Sorry to be missing in action...

Both Monday and Tuesday I was asleep by 8pm with the idea of getting up in an hour and slept until 4am. I seem to be incapable of taking a nap when I feel this drained. Anyway, I feel much better. I'm trying to decide if I'm slipping back towards depression or if I'm just emotionally exhausted. I have been taking my medicine faithfully, though, so hopefully that will help. Things that have been going on in my life.

• Finished both my resume and curriculum vitae. Now, for the worst part...cover letters. I hate writing cover letters.
  
• Have a line on three jobs. One is with the state, but hasn't posted yet. One is at EKU. One is...and I can't say this without smiling, just because I have a novel character I've worked on with this background...but one is paid training to be a private investigator for $27-$35 an hour. Now, before you laugh, consider that 95% of private investigating is not driving Ferraris, but is doing tedious research, something at which I excel. It would be interesting work that I could do part-time whilst keeping my current job/benefits. I figure, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And here in Kentucky you only have to be 18 years old to be a PI--there aren't any other requirements. I know one other librarian who has made the jump to that profession.
  
• Was somewhat surprised to find I had no electricity this afternoon when I came home--surprised because I'd called the company at the end of last week to make sure I was not in danger of being shut off and was told I had until the 20th. Apparently that was a mistake, although they're going to pull the call records and credit my reconnect fee if they can verify it. The good news is that since I planned to pay it this week anyway, I was able to pay over the phone and get it back on within the hour. Is it just me, or do I have awful luck sometimes? I am getting to a point where I see no reason to believe anyone anymore--or at least maybe just three people--my mom and my closest friends. Is that jaded? On the other hand, something told me not to go straight to the gym but come on home, and I would have otherwise not come home until after customer service ended.
  
• Dwana made it through surgery okay and is recovering at her parents' house in Harrison county. She called me yesterday to let me know. On the one hand, I'm glad she's doing okay. On the other, work seems sadly empty without her around. However, in her absence, you're going to get an eyeful with the next bullet, because I just have to vent.
  
• I have reached that point where, although I appreciate their concern, if one more person asks me 'how are you doing' in that concerned, hushed tone of a workplace shocked by cutbacks, I think I'll scream. I think part of it is that no one can quite believe that the cuts are over for now, although we're supposed to be safe through 2004. And although I know it's partly concern for me, a lot of it is concern for themselves. One guy asked during the town meeting whether I'd been give a severance package, and I know he was motivated by his sense of justice. But someone else just walked up to me the other day and asked point blank, no expression of concern, just wanting the info. I think others are afraid that even if they aren't laid off, per se, they'll have a reduction in hours which could be potentially worse. I had a couple of days of denial, followed by a small breakdown where I got my emotions and my brain on the same level, and now I'm working to move on. That said, I know there's still a lot an emotional morass to deal with. Yes, I feel betrayed. Yes, I'm sad. Yes, I'm angry that for years I was told to accept abyssmal wages ($9.02-$13.37 an hour for a professional library position) because the benefits, work environment, and stability of our jobs offset any deficit. And damn it, I was beginning to believe them. So, yes, I'm disappointed; that's only natural. On the other hand, I don't blame anyone in particular, and I oddly enough don't seem to have the negative attitude that some of the others at work have. I've been up front about my feelings, but I'm tired of revisiting the issue every few minutes. If I need to vent about things, I have this blog and my friends and family. I don't want to deal with the emotions whilst at work, but just focus on my job. If they want to vent, well, I'm not feeling particularly sympathetic to fears from people who aren't losing their job or hours at the moment. I've had people come up and say they were surprised they weren't cut. In some cases, so am I. But I don't want to get to a point where I start looking at every co-worker with this critical eye of 'why not them?' or going down hallways and looking at murals that in better years cost more than I make in a year (but of course it's easier to get a donation for something like that rather than to keep people). I'm starting to feel that way, and I don't want my experience at work marred by that. I think I'll work past it, but only if I'm not constantly reminded by everyone else. Does that make any sense? At the same time, I'm not a fan of people going 'let's not talk about anything because you might offend her' so I guess for now, I'll just weather the encounters as they happen. Over the years, I've become the sort of 'bartender in 10 forward' [Start Trek: Next Generation reference--think Whoopi Goldberg] for the hospital, the place everyone, from co-workers to parents, talk and vent, and I've always been conscientious of listening, because it might be the only outlet a person has, and they know it's not going to go further with me. It's one of the ways I've become so interconnected into the hospital. With everything, I guess, I still want to be there for people-both in terms of services and the unofficial ways, too. But I don't know how well that'll work after my hours change.
  
• That said, I'm hopefully not going to make the same mistake by sending one of the women who was laid off a card. I didn't know any of the others well, but I really wish I'd had a chance to say goodbye to Jayna. The card has a picture of Garfield that reads: 'When life is getting you down, sometimes it helps to seek out one of those cheery people who never stop smiling...and kick their butt clear into next week!' I think she'll appreciate that one better than something happy and 'you'll make it' sort of drivel. She has that sort of sense of humour. When I was perusing the classified Sunday I found a job more suited for her, public relations/writing for the Department of Education. So I'll send that clipping. I figure if she doesn't want it, she can just throw it away, but I don't want her to think we don't care--because of all the cuts, that's the one which made the biggest impact, since she was full-time, a public relations director, and involved in just about every aspect of the hospital and in many ways our line to the outside world. You can't go to any other organisation with which we deal without someone mentioning her. She has a very engaging (but not overly perky or annoying) personality. She's also had a lot of ups in down in life over the last few months, so I'm worried about her.
  
• It's so freaky to hear stories of the Matterhorn being closed due to heat or British motorists giving themselves frostbite with a car air conditioner. Here, where it's quite normal to be hot and muggy in August, it's a little cooler than normal. I don't even have the air conditioner on in the house.
  
• I'm reserving judgement on the new Mel Gibson movie, Passion. On the one hand, as a classicist, I'm intrigued that someone has shot a film in Latin and Aramaic that attempts to stay faithful to the literature surrounding the death of Jesus, and the shots I've seen have been cinematically interesting. On the other hand, there are concerns that elements of the film will incite anti-Semitism by blaming the Jews for that death. Gibson apparently practises a conservative, pre-Vatican II form of Catholicism, and Vatican II among other things removed this stigma from the canon of Catholicism. Since the film has not yet been through a final edit or release, this is just speculation. But it will be interesting to see what happens. I think sometimes people forget that Jesus was Jewish or that the Roman occupation of Judaea made for a very complex set of circumstances, or for that matter, that according to Christian doctrine, this was the plan of God all along.
  
• Yay to the American Bar Association, which voted to support state laws allowing gays to adopt their partner's children. This gives the kids the benefit of two parents and legal protection in terms of being able to get insurance, benefits, etc.

Can you tell I've been listening to CNN? I'm leaving out macabre details of Ted Williams' post-mortem or waterspouts, or dramatic rescues from a river in China. You can check those things out for yourself. I guess that's all for now. I'm going to go back to bed until the sun comes up, anyway. I just needed to get something into my system and feed the animals.