My True Soul

Iceberg, Kite, Spoon, Stone, Pocket, Ink, & Tide

          I'm up right now in an attempt to help Manda study. I've been rather worthless when it comes to this actually staying up to help her thing. I don't really know what it is, but I've got where I sleep even heavier than I had been before. When I was 18/19, I could go all night without sleeping any. As I got older, I could do the whole getting a few hours of sleep for a nap and getting up. Now? It's getting bad, I have to sleep like all night before I can even wake myself up.
I'm not sure if it's my laziness or if it's the fact of how much busier I am now than ever before. Here's my schedule right now. Manda has class at 8 am on MWF, so we're leaving at 7:30 am... up around 7, at the latest, usually have to start waking up at like 6 am. Monday evenings aren't bad. Tues and Thurs, we're starting at 9:30 for her classes... so up around 7:30-8 am some days. I'm in for work from 10-2 on both those days. Then I have class 6-9 on Tues/Wednes. Thurs and Fri, I've got work from 5-9. And on Saturday, I work from 10-2.
Then you have to consider I'm reading at around 50 pages for my Mon. class, 20 for Tuesday, and another 30-70 for Wednesday. In addition to that... I've got a poster presentation with 5 sources for my Mon class and a 10-12 page paper that explores my family along with a genogram (which is PURE hell, I'll explain more later). For Tuesday, we get off easy with the reading in exchange for 3 journal critiques (my last 2 have avg. about 10-12 pages) and a research proposal paper, which is basically the paper you'd write before you proposed a thesis (it has to have at least 15 sources, no page limit as they wouldn't want to limit our writing). For Wednesday, we've got to develop a theory and write a paper as a group... er... I have no clue.
Ok, so all that is in addition to the tests we'll have in these classes. So, I only have 9 hours of actual classes per week, but as you can see, there's a lot of work outside of those 3 classes. Then there's 20 hours for work. About 50 hours a week, easy.
Ok, so things have been hectic and they're just sorta calming down. I've gotten through mid-terms. Now I have to divert all my attention to my papers, but that's ok.

         About a month ago, hard to believe it's been that long ago, Manda's mom had a horrible nose bleed and ended up being in the hospital for a week. After that week, she was pretty weak. So, we were back and forth a lot between here and Manda's hometown, trying to help look after her mom. I found out, btw, that I have a really strong stomach for seeing blood... I was proud of myself. Anyways, that was just really hectic that week and the week after. Then we had to play catchup for the past 2 weeks. The house is a complete mess still. Her mom is doing fine now... found out the nose bleed was the result of several factors, but it seems she has high bloodpressure and the symptoms were coinciding with the effects of an ear problem she's had since she was 17. She now has medication to help, so things are better.
Speaking of that, it seems my dad is due for a change in diet. His blood sugar has been through the roof. My mom's been trying to tell him something wasn't right for the past like 6 months almost. He finally listened this weekend and let her check his sugar. It was up towards 500, not good. You'd think he'd listen to her given that she's been borderline for YEARS.
So, I should probably watch mine more closely. Admittedly today hasn't went well and I've indulged in the Dr. Pepper more than usual. But at least I typically stay down to 1 caffeine soda a day. I might drink sprite/root beer, which of course still has as much sugar... but overall, I'd still say I eat healthier than my parents. We bought a bag of chips the other day... that was the first time this entire semester.

         Right, the paper with the genogram. Genograms were a new concept to me until this semester, so I figure I'll explain. They're simply family trees in which you add things like emotional relationships (i.e. fused relationships, hate, love, abuse, etc.) and you have things like marriages, divorce/separation, cohabitation, engagements. Also, you include substance abuse problems or addictions. I'm not sure if family trees do this, but you would also include miscarriages/stillbirths. We have to do 3 generations, which wouldn't be as bad if the professor didn't want us to include our grandparents siblings. There are 16 total siblings on my maternal grandmother's side. There are 13 total siblings on my paternal grandfather's side. Plus, he wants us to investigate our own family. My family doesn't get along that well. Oh, and not to mention people like my Uncle Johnny who's been married and divorced multiple times to 1 woman (think 8 times) and to other women. Even worse, my Uncle Jerry who's got as many marriages/divorces, but has 4 children. Mapping these people out is pure hell. I got a lot of the basics done on my mom's side... the people have symbols, but not many details. I haven't touched my father's side yet.

         Being a supervisor is an interesting position. Especially since I share the title with 2 others and have a boss that only recently took over the position he's in and is really wanting to get things moving in that place. We went from having maybe a dozen people total working to having around 30 people. Every night, my boss wants the place to be full (18 people). I can understand why and I think it's pretty interesting the stuff we do. Admittedly, it gets old hearing it after a while... but, overall, I don't think its a bad place to work.

Anyway, I came in to the position trying to show some respect to everyone, especially those ladies that have been there longer than me. I know they know more about doing their job than I do. Plus they're all older than me. And I refuse to become the type asshole supervisor that I fussed about while at Kroger and that my parents still fuss about.

There has been so many little things I could fuss about... my gosh, but I'll stick to overarching things. Anyway, since I've been there the past couple of months, I've got most of the employees where they like me. I don't have to do a whole lot to get them to do what they need to be doing. All I have to really do is ask... most of them like me enough that they don't question, they don't do stuff too wrong in the first place.

However, as they like me... they're more willing to come to me with their compliants, their questions, etc. And apparently, between the 3 of us, I'm getting the picture that they all think I have a better idea of what's going on and am more willing to help them understand whatever it is they may have problems with. I'm glad, don't get me wrong, but it adds more to my job than it does to the other 2 supervisors.

