cifarelli

I'm at work this afternoon, but since it's the last day of finals for the semester, we're not very busy. Most of the questions we're getting are of the "Where do I return my books?" variety; nothing very challenging. We did have one Ask A Librarian email question this morning asking how to find a particular kind of psychology article, and that caused us to do a double-take: "Really?! It's 8:30 on the morning of the last day of finals and you haven't even found your ARTICLE yet?!" Ah, well, it's their problem. We did answer the question, of course.

( This got very long! )

I skipped posting Day 6 yesterday. Bad me!

Yesterday, Corwin's school had a Storybook Parade, where all the kids dressed in a costume and carried a book that their costume was from. Corwin went as the "stalking and lurking adventurous cat," Slinky Malinki. Essentially, this means he wore the black cat costume that Ian wore for Halloween -- and Ian put up such a fuss about Corwin wearing the cat ears that I had to go dig out some old Cheetah ears I still have from a costume I wore in college for Ian to wear.

Ian was quite the sight yesterday -- he was wearing a Cars shirt that is really a pajama top of Corwin's. It was size 6 when I bought it last year, but has shrunk so much that it now fits Ian, who normally wears 2T these days, just fine. And the cheetah ears. I took some pictures on my ipod, but I haven't bothered to try transferring them to the computer yet to see if they're worth posting. Maybe tonight.

Since it was just Ian and me who needed to get up to the school yesterday morning for the parade, we went on the bike. That was a good decision both logistically (avoided the whole trying to find a parking place in the street and cajoling Ian to walk instead of staring at trees, bugs, and cracks in the sidewalk) and in that it got me a little bit of exercise. :) I haven't been doing too well with my exercise regimen lately. Motivation has been lacking, and being sick this week hasn't helped.

I went to bed at 10:15 last night, which is late compared to what I had been doing this week (9-9:30ish). Fell asleep just fine, but then spent a couple hours awake in the middle of the night coughing. I contemplated just getting up, but I really wanted the sleep. I finally found a position on my stomach that alleviated the coughing...and then Ian started coughing. Fortunately, he didn't cough for long and I was able to fall back asleep after that. Ready for my family to be healthy again!

Today I'm at work all day, so doubtful there'll be much of interest for me to post about tonight. But you never can tell!

I'm tired today.

Corwin woke up in the middle of the night (around 1:15 a.m. or so) crying again. I think he's having nightmares. It's not night terrors because he's awake, but he still isn't really able to tell me what he dreamed or what else is bothering him. I just get crying and "Corwin doesn't want to sleep" and "you don't want to sleep" (which translates to, "I don't want to sleep" -- he's still not got his pronouns figured out) over and over again. This was pretty much a rerun of the time a few weeks ago when he woke up at 5 a.m. I rubbed his back and sang to him until he had calmed down, but just when I was ready to leave the room he asked to go to the bathroom. So I took him. He was shaky and unsteady on his feet like he is when he's very tired. After he peed and I said it was time to go get back in bed, he climbed up in my lap (I was sitting on the edge of the tub) and started crying all over again and repeating that he didn't want to sleep. I took him back to his bed and tried to calm him down, but failed and eventually just left to see if he'd calm down on his own once he no longer had an audience.

He didn't. Just kept repeating that he wanted me to scratch his back and that he didn't want to sleep. After 10 or 15 minutes Andrew got up and took him to go listen to some music for a while, and some unknown by me period of time later put him back to bed. He went calmly that time, but talked to himself for a while before falling asleep. He must have been awake for at least an hour, maybe more like 1.5 hours. And he was up and playing in his room at the stroke of 7 this morning. Needless to say, I hope he's taking a nap for Andrew this afternoon.

I'm at work today in the library. I expected it to be a quiet day due to the Super Bowl, and indeed we're not that busy in terms of students actually IN the library. But my phone is ringing off the hook with actual reference questions today. Guess lots of folks are studying at home before the game instead of driving here.

