Barb’s Burblings

I volunteer pretty regularly, at two popular attractions in DC. I’ve volunteered at one since 2001 and the other since 2009. At one of them, I wear a shirt that say “Volunteer,” but it’s pretty small. And I get a lot of questions that start with “Do you work here?” I’m never sure where the person is going with that, so I usually say, “Well, I volunteer here.” Most people then launch into their question, but more and more, I get people being all, “Oh, you’re a volunteer? Thank you!”

I never know how to respond to that. Usually I say something about how it’s a good outlet for me to blather on about random history topics, because they don’t come up in conversation that much. And then, a lot of the time, the person will say, again, “Thank you!”

This may go into the same category of how I can’t deal with compliments. (Example: Coworker: [Other coworker] and I were just saying how much we like your top! Me: Really? I mean, thank you.) I do spend my time trying to help visitors have great experiences, and hopefully making the lives of the people who DO work there easier. I’m not sure whether something has shifted in our society that I’m getting more thanks from visitors than I used to. I think part of what makes me uncomfortable is that a lot of times, there are staff members in the area, and I see these people as making bigger sacrifices than me. I’m giving up part of a weekend, but a lot of the people who work there don’t make very much money and work long hours there.

So I try to make up for it. Like the time a visitor gave me a gift card to Starbucks; apparently he carries them away just to give away to do-gooders. I gave it to the staff member on duty, who had spent a large chunk of the morning being chewed out by that guy’s wife because we had run out of passes to get into the site. I can pawn upset visitors onto staff; they’re the ones who have to take the brunt of the anger.

I was in a training session for volunteering at Ford’s (they’re opening a new Center for Education and Leadership, which is very exciting and you should go see it when it opens) and we were discussing working with various age groups. The leader was saying how much she enjoys working with elementary school students, and another person in the training talked about how it was in 4th or 5th grade that he really started getting into history. And I thought about it and yeah, 4th grade was when history happened for me.

We moved to Connecticut the summer before 4th grade, and I remember getting a lot of books out of the library. One of them was a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. (Of course, the mere fact that I was browsing for books to read for pleasure in the children’s biography section says something.) I read it and…that was it. I was hooked. Read other biographies of her. Read biographies of FDR. Begged my parents to take me to Hyde Park. I’m not sure why this didn’t extend to reading about Teddy Roosevelt, but there you go. I still devour books about Eleanor and Franklin.

And we started learning about Connecticut history. That didn’t intrigue me so much (well, maybe the story about shoving the state charter into a tree did a bit), but it was this time that I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Calico Captive. If there’s something that sparked my interest in history, particularly the Colonial period, it’s reading those books. I still love them. Part of me doesn’t want to go to Montreal, because I love it too much in my imagination from Miriam goes there.

Maybe it’s because that’s the age that kids start grasping the concept of different time periods. I don’t know. But that’s certainly when the history bug bit me.

I just finished reading Bossypants, Tina Fey’s book. Getting it was something of an epic quest–I wound up on the queue for it at the library twice (missed my pick-up the first time because I was in Russia), so I’ve essentially been on a waiting list for it since, like, March. Anyway, it’s a really enjoyable book. I’ve been watching 30 Rock compulsively since it went into syndication. It’s on from 5:30 until 8 every night–and it’s on twice in one of those time slots. (Unfortunately, another station that airs it at 11 airs one of the episodes from an earlier timeslot, which I always forget and wind up frustrated.) So actually, reading the book now was perfect timing.

Fey is very relateable, and one of my favorite passages was this, from page 173, when she finds out that the pilot was picked up:

I was a little excited but mostly blorft. “Blorft” is an adjective I just made up that means “Completely overwhelmed by proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to stress with the torpor of a possum.” I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.

