WhatsUp4

Saturday June 29, 2002 -- 4:45pm
Have I mentioned that my downstairs neighbors are professional musicians? This is very gratifying for me. It makes me feel like I am living the artistic Bohemian life I always imagined I would - only without the inconveniences of being artistic and Bohemian.

I don't know what these people are doing in Albany.

-- 8:15am
I had a dumb dream about student teaching. I was with the 5th graders, and it was awful! They were running around and being really bad - even the ones who were usually well behaved. And I was being just the way I never want to be: yelling constantly, degrading them, even kicking them out of the classroom. I was so bad that one kid's parents called me to complain. Then the school came to me with this "wonderful opportunity." They wanted me to complete my student teaching in rural Alaska. I knew it was because they wanted to get rid of me, because I was such an awful teacher.

Then I woke up, in a lousy mood. I'm feeling all depressed and like a huge failure! But I'm not a lousy teacher! Actually, I'm a good teacher! And I'm not a failure. I am proud of what I've done at the museum and the little differences I make in the lives of the kids there.

My brain is insidious. Truly, truly evil.

Friday June 28, 2002 -- 11:00 pm
I love my job.

-- 12:30pm
I worry so much about the museum kids. I'm worried about one in particular today, and I feel helpless to do anything to help her - for a variety of reasons. I remember so clearly how it felt to be an unhappy teenager. You'd think I would know just the right things to say. But I don't. All I know is that there is nothing to say when someone is hurting really deeply. All you can do is hope that they'll ride it out and hit another good time. When you feel like your life is an acid bath, all the ropes that people throw you just dissolve.

My supervisor (not the director) and I ran our first educator meeting today. There were no major revolts or anything, so that was good. It felt very, very weird being in the new role though. I feel like I'm doing something wrong by doing Heidi's duties. I hope they don't all hate me behind my back or resent that I'm in this position.

Thursday June 27, 2002 -- 8:45pm
We've been burgled! For some reason, I find this terribly amusing, which it isn't, of course. I sort of feel like I've been initiated into a club. No one burgled our apartment. Just the basement of our building. And nothing of ours got stolen. Dee and I don't actually own anything that is both worth stealing and light enough to walk away with. One of the neighbors had her bike stolen. They didn't take mine which, as mentioned, isn't worth stealing.

But on to more important things. My theory regarding chocolate. I believe that the quality of the chocolate itself is related somehow to the size and shape of the bar. For instance, a regular Hershey's bar is quite thin, but of adequate length and width. The supposedly "king sized" bar is fatter, but narrower and shorter. Then there's the great big one that is of in between thickness, and longer and wider. The flavor of the chocolate varies! I am looking forward to researching this more fuuly.

Given blood lately? If you have no compelling reason not to (such as harboring a blood-born pathogen, and/or fainting at the sight of needles) you should. If you never have before, you should try it. They give you cookies.

-- 6:00pm
I would like to state for the record that children's museums - contrary to popular belief - do not have "quite a racket going," nor is anyone even remotely associated with children's musuems - not even the director - motivated by monetary or material gain - unless the materials you speak of happen to be toilet paper tubes or empty coffee cans. If you do not believe me, I welcome you to stop by our museum some day and try - just try - to find our extra Scotch tape. Seriously. I wrote a proposal letter today to a company (that I hate) asking them to donate office and cleaning supplies. I will kiss whatever corporate arse I have to if we can just have some damn Scotch tape.

I have just developed a theory regarding Hershey's Chocolate bars, but, as it looks like the Apocolypse is about to take place outside my window, it will have to wait until later. The temperature just dropped 10 degrees in about 3 minutes. Batten down the hatches.

Wednesday June 26, 2002 -- 7:00pm
Oh dear God. I forgot to call back the bumble bee woman. Trials I face on a daily basis: Randomly appearing groups demanding programming, non-functional planetariums, non-functional directors, hyperactive Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, psychotic step-fathers with Napolean complexes, and people who want to dress up as bumble bees and distribute sugar to our young visitors.

On the bright side, my attempt to donate blood today was successful. Yes, my iron is up and life is rosey. Please, don't ask me to do any heavy lifting this evening. And, technically, I should stay away from alcoholic beverages. However, as the nurse pointed out, I have less blood tonight and would make a cheaper date than usual.

Tuesday June 25, 2002 -- 8:00pm
Today was a very dumb day. I took a wrong exit and spent an hour hopelessly trying to find the graduation ceremony of 2 of my museum kids. I got so frustrated, and I was so angry at the place where it was being held for not having better signage. Then, suddenly, I realized I had taken Exit 13S instead of 13N, or some such nonsense, and I was even more annoyed.

I got there in time to see both kids walk. There are about 15 million kids in their graduating class. I could separate them into their various clicks by analyzing the applause. Depressing how much high school is the same, no matter what. Anyhow, the whole thing was fine, until the end. After they all filed out and were standing around the park, congratulating each other, and not wanting to leave, not knowing what to do next. Then I got overwhelmed by the sadness of it all. It's one of the only major rights of passage our culture (as in the American culture) has, and it frequently ends with having to lose all of the friends you've had forever and start over again in a whole new place, all by yourself. I remember feeling lost as graduation approached. My yearbook quote was, "Where do we go now?" I knew I was going to Binghamton, of course, but I still haven't answered the deeper layers of that question.

Then I went back to the museum and attempted to get just a tiny bit of work done. This was made more challenging by the director, who kept popping into my office to say random, unintelligible things like, "Whose sanity are working under?" and, "This is not a beauracracy, you know." Ok, Chief. He had the audacity to ask me if I had called someone about dismantling the owl cage - something I volunteered to do about 6 days ago. Why, no. I haven't quite gotten around to that yet. Have you, by any chance, photocopied the timesheets I asked you for two months ago for a grant report that was due one month ago for the primary grant that pays my salary?!?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Monday June 24, 2002 -- 6:30pm
I have returned from a flying visit home. Didn't do much. Mostly I just ate and fiddled around on the computer. A lot like being here, only not so many dishes to wash. I saw a kid from high school as I was driving out of town. He's a cop now, and he was directing traffic through a patch of construction. For some reason, this struck me as terrfically funny, and I laughed my way out of town.

Last week, in the northern part of Troy, someone's swimming pool was stolen. It was full of water. The thieves took the floats too. Only in Troy.