Well, I've actually had a weekend worth speaking of, for once. It has been a busy one.

Friday evening, we re-dyed my hair, so I'm now a dark redhead again. It'll fade back to the color you're used to seeing on me soon enough, but I get to enjoy being dark and redheaded for a day or two first! :)

Saturday, I went to work in the afternoon as per usual. Nothing really worth mentioning happened; it's mid-Summer II session right now, so the library was a bit busier than it was last weekend (when it was dead). After work, ehcnalava and kaerukami came over to babysit for us while Andrew and I went out to a club, for dancing and that sort of thing. How amazing is that? We got to go OUT. And be ADULTS! Yay! They had an easy babysitting job, too, as we put Corwin to bed before we left (but after they arrived, so he'd not be totally shocked if he did wake up and found himself attended to by someone other than Mom or Dad), and he apparently didn't make a single peep the entire time we were out.

Today we went grocery shopping this morning, and then hosted the usual (though it hasn't happened for the last three weeks due to us being in Alabama for two of them and being lazy and taking the day off last weekend) group for boardgaming and conversation. We tried out Sucking Vacuum (whose title never fails to inspire the image of a vacuum cleaner in my head in spite of the fact I know it's a game set on a space station) for the first time. It played pretty well, though we had some trouble figuring out how exactly the rules for controlling Annabel worked. Then ehcnalava and I played Qwirkle while the rest of the group played Last Night on Earth. I enjoyed Qwirkle, though it took me just long enough to figure out the strategy that I made a pretty big strategic error near the beginning that I never recovered from....and ehcnalava thus defeated me roundly. After we finished our game (which was much shorter than Last Night on Earth), we played with Corwin for a while and chatted.

After we got Corwin to bed this evening, I spent the 40 minutes to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which for those not already aware (I wasn't until mid-day yesterday) is a three-part supervillain musical helmed by Joss Whedon (and starring Nathan Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris -- yes, Doogie Howser -- and Felicia Day). It's only available until midnight tonight (and no mention of in which time zone), though, so if you haven't seen it yet, you better get on it!

And the craziness isn't over yet. Tomorrow (that would be Monday), I finally have my dentist appointment with scarlett_sage's dentist, who I am paying out of pocket to see. This will be my initial consultation, and if he concurs that I do have a cavity (or heaven forbid, more than one!) I'll have to have a follow-up appointment to get it fixed at a later date. Corwin is going to stay with scarlett_sage while I go to my appointment; we're going to head up there in the morning and have lunch with her first. Then tomorrow evening (as a reward for my dental fortitude?!), Andrew and I are actually going to go to the movies!! We're seeing The Dark Knight with sirbobsalot and kaerukami. ehcnalava, who doesn't have any interest in the movie, has graciously agreed to babysit for us again. Hopefully Corwin will do okay with being away from Mom & Dad twice in one day. I'd forgotten about my dentist appointment when I made plans to see the movie, but he knows his grandma pretty well, and it'll be the third time in 3 days that he's seeing Jamie, so I think he ought to be all right.

And I think that about covers it. I actually felt like I have a life this weekend!

Today is my long day at work; I'll be here 'til 6:00 this evening. For some reason today I am really really tired. I've wanted a nap ever since I got here this morning. :P And being tired hasn't helped my patience with some of the patrons today, either. My coworker who is here with me 'til 2:30 just left, but I don't think she was feeling any more awake than I do today. But at least she gets to go home now. :P

Corwin suddenly started screaming and crying at 5:15 this morning by our bedside clock (so really more like 5 a.m. by any other clock). I got up and fumbled for pants, but by the time I got them oriented properly to put on, he suddenly stopped. So I went to the bathroom and went back to bed. He was quiet for 15 minutes or so, and then started in on his usual morning half-awake grizzling and babbling. He didn't need anything....but he kept me awake. So I've essentially been awake since 5:00 this morning, with a bit of dozing between then and 7 or so. No wonder I'm dragging.

