I plugged “aloneandunobserved.com” into Wordle and this is what popped out. After I tweaked the color, font and layout, that is. Try it, it’s fun!
(Click for full-sized version)
As I feared, the weigh-in on Tuesday showed that I have made no progress towards my fitness goals in the last two weeks. And now that I’m done with that program and there’s no accountability, my motivation to eat correctly and exercise properly is very low.
Plus my goggle strap broke right before QUAC swim practice last night, which stole half of that workout—it turns out that trying to tie a knot in a thin, wet, slippery rubber strap with slippery, wet fingers is a very frustrating and time-consuming experience.
So I’m trying to think of ways to make fitness and exercise thrilling and new all over again. Lube wrestling on Sunday, anyone?
Every morning in my neighborhood, the meth moms come out in force, with their babies and their toddlers and their strollers. At first glance they appear to be in their thirties or even forties, but, up close, their conversation is so shockingly inane it seems they cannot be out of their teens—child-women, pushing their strollers from the halfway house to the daycare center up the street, and then heading off to work or to their recovery program. These women’s lives, their maturity and their personalities have all been arrested by the drugs. Many of them have had children taken away and husbands and boyfriends who betrayed them, and many cannot hold down a job, so a large part of their program involves learning job skills. A friend who works at one of the halfway houses told me that most of them were introduced to drugs by their boyfriends, and once they leave the safety of the program many will go back to those boyfriends and eventually back to the drugs.
From time to time they come into the library and ask for help on assignments they’ve been given, usually research on addiction and recovery. Most of the books on drugs are for teens, but sometimes the women complain that they are too hard and too complicated, that they have too may words, so we give them the kid’s books, which are full of pictures of syringes and pills. Then (because the program requires them to account for all of their time) they ask to use our phone to call and check in with the halfway house.
Utah seems to think that the solution to meth addiction is a series of embarrassing and misleading ads featuring purses, diaper bags and minivans (“Another blatant sign of a meth user in Utah”). Utah does have some frightening female addiction/arrest statistics; I just wonder how effective it is to imply that every mother in the state is a meth user.
And every morning, there the meth moms are, on the sidewalk, at the bus stop, at the TRAX station, with their babies and strollers and diaper bags.
I took the day off today. Perforce, because I have a week and a half of vacation to use up before the end of the fiscal year, and not nearly enough available time in the department schedule to take it. Seven hours down, forty-seven to go, and no idea where most of those are going to come from. You see, I was under the impression I had about a week’s worth of vacation total for this year, and that I had used it all up over Christmas, or I would have scheduled it months ago, like the conscientious, forethoughtful individual I am. Instead, I saved it up and sprung it on my poor manager at the last minute.
Manager: “So how many vacation hours are we talking about?”
Me: “I think I have 52 left. No, wait—I lied: 55.25 hours. I knew there was a 5 and a 2 in there.”
Manager: “Well, we’ll work it out.”
Then, on Saturday I called to tell her that, oops, my graduation commencement* was the beginning of May, and could she give me two days off to spend with my family?
Manager: “Urgh. That’s the Utah Library Association conference, and the Interlibrary Loan conference, and there are three people on vacation . . .”
Me: “Please please please pleasepleasepleaseplease—”
Manager: (Sighs) “We have to let you attend your graduation. We’ll work it out.”
Two minutes later, the phone rings again.
Manager: “Let me try that again. Congratulations on your graduation, and we would love to support you by giving you time off for it.”
Next week I’m going to call in sick for a week. Kidding!
* Note: this is the graduation ceremony for my master in math, which I received last year. I still have at least a year left in library school.
Yesterday was beautiful. I bit too beautiful for me, to be honest—I would prefer that the temperature never go above 69°F, so the clear skies and sunshine and warmth were a bit too much for me to handle.
Today was not beautiful. Today will always be remembered as the day it rained, then snowed, and then the world ended. Because pollen counts suddenly surged into the KILL! KILL! KILL! range, and everyone was smothered by their own spit and mucus. Oh, wait, maybe that was just me.
Drugs, please.
I took this 58-second video last night during the contra dance at the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake. I’m not in the video, because I was holding the camera.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/814115]
Moves shown:
I’ve also posted several more photos in my contra-dance photo album on Flickr.
It's amazing how low blood sugar and a healthy dose of exhaustion can take the fun out of any activity – yes, even contra dance. IS NOTHING SACRED?!
Recently Read and Rated What I’ve Shared