I LOVE it. Mostly because that’s exactly how I react to feeling overwhelmed. I needed a word for that feeling when I have 8 million things to do, but all I can focus on is playing Doodle Jump on my iPod Touch. One of the questions my boss asks in job interviews is how people react to stress. The only indication I give that I’m stressed (for the most part) is that my desk gets really messy.

Like everyone else, I totally want to be BFFs with Tina.

There are a lot of bad things that go with being single. (There are a lot of good things, too–don’t get me wrong.) I’m not talking about the underlying fear of dying alone and being eaten by my cats or hearing comments from grandmothers about hoping to see me married before they die. No no, I’m talking about issues that people with significant others take for granted.

Today I bought a new tv and a new tv stand, because the pretty, pretty television doesn’t fit in my old entertainment center. You know what makes me twitchy? Having to maneuver electronics that I just spent hundreds of dollars on up a staircase, by myself. Even harder? Getting the incredibly heavy tv stand box up the stairs. Those things are heavy, yo. But I did it! Yay! Of course, that meant I had to get rid of the old, huge entertainment center. Luckily, I ran into my neighbors in the hallway, and one of them helped me haul it out back. (As a bonus for him, he got to see how insanely out of shape I am, as evidenced by my face turning bright red and having to stop for breaks every few feet.) And then…I had to set everything up. Which was the last thing I felt like doing. I was tired, and I have a LOT of work I need to get done this weekend. It would’ve been so awesome to be all, “I need to proof these evidence tables; can you put that together?” But no such luck. I had to do it myself. It does look pretty good, though I put off putting on the doors. Unfortunately, I also have a bookcase to put together. (My DVDs have to go SOMEWHERE.)

I should’ve realized how the day would go when my first stop today involved stopping at a mechanic to get a slow leak in one of my tires taken care of. My plan was to drop the car off, then do some shopping and grab lunch. The shop was booked up, though–I wouldn’t be able to get my car until 5 or 6. Could I drop the car off Saturday, or Monday? Well, no. I’m busy all day tomorrow, and Monday I have work. And the place isn’t particularly close to me or a Metro or my office. And I don’t have someone who can pick me up and drop me off, etc. I’ve run into that in the past, and it doesn’t get less frustrating.

On the positive side, my new tv is AWESOME. I heart it.

I’m having one of those times when I feel just really, really fortunate in my life. Hugs from a Tony-nominated actor? Third row seats to see Les Mis? Geeky history talk with another actor? Family coming for Thanksgiving? Tickets to see Hugh Jackman on Broadway? Going on a cruise (and a cabin with a balcony)? Stay in a hotel room overlooking Camden Yards? Nothing to do until Monday?

Woo! Life is really good, sometimes. I’m very lucky.

Last Labor Day was when I had my kidney stone. That was not fun.

Minus the kidney stone, I had a similar weekend planned for this year’s Labor Day–going to the movies, having dinner with a friend, and heading up to my grandmother’s on Sunday. My mom was in town, so I could see both of them. And it was going OK, until I got close to the exit for the Harbor Tunnel, when the check engine lights came on. I was near my dealer, so I went there. Service was closed, but the guys there thought I’d be OK to make it to tomorrow, and just bring it back then. I kept going to my grandmother’s. When I was getting off at my grandmother’s exit, the emergency brake light came on and the car started making a high-pitched noise…and then, a half mile later, the gas pedal stopped working. I pulled over and restarted the car, and made it to my grandmother’s, but it was doing it again by that point. I had AAA tow my car back to the dealer and my mom drove me home.

I got home and picked up the letter I got about a recall for my car, and cross-referenced it with what had happened, and, happily, it matched up. Apparently the brake light and noise were the signs from my car that it was about to quit on me. When I talked to the dealership this morning, they confirmed that it was the water pump, which was covered by the recall. YAY! I had been so worried at having to fork over thousands of dollars. I did have to fork over some money–I needed a new battery (the regular kind, not the hybrid one, and seeing how I’ve had Seth 7 years, this wasn’t a surprise), and wiper blades, and an oil gasket something something. But I can afford the few hundred dollars a lot easier than a few thousand. Phew.

