on your journey, i will bless you...

According to the Google homepage, today is apparently the first day of summer. Edit: I clicked on the Google doodle, and the first day of summer is actually tomorrow, June 21 (the Summer Solstice). Well, way to massively mislead people there, Google. Anyway, this is a bit about how Rebecca spent it.

I overslept this morning, and as soon as I finally woke up, the electricity in our apartment sputtered and died. No air conditioner, no fans, no refrigerator, etc. -- ugh! I called our electricity company but never got through to an actual person, and the power came back on after about thirty minutes anyway. And that might not seem like a long time, but it's been so hot lately that our apartment warmed up fast.

After that, I left to run some errands on my bike. And even though it's been drought-dry for the past two months, of course it suddenly decided to start raining while Rebecca is on her bike. (And I don't mean a little sprinkle but a heavy rain.) I didn't mind getting wet, but fool that I am, I left The Postmistress (a book my mom lent me, and it's not bad, even though it's taking me forever to read) outside and it got soaked! At least it seems to be drying well. It tooker longer than I had thought to get my errands done - my own fault for oversleeping - and I had to really haul butt to get to work on time.

I didn't have my parapluie française (which I bought on a rainy day in Villers-Cotterets) while I was bike riding, but it didn't matter, because when I got home and tried to open it, the handle broke in two. I guess the Louisiana weather was too much for it.

But the day wasn't all bad. Muse Watson used to leak whenever it rained (which I know he didn't do before the crash), but I think stopped him up. One of my more annoying coworkers quit over the weekend, and to celebrate him being gone, my awesome manager bought the entire closing crew candy and soda. When I verified the deposit amount for him and caught a mistake he made, he said something like, "Wow, you Jews really are good at counting money, aren't you?" Haha. He cracks me up.

So, summer has officially arrived, people. (Although here in southern Louisiana, we've been having summertime temperatures since at least April.) Enjoy yours.

When I've just had a bad day at work (like today) I usually start kicking myself and wondering why I didn't start looking for a new job sooner. If I had looked for one consistently during the 2+ years that I've been at this job, I certainly would've found a better one by now. On the other hand, after coming fresh from the G-d-awful job hunt of 2008, I can understand why the thought of job-hunting made me sick to my stomach for a while. Also, my job was not such a negative environment when I was first hired there, and of course I had no way of knowing how bad it would get.

Then, a few days ago, I got a call asking me to come in for a job interview. Then I spent most of yesterday evening researching the place I would be working for, trying on good job-interview outfits, rehearsing what to say, and worrying in general. I was so nervous, I'm amazed I got any sleep at all last night. And I suddenly remembered why I haven't been job-hunting in so long. It's exhausting!

So this morning I woke up early (6:30) for the interview, went into the bathroom to get ready, and immediately, the light over the sink goes out. And we don't have any extra light bulbs! I'm paranoid, so I immediately take this as a bad sign, and even though the rest of my morning didn't have any kinks, I still don't have a good feeling. I keep going back over what I said, didn't say, should've said, etc. It seemed like much too much of a job I would've enjoyed for me to actually get it.

Right in the middle of typing this entry, I had to take a break to answer my phone. I have another job interview! This will be my third one in three weeks. I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing? Okay, find a happy place, Rebecca!

Happy place found: This weekend, I will (maybe) be taking a trip to Hodges Gardens, and I'm determined to bake some pecan pie muffins for my Torah study group on Saturday morning. Oh, and my latest fanfiction has gotten 38 reviews so far! Which is crazy, because it's actually a pretty crappy fic. But there are so many people out there with bad taste.

What a Monday it's been. I woke up at six this morning with a terrible asthma attack. My albuterol inhaler recently got lost ran out, and I had ordered a refill, but by the time I got to the pharmacy yesterday, it was closed. So, I had nothing. Worst of all, I had one of the God-awful Christmas songs they play at work stuck in my head! So I put on my Sound of Music CD and read Davita's Harp until I dozed off again two painfully wheezy hours later. (I'm still amazed I was actually able to go back to sleep at all, considering how bad my breathing was.)

