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This OT is on Vacation!

Good evening, Persephoneers! I am writing this post from the beauty-full Jersey Shore! This is not the vacation that is referenced in the title, though. Actually quite the opposite. This is a working trip, and boy, are we working.

However, the other editors and I are taking a much-needed break for an extended weekend. There are rumors of bouncy castles and margarita machines. I’m fairly certain it’ll be epic. We’ll be back next week with an awesome line-up!

In the meantime, sit back, relax, hang out here and play in the open thread. We’ll be out looking for unicorns.

Here’s a tune to put you in the mood:

 

By [E]queSarahSarah

Part-time artist, full-time crankypants who dabbles in knitting, running, and burpees.

127 replies on “This OT is on Vacation!”

So. 18 more episodes of BSG. Assuming that they are each about 45 minutes, that’s about 13.5 hours.

Goal is to finish them by this weekend. I figure I can get 3-4 episodes in tomorrow, 1-2 on Wednesday, and then marathon the rest on the weekend.

This is my first time watching it and ZOMG. ZOMG you guys. No spoilers, but… watched Razor, which blew my mind. Super-minor-spoilers: finally some teh gheyz in my BSG.

Hey hey, p-magnificent crowd!

So, I am playing with that tumblr thingy. I think I like it. But I need more people to follow, so it’s not just feminist blogs or religious criticism or cute critters. And I’m not really sure what to do with it. Should I treat it like a blog or just reblog things or both? Halp!

I have a new temp job starting next week (2 July, not the upcoming Monday), which is good. It means I can sort of relax on the desperate job-hunting that I’ve been doing (i.e., apply to the good jobs, not just “oh look, McD’s is hiring, mehyeh”). And I get a whole week to “take it easy” before I’m hauling textbooks around (campus bookstores, yay!). I miss having something to do all day (and, you know, getting paid).

Job hunting sucks, and I kinda feel like I need to “have a plan” beyond “get a job = pay rent and eat”. I don’t know what my plan is or how to get there or aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnyyyyyything. And several real-life people are calling me a drama queen because I’ve had exactly two temporary jobs come through since December, and it’s frustrating and makes me anxious and I feel like that nagging back-of-the-mind depression is trying to kick in and people yelling at me to get over it makes it worse. Sorry, I’ll try to smile the next time a job application is either ignored or I get the standard “thanks, it’s cute that you think you’re a strong candidate, but no” letter for jobs that I’m 98% qualified to do and don’t even get an interview for.

Okay, so no “rules”. Got it. I’m still getting used to the idea that family members can and will use Facebook as a means to tell others important news, so that when I have their updates hidden (because they also repost any and every “moderate conservative”/basically Tea Party BS they see) I miss things like relatives having surgeries until I get passive-aggressive nastygrams because I didn’t respond to that comment. So, yeah, figuring out tumblr before I jump in.

Oh hey, that was my old job! I actually really miss working at my alma mater’s bookstore, it was super fun and often low-stress. Enjoy it! And paying rent is a bonus, of course :P

Man, fuck people who think you’re being dramatic. Jobs are insanely hard to come by and they should understand your stress.

My (primary) job in college was at the campus library, and I loved it. I miss that job. At this point I miss cleaning hotel rooms :p

I think the friend who called me a drama queen is stressed out herself; she’s reacted that way to a lot of people recently. But, um, not knowing for certain that I’ll be able to pay rent when it’s due is pretty damn stressful too. I’m allowed to get emotional about that.

Solstice celebrations update! The weather was horrid, cold with pouring rain all day long, somewhat curbing the enthusiasm for any more risqué celebratory practises (not that I usually get round to skinnydipping or leaping over the fires anyway). But I have certainly feasted, albeit indoors, and warmed myself by the bonfire (that took a while to get going) until steam was rising from my rain-soaked clothes. (Supposedly, warming your back by the solstice bonfire means you won’t get any back aches during the entire year.) I also saw hedgehogs and played with the cutest little toad. I love frogs, but my cousin’s daughter is terrified of everything remotely creepy-crawly, basically, so I was removing the innocent tiny frog from her paralyzed-with-ick-9-year-old presence. All the more frog cuteness for me.

