What I’m Reading
Jan
30
If I Convert, Do I Get A Trophy?
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Again with the Quiz Bowl. This year it seems like I am getting on a bus with them all the damn time. These constant field trips are a double-edged sword, really; on the one hand I get to miss almost an entire day of school, on the other I have to miss an ENTIRE DAY OF SCHOOL. Without a sub. Do you know what kids and teachers do to an unmanned library? Restoring the shelves from a day of chaos without me is more work than just being here all day.
But it’s okay, really, because I love my little nerdlets. As long as they win they are the apple(s) of my eye, and so far we are well on our way to that big gold trophy. We are currently in first place! For real! We even beat the evil Catholic school (evil because they usually kick our ass, not because of any religious/devil/Jesus-type reason) and left them crying into their baptismal font.
Of course, now that I have bragged about my team Jesus is going to render all my kids dumb today and we will lose to the stupid school that should be an easy win. So just in case, sorry Jesus! I was just kidding when I called the Catholic kids losers, I swear!
Just kidding again. I would never call any of the kids losers, especially not when I am a fully grown adult reading Twilight and hanging out at the mall. That said, please wish my kiddos luck today! They will definitely need it after all my atheistic, blasphemous smack talk.
UPDATE: Winners!
Jan
29
Shopping Dilemma
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Ladies! And gentlemen who don’t mind discussing shoe shopping! I have a quandary I am hoping you can help me resolve. Let me lay it all out for you, because shoe shopping is complicated but if anyone can help me out I know it will be the internet. I tried asking Chris for his advice but he is still on his reverse psychology kick whereby he is overly encouraging about accumulating shoes. “Yes, buy all the shoes you want! The more the merrier! You DEFINITELY NEED four pairs of black flats!” Which, while nice to hear, does not help me in my current situation. So here we go.
My mom bought me an awesome pair of casual riding boots from Eddie Bauer for Christmas. See?
Yes, my mother has lovely taste.
The problem is not the boots, which I love. The problem is that she bought me a very similar pair of boots last year, also in brown.
So now, decision time. Do I keep the second, similar but not exactly the same boots? Or do I return them?
A few factors you might want to consider:
They do not make the boots in black or camel, which was the option I was hoping for since currently both pairs are brown.
I think I would only get store credit for them, since my mom already paid for them on her credit card. I don’t usually love the clothes at Eddie Bauer so I may or may not find $160 worth of clothes there.
I would just let my mom keep the credit and buy something nice for herself, since I clearly am not in dire need of more shoes…
But I love them and I could always use another pair of boots in the winter, right? And someday my first pair will wear out and then I will be sad I have no brown boots!
HELP ME, INTERNET. Who knew shoes would ever give me such anxiety?!
Jan
27
The Pressing Issues
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Thank you all for your concern about my bitchfest from yesterday. To answer your questions:
-They kept the kids in the library because the classrooms upstairs were even colder than my office, registering a brisk 47 degrees. Plus, they needed a central location so that the Superintendent of Schools could swing by to “assess the situation”, also known as “make a note of how ridiculously old and inefficient this building is so that when the principal uses it in a political power play to get more money from the town, she will be prepared”.
-My library is pretty big, but with 300 kids in here the library quickly heated up to sweaty and uncomfortable. It ended up being kind of a toss up as to which was worse- the cold or the body heat- because depending on the group of kids they may or may not have already had the deodorant talk and when they are huddled together like that it’s really very difficult to pinpoint an individual culprit.
-I would love to keep a space heater under my desk, except for the recent email we got specifically prohibiting us from using space heaters at work. Old and often faulty wiring plus blazing hot ceramic heater under my desk equal office fire. Not that this seems to concern anyone in our main office or the principal, all of whom are wearing tank tops and are flushed with warmth every time I see them.
-The teachers who did not help me stand guard all seemed to be gathered in the hallways, complaining to each other, while I stood in the library and complained about the teachers complaining, then wrote a blog post complaining about them as well.
-I did not get frostbite. This is partly because I wore gloves all day, but also because I am mostly just a whiny baby and really, it was cold but not cold enough for them to cancel school or send us home.