Plans for next week
Plans for next week have been firmed up a bit. Current plan is that Corwin and I will travel to Austin on Tuesday afternoon. I'll teach the class for my mom on Wednesday morning. We'll head back to Houston on Thursday or Friday, depending on how I'm doing as a single parent. I'd like to go to the game night on Thursday evening, so if Corwin isn't driving me too crazy with refusing to sleep we'll try to stick around for that and head back here on Friday. I'd like to go spend some time with sunflowerkwm, probably on Thursday, if she hasn't had her baby yet (or if she has and wouldn't mind a visit anyway).

Should try to get some work done to prepare for my presentation while I have the computer to myself for a while, but I'm so tired I'd rather just read my book until someone else needs help with something. We'll see what I get done.

I am happy. I have a wonderful son and a wonderful hubby who is a good daddy to our son. I'm just really happy with our family and my life right now. Yeah, I'd love to have a cleaner, neater house, but I've always wanted that but I've never had the time, energy, or motivation to really whip it into shape. I can live with it the way it is. :)

Amazing the perspective a few hours out of the house by myself (work) gives me :)

Ask me again at about 6:00 a.m., and I'll probably be ready to sell Corwin to the gypsies for a quarter. (Okay, not really, but I'll threaten to!) ( Sleep stuff )

We've done a lot of shopping this week. ( Details! )

Andrew's computer is still at Fry's. He's been calling every 2 days to check up on it. Today they said they think it's the motherboard, but they still have a few other things to eliminate first to be certain. Andrew's (rightfully) a bit grumpy at me for throwing out the receipt for his computer upgrades at the end of last year. I'm gonna be a bit grumpy at me, too, if they would have been covered under warranty still, but we can't prove it. *sigh*

Work's been going well for me so far. This weekend is my first to work both Saturday and Sunday. I'm amazed at how tired I feel this evening, when I only worked 5 hours and they hardly qualified as stressful (I actually got to spend a fair chunk of time just sitting and reading, as there weren't many questions and there were two of us manning the desk). I think the tiredness is probably more due to my interrupted sleep than the actual working. I'm still awaiting my first paycheck, though. Hopefully soon! :) Tomorrow the new Electronic Resources Librarian (my former position) is coming in to pick my brain about ER stuff. That's going to be odd. It still feels a bit weird to me not to be doing that job any more. It was especially strange the first time I got an email from the new person with Electronic Resources Librarian listed as her title. Ah well. I wouldn't be happy working full time right now, and I well know it. :)

The university got back to me today and said the hourly rate I asked for was fine ($1/hr more than they offered). That was so easy (no dickering at all) that I'm now left wondering if I should have asked for more. Oh well.

Now they just need to do a background check (currently waiting for HR to email me a form for that) and send me an offer letter that I get to sign and send back. My current tentative start date is September 8. Once I get the offer letter taken care of, I'll have to go in during the week to get keys, do HR paperwork to get paid, and the like. I'll probably take Corwin with me for that, though, since I know several of the folks in the library will be interested to see him.

He's currently fussing in his bed, as per usual when I try to put him down for a nap. His refusal to nap in his bed except on rare occasions is very frustrating, and I don't know how to fix it. I don't want to just let him CIO for however long it takes him to go to sleep (I've let him go for a half-hour once or twice, didn't like it much at all, and that apparently wasn't long enough for him to give up and go to sleep), but I'm not sure what other options I have. I sit in the room with him sometimes, and sometimes he falls asleep with me in there...and other times he doesn't. It doesn't consistently work. And occasionally he puts up so much fuss that I start second-guessing myself that maybe he wasn't REALLY tired after all -- but then as soon as I get him up and nurse him or lay down with him in our bed, he conks right out.

Making it darker in the room (we have hung sheets over the window) has helped somewhat, but it hasn't been the cure-all that I hoped.

