Tears of a clown.

Tomorrow is my appointment with an academic advisor at Mount St. Mary. It's a 2 hour appointment, which is more time than I got from anybody at LBCC, but maybe I should stop talking shit about LBCC. It's starting to sound bitter. Anyway, I'm nervous. Why? Well, for one reason, I don't know where I'm supposed to park.

It's been a rough week. I decided to change my work schedule back to the 9/80 for the summer, and this was the first week of four 9-hour days. I'm actually really feeling that extra hour. It doesn't help that we are very busy at work, covering for absent/non-existent colleagues (all of us. There are five us, and then three missing). It seems that we take turns being miserable, being realistic, and being accepting. I think I'm in the accepting phase  (for now). It is so hard to be totally behind, work piling up and having unread emails and ignored voicemail messages, and then when you are at your breaking point (or near it), someone tells you to "do your best."

Dude, if I wasn't doing  my best, I wouldn't care at all. 

Anyway, luckily I work with a group of very fun people (having a nice work environment is a new one for me, and I am not taking it for granted). 

Here's an example, though I hope this story isn't somehow offensive. If it is, I am very sorry. It's possible I was having a bad reaction to my allergy medication.

My colleague, G. just inherited the case load of our departed colleague, D. (D. didn't die, she got a promotion). G. unfamiliar with D.'s cases, and since we tend to memorize and recognize the names of the people we work with, it was bugging her that she couldn't identify this one employee. The employee's last name is "Fu." 

Now. My colleague is a sophisticated woman who has the most beautiful jewelry I've ever seen. She's funny and smart and has this awesome Armenian/Russian accent. She speaks 4 languages. She's a smart cookie. 

After looking for this file for about 20 minutes, G. got frustrated and asked me to help.

"What am I going to do with this Fu," she asked, and for some reason that struck me as the funniest thing I had heard in a very long time. 

I was the only one who laughed. I laughed a lot. It took me quite a while just to stop giggling. I think the guy who sits on the other side of my cubicle was ready to call the Employee Assistance Program on my behalf.

Anyway, this week I have been tired, overwhelmed, achy, silly, and sad. Not all at once.

Please play "Tears of a Clown" (the cover version by the English Beat) now. You'll feel better. I do.

Well, okay, this is weird.

So we are lucky and have an awesome niece and nephew. My niece is in college, and my nephew is in high school. They are sweet, smart kids and went to the same elementary school we enrolled our son in, pretty much just based on how totally awesome they are.

Yes, I know a lot of that awesomeness comes from parenting, but I'll take any advantage.

Anyway, while my niece is home for the summer, I'm hoping to get to hang out with her and my nephew more. We all had dinner tonight with their mom at Chick-fil-A. It was a lot of fun to chat with them all and Jules loves seeing them. My nephew had someplace to go soon after we finished eating, so Jules asked to play in the enclosed play area. Usually I hate those places (germs, mean kids...) and almost always say no, but this time I'm letting him. Free  wifi, you know? So I'm just sitting here, listening to the mom of the three kids in the play area with Jules, talk on the phone. I can't really figure out what she's saying but I keep hearing, "I texted her..." and "Cadillac Escalade." 

On the other hand...

I think I stopped talking at what became the end of my last post because it was time to eat. I should tell you, after I typed the last period of the last sentence, I got up and looked in the refrigerator and when I saw that we were (are) out of eggs, it turned into a disappointing evening. However, those Trader Joe's frozen chicken tamales are much better than you might think they would be. 

They're pretty amazing with a fried egg. 

I've been taking baby steps toward this for a while now, but I finally reached out and got some help: I have been accepted to, and intend to attend, Mount St. Mary's Weekend/Evening College. I've filled out financial aid paperwork and everything (I took this step when I was accepted to Cal Arts, but it was pretty clear I wasn't going to be able to afford it, since I had researched the tuition ahead of time. This time I'm flying blind. I don't want to know how much it's going to cost, yet. I'm not prepared for that information at this exact moment). 

(Last week I was discussing this with my friend Teresa, a super-educated, amazing woman who worked her ass off, and she asked me a question, something about how I thought I was going to handle doing the work. I said, "Oh, I don't know. Let's not talk about that just yet." I know there are real things that I need to think about and prepare myself for, but right now it's better to be blindfolded, taking one tiny step at a time.)

Because my GPA, which was a combined score of the A I recently earned, and the subpar grades I was awarded in the 90s, could have been better, I am taking one last online class at LBCC. I had a bit of a temper tantrum while registering for it, and pitched a hissy fit on Twitter (where else? I wasn't able to reach anyone on their stupid phone system, which doesn't tell you if the school is closed for the day or give you any option to speak to a live person! I was pissed!) because I'd left several "please call me back" messages for "Andrea," the person who's voicemail was triggered when I selected the number for "Cashier." (Look. Her message doesn't say, "You've reached Andrea Whoever, CASHIER AT LONG BEACH CITY COLLEGE." It just says, "This is Andrea Whoever, leave a message..." I mean, how was I supposed to know if I was even leaving my message for the right person?) Anyway, we know LBCC monitors their Twitter mentions, because Andrea called me back twice the next day, once to say, "I can't help you without your student ID" and the second time to say, "you know what, I just entered your name, and there's only one student in the system named Irene Palma, so here's what you need to do..." SO SHE NEVER EVEN HAD TO SPEAK WITH ME AT ALL. 

Anyway, I better ace this online class, which will be new for me (oh, I did traffic school online once a million years ago), and perhaps a way to get my feet wet with this online business anyway. 

Oh, and I left a rating for my English professor on that "rate your professor" website, and yes, I said, he IS hot. 

This post has no title. Dude. Cleverness is not a virtue.

So.... since my last post, things have changed. Not everything, just: goals.

I finished my writing class at LBCC. My professor, Christopher Byars (probably a good 10 years younger than me, with a great head of hair), was amazing. It was a fun and exciting experience. I made a room full of recent high school graduates laugh at least twice, and who knew that would be so fulfilling? 

I got an A.

High on academic success, I decided to get some math over with. I tested very badly, and therefore had to retake algebra. I signed up, started the class, and instantly felt my life slipping away. It was awful. I was awful. Out of my depth, there was nothing fun or funny about that class, or my performance.

So I dropped it. 

Since then I haven't taken any classes, unless you count checking out YouTube for cooking tips (actually, I don't think I've even done that. I may have asked Alexa: "Alexa! Is canned corn cooked?"). Or a work-related training session that was dull beyond belief. No? You don't count those things? Then hey, my education abruptly came to a halt.

More later. My frozen tamale is almost done steaming, and I have an egg to fry.*

*Not a euphemism.