-I realize that many of you ask yourselves every time you read one of my posts, WHY WOULD ANYONE WORK THERE?! And the answer to that is threefold: 1. I mostly like my job despite its many flaws. 2. On the whole, I work with some very nice people, except when they annoy me. 3. It sucks to try to find a new job, especially when I know I won’t make as much money anywhere else because my extra graduate credit is worthless in any other district, and especially when library jobs are becoming a scarcity in a time with no extra money for things like LEARNING and BOOKS.
Sigh. I am keeping my fingers crossed for the predicted snow day tomorrow. At least at home I can crank up the heat and pile on the blankets. Oh, and also drink wine and play XBox. My life, it is thrilling.
Jan
26
Shivery
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Greetings, my internet loves, from a balmy 55 degree library! Remember last week how I complained about the cold of my office? Multiply that by a weekend of weather in the teens during which the heat was entirely shut off in the building, compounded by the fact that due to some “modem snafu” the heat never turned on in my school this morning. Let me just run you through my a.m. thus far:
I enter the building bright-eyed on a sultry mid-winter Monday morning to a Vice Principal who, in response to my chipper “Good morning!”, replies with a grim, “Keep your coat on.”
Undaunted, I make my way to the library where I am greeted with a blast of frigid air as if I had walked back outside. The children are huddled together, their fingers too cold even to annoy me with their cell phones.
My first thought: what the hell?!
My second thought: this blows.
My third thought: there is no way they are going to send kids to class like this.
And I was kind of right. They did not send the kids to class at 7:30 as normal. Instead, they held 300 children IN MY LIBRARY. For an hour. While the classrooms heated up. Do you have any idea what that is like? A few teachers hurried past, alarmed at how many kids were in the library and probably worried I would ask them to stay and help out. A few kind souls took pity on me and stood guard in various parts of the library while I patrolled to break up the couples sitting on each other’s laps and the kids bashing each other with their book bags full of bricks textbooks. Those teachers will be getting a free coffee from me because I am pretty sure I would have given up and hid in the bathroom if they hadn’t magically appeared.
The rest of my morning will be spent in an attempt to retain blood circulation as it is currently only up five degrees from when I got in. My down jacket and gloves may not be enough this time around, I may need to break out the DDR for some aerobic activity. Does anyone know if I can collect Worker’s Compensation for frostbite?
Jan
23
Like my job isn’t weird enough, a whole group of sparrows have decided to nest in the courtyard outside my library windows. Birds making nests outside isn’t exactly strange news, I grant you, but considering my sizable fear of birds and flying things like butterflies (shudder), it is mildly unpleasant news all on its own. To make matters worse the birds have been eating these berries that are falling off one of the trees. Apparently these berries have fermented, so two or three berries in the birds start hopping sideways and twittering in these crazed, loud chirps.
I had just pointed them out to the school nurse and we were laughing at the poor drunk birds when WHAM, one flew head first into the picture window and broke its little neck. The nurse and I both let out little shrieks and she ran to tell the custodians they needed to clear out the berries ASAP, along with the dead bird evidence so these fragile kids didn’t have to see a chalk outline of a bird in the courtyard on their way to their next class. Because you know any bird-loving kid is going to use that as an excuse to say they are having anxiety and where do you think those darling anxious children go when they are not in class? Let me give you a hint: NOT THE NURSE. I guess the library is like a little haven for these stressed out kids, which is sometimes nice to think about but then in reality I end up with the stuff like the suicide watch kids because the library is the place where they feel “safe”. I didn’t sign up for that kind of responsibility! Where are the kids that want to talk about Harry Potter?!
Anyway, you might think I am kidding about these kids being super sensitive but it’s very much true- we have one girl who has a movie phobia. And not, like, gory movies or PG-13 movies, but ALL MOVIES. Any time the television goes on in a classroom she gets a pass for the library and stays here until the teacher sends for her. I don’t necessarily mind because she is quiet and willingly sits and reads for the whole class, but I just don’t understand! And isn’t this girl going to be at quite the social disadvantage later in life when she can’t even sit through something like Finding Nemo? It seems like this is a phobia to be worked on, not avoided, but I guess I am not a counselor so maybe I should just stick to making sure the kids don’t kill themselves on my watch.