Then I had to get back up at nine to get ready for work. At least I wasn't wheezing anymore when I woke up. One of my co-workers was sick -- although she actually came in and tried to work before she almost puked, which I admire -- so we were short-handed, and the insanity hasn't slowed down since Black Friday. We were so busy that it took me forever just to get to my locker and root around for 86 cents to buy a Snickers bar (I had forgotten to pack a snack to eat). Since I had no inhaler, I took a full dose of asthma medication last night, which gave me a headache for most of the afternoon.

When that was finally over, I went to the pharmacy and picked my inhaler, which fortunately was only $30. One of my medications is $30 and one is $80, but I can never remember which is which. Then I went by the Dollar Store and spent my last bit of cash on Draino, Cheeto's, and one can of French-fried onions to eat raw make more green bean casserole with. (It was my last bit of cash because I forgot my paycheck to take to the bank!) For some reason, it didn't turn out as well as the ones I made for Thanksgiving, and even though I meant to make it go for two meals, I just finished eating the whole thing. Oh, well.

And did I mention that we didn't see the sun once all day today? Nothing but depressingly gray, overcast skies. Bleh!

But, two little pick-me-ups that made a bad day so much better. Weird how messages like this sometimes come just when we need them.

• E-mail from Mr. G: "In Boston right now and it's so cold! Hope I get to c u Friday, been too long."
• Text message from Athena: "I miss u! Hope we can get together next time I'm in town, I'll b home soon.

P.S. Oh, and one more pick-me-up for the day: NCIS's Cote de Pablo on the cover of Prevention:

 HOT DAMN! Isn't she gorgeous? I'm drooling.

If I ever see Yeager, Brager, or any of my other college French professors again, the first thing I'm going to do is thank them for helping me get into this program to go to France. The second thing I'm going to do is apologize for speaking so little in their classes. Before this week, I had thought that long silences in class only bothered the students who were supposed to be talking. But now I know how painful they are for the teacher.

(There are three basic divisions of language classes at this school. I'll be referring to them as 1-classes, students who have just started learning English; 2-classes, intermediate students; and T-classes, who are at the highest level of English.)

I started teaching (if you can call it that) yesterday with Madame Camus. We started out with a T-class, doing a lesson on Hurricane Katrina, which Madame Camus had asked to discuss. She is an excellent teacher, very nice but also very tough – the students don't just talk in her class, they stand up straighter when they see her in the hall – so it wasn't very difficult as long as she was in the room with me. Then she left me alone with half of another T-class, to do the same lesson by myself. The students were a little confused by my strange American accent and my fast talking – I tried to slow down, but even Americans have told me that I talk too fast – but their English was good, and overall, the class went okay, although it was hardly what I had hoped for.

Today I was scheduled to teach two more afternoon classes, but because one of the English teachers has been out sick this week, I had to teach a morning class on short notice. I wasn't prepared, so I used the Hurricane Katrina lesson plan that I did yesterday. Lo and behold, I was teaching the same students as yesterday. I couldn't understand why they were so bored with the subject, or why they looked so familiar, until finally I realized. It was positively painful.

When it was finally over, I went back to my room and felt sorry for myself and thought about what to do with my 1-classes that afternoon. I decided that it was Friday, and the students didn't want to hear about a depressing hurricane that happened two years ago on the other side of the world, and the subject was too difficult for 1-classes, anyway. I needed easier material, and thinking back to Brager's class, I decided to go with the Proust Questionnaire. (It's a list of questions compiled by Marcel Proust asking simple things about what you like or dislike, etc.) I also confessed to Madame Camus and Madame Gady about what had gone wrong with the morning class. They told me not to worry about it, and Madame Gady offered to stay in the room with me during the 1-classes – of course, I jumped at the chance.

So I spent the afternoon asking the 1-classes Proust's questions and trying to coax responses. It was difficult getting them to talk, but it was much less painful than the morning class had been. I gave a few answers to each question, which seemed to give them ideas. For, "What do you dislike?" I suggested Monday morning and cafeteria food, which made the students say homework and bad grades. I think it went well, but I was so exhausted afterwards that I didn't go grocery shopping like I meant to.

I plan to spend this weekend resting and planning more easy things to do next week. If the weather is nice, Heather and I might walk out to the McDonald's; it's far, but we miss our crappy American food.