For anyone who’s ever read A Canticle For Liebowicz, that line right there is high comedy–and, pretty much, that’s all I’ve got for you.
I’ve been in training for the last two days. The thing about working part time is that everyone assumes “It must be nice to get off early,” without really getting the fact that you’re not getting off early, you’re reporting to duty for your other job. So when my administrator asked me ‘ever so nicely’ if I could please please pretty please show up for five days (non-consecutive!) for the full day of training, I tried to explain that this would completely fuck up everybody’s life to the extreme–but I don’t think I quite got the message through.
In order for me to stay at work until 2:30, the following has to happen:
Mate has to drive from Folsom to Citrus Heights to pick up Cave Troll, and then drop him off in Natomas. And then go back to Folsom. This adds up to about 40 miles of driving, much of it city driving, on Mate’s lunch hour.
After I pick the kids up from the babysitter (who we now have to pay extra which I’m not making) I have to haul them NOT home, but to the Fair Oaks Library (this is one suburb over from home) in order to pick up Chicken. This effectively turns the half-an-hour trip home into an hour of driving for the little kids, which sort of sucks–especially since Cave Troll already made a similar trip only three hours earlier.
“Thank you, Amy! That’s wonderful that you were able to do that!”
“Don’t thank me, thank Mate, Ladybug, Chicken and the Cave Troll. They really are the ones suffering here, right?”
I feel bad because yes, that’s pretty darned ungracious of me, but after I got Chicken home yesterday and effectively passed out in front of the television (because I stay up later working part time than I would working full time) and THEN took Chicken to a party and THEN dropped Mate off at the movies so he could save the line for Star Trek and THEN picked Chicken up from her party and THEN actually GOT to the movies…
Well, I was cooked and done. After four hours of sleep, I was still cooked and done, to the effect that, as I was bringing the short people from gymnastics this morning I truly had no predictive ability for the suicidal squirrel that decided to throw himself in front of my car as I hit our residential neighborhood.
It’s true–I did try to dodge the little fucker, but as I looked in my rearview mirror and saw his tail spazzing out in his little death throes, that line from Canticle For Liebowitz came back to me. It’s spoken by a young man training for the ministry (it’s a warped, post-apocalyptic ministry, but there’s the whole fasting in the desert thing to contend with anyway) and he finds what he thinks is the secret to the universe, only to have his finding so covered up by bureaucracy that he almost loses his faith. The poor guy is sent back to the desert for prayer and fasting, and he’s so miserable that he has a falling down. Hence, “Bless me Father, I ate a lizard.” “Say five Hail Liebowitzes my son, and do penance. Amen.”
So here I am, tired to the gills and trying to do my best for my superiors, and I still manage a tiny fuck-up that’s going to be tail-spazzing in my dreams.
Bless me Father, I killed a squirrel. “Say your ed code my daughter, and be sure to read your section on curricular mapping. Amen.”
Oddly enough, I’m starting to lose my faith… go figure. (Fucking squirrel. Really. Do they have to get suicidal in the spring? Can’t they just go antagonize pit bulls or something, do they HAVE to run into traffic? Just sayin’.)
(Happy Mom’s day tomorrow–if I’m not quite as cooked and done and get a little more time to myself, I shall try to get to everyone’s blog tomorrow. It’s been so busy here, I’ve actually READ BLOGS I HAVEN’T COMMENTED ON. Considering how very little I like to keep my mouth shut, that’s pretty amazing:-)
I’m going to go write three unintelligible pages for Rampant, which I will try to clean up by tomorrow–I’m about at 500 pages-yee-ha!)