Jan
20
Marring An Otherwise Lovely Day
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Since I just spent over two hours jerry-rigging the televisions in my school to receive residential cable access I am really in no mood to write a pithy post. In fact, I’m pretty sure anything I say right now is going to come across as bitter and cynical but please be assured that there is a reason for that and it is because it really really sucks being the technology go-to person in a place that HAS NO TECHNOLOGY. And people, I am trying. I told a select few teachers to try streaming the inauguration ceremonies live from CNN but hey ho, guess what? Internet access is out in the upstairs of our building! And also, I highly doubt that our district has enough bandwith allocated to allow us all to stream live anyway, since I can barely get a YouTube clip to work without it causing my computer to commit suicide.
But luckily I got some televisions up and running and hopefully everyone (including me) will get to enjoy this wonderful day. It’s been a long time coming, and I made sure to wear my waterproof mascara. It’s hard to remain angry when there are so many things to be thankful for. See? There, I feel better already. It’s all about perspective.
And just to prove my non-bitterness, I will leave you with an anecdote from last Friday. I was sitting in my office and my phone rang. It was one of the older teachers, just a few years short of retirement. “NPW, get up to my classroom quickly! I am dying to show you something!” I ran right up there fearing an electrical fire or worse and I saw her calmly standing at her computer watching a slide show. “Have you ever SEEN this?!” I looked at it more closely, it was a clip about Martin Luther King.
“This video?”
“No, this website! It’s AMAZING!”
I looked again.
“Are you asking me if I’ve ever seen YouTube?”, I asked cautiously.
“You mean you’ve heard of it?!”
And end scene.
Jan
16
-4 Degrees and I Call Bullshit
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There’s been a lot of grumbling lately around my school because the classrooms and hallways are arctic cold but when you enter the Principal’s office you want to strip down to your bathing suit and spread out your beach towel. It doesn’t seem fair, but then, I guess I shouldn’t complain too much or the building maintenance people might come and reinstall the Bog of Eternal Stench that plagued my office last year.
When I complained about the air quality in my office someone must have heard me because they installed a new air ventilation system over the summer. Unfortunately, the only way to pump fresh clean air in is to suck it up directly from outside, where it is currently at -4 degrees and dropping. So last year my office reeked of excrement but was warm and this year my office has been relatively free of sewer smells but I risk losing digits to frostbite. The jury is still out on which I prefer.
I’ve taken to wearing my fingerless gloves/mittens in my office because then I can type until I get too cold, then I can fold the mittens over my frozen popsicle fingers until they regain some feeling. One of the kids commented on my gloves yesterday and I told him I was wearing them in preparation to go downtown after school to beg for money in the square. Oh and also, they are great for using my iPhone. I can’t tell if the kids think I am insane or hilarious, but I am going to tell myself it’s both.
The other bad thing about being frozen all day is that it requires an insane amount of hot beverages to keep me going throughout the day. The most readily available hot beverage is, of course, coffee, since I get offers at least four times a day from people who are going by Starbucks, Dunks, or one of the other twelve coffee shops within a one-mile radius of our school. Since I love coffee I rarely refuse, but in the past month or so I have slowly come to realize that my end-of-the-day rages are likely caused by severe caffeine overload. It may be time to switch over to the chamomile. Either that or go totally balls out and see how many cups of coffee it will take to turn me into the Hulk. HULK SMASH! HULK SMASH LIBRARY!
You can see why Chris thinks I’m such a peach.
Jan
14
Foul! Inappropriate Use of Technology!
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Look, I’m totally down with the twenty-first century. I blog, I use Twitter and Facebook, my photos are all online, I watch television shows on my iPhone, and I most definitely text. But there have to be some limits, right? I mean, I don’t want to learn of someone’s impending divorce via their Facebook status! Some things deserve a phone call, is all I’m saying.
Which is why, last Friday, I had to threaten my sister with a punch to the teeth after I received a text message from her saying, “We’re getting married!”
I called her back immediately to deliver said threat, only to discover that she and her boyfriend had just talked about getting married and agreed that they wanted to, not that he had surprised her with a ring and I should start saving money for a bridesmaid dress. Which was lucky for her, because if she had texted me the actual news of an engagement I would have made good on my promise to kill her.
The good news is that she now knows she should call me when the diamonds have been delivered to her hand so that I can express an appropriate sisterly glee that she is getting married instead of being totally annoyed that she couldn’t be bothered to actually dial my number and speak to me. The bad news is that I should probably start saving up because knowing my sister, this wedding is going to be a booze-fest at an expensive tropical location. And judging from the way things have already started off, I should probably also pony up for a Costco membership because I am going to need a LOT of headache reliever in the months to come.
