"I have a long day's darg afore me." --Sir Walter Scott
I realize that this is once again a highly off-topic post, BUT the South Hall Lobby is so sad it's down right hilarious. It looks like a bad attempt at a Hotel Lobby.
If you are in the area you really need to come see it to believe it. TRUST ME.
Once again I leave you with the thought that most closely apporximates its appearance: HILARIOUS!
Just a quick note to let you all know that the new job reading is going very well as long as my voice holds out. Right now I'm reading management texts, but later on I get to read of an English class. :)
and now time for a South Hall update:
The new furniture has arrived. It is a lot better than I was expecting, aside from the fact that they seem to have forgotten about the couch concept and there is a proliferation of "waiting-room" chairs which apparently belong to a table that has not yet appeared. There lots of fun looking gigantic cardboard boxes in the lobby yesterday and this morning but now there gone. sad. Oh, and there going to put chairs in the "gym" portion of the lobby. lol. HISTERICAL.
until the next time . . .
I find it highly appropriate that as we approach Independence day I can unofficially announce my freedom from housekeeping. [Insert gigantice grin and lots of dancing around]
I am moving up the food chain. :)
I'm going to read books onto tape for the Learning Support Center. The total number of hours is thus far uncertain, but likely almost 8 hours throughout July. :)
Whether this is the end of this blog or not still remains to be determined.
I haven't turned in my "Student Employment Termination Card" yet. I could get another one and turn it in today, but I have been carrying that card with me almost everywhere I go in my journals for over two weeks. Alas, I didn't bring it with me today. sigh.
But that is a minor thing.
Tuesday!
Oh, and a very Happy (early) Fourth of July to everyone. :)
and I'm not going back at 1pm.
I don't know yet if I'm going back tomorrow or if this is the end.
. . . but atleast the one on the end has stopped drooling . . .
I had a premanition yesterday when I was scrubbing furniture in the suit that my male coworker was cleaning the bathroom in (the first and only guy Claudette has had clean a bathroom)very half-heartedly and unthourghly that I was going to get stuck fixing it. I was right. I pretty ticked off. Whenever, I've run out of time and haven't been able to finish something it has been there waiting for me the next day, and I have never made it out of a sloppily done assignment.
I didn't finish the bathroom. I didn't have time. We'll see if it's still there waiting for me tomorrow afternoon.
It probably will be. I'm not expecting to get out of it. It's a morbid experiment.
Lesson learned: Always bring TWO H2O bottles.
I apologize, I have realized that the post before this one was excessively long, but hey all of this is for the record right?
On the walk from Calkins to Angwin after lunch which I was forced to walk with Claudette, she didn't want to walk alone [the woman is in such bad shape she barely made, it felt like about ten miles]I found myself unable to help speculating as to what it must be like to live Claudette's life. I mean, from 8am to 5pm (plus a little bit a each end) she's dictator of housekeeping, yet at the sametime she's under the thumb ot the Deans and the rest of her superiors. She only has us to socialize with. We barely tolerate her or worse. And she mostly like suffering from the effects of prolonged, excessive [well it would be excessive if she ever actually worked] exposure to cleaning solutions.
Frankie, I wish you were here, for so many reasons, but right now I want a full body massage, which I realize I couldn't get from you, but atleast I could get my neck and shoulders worked out. I know, you're having a lot more fun where you are now. :)
A Final Thought: As one of my dearest coworkers put it, "until you have been down on all fours cleaning tile for for hours don't even".
This gig was so much better at the beginning when my mom made me/brought me lunch, or even when there will still left-overs in the frig, or food in the frig. sigh.
My apologies to the few who care for negelecting this blog recently (I was somewhat startled to learn of your existance). I just wasn't inspired Monday, not that there weren't horrors to be inspired by, I was just to disconnected from my body during the experience to write about it later. I think I was in shock and wouldn't believe that I was actually there.
My mind is still completely numb but sometime filled with a coffee shop dream. There maybe a light at the end of a short dank tunel and that life just might be SIFE. There starting their own coffee shop and I sort of know the person heading it up so I might be able to get a job there. Unlikely, but it gets me through today.
Whether this is my last week or not, it's best to think of it like it is. Makes it survivable, though it does make Mondays a shock. It would be great to quit Thursday though, supposedly we're not scrubbing any more bathrooms in the morning until Friday. Of course, there is still the afternoon. . .
It's interesting how the job looks from the third week and little sleep.