There's a Weekend Reference Librarian position open at the university where I used to work. I've been contemplating applying for it ever since shortly after Corwin was born when I found out that one of the former two people in that position was leaving it. However, Andrew had pretty much talked me out of it, because it would essentially mean we were both working 6 or 7 days a week (counting childcare as work, of course...which it SOOO is), and we aren't certain whether the stress of that will be worth the small additional amount of money I'd bring in. However, there is a part of me that wants to do it, both to be contributing some amount of income, and to keep my foot in the door of library-land in case I need to go back to work full time somewhere down the road.

Well, tonight I got an email from the Assistant Director for Public Services (who supervises the Weekend Reference Librarians) asking me if I wanted to apply for the position. So it's apparently not been filled yet, and the new semester starts Monday. So now we are discussing it all over again. I think I'm going to call the AD tomorrow (assuming I can get Corwin down for a nap so that I can make the call, of course) and talk to her a bit about the position and see what I can find out -- when they'd want a person to start (I'm assuming weekend after this coming one, if I got hired that quickly), exactly how much it pays, whether there is any way to get around having to switch to the Teacher Retirement System for my retirement plan rather than the ORP [403(b)] I previously had, etc.

If I took the position and it still works the same way it did six months ago, I'd be working 9-6 on Saturday one weekend and be off Sunday, and work 5ish hours in the middle of the day the next Saturday and 1-6 on Sunday. So between us, we'd have one Sunday and one Friday where we were both off together...hopefully on alternating weeks, if we can get the timing worked out right. I think I'd have both days off on some holiday weekends and during intersessions when the university is closed, and in the summer the library is only open 1-5 on Saturdays, so I'd presumably have every other weekend off then.

Arghhh...decisions!

Well, I just got off the phone from giving my boss notice that I'm not going to go back to work. I was dreading that call, because I love my boss, and while I don't love my job all the time, in general it hasn't been a bad gig. I just know I can't handle going back to work full time in two weeks. I'm barely getting enough sleep now to function staying home with the baby (today has been BAD), and while that could change in the next two weeks, I'm not crazy enough to count on it. Plus there is the fact that I just really don't want to put my child in day care for close to 10 hours/day 5 days/week. That's too much time, IMO, and since we don't NEED my salary, I don't see the point in putting him and me through it.

I did mention I could work part-time from home either indefinitely or until they replaced me, and my boss sounded like she'd love that. But I'm kinda doubtful it could happen in reality since it's a state-supported institution, and they're not known for their flexibility.

It is a load off my mind to finally have that phone call made, though.

Well, Corwin's awakened from his nap now, so I'm back to baby-wrangling.

Stayed home from work yesterday due to acid reflux stuff keeping me awake all night again Tuesday night.

I didn't sleep well last night either -- had trouble falling asleep when I went to bed, probably due to napping too much during the day (but dammit, I needed those naps after not sleeping the night before!). And when I did sleep, I had stressful dreams. ( I'm taking a midterm I didn't study for! )

So then, I got to drive to work in the rain again this morning. Then I got stuck at the light under I-10 because the train that sometimes goes through about a block down from there and holds up traffic for a couple of minutes had actually STOPPED, blocking the street completely. I sat there for about 10 minutes until the traffic ahead of me finally cleared out enough that I could go somewhere (there are a couple of sidestreets between the light and the train, one of which was the one I needed). So it was 8:30 by the time I got into the parking garage, and there was one covered parking space left. Unfortunately, it was between a large F-150 parked nearly on the line on the left side, and a support post on the right side. I figured I could still get in there since I drive a small car, but I didn't pull close enough to the F-150 when I turned and ended up scraping up the paint on my right rear door. That was just the capstone to my morning. *grumbles*

And now that I'm actually in my office, Andrew has informed me that they're now blocking lj on the internet filtering at his office. So...if you need Andrew's input during the day for any reason, you'll need to either call his cell phone, catch him on ICQ, or ask me to relay a message.

Hopefully the day gets better from here. Please?