When You Run Your Mouth

You get your ass beat. Plain and simple. Couple that with being a pot stir-er extraordanaire, add a dash of whine and a big old helpin' of drama queen and you have my nightmare child, C. Wednesday night (no I wasn't there) C got her ass beat by 4 other residents at the facility. I think all the staff knew it was not a question of if, but when. She's alright, bumps, bruises and some taped up fingers. Her mouth wasn't broken, she's now trying to play the poor me card. As for the girls that jumped her? 2 have been released from our program, 2 are still administratively segregated from the general population, all are facing charges of assault and assault of a peace officer. My work life, not to mention paperwork pile will lessen exponentially if C gets released from our program. Please, please make her go away, she has no intention of working our program, ever. I need peace on my unit again.

The Good The Bad And The Ugly

Wow, two posts in one week. Yes the sky is falling, run!! Kidding. I'm gonna try the every other day posting thing and see if that works for me because the every two weeks thing ain't workin' for me and I'm sure it's not working for you either. So here goes.....

We're going to talk about work. Work's good. I'm really getting the hang of things and my job, now that I know what the hell I'm doing, is really kinda easy. Working with 12-24 girls is the challenging part. Oy! Teenage girls are the WORST. They whine, they complain and did I mention they are defiant? Oh yes indeed! So defiant in fact I've been called a bitch several times and had a full half pint carton of milk thrown at my head. It missed me of course because she's a crap ass shot and I'm quicker than I look.

I came home told the husband about my day (and the milk incident) thinking he would insist that I quit and find something else ASAP. Nope. He LAUGHED, my friends. Laughed. Told me that tomorrow's another day and some other bullshit and trotted out the door. Where's the sympathy? Where's the "let me take you out to dinner you've had a rough day" treatment. AWOL, folks. That's where. Not even a droplet of sympathy. The folks are still bewildered that I've returned to my "old profession". They make it sound like I'm a mild aged hooker! Uh, it drives me nuts so I only tell them the good things for obvious reasons. I think my mother still thinks that one day I'll "quit all this nonsense" and go into something respectable, like playing the piano for a symphony or something mundane like that. Eh, not happening.

My girls (to quote Brighton) are spawn from Satan's ass. Ok to be fair, not all of them, but the majority. I have 2, maybe 2, that I like and doubt they'll return to the program ever again. The others, they're too far gone and after having had the pleasure of meeting their parents I now know why they are the way they are. I've seen at least 2 of my ex-probationers coming to visit their kids at our program. Apple didn't fall far from the tree it seems.

Remember me telling you about my KICK ASS boss, R? The one I get along great with and have a lot in common with professionally? Him? Yeah, he was fired. Yep, you read that right. Shit canned. We were herded into an "informal meeting" with 2 of the directors and told that R was fired for 2 incidents that happened on our shift. Grievances by the kids in question were filed and the department saw their complaints as legit. Honestly, I do to. R made some baaaaad judgment calls that day and it cost him his job. To say we were stunned was an understatement. We'd all felt like we'd been kicked in the stomach, honestly. We've missed him a lot because he had such a good relationship with all of us. He wasn't a yes man or some kiss ass trying to claw his way up. He told it like it was and it didn't matter how many letters you had behind your name. For that, he was labeled a trouble maker and we all think that administration was looking for an excuse to get rid of him. He gave them the perfect out, no hearing, no appeal, just a "clean your desk out".

Who's our stand in boss till someone is appointed permanently? C. My micro-managing Attila the Hun supervisor. God help me if she gets R's position we'll never have peace again. The good news, I'm not letting her get to me and the other day she told me I was doing an excellent job. Yay me! I'll take that compliment from her any day.

Got some more good new today. We're getting an 8.5% raise. Now, to those that work in the private sector, I'm sure you're laughing. For those of us in the less than private sector, that's a nice little chunck o' change. AND our benefits premiums won't increase. Yay! Now maybe I can afford the gas to go to work and back seeing how it's a 44 mile round trip for me. The raise goes in effect October 1. Show me the money!!