(Also, I had spent Friday and Saturday cleaning my apartment. And because my mom drove me home from my grandmother’s, she got to see my apartment at the Exact Right Time. Perfect! Now I can pretend my apartment is ALWAYS clean.) (Mom, pretend you didn’t read that. My apartment IS always perfectly clean.)

Anyway, now I have a fear of Labor Day weekend. Or, the Sunday of Labor Day. Next year, I may just stay in my apartment, hiding in bed.

I recently returned from almost 2 weeks in Russia. It was amazing; I had such an incredible time. I loved seeing all of these places I’ve read about. It was fabulous cruising down the rivers and lakes and seeing the towns and the churches with onion domes. And I can’t describe what it was like to stand in Red Square and take a tour of the Kremlin.

It was hard to come back. I appreciated being home, of course, but it really just made me want to travel. I was surrounded by retirees who spend their time traveling; now that’s all I want to be doing. So now I’m spending my time figuring out where to go next:

Philadelphia
Charleston
Chicago
Cooperstown
London
Oxford
Ireland
Kyrgyzstan
Spring training

The only problem is that even the mini-breaks have the potential the become weeklong. Screw it–I just need a trip to somewhere for a weekend to lay by a pool and read.

I’m thinking it’s time to start another SmartyPig account.

I’m used to being the youngest. I’m the youngest in my family, I’m the youngest grandchild on one side, and almost the youngest on the other. I was one of the youngest people in my grade at school; there were kids who were an entire year older than me (and kids in the grade behind me who were older than me). And I’ve always worked with people substantially older than me.

…Until now. After 11 years of working with people at least 10 years older than me, I now am dealing with being a fair amount older than some coworkers. There’s one coworker in my department who’s 6 or 7 years younger than me, but for a while, it was just her. But in the past couple months, we’ve hired two other women (I admit, I want to use “girl,” but that sounds weird; of course, “woman” does to me, too) who are way younger. One’s in the 7-years-younger range; the other just graduated from college last December.

And it’s totally weirding me out. I talked with my boss about setting an example (because I work very closely with one of them), and I now find myself being the one with experience and teaching. I’ve been lucky to have some great bosses, so I’m hoping that I’m successfully modeling their behavior, but it’s totally weird. I feel so old!

It doesn’t help that I remain pretty much in the middle. You know what’d be great? If we hired people MY age. But I admit that it’s nice seeing the little group of 20-somethings hanging out. It’s something I’ve never had; it makes me happy that they have that camaraderie.

For the past few years, I’ve taken on a sizable freelance project in the late spring/early summer. From the end of March to the beginning on June (with a couple weeks off in there), I spent almost 140 hours on it. And now…I don’t want to do anything. At all.

Even after finishing the project, I’ve been busy–tap recital, ushering, volunteering, etc., etc. When I look at my calendar for June and July, I shudder a bit. The problem is, it means that on nights that I’m home with no actual obligations, I don’t do anything. At all. Tonight, for example, I had a number of things I needed to do: Work on another freelance project, clean the shower, do laundry, take off my nail polish, play with Rosetta Stone a bit. And I have…finished a book I was reading and made a playlist for a friend.

Part of the problem is that I know I have tomorrow night free, too. Of course, tomorrow night I will have ADDITIONAL cleaning. But, meh. That’s the future. And I’m banking on the cats doing something helpful while I’m at work.

…Or maybe cleaning fairies?

I’m not saying that How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson is a character I necessarily recommend emulating. And he’s certainly not one who I relate to a lot. But I’ve decided to use a quote of his for my new philosophy:

“When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.”

It’s a good one. I’m lucky that I don’t actually get depressed and that being sad is usually fairly fleeting for me. And this is helpful in building up my self-esteem. Because I AM awesome. And sometimes, it’s good to be Barney Stinson and remind myself of that.