Thank goodness for last night though. Thank goodness for friends that take me out and let me forget that I am a poor, lowly, unskilled, serf under Claudette's rule. Even if it does involve absurd amounts of Say What?! coffee (which is highly potent by the by) for absolutely no reason, and unsanitary spas late at night when I have to get up so early. It was great.
This morning I was trying so hard to be happy. I stayed in bed for a long time after my alarm went off listening to "Hillary's Random Mix" [I love Live :)]And I was actually being fairly successful [partial credit is due to the wonderfully snuggly feeling I had just before I drifted off to sleep last night] but as soon as I walked into the office to drop my stuff off I realized that I had left my cell phone under my pillow. Four hours this morning having no idea what time it was! It was horrible. Walking down that hallway the first time this morning I felt like I had been checked into a mental institute and been bereft of all of my personal belongings. It felt like I was never going to make it back out.
Tonight I'm going home and sleeping. Than Wednesday night, Gothika! yeah! :)
A couple minor positive notes: There were some wonderful chances for scrimshanking this morning. I managed to sneak a short nap in one of the closets I was scrubbing. hehehehehe. . .
instead I got stuck in the worset shower I have ever seen. Claudette had bleached it yesterday. I went in there to clean it and she told me to open all of the windows and to get a face mask. Claudette has never told anyone to wear a face mask for anything and she is constantly telling us to close windows. I was scared.
The bleach fumes when I was rinsing the bleach off of the shower walls were terrible. They cut right through my face mask. Also there was this horrible black fungus I had to scrub off.
I think I might be developing an alergic reaction to the Ajax. I have had a really gunky nose and throat the last two days. Last night I took a decongestant before I went to bed. When I woke up this morning I was mostly cleared up. This lasted until a little before nine 'o clock, about the time the cleaning solutions were getting out and used, then my nose started running, I was sneazing inside my face mask. It was nasty. Now I'm starting to lose my voice again. :(
One of the girls I work with who doesn't use a face mask said that now everytime she brushes her teeth her gums start bleeding.
I feel like there is stuff in my lungs but this could simply be a psychological reaction. Last night at the diner table my father was asking me about my working conditions and sounding genuinely concerned for my health. He's never worried about that stuff. That is to say, he's unlikely to think a situation is actually unhealthy. Hee was acting like he was thinking about making me quit which I protested, but this morning I would have been so excited if someone had come in a told me I didn't have to work anymore after today.
sigh
just two more hours . . .
Well, I'm working on finding the life expectancy stats to back up my claim that the poor die early.
This is what I have so far: according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published 2003: In 2001 21% of the poor and 15.5% of the near poor reported that their health was fair or poor as opposed to only 6.2% of the nonpoor.
A few notes on today's housekeeping "experience".
Yesterday when I went home I could barely speak and my throat and nose were incredibly gunky from breathing in powdered cholerine bleach "Ajax". So this morning I spent quite a bit of time hunting up a face mask to cover my nose and mouth when I work. That was horrible, the sweat, the pinching, but atlest i don't have to worry about kiling myself. Though, when I was walking down the hall for my 10min. break the haze of chlorox was so strong I could smell it through my mask. The fumes and bleach dust make my eyes itch. I'm going to have to start working in a hazmat suit.
Did I mention that Claudette doesn't have the guys clean bathrooms, because they are guys?! ugh
She did say that she brought us special drinks but left them in her car, but she'll bring them tomorrow. We'll see . . .
I must have done something to please her this morning, though, because this afternoon all I had to do was sweep. That was nice. A lot of walking, but nice. :)
All today, especially this morning, provided no opportunities for scrimshanking. Such a shame.
One note from this morning:
10:11 am I can already feel a thin layer of Ajax forming on my face.
With that pleasant thought I leave you until tomorrow.
I'm feeling oddly happy right in this moment so I think I won't spoil it by writing about new housekeeping horrors. I'll save those until I get of work.
The moment's question is, why am I happy after spending four straight hours scrubbing a bathroom trapped in a face mask?
Possible answers:
1)It's lunch break
2)I only have to do a half shift (2hrs) after lunch
3)My scrubbing week is more than half over
4)The pizza I had for diner last night, which was very good, as was the company :)
I would say it was the dream I had last night, but it was really more of an odd dream than a good dream persay and besides it didn't keep me happy this morning.
By the by the toilets are truly like 3 feet from my office door, still in a row, probably talking to eachother, gossiping over the new paint color for the bathroom. . .