Thursday, March 15, 2018

Oh, so tired

* Still tired, though I am pretty sure this is allergies DESPITE me taking time before Elders' and Board meeting to quickly wash my hair (and going to the meetings with still-slightly-wet, skinned-back hair).

* I really need spring break. I plan on doing a lot of sleeping. Also, my parents are closer to the eastern edge of the time zone (so the sun will appear to rise earlier than it does here) and hopefully I can get my body clock properly recalibrated. (And a big un-prize to those in our government - both state and feds - who are talking about making this abomination year-round. So you want people who have to go to work early in the morning to be even more likely to die in a car wreck? I could be down with year-round DST IF they were to change our work schedules slightly so we didn't have to be places before 8 am or so. But with 8 am classes, I really like to be in at 7, so I can deal with overnight e-mails and look at my notes and the like.)

* I think I might have one time-embargoed post over break (if I can get it written this evening) but again: these mid-semester breaks really sneak up on me (Thanksgiving is the same) and I feel not-ready for them (in the sense of not being ready to travel, not in the sense that I don't need a break).

*  I dunno. The second week of any month is just hard because of meetings at church. I guess it's hard for everybody who is in both CWF and on the board.

* I have to figure out what books to take on my trip. I guess I take Young Titan and try to finish it (I kind of pushed it aside when I got so into "The Cruellest Month"). I HAVE a lot of books, I will just have to find a couple I particularly want to read that will seem like good "train" books. (Mystery novels usually work well, as do popular-press history or "science lite" books.) I do have that monograph on soil invertebrates but I don't know if I can bring myself to read it on break.

* So apparently Toys R Us is closing all its stores? I know a few people who have said it's been awful in the past 5-10 years (I do not know; the one in Sherman closed back around 2004 and I haven't been in one since). On the one hand, if they had bad business practices, they should go. But on the other hand - I admit, I do worry about a future where you have only the Wal-Mart and Amazon behemoths for shopping, and if they don't carry what you want - or you can't wait for its delivery - or it's something a little unusual - you're out of luck. I suppose some of the larger cities still have independent toy shops? I don't know.

I have also read that the up and coming generation of kids "plays less" with toys, and I confess, that makes me a little sad. I guess a lot of them would rather play Minecraft and the like? One thing I have noticed about the up and coming generation of college students: more and more, you get people who are uncomfortable with "doing stuff." You can kind of tell who played with Lego (or built stuff out of scrap wood, or whatever) because they are more comfortable working with things, and also (I think I've said this before) I think people who did things like cooking or crafts or building stuff as a kid is better at following directions. (The following direction thing drives me to distraction - we have stuff laid out as simply as possible in the lab book, and I also verbally go over the important points, and yet people just IGNORE some of the instructions, to the point where, for safety things - like avoiding cross-contamination - I have to hover over people and watch them and frankly it's a lot of wear and tear and anxiety on me). I also admit some amazement when I say THIS ONE THING IS IMPORTANT and about half the class, it's like they didn't even hear it. (Maybe they did not, I don't know). I just know....I was so uptight as a student that I hung on every word of a prelab, and sometimes took notes, because I didn't want to break stuff or screw things up.

And also, as someone who kind of low-level collects dolls and other toys, it just makes me sad: I would like to be able to still buy things like Monster High (though I guess Mattel has killed that line, based on some things I've read) into the future.

It kind of sucks: as a kid, I had no money (parents were stingy with allowance and pay for chores) and also there weren't that many good toys out there. As an adult, I have money to (at least occasionally) buy a toy for my "collection" and slowly they seem to be being phased out in favor of clicky flashy things on a screen.

(Well, there's always amigurumi, I guess.)

I guess also part of it - from stuff I've read - is that kids want to grow up really fast and eight-year-olds are abandoning things like dolls as "babyish."

(I played, on some level or other, with stuffed animals, until I was 12 or 14. Granted, I was an extremely late bloomer in some regards, but still: I think putting away the trappings of childhood too early is sad. I would tell those kids, adulthood REALLY does not have that much to recommend it; I would rather imagine horses running across the prairie and having adventures instead of worrying about whether Brendan "like-likes" me and trying to learn to put on make up.)

I dunno. If I could go back, even for a short time, to having that imaginative child's mind where I could easily create an entire world, and families, and adventures, out of a small group of toy animals and some dollhouse furniture, I'd swap being an adult for it, at least for a couple days. 

* Board meeting was pretty good last night. Not quite as long as I feared. Apparently the minister we have now is semi-permanent, which is a giant relief to me - we cycled through a lot of temporary people and each time they drew near the end of their time, I'd wonder: so is the decision going to be made that we fold? And so far, the answer has been "No."

The presentation on the planned homeless shelter - the main group working for it (there are three, and frankly, I think they need to join forces early on instead of trying to work in parallel for the same goal) has it well thought out: the big plan is to provide a "hand up" with the goal of getting as many people as possible into a position where they have a job and can pay for an apartment/rental house themselves, and also to help with other underlying problems (e.g., drug abuse). At this point no commitment from churches being requested (they don't have their non-profit status yet; they just recently applied for it) but at some point we are going to be asked to contribute $100 a month, which I think we can do, and I think if some people know about it, they'll increase their giving to cover that.

The other big presentation was about the bell choir - we have a set of bells given as a memorial but they hadn't been used for years and the rubber/polypropylene inner parts perished, and so they need repair, but the good news is it's something we can do ourselves given the parts, so there's a plan to have a few workdays to do that. I volunteered: I'm pretty good at fiddly things, and I have smaller hands than some people, so reaching up in some of the bells will be less of a problem.

I also gave a tentative commitment to play in the choir. I don't know about that given my history of terrible stage fright with clarinet and piano, but with bells I'm not the only one and I'm only responsible for part of it. And if I do one performance and hate it I can drop out.

There was also further talk of "safety procedures." The newest plan is to equip the choir with whistles, and if they see someone trying to get in (they have a view of the main doors, which are glass), they are to blow the whistles and then we all bug out into the area below the baptistry. The idea being: it will buy us the five minutes or so that it would hopefully take for the police to arrive, and it's probably smarter than running outside.

And also, to be honest: I suspect the two most likely threats we face would be a tornado (which would require the same safety procedure: the under-the-baptistry area is below ground and well sheltered by strong walls) or fire (in which case you get out whatever door is nearest to you). As I commented quietly to the people next to me: "if some person wanted to make a statement, they'd go to Victory Life" (the very large, well-known, non-denominational church in this town. We are small and sort of out of the way, so I suspect we are at less risk for any kind of harm-doer).

And to be honest? I suspect if we had a random threatening-seeming person wander in, they would more likely be someone impaired on a substance (years ago, apparently, a drunk person did stumble into the sanctuary and the deacons gently guided him back outside and sat with him until paramedics came) or who was otherwise not in their right mind - and in that case, I think the "correct" (certainly: the Christian) response is to strive to calm the person down and get them somewhere where people who are trained to care for them can. The board moderator had talked to police and said they discouraged people with carry permits from carrying, because "things could get confused" and I presume that means that someone who is merely disturbed and not an actual threat might have people "drawing" on them, or, there might be friendly-fire type errors in a really dire situation. The police officer seemed to think getting out of the sanctuary as fast as possible would be the better response and that relieves my mind; I tend to agree with him and I am glad that my gut feeling is backed up by someone with actual training.

But I will say it was a little hard going there and Steve not being there, and me having to remind myself "he's not just on vacation" because honestly that is still what it feels like - that he's away on a trip, and some day I'll be down at church for something and he'll walk in being his loud self.

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