster mother, and she seems to really love him a lot, which is fortunate for him. He was a lot more vocal and active this week, and it turns out that last weekend he was not only on a new medication, but that his social worker, who had him for the day, may have given it to him closer to the time of his arrival than usual, so that he was still lethargic and sleepy when he got there. Either way, we had a fairly good time and I think we're going to have a good kid/clinician partnership.
After, even though I was working on very little sleep, I went over to my brother's house for a little bonding time. He's home from school this week on Spring Break, the lucky bastard, and most everyone else has theirs the week after that. I have mine the week after that, so my break is probably going to be pretty lonely, what with everyone else already being back at school. I suppose I could look at it as an opportunity to get some work done, but I've lived with myself for 20 years now and can no longer be fooled by my lies.
I had a really, really good time with James. I find that just riding in his car listening to music and talking or not, it's just the most refreshing thing. It's got all the benefits of social activity with none of the work that usually comes with being 'on' for people. That is I think what all intimate friendships should aspire to be, and I'm lucky to have that not only with James but with several other people as well.
We wound up running a few of Jamie's errands, and then went antiquing at Bay 50, the big antiques mall right before the Bay Bridge. The place is huge, and they sell literally everything that's old or looks old, vaguely piled according to type. I don't know who would ever want a half-filled can of paint thinner from the 50's, or commemerative Coca-Cola bottles from 1985 (still full), but if you do want those things, they're there, along with some actual worthwhile stuff. I'm always pawing through the stacks and stacks of old books. Usually they're things like biographies of Richard Nixon or whatever, but I live for the day when I find vintage erotica or something. This time I made a good find, a first-edition copy of Rudyard Kipling's The Seven Seas. Lesser-known book of poems, and I'm having trouble finding information about it online, and it's certainly not Captain's Courageous (which is my favorite Kipling novel and which I had memorized nearly by heart when I was 10). But it's a good start to a collection, and I was extremely pleased to find it only $25.00. All in all, a good way to spend a Saturday.
Sunday... what happened Sunday? I think I slept until noon (that being the only day it's possible to do so), and then meandered over to my father's house sometime in the evening. I lazed there for a while, communed with my dog, poked at the avocado plant we're growing on the windowsill of my dad's room. An executive decision was made to go to IKEA for supper, so off we went.
I know I've written before about how much I love IKEA, but one of the things I love best is the cafeteria. I like that you can go through all the little room mockups and then when you're tired have grilled salmon with dill or a shrimp salad or lingonberry mousse cake. I like that they try to have things that are Swedish-inspired, and I always get the most outlandish thing I can (which, since it's IKEA, means the Manager's Special - 16 Swedish meatballs, three boiled potatoes, cream gravy, and lingonberry sauce, plus a mousse if there's any left, and a lingonberry-flavored drink). I love that you can get all that for $6.99, and it's good. In theory I love that you can buy packages of all the food they serve in the cafeteria downstairs in the 'cafe' area, although I've never wanted to miss out on the whole IKEA experience by having the stuff at home. I still like the fact that it's available.
I don't know if we're weird, but maybe once or twice a year my dad and I go to IKEA just to eat in the cafeteria. A few times we've walked in and out without even once gazing upon their fun, funky, visually pleasing merchandise. This time, though, we wandered through their cooking stuff, looking at things like an ice shaver that is vaguely but not explicitly shaped like a penguin, or little spring-green ceramic espresso cups that are so cute they should not actually be allowed to exist. Seriously, IKEA is Disney World for adults. If I could, I would run away from home and live in an IKEA store forever and ever.
Then it was Monday. Oh, Monday. I got 2.5 hours of sleep last night due to a paper being due in Lit. Usually that tired-and-fuzzy zone is where I work best (also the only place I work at all generally), but this time it just fell through. Part of the problem is that the only guidelines were to write 3-5 pages on one of the works we read in class since the last time we had a paper. Unfortunately, we always go over, discuss, rehash everything in class to the nth degree, so I always feel like kind of a hack talking about poems that we already analyzed to a fare-thee-well a few days ago. So I try to make up innovative, new analysis, usually based on comparison between two small works that we didn't explicitly tie together in class, and this time given my tiredness and the time constraints, I think I just overstepped my grasp. Hopefully Gavin won't be terribly disappointed.
I came home and pretty much collapsed after school, only waking up for dinner. There was a brief spat over the food, that went something along the lines of,
Me: "If I don't get into Saint Mary's, I can't go to community college again next semester since I have 64 credits already and nowhere will accept your transfer with more than 70 credits."
My mother: Looks shocked and amazed.
Me: "I've explained this to you before."
Her: "I know that, don't treat me like I'm stupid."
Me: "Then why are you acting like this is the first time you've heard this?"
Her: "Because it's not true."
I was just... so, so mad.
Me: "You're right. You know everything about this, and I haven't done any research at all."
I would talk about the abject idiocy more here, but the memory is making my temple throb. So I left and went to my room and started reading the next big novel for Lit class. It colored my evening, but somewhere along the line I took a bath and it got rid of a lot of the irritation.
I should just move all my stuff into the bathroom and take up primary residence in my bathtub, assuming the IKEA thing wouldn't work out. Life would be so much simpler.
Erin