For example, the other day they fussed at one of the ladies I like (some people you just click better with) about taking a 47 minute break. In the software we use, the log off hours show up as .47 of an hour. Well... almost half of an hour is about 30 minutes... not 47. One of the other supervisors and the boss did NOT realize that. I didn't either at first, but when she told me about the problem.... I spent about 2 hours trying to figure out what the heck was wrong bc I knew it was impossible she'd taken that long of a break because that's not the kind of worker she is and it'd be hard to do that without me noticing.

Okay, so in addition to that... it occurs to me that one of the other supervisors is highly unprofessional. She's got where she has full course meals behind our desk, things other than water to drink, etc. It might not be AS bad if she ate like... I don't know... as the other supervisor suggested... skittles. Because skittles are pretty hard to melt, be sticky, mess things up, etc. But, the point of the matter remains. The previous supervisor said we could have coffee behind there... not a good idea. You have all these ladies who're told not to have anything but water at their stations and then there's a supervisor enjoying a entire meal behind her desk? In addition to that, this particular one's husband is ALWAYS up there. And when he's there, they're either flirting or arguing. It's sickening.... and distracting... and annoying. She also doesn't consider averages. Some nights the people these ladies are calling do not want to talk. Some nights are better than others. She expects way too much. She fussed today at our meeting because they only got 80 completed interviews last night where they'd gotten like 96 on Monday. Both the other supervisor, the boss, and I just were like "but that's really good!"
Manda's working out there now. She absolutely hates working under this girl. She'll tell me the stuff that she does... it's unreal. The other supervisor sometimes isn't the smartest when it comes to software stuff, but at least she has a sense of professionalism.

          Ah, yes... and a week ago... Paula (supervisor with sense of professionalism) just blatantly asked me if I was a lesbian or not. She'd mentioned letting one of the workers pull up the myspace of a gay co-worker. (Sometimes we'll let them use the internet to show pictures to each other/check football scores, nothing much more) So, the myspace page was inappropriate to be looking at during work hours. So I mentioned that, yea, gay guys seemed to have profiles like that with almost naked men, etc. and that they were worse, on average, than lesbians. Then she told me that my boss had been confused as to what GLBT meant when I'd put it under my research interests and had asked her. Then out came her question. It just... floored me. It didn't help that I was out of my mind a little because of whatever bug was going around down here. So in the combination of being sick and being floored by the directness of her question, I actually let it be known that it was debateable. I also explained to her that I felt the GLBT community was one often overlooked when it came to family counseling, especially in the south, and that for those same reasons, I also would like to work with spanish speaking families. Then she started asking some of the typical questions.
I don't know... so far she hasn't seemed to have mentioned it to anyone. It's been a week since we've had that conversation and nothing seems to be different.

I also talked to my cousin Jen a few weeks ago. She asked me if there were any lesbians in our family. I told her that I'm sure there must be somewhere and just kinda left it at that because I'm still not really sure how much I can trust her and it's honestly worse than telling Paula because of how easily Jen could tell her father or our aunt and have it spread. Plus, that side of the family is "lesbian-free" to my knowledge so it's not like they've had any experience with dealing with that issue like my mom's side has. Anyways, Jen was asking me because, as she then confessed, that she thought she might be into girls. She said she noticed them more often than guys. I started to tell her then... but refrained from it. Turns out, lol, she and I have very similar taste as far as our basic preferences in looks. She likes latin guys... I kinda like latin girls or those that resemble. (And as much as Manda gets spoken to in Spanish and looked at like "shouldn't you already speak this language" in her Spanish classes.... she definitely resembles.)

So, I like talking to Jen. Out of all my family members... for some reason... I like her. I think she's stupid sometimes, but overall, I like her. It's making this issue of possibly disclosing my orientation to her rather annoying. I'd like to, obviously she'd be ok with it, she's actually asked before, etc., but then at the same time... it's giving her so much potential power and I don't know if I can trust her that much. I have such a time trusting people. Plus, I really would love for someone in my family to know and I'm afraid I'm rushing in to wanting to tell her because I finally feel like I might have someone I can tell.

          Okay, so I got back mid-term grades this week. I'm feeling much better than I was about everything. I made a 88.5 or 17.7 (out of 20) on the worst test ever. Most everyone in the class made like 15-16 and did not do well on the essay. I actually got an excellent essay comment from the professor and he's an asshole. The ones I've talked to about it so far, they've all said they've bombed. In my other class... the test... oh my. Okay, it was a 100 items. She let us take it, made sure we answered all the questions, and then let us have the rest of the 3 hours to go back through our book/notes and correct the ones we weren't sure about. I was in there from 6p.m. until 9:15p.m., yea, I spent that much time. So I got back my test today with an 84, got to add 6 points... so I made an A. But, she gave us the option of taking home the test, again, and getting an entire week to re-do it with the option of taking the higher grade between the 2. I took the test to work on over the next week... I'm figuring since I'll have a week, then I'll have plenty of time to hopefully get more points and have some cushion.
Point being, is I made an almost A and an A. Yay, go me!

It gives me hope. Now, I've got to wake Manda up. She's got a test to study for. I napped for a while, she woke me up when she wanted to sleep, and now it's time for me to wake her for her to study some more.

I think this is more than enough for now. Hopefully it won't be as long until the next time I get to write, I sure as heck hope not.