It would be proper of my agnostic-with-pagan-tendencies self to go visit the graves of ancestors tomorrow, but I’m not sure I’ll get round to it. However, there’s a lot of folklore of the dead getting leave to roam freely in the world of the living on the summer solstice night, and more often than not using the chance to check up on their offspring, so it’s a good time to be respectful… I hope it counts that I took one of my grandmother’s dresses out of my closet today, tried it on and decided the time has come to give it the touchups it needs in order to be wearable. I already set it aside with that in mind when I was in college, but it was a bit too large for me back then. It’s handmade, in a beautiful deep navy blue jacquard fabric (haven’t tested yet if silk), possibly from the 50s. Needs a zipper and hemming, I also want to make the neckline a bit lower and the sleeves a tiny bit shorter, and possibly put hidden pockets into the side seams. Would be neat to wear it with the as-yet-unbought blue brogues and socks.

Ladies, there is a Christian Grey twitter account. I have spent the past five minutes laughing alone in my bedroom.

“I put your nude body against the door. Your bare ass is at the mail slot. I climb out of the window and post my penis into you. First Class.”

“I find it very erotic when you fall over because I secretly and erotically tied a tripwire outside your bathroom.”

OMFG I just spit all over my computer at this one.  Bahahaha.

On a side note, ALL OF MY COWORKERS (and I am NOT exaggerating) are reading this book and recommending it to me. Argh, argh, argh.  It needs to stop. Though I did have a good internal chuckle when one of my male coworkers asked a fellow female coworker if the book was “more vampire crap,” and she replied, “no–I’m not in to that sort of thing.”

The conversations about these books at my work have been hilarious.

Male Boss: Have you read that 50 Shades of Gray thing yet.
Me: No, and I wasn’t really planning on it.
Male Boss: (sounding indignant) It’s porn!

Female Coworker: So my sister and my mom have both been reading them, and every so often Mom will ask her what something means, and when she answers, Mom wants to know how she knew.
Me: Oh God… Talk about not asking questions you don’t want to know the answer to.
Female Coworker: Not to mention that that is a conversation I could die happy not having had with my mother.

The woman in the right-hand photograph is Rebekah Brooks, one of the masterminds (allegedly) of the Murdoch empire’s phone-hacking scandals, and a generally unsavory person. Since she’s come under all this intense scrutiny, people have sadly chosen, often, to attack her based on her appearance. I like the juxtaposition of “Fright-wig” Brooks next to the idealized princess character – they have the same hair! But apparently it’s cool only on one of them.

So the fallout + original horror of the bus monitor situation has got me shaking in my boots even more for the job I’m starting at the end of August. I’m essentially doing school counseling for kids k-12- individual/group, behavioural support, linking up with community agencies etc, parent conferences- but I’ve never worked with kids. I got this job on the strength of my volunteer tele-intervention work with adults and the fact that I’m a young person willing to move to the middle of nowhere.

I was bullied in middle school, and I worry that having kids just like, or even worse than, the ones who taunted me, sitting in my office, expecting to push back against me might be too much and I’m going to totally fuck it up. That I won’t be able to achieve or retain authority. SO SCARED.

ETA: This job really should require a master’s degree for the things they expect. I believe I’ll have lots of access to training + support, it’s just… a constant thoughtstream of ‘ohfuckohfuckohfuck’.

I worked with inner city juvenile sex offenders in a therapy-related setting for a while and they would walk in, thinking they were all swag. On occasion, when they were new to the program, they would say somewhat mean things but I’ve never seen them act anywhere near how the kids in the bus video acted. Kids can be little bastards sometimes but I think that most are not as bad (at least to adults in a position of authority) as the ones in the video.

Just don’t let them sense your anxiety. When I was new at my old job, I was pretty nervous about being around the kids and they picked up on that. They never acted too unruly but they definitely straightened up as I adopted a more no-nonsense, ‘when you act out, I’m just going to stare at you until you are done and then we can converse like two human beings’ approach. Making them feel like they were being perceived as immature children tended to make them want me to see them as ‘adults’.

I really admire you for doing this job; it needs to be done. The very fact that you have agreed to do it makes you a badass. Some good advice I got many years ago: ACT as if you know what you’re doing, whether you do or not, and move very slowly in stressful situations – this means s l o w l y open the drawer, f i n d the pen, l o o k up, stare; it can be very intimidating. Remember these are kids, WTF do they know?

 

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