On the flip side: Epic Win

So my most beloved friend Vince back home has this adorable 3 year old daughter, Maya. I have met Maya all of once, when I was home in 2006 for Christmas and she was up late for her daddy's yearly NYE ( and birthday) party. She wasn't even 2 yet and she was super tired, so I didn't make much of an impression, as you might imagine! But for some reason, I am just so crazy about that little girl. Maybe it's because, for one, I had this weird and amazingly beautiful dream that Vince's wife was pregnant before they'd even announced it (and I went and asked him, "Is this true?" He was all "Not that I know of!"LOL!). Maybe it's because seeing Vince be a dad is just so positively cool and makes me wanna cry when he talks about how much he loves his little girl. Or maybe it's just because in all her pictures and videos she's so funny and smart and beautiful one can't help but love her.

Anyway, usually I manage to get it together and send something for her birthday, but last year I blew it and was so farking late that I had to put it in with this year's Christmas package/Vince's birthday gift. And of course, I was late with the Christmas gifts this year, so Vince and his family didn't get it all til this week. But I heard from Vince today, and...

...it seems Miss Maya is in LOVE with her gift. I got her this book:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Hug-Time/Patrick-McDonnell/e/9780316114943/?itm=1

which is this really great book by "Mutts" creator Patrick McDonnell that had me bawling when *I* read it, because it's so sweet. The main character is this little cat named Jules who wants to give the world a hug, so he goes out and travels the world and gives all these different people and animals a hug. It's funny, and smart and a little environmentalist, and of course, illustrated in a very cute way, but not saccharine or watered down like a lot of kids books. ( When he comes home and the book ends with ," The world is so big / And yet so small / It's time that we embrace it all." Since Vince and his wife are trying to raise Maya in a Secular Humanist tradition, so I thought this was extra-perfect.) I got a little orange cat to go with it, and Jeannie helped me knit this little green sweater for him just like in the book.

Vince told me today that she's carrying Jules everywhere ( whom she thinks is a girl) and has begged him to read her that book like 10 times. Vince and his wife explained that she got these gifts from her friend Jessica who lives in California, and so she got out her US States puzzle and looked at California (*pang! snif!*). He also informed me that she has introduced Jules to all her other stuffed animal friends.

Man, that just slayed me. I was like, "::OOF::" straight through the heart. I thought maybe she'd like it, and I hoped she'd someday know who I was a wee bit, maybe even later when she saw the book and was more grown up. But it just kills me that she's only 3 and really loves it ( another SCORE!, since to me, it's always a little tough trying to buy something decent for kids, especially ones you don't get to spend a lot of time with), and is putting together, maybe a little that I'm here now. It means so much to me, since I've missed so much of her life already.

So, I guess the thing of it is, if you can make a little kid happy for a day, it really is an Epic Win. Because really, you can't help but be happy too.

:)

Epic Fail

Here's a colossally stupid moment -- just a little a snapshot for your amusement:

I'm standing in the dining room packing up some after-Xmas cookies for a friend, and listening to the Golden Globes in the living room. They announce all the contenders for Best Male Performance In a Blah Blah, and my ears perk up when they announce Heath Ledger as a nominee. I don't go to the tv though, 'cause I'm right in the middle of this cookie thing, and then they announce that he wins.

So of COURSE I get all excited, and I try to hustle it in there to see who accepts it and what they say. MInd you, I live in a apartment so it's not like the LR is so far away, but I'm a.) wearing big fuzzy pink slippers and b.) stricken with some sort of instantaneous loss of coordination from being forced to multitask. In short, I trip over the edges of the tablecloth, fall down, scrape my hands and knees on the carpet and have to crawl to the tv to see Christopher Nolan accept the award.

I start laughing at myself, and then I'm all misty with the clip from the movie and by the time the 30+ second debacle is over, I feel like I've been on a roller coaster. And am pretty sure I'm a total moron. It's amazing I can get out of bed every day and dress myself.

I'm really glad he won, though. :D

Now that it's Jan. 5 and all is still once more, I can officially say that yes, I survived yet another Christmas season.

I just didn't survive it with my job intact.

I wish I could say I am sorry for that; I'm not. I'm obviously not good at that job the way I should have been, in their opinion, and I'm not sorry for that, either. I had a moment, but I realized that asking me to be good at the things I needed to be good at ( like being nice to rude, stupid, lazy, entitled people for 8 hours at a stretch) is not something I'm likely to EVER be good at. Not for anything less than twice what they were paying me, anyway, and I'd probably still crack and be bad on a regular enough basis to know that I just don't have that temperment. I give in on that one. I have to: all the evidence is there, and I can't say I wasn't a.) warned repeatedly or b.) making a sincere effort again and again. I really was, on both counts.

I wish I did have that temperment, because I did like the other parts of my job: I liked helping people find books and making recommendations and figuring out how to help them solve a problem; I loved being around books and getting to read them all the time without paying for them! I liked my coworkers because they were all intelligent, talented, funny, highly verbal people, and alot of fun. But in the end, there has to be something better for me than going home as stressed out as I regularly was, with the kind of xenophobic, cynical faithlessness in humanity I was developing.

There has to be something better for me than having two degrees and part of a master's and getting yelled at for ridiculous shit by a manager who openly swears at his employees and disregards women in general as a regular practice, whom even the lower managers disdain as incompetent. There has to be something that pays more than what I was making and appreciates what how hard I do work instead of picking on the small ways I don't always remember to work.

I just think there has to be something better suited towards my success versus guaranteeing my failure.

And I'm going to find it.

Right now, however, I have to pay some bills before I hop off to Paris, so I'm going to likely have to suck it up and find something small to ensure that the power remains on for the kitties while I'm in Frogtown. Even if it's Starbucks, that's okay for right now, til I get back. It really doesn't matter.....of course, it would be lovely and ideal to get the dream job NOW, but I'm trying to be realistic in the 3 weeks I have left!

Other than that, I'm REALLY glad Christmas is over, even if no boxes of cereal arrived at my doorstep and by and large I was really blessed. I farking hate that time of year, and next year, unless I have some super-important place to be, I'm going to ditch and go to a beach somewhere and hide out. It's been my dream for a few years now; it's time to make it happen.

This year will be different. For the better. Just wait and see. I can almost guarantee it. It WILL. Because I say so.

So be it.