the boss is gone... let's party!

is it a bad sign when work is 30 million times better with the boss gone? that sounds stupid... everyone loves having their boss gone, but i mean like REALLY REALLY better when the boss is gone? like we can breathe in a full breath, walk across the room with confidence and do our job because she's not staring down our every move ready with a condescending remark to put us in our place as the childish morons that we are? oh the joys of being an employee. i do love my job, i love it so much, so much in fact that i'd willingly put up with more summers of the same boss, but there certainly are times that i feel small and hated... like monday. and the part of the week before. and most all of the week before that. the irony of it all is that i put in way more hours than i get paid for and am not appreciated for that. i probably 'volunteer' around 7 extra hours a week beyond my schedule and off the clock and it seems logical that any good boss would appreciate that, but not mine. in fact, she does a darn good job of making me feel so unwanted at times that if i stay late on a bad-ish day for her, i'll end up feeling so uncomfortable that when i decide to leave i sneak out so she doesn't know how late i stayed. sounds rather pathetic now that i wrote it out. of course there are times that she confuses me and thanks me for coming in to work. go figure. anyway, to bring this tanget to a close... donna was at work only monday and friday and other than that, i saw her for 15 minutes total the other 4 days. it was so freeing. we all enjoyed work so much more. it helps that the volunteers rocked this week, but even so, it was just so much more enjoyable being boss-less.

last night i babysat for the twins, emma and alaina. they're cute little things. 7 months old. emma crawls all over the place now, including all over me. they're the easiest babies i've ever encountered. and they smile so much and are just plain happy kids. emma was laughing so hard last night that i thought she might pass out from lack of oxygen. they love cuddling too, which makes me melt. they both fell asleep in my arms a couple times. the oddest part of the night was my discovery of how much more i appreciate dressing and changing the diaper on a baby as opposed to a full sized adult like i do at work. it's such a breeze! nikki and brian looked at me like i was insane when i told them that i rather enjoyed it last night because it was just too easy! amazing how a perspective can change.

i'm exhausted. this past week was late nights, short sleeping periods and long days. 7 hours of sleep in two nights combined with naps of 20 and 45 minutes respectively is just not enough to keep a body going all that long. good thing i enjoyed the activities that kept me from my bed. stories for another time. until then... bubyd

yippee!

last night was WAYYYY fun! we had a bon fire at lyndsie's and it turned chaotic but was oh so much fun! it all started by brian and lyndsie finding random sticks and deciding to sword fight. i was cringing a little when wood started splintering... waiting for the moment our first aid training would be employed. it came soon enough: lyndsie's arm and brian's finger. so we cleaned them up while lyndsie's dad started a fire for us. as he's walking away he looks at me, sara and katie and specifically says "girls, don't let those two kill each other." "ok, mr. marsh... we'll watch them. it'll be fine." uhhh.... yeah... it was fine alright. somewhere along the line... very shortly after mr. marsh left, we started talking about bruises and lyndsie and brian mentioned they don't bruise easily. so what came next? they started punching each other in the arm of course. odd i know... but highly amusing. they continued that for a while, but eventually it spilled into the yard and turned into a wrestling match with lots of mindless laughter. katie and i got up to watch more closely, we're curious people ya know, and brian dove at my legs. mind you, it was dark out so i barely saw him coming. now... i've got two brothers so i'm not entirely helpless, so i wasn't about to let him just take me down. no no... i put up a fight, but uncontrollable laughter makes me considerably weaker. shortly thereafter katie got taken out, and after a while sara got involved too. it was mostly 4 girls against brian. he held his own pretty well... but i think the adrenaline and stupid humor of it kept him going for most of it. i'm sure he's sore today. i'm not sure how long we all wrestled, probably about an hour, but we ended up as a grossly sweaty pile of people laying in the middle of lyndsie's back yard using brian as a pillow because i think we had finally worn him out. it all sounds incredibly strange, but it was more fun than i can possibly express. i haven't laughed that much in a long time. my clothes were very grass stained and i've got bruises on my hips, arms and my shoulder... but i'm sure that's minor compared to brian or lyndsie. if you haven't guessed... we're a really close group of staff and we're pretty darn comfortable with each other. it must be the nature of our job has made it possible to bond so closely. i love it.

so today... today was hot. oh so hot and humid. mid 90's. i picked raspberries from 11-1 today, 2 1/2 gallons of them, and i got sunburned! i'm rather shocked. i'm really tan and haven't been really burned once this summer despite the numerous hours i've spent in the sun. but today must have been special and my back is quite toasted. that's what i get for wearing my swim suit. but it's all good because after my picking we went to the lake and had a jolly time. the boys and i had fun messed around and doing childish things. brendon and i mastered some sort of double back flip thing in the water where my legs were around his waist and we flipped backward and i would pull him around with me and i don't even know, but it was cool. ethan didn't have the skills. he didn't go limp enough so when i was underwater i'd have to yank him pretty hard with my legs to make him follow me or i'd never reach the surface. this sounds confusing... nevermind. this is the end of my story for now because i've determined that i'd like to go to bed. ta ta

if something intresting had happened... you still wouldn't know

this blog has fallen to the wayside. and the bowl of rice that i am consuming is wonderful... what a cook i am. it's been nearly 3 weeks since i've updated, and yet, despite the fact that i have been officially named the invisible daughter because i'm everywhere but home, i can't think of anything of importance that merits being mentioned here. now that i've taken on the community life leader position at work in addition to my other job there, my schedule is dreadful. 6 days a week, am's and pm's. i spend 3 nights a week sleeping at work cause if i don't do that, within 6 days i spend 6 1/2 hours in my car driving to and from. that's what i get for having a split shift so i have to go to work 9 times in a week. i paid $3.05 for gas today. it was $3.17 last week. clearly its quite painful to have to get gas often. i'm thoroughly enjoying my job though. never in my life did i dream i would be doing something like this. never did i dream i could do something like this. dealing with people with disabilities was something i didn't really know how to do and kind of doubted i would be good at, but it has all come together quite handily and i love my job. of course there are certain unpleasant things about it... quite a few in fact. bodily fluids just can't really be all that happy and exciting, but ya know... it's part of life and a darn good experience for me. i have an awesome new circle of friends though, which is a huge plus. basically i work, and when i'm not working i'm sometimes home but often out doing something random with people from work. us AM staffers are a tight bunch. we went to the drive in last night. because we couldn't all see sitting in sara's car, we laid on blankets in the grass, but it got really cold! it had been 90 degrees during the day so i was wearing shorts, but after a short but heavy rain storm while we were at work it cooled off and i was a bit chilly. oh well. i toughed it out (and people snuggled around me). well that's about it. last week was vacation for me because we didn't have camp over the 4th. i spent 7 out of the last 8 days in a swim suit in the sunshine and am golden now. i'm back to reality now though. i think i might go take a nap. last night was late and i actually had to get out of bed this morning... adios!