Please don't tame the shrew.

I kind of want a shirt that has my post title on it. It would probably be one of my favorite shirts. I might make one someday. Hmm.

My house is screamin' for a cleanin'. Now that vacations are done and one job is over and a new one has begun, life looks like it could be slowing back down a little. Maybe enough that I can get a handle on all the piles of stuff around the house. It all stems from my initial foray into painting oh so many months ago. I think I'm far enough removed from some of the painting projects now that I can clean up areas. I might do that a little bit today on this Independence Day. It's too hot to spend much time outside today. The big news of the day is that Watson, my dad's cat, is coming to stay for a while. Beatrix is going to love it. While I was in Omaha, my dad took care of Beatrix at his house and Bea and Watson seemed to come to a bit of a truce, and maybe even the start of a friendship. Since it's only been several days since they've been out of each other's company, I think the transition back into sharing a house shouldn't be too bad. Even though my house is smaller and there are fewer places to hide. I think it will work out.

I'm two days into my new trabajo and it's pretty fun so far. I have a lot more responsibility than I've ever had before. I get to make decisions and stuff! Watch out! Things got done in the past, but people are overwhelmed with their job duties and things are kind of stressful in my new area. I don't like stress, you know. I hate it, actually. Stress and drama are two things I avoid like the plague. At work, I'm now in charge of inter-library loan, which is not something I've ever had anything to do with in the past. It's interesting and I am sorta digging it right now. Still, the procedures for it seem totally wonky to me. Things can be much simpler than they have been and I plan to make things as easy as possible. I don't like being weeks and weeks behind in my work. The person I replaced retired about a month ago and I think she did a great job and wrote out some really awesome instructions, but some of the things that it says to do seem redundant and I won't be doing it that way. I checked with my boss to make sure that I actually am in charge of certain procedures and have the ability to change them and I do! Woooot! But I'm impatient, so I think I need to settle down a little. I am only two days into the job but I've got so many plans worked out in my head as to how I want things done. I think I'm going to need to take a breather because probably my co-workers aren't ready for the Tornado-of-change-named-Jill to come roaring through at the moment. Despite how ready I am. I have other non-ILL duties as well, but for the past two days I've mostly been focusing on that. Since it's a holiday week and a lot of people are on vacation, it seemed easier to just have some time to putter around and get settled in.

I had to go and get a new security badge on Monday and they switched me from officially being a student to officially being a real employee! I was looking at the two badges and the student one was taken almost exactly two years ago when I quit my job at the Archives and went back to school full-time. I actually look younger now than I did then. I think you can tell that you're moving in the right direction if you can look at yourself now and look at yourself a couple of years ago and actually see that you're happier and healthier. I definitely smile and laugh more now than I ever did back then. Looking at the two badges made me realize what a good decision going back to school was for me. I'm definitely in a much better place because of it. It's nice to be able to recognize that you did something that was rough, but good for yourself, you know? Plus, getting a job where I can use the degree that I quit the prior gainful employment to get, helps too. Kind of validates it all...

Isn't it strange that it's already July? This year has gone by really quickly. I don't get to take any more time off for about six months now that I'm a newbie at work again. I think that's okay though. Here I am, already getting a day off for a holiday. Starting employment in July and having that probation period is easier than starting in January, I think. I was thinking of all the holidays I get off during my probationary period since it's the latter half of the year. Counting today, I get 6 days off in the next six months, compared to just 2 holidays in the first six months of the year. Americans are rear-heavy in the holiday department where the calendar is concerned.

I need to go pick some stuff up that Bea has thrown all over the place. A hint that it's time to clean up the paint supplies is when she starts to drag the replacement foam rollers up the stairs as toys. I walked out of my room this morning to see one of the foam rollers I used on the dressers up on the staircase landing by my door. It was on the kitchen sink drying after being cleaned. I think Bea brings me these things as gifts sometimes. She plays a lot, but she always leaves them right by my door or drags them into my room and leaves them so I see them pretty easily. I have to say, though, I much prefer this sort of gift-giving by the cat than what other people's cats bring them. I've never had any cat dump a mouse carcass or anything at my door. I would scream and probably not be able to come out of my room for a while. Foam rollers are more my style. I think Bea recognizes this fact and we're on the same page.

[Travis Barker drum break]

"I am so glad you are a part of our profession!" I got that sentence in an email from my practicum professor after I submitted my final paper and evaluation yesterday. How sweet is that?! I felt all warm and snuggly. She had been apprehensive about me doing my practicum where I was because of the arson early on in the semester, but I said I wanted to stay and I learned a lot about disaster recovery in the practicum, and that's what I wrote about in my paper. In the end, I think my professor was pleased that I had still been able to learn things despite the arson, and even though it wasn't quite the education that other students had taken away from their practicums. Now I have a pretty clear understanding of what it takes to try to fix one guy's drunken rampage. That guy still hasn't been charged with anything. I guess they've found him mentally incompetent or something? I think he was actually just drunk and likes fire. Which...I actually went to girl scout camp with a girl who was a pyromaniac. I remember a few of us sneaking into the girls bathroom cabin at night and watching her set fire to the bathroom sinks using hairspray. That's the first time I ever saw fire actually dance. You could just turn on the faucet to put the fires out. It was actually kind of pretty as long as it was contained like that. Pyromania certainly wasn't on the Girl Scout camp agenda, but you'd be surprised what happens at Girl Scout camp. Someday I'll tell you about the shanking that occurred in my group during my final summer. 


