Today

Today... no rain. YES! I get to work with minimal delay. I'm sure of myself, sure of my route... well, as sure as I can be Day Two.

Everything is going going fine UNTIL we get out schedules. Horrible... not only do I have the shift where I won't be able to work at my part-time job, but I work Friday AND Saturday night and I don't have consecutive days off! The situation was looking bleak, so bleak that I considered just quitting right then and there and moving home to start the job search all over. This of course would not happen because although you can count on me to do the unpredictable or outrageous... I am not stupid and definitely not independently wealthy. As much as I would have liked to address the problem then and there, I had somewhere to be and quite frankly, I did not have my wits about me because I just went into stress/panic mode.

So, I left to head over to the Beacon House. Yeah, got a little lost and didn't know where to park, but things were ok UNTIL I had to work with someone putting together bookbags with school supplies with someone who can't read and can't count. We had to put together 20 bookbags of supplies. How many piles of supplies did he have set up? 24. How many did he think we had to have set up? 30. I'm glad I figured that out somewhat early. After that I knew that poor Rafael could not be in charge of this task. I asked him how many black pens each pile needed. Pause. "How many black pens?" Pause. *sigh* Finally, I just grab the sheet from Rafael since all he can do is stare at it and find that each set of supplies needs six pens. Six times 20 = 120 pens. So, I ask Rafael to go find some more pens. And I hear him talking to one of the ladies there. Well, the lady was doing most of the talking. She asked him how many he needed. No answer. Much too difficult a question.

Once we start packing the bags, Rafael picks up a box of pencils and says that they were left out of one of the bags. Hmm... funny. He thought I left it out of one of the bags I packed. I found that quite odd seeing as how I just pick up the whole stack of supplies and put it in the bag, but I don't say this. Come to find out Rafael left it out of the bag. Shocking, I know. He would take item by item to put into the bag. Ludicrous! By the time he packed one bag, I had already done three! I have serious issues with inefficiency, more so when it comes to a group effort. Ugh.

When I am beginning to clean up and put supplies away I notice that we have a lot of colored pencils which weren't on the list, but wouldn't it be nice if the kids got colored pencils? So I ask Rafael to count to see if we had 20 packs of colored pencils. Turns out we don't have enough, but we can just give two kids markers instead. Nice compromise. Then I put him in charge of putting them in the bags. Generous, I know. After he is finished there are two packs of colored pencils still left on the table. Huh? Rafael strikes again!

Yeah, so I am light years ahead of Rafael in terms of counting ability. Perhaps he's a genius in some obscure area. Its too soon to tell. He's a nice guy, but I think he gave me a headache today.
The favorite part of everyone's day... driving home. Ha! I got lost. DC streets I tell you... I never know if I'm coming or going, north or south, east or west. Well, I somehow made it on North Capitol St. though I have to admit I was going in the wrong direction for a little bit. *sigh* North Capitol St. turns into Blair Rd. And today Blair and Butternut was where I was pulled over by the police.

I didn't even know that I did something wrong! I heard the little whir of his siren and I thought maybe he had somewhere to go and wanted to pass by. Nope... He wanted me to pull over! *sadface* Apparently, I ran a redlight. I didn't see the redlight, which is probably how I ran it. He asked me if there was a reason. *sigh* If he only knew. I wanted to cry, but he already said I was only getting warning. I'm glad he gave me a break, but honestly, who wouldn't? I had to hand him a CA Drivers License and the registration for a car from VA. I was a fish out of water. That debacle left me a bit frazzled, but I finally made it home to compose some lovely emails to my bosses with my fingers crossed that I will have my schedule changed. Here's to hoping!