I really like the people I'm working with. We have to work as a team so liking each other really makes a huge difference. We all get along good and joke a lot. For some odd reason I've always had more male friends than female and I've always gotten along better with my male coworkers and supervisors than my female counter parts. If ya'll know why, let me know. I'm not sure why that is. Just one of those weird Kristin phenomenon I suppose, it's either that or my freakish understanding of UT football, but that couldn't be it, could it?

Talent

Hi, it's me the crap-ass poster. Yeah, I'm back for another installment. Things, they be a-changin', just workin' into a groove is all, hang with me folks. I'll be back posting regularly soon.

Lets discuss talent. Some of us have it, some of us, well, don't. I truly believe we've all been given certain God-given talents. He bestowed them upon us at birth. Some of them come naturally, some have to be nutured.

My talents? They are few. I have the gift of gab. I'll talk to a tree if it'll talk back. I figure this was something I learned to nurture. People laugh when I tell them I was a painfully shy child and adolescent. I mean, cling to my mother's leg, shy. Most are stunned because I'm usually the first person to introduce herself at a get together or talk with ease to a stranger while waiting in line. I'm not sure when I grew out of my shyness, but I thank God I did. Now, I can't imagine being a wall flower.

I fancy myself a pretty good scrapbooker too. I'm not published but that's from a lack of submitting. I see women agonize over their pages at crops and through online message boards. Scrapbooking is the one thing that I a.) don't take too seriously b.) micro-manage and c.) obsess on perfection. I get my pictures, find some cardstock and paper and boom, bam, bang, I put it down and move on to the next page. Don't get me wrong, I do like my pages to have the right design elements, but I seem to come by those easily. Picking pattern papers to match pictures comes easily as does the placement of my photos. Everything just gels for me, I guess I've been blessed with a decent eye for design.

I have a talent for knowing totally useless facts, like, Jeopardy winning useless. My friends know (and have accepted) that I know totally useless bullshit. Actually, I think they are quite amused by my freakish knowledge of dates, times and the history of glue. My coworkers are getting to see that side of me too. Recently, we were talking about milk and someone said something about black and white milk cows. I said those are Holsteins. The conversation stopped and all eyes are were on me. I went on to tell them Holsteins are but only one breed of milk cow. There were others like, Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Jersey, Ayrshire, Shorthorn and Dexter. *Insert stunned silence* I guess I didn't look like a chick that would know such things. How I came by this knowledge, I'm not sure. I guess I'm just a perpetual learner. I read a lot and I watch a lot of documentaries. Could be my husband's in the cattle business but not the milk cow biz. Who knows, but I know the breeds of milk cows and I felt the need to bestow my co-workers with my knowledge. They now know I'm a freak too and I'm ok with that.

Where am I going with all of this? As you can tell I'm not a natural writer. I have to force myself to blog. It's not a particular task I enjoy. I do it 1.) because I know I have friends that read and want to stay updated and 2.) because practice makes perfect, right? There are a lot of blogs out there some good and some bad. I read the funny ones mostly, but I do have one, in particular, that is truly an outstanding work of writing. Without fail

http://www.texas-music.blogspot.com/

never fails to disappoint with his writing abilities. The man, in one word is, PHENOMENAL. If you think I kid, go read his post about Solitary.

Jack is the one that introduced me to blogging and for that I will always be grateful. I've meet some wonderful people who are bloggers and some have become good friends of mine and the husband. Jack's latest entry just blew me away. I read a lot. I've read good books and I've read really bad books and some that left me wondering if they only got published because they were fucking their editor. Jack, to date is unpublished and it's a shame. The man has a true gift for words and stringing the perfect ones together to create such a clear picture, it's eery. I love a book that can transport me into the moment, the scene, right then and there and he does that with what seems like total ease. Jack is a humble kinda guy and doesn't like to brag but I think he knows he has some sort of talent, whether it be natural or nurtured but far be it from him to toot his own horn, so I'll do it for him. If you don't read Texas Music, please book mark it and check often to read some of what I think is the best writing out there.

Now, Jack, would you please start writing your book. I promise I won't make a scene at the Border's book signing when you get published and I won't even name drop that I "knew you back when". Deal?