On to more recent events, though:


Lots of stuff can happen in a month. Early November, I was waiting to find out if I passed my comps, job-hunting, taking care of Iris, and driving Tinker all over the place. Fast-forward to now and I'm prepping for graduation, have a full-time job starting the day after graduation, have Beatrix the fastest cat on four legs, and have a new-to-me car named Dewey. Dewey is a Mazda3 and he's awfully pretty. I drove 5 cars all over town and had probably the most patient car salesman ever. He only looked slightly annoyed one time when he got a car out and then I got in to drive it and drove it halfway around the parking lot and was like, 'No. This is not for me.' and parked it and asked to drive another one. Although it could also be that he couldn't get out of the car either because of some bizarre child-locking issue on that car, too. But, by the end of the sale, he was (of course) feeling much more positive and he even went and filled Dewey's tank up with gas for me! 
Here's a stock photo of the car via Google. Imagine it in a pale blue color and you'll understand how awfully adorable Dewey is:

That front grill looks like its smiling, doesn't it? What a cheerful, lovely car. 

I was kind of bubbly and excited getting the keys. I wasn't really looking forward to the entire experience because I felt like there were too many choices and I didn't want to waste anybody's time by test driving a lot of cars, but after doing research I decided that showing up and driving 4 would be the right thing to do. So, I drove 4 2010 models: Ford Focus (the one I wouldn't drive onto the road, only on the parking lot), Toyota Corolla (my second choice car. I really liked it. It was incredibly quiet. And the cheapest car, too.), Subaru Impreza (Loud, loud, loud. And Subaru redesigned the front seat to make it super uncomfortable. I like Subarus, but I'm not sold on the pricetag. I think other small cars are a better deal if you absolutely don't need to have AWD.), and then the Mazda3 (semi-quiet ride, comfy seats, roomy, awesome interior design, all-around the best of the 4.). Dewey was the second mazda3 that I drove. He was walled in by many other cars, so I drove an easier-to-get-out black one first. But, I'm just not that into black cars. And since I had a choice, I opted for Dewey, the blue one.


Also, my godmother is out of the hospital and at home! She's really interested in writing but has never been sure what to write about. Now she has something to write about and she's decided she will use this experience to start writing, so that's good. She's got a lot of hospital stories now. Especially Thanksgiving-hospital stories and they're all kind of funny as long as you don't have to actually spend a lot of time in a hospital. If you ever have been in one or have had someone in one for an extended stay, you probably already know how completely uninformed most of the hospital nurses and doctors are when it comes to patients. They never know what's going on because they have so many patients coming and going and they can't keep it straight. It's understandable, but kind of backward. You have so many different docs, nurses, techs, even the food people; nobody's really got a true idea of what's going on. Someone brings in a machine to hook the patient up to something and then they leave for a second to check on something and while they're gone, a nurse comes in and turns the machine off and leaves, and the tech comes back and gripes at the patient for turning off their machine. It's a comedy of errors, but if you make it out alive, it can lead to some doozies as far as stories go. Maybe my godmother will write a book about it now. She's got a killer wit, so I bet whatever she writes would be hilarious.  


I feel like I'm kind of back to neutral again after the last month. Things are different, but better. 

I accepted a real grown-up job this morning!

I was offered and accepted a job this morning! It will pay enough for me to commute to it! And I'll get benefits again. And vacation time. And paid holidays. And all that grown-up stuff that I actually enjoy. Maybe I can buy cable tv again? Or get my own internet? Perhaps I can even invest in a car that has better gas mileage? Oh, the possibilities. Success. Is. Miiiiine.

It's still at the same place that I do my civil war grant work, but I'll be finishing that grant and the full-time job is on a national newspaper digitization grant with the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities will go for another two years. So, it's another two years in Central Missouri, another two years in my house (which is what I needed to do to not have to pay back my city 5 thousand dollars), and learning new skills + more money, vacation time, and benefits than I ever got working for the state. And also, my co-workers are awesome. All in all, this is good. I was looking forward to moving away and starting over someplace else, but not sure about the house situation and everything. Now I can take my time and hopefully, by 2014, the housing issues will be in a better place and so will jobs! So, it's allll good. Central Missouri, you just love me too much to lose me, I guess. But, I will be taking my beach vacations...

Here's my new project: http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/

Scratch that job off the list

I have the heeby jeebies a little bit. Tonight our class spent a few hours at the maximum security prison in town to talk to the prison librarian. I am not okay with being behind barbed wire fences in a maximum security prison during movement time when the offenders all move from their cell blocks to wherever they're going, in this case the library. Talk about super uncomfortable. They were all pretty polite, and although we did get some things said to us as we walked by, nobody was really offended or anything. I mean, we were the ones running late and kind of screwing with their schedule. We all had on mugging alarms that would have set off if anybody had been touched. That alone managed to freak us (even the guys) out before we even left the security checkpoint. And that was at the very beginning. As it turns out, the ending was even more awkward because we, yet again, sort of got our timing mixed up and had to walk through the yard when a lot of offenders were out in it and I have never been more uncomfortable walking down a sidewalk than I was tonight with us on one side and a growing number of offenders standing all along the sidewalk watching the six of us walk by. We did have security guards with us at the end, but, it was totally uncomfortable and I wanted to run to the security fence in a chaotic manner screaming, 'I GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE.'

Obviously, I do not have the personality type fit to work as a librarian behind bars. Not only the uncomfortable factor, but I care too much about what the patrons want. They told us that prison librarians have to be completely detached at all times. You can't care what happens to the prisoners. You can't become emotionally involved in their lives or let them become emotionally involved in yours. Even the ones that you work with every day, you have to constantly not care about. Most importantly, you can't show fear, which obviously, I was scared as hell tonight. I couldn't do it. Thank God we don't have to go to any more prisons.