Jan
12
Moral Dilemma
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You may or may not recall, but I am currently filling the position of union rep at my school. Basically what this means is that I get to attend some of the most soul-crushing meetings I have ever experienced. They are a combination of boring and depressing and if I didn’t have my iPhone to keep me entertained I probably would have already run screaming from the room- after I had excused myself using Robert’s Rules, of course.
Anyway, at the last meeting I was busying myself with Facebook updates when suddenly I saw people raising their hands, which meant I was about to miss voting on something. It seemed like a lot of hands were up, including one of the other women from my school, so I threw up mine as well. Phew! Two very long hours later the meeting was over and my co-worker turned to me brightly, asking, “I didn’t know you were interested in bumping someone else out of their position!”
Hey to the what now?
She prattled on for a bit about how if there was no money in the budget the people with tenure could still get cut- if there’s no money, there’s no money, right? But since I have seniority over a bunch of people in the district I could just take their job instead, leaving them to queue up for the dole and hope someone needs a school librarian.
I had no idea what I was doing when I raised my hand, of course, but it seems so shady to want to push someone else out of their job when they’re just cruising along doing their thing. But really, what’s my alternative? Collect unemployment myself? Chris and I have been talking lately about trying to find property to buy, I suppose now would be as good a time as any to make a move somewhere. Somewhere warm, where there’s no snow to shovel…
Wait a minute. I’m getting ahead of myself here. If I didn’t have a job I wouldn’t have any money to buy anything, anyway, dreams of a desert climate be damned.
So what do you think- is it totally a jerk move to kick someone else to the curb to keep a job? Or would it be a sucker move not to? And also, should I start paying more attention at the union meetings, or start skipping them altogether? I think even I know the answer to that one.
Jan
9
Office Woes
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Let’s just get one basic fact out of the way: mostly everything in my work office is crap. I’ve managed to MacGyver some twisted metal and flat surfaces into office “furniture” but for the most part I spend my days wedged under a child-sized desk, typing emails on a computer that is so ancient it would probably be faster to chisel my messages on a stone tablet and send them Pony Express than wait for Outlook to open.
At the start of the year I was using as my desk chair one of the kid’s chairs. Not only was it meant for pre-pubescent children to sit in for 30 minute stretches (and not, say, a thirty-year old woman), but it was also one of the chairs that had previously been attached to a desk by metal rods. Somehow it had been twisted free of its accompanying desk and was ceremoniously presented to me as my office chair. Sometimes when I sat in it I would catch my clothing on it, which was nice, because I always enjoy throwing away $80 Banana Republic pants. Other, less lucky, times, I would catch my skin on it, and that was not so nice because I do hate getting tetanus shots.
Then sometime around October my co-worker sucked it up and bought herself a new office chair and I was totally jealous. It was a giant, cushy leather affair and as she spun herself around in it I vowed that this was the year I wouldn’t contract lockjaw from my current office chair! Then my co-worker spun back around and slid her old office chair towards me. “It’s not much, but at least it won’t send you to the hospital!”, she said.
True.
So I took her old chair and moved my old ragged metal one to the desk where the senior citizens sit. The new(er) chair was a spinny chair and had a little lever to raise and lower the seat. Fancy! Except my co-worker neglected to mention that the little lever that raises and lowers the seat was broken so every time I sat down, the chair would sloooooowly sink until I was basically sitting on the floor, a good seven inches lower than my makeshift desk. This was mildly irritating, as you can imagine, but after a couple of weeks of this I found a delicate balance where if I sat just right I could stop the chair from sinking.
And then the holidays came and Santa Chris bought me a Balance Ball chair:
And the world was good. Until I came back from lunch the other day to find a cluster of children BOUNCING on my new chair. I tell you, if I could have smacked them upside the head without being fired I would not have minded at that moment. Then I noticed at the center of all the bouncing children was one of the teacher’s assistants! I just gaped at him a moment before I could summon up an “EXCUSE ME, I hate to interrupt the ruining of my new chair, but I have WORK TO DO, THANK YOU.” He didn’t even seem at all abashed that he had led a troupe of germy children into my office to defile the one nice thing I have in there.
I know all I can do is tell him off, but please validate for me that he also deserves a smackdown. I am feeling mighty grumpy about it, but maybe it’s the hormones kicking in.