Shelf-Shifting

37 Replies

One of the many things I am enjoying about being back at my library paging job is that EVEN THOUGH I like the job, I STILL get to experience that delightful “Oh, yay, it’s Friday!”/”Oh, yay, a day off on Monday!” feeling. This happens even when I spend my day off wondering if I should text my supervisor and see if I can come in anyway because I am just itching to get back to my shelf-shifting project and am jealously wondering if my supervisor might have put one of the OTHER LIBRARY PAGES to work on it, NO, LEAVE IT FOR MEEEEEEEEEEE, IT IS MYYYYYYYYYYY PROJECT!!! (There is a sense in which Swistle is an excellent team-player, and another sense in which she the hell is not.)

Shelf-shifting is, as you might expect, when you shift books on the shelves. Sometimes it means moving them to an entirely new place; but more often, it means distributing them more evenly/sensibly among the shelves where they already reside. In a sense, shelf-shifting happens continually as we’re re-shelving: maybe this week’s new James Patterson book won’t fit on the twenty shelves his books are currently inhabiting, so I have to move another James Patterson book either one shelf back or one shelf forward to make room. But usually the term is used for a larger project, such as when an ENTIRE SECTION (e.g., all the large-print books) has gotten to the point where it no longer makes sense to do the little everyday shifts: you’d try to move one book to the next shelf, but in order to do that you’d have to move a book from that shelf to the next shelf, which would require moving one book from THAT shelf to the next shelf, and so on for ten shelves, just to make room for one book. SO THEN: my supervisor might ask me to shelf-shift an entire section. (Or, if I am at loose ends and have noticed an issue, I might shelf-shift a smaller area without being told.)

When I was presented with this type of task for the first time, I thought I wouldn’t like it: it seemed like boring manual labor. But I LOVE it. It’s so satisfying. You start by looking at all the shelves in the section, and estimating how many blank shelves there are total: like, that shelf is about 1/10th empty, that one’s about 1/10th empty, that one’s 1/4th empty, that one’s 1/2 empty, there are three entirely empty shelves at the end of the section, and so on. Then you divide that among how many shelves are allotted to the section: okay, I have approximately five full empty shelves total, and there are forty shelves in this section; so when I’m done shifting, each shelf should be about 1/8th empty.

But! As you’re shifting, there are some Things You Know. For example, you know you should leave more than 1/8th shelf available in the Patterson section. You know it’s likely Berg and King will need more room over the years, but Grafton and Binchy will not. You know you always have a lot of Baldacci and Hilderbrand and Hannah to reshelve, so leave them space because some of their books are for sure checked out right now, and they’ll need shelf to sit on when they come back. And so on!

And you can make the whole area tidier while you’re at it, which I guess doesn’t sound like fun when I type it out, but remember you are being PAID to do this. And: it happens satisfyingly often that, as I am working, I find a misplaced book: maybe every few shelves, I find one mildly out of place, a book I could easily have found if I were looking for it, but it’s still pleasing to move it a few books to the left or right where it belongs; but maybe once per section, I find one WILDLY out of place, a book that was impossibly lost (a 700s book in the 900s! a non-large-print book among the large-print!), and it’s EXTREMELY pleasing to walk it over to where it belongs and feel it clicking into place—as if a little tracking light has lit up on a book-location map, now that the unfindable book is findable again.

(Are you still reading this??? You may want to consider a job at a library.)

Energy

42 Replies

Friends, if you are feeling low on energy, may I recommend EATING MORE FOOD? I know decades of women’s magazines have encouraged us to increase our energy levels by EXPENDING energy via exercise (while, interestingly, we simultaneously use that exact same method to DECREASE energy in children and pets), but consider that another idea is to ADD energy, via calories. Like, literally put energy into your body, by eating food, which is the energy humans use.

The weather has been hot, and my job is very physical, and when I am hot and tired I am not hungry. And I have definitely absorbed the message from this culture that if you’re not hungry, don’t eat, because fewer calories is always better than more calories: if you’re not hungry it’s, like, bonus, Free Dieting! But today I was feeling just absolutely sapped, and I was wondering if I needed more vitamins or more yoga or more sleep or what, and then I mentally went over what I’d eaten the last few days, and it seemed like there was an important clue to be found there.

Today I am going to eat even if I am not hungry, and see if that helps. And I don’t mean I am going to add some of the very low-calorie foods we’ve been trained to view as “””healthy”””; I mean I am going to add CALORIES, which is literally the way we measure the energy in food: more calories = more energy. I am going to take ENERGY, and I am going to PUT IT INTO MY BODY, and I am going to see if that INCREASES ENERGY LEVELS IN MY BODY.

Grocery Store Report

31 Replies

The difference between my last trip to the grocery store and this morning’s was MARKED, and I don’t know how to account for it. The store had taken out all the one-way-aisle signs, and perhaps that contributed. Or perhaps it’s all the news items about mask mandates being removed. Or I don’t KNOW what, but what it was LIKE was as if everyone went back to pre-pandemic grocery-store crowding. All of a sudden, the deli section was packed with people standing close to each other. All of a sudden, I was waiting my turn for the milk section, and someone just went around me and went to the milk section, standing RIGHT NEXT TO the person who was already there. As I was waiting my turn for the eggs section, THREE people went around me and got eggs—no social distancing AT ALL. People were acting as if they didn’t even remember that they USED to wait; they were acting as if they couldn’t understand why I was just standing there.

It was nice not to have to go up an aisle I didn’t need just because I needed to go down an aisle in the other direction—but the two-way traffic was difficult not to be jumpy about, after all this time. And it seemed almost as if people had forgotten how to do it: I had to do a fair amount of dodging left and right to get around people, and it seemed as if many people weren’t looking where they were going.

When I was in line and had loaded my items onto the belt and was standing on the 6-foot marker to be appropriately distant from the cashiers (they’ve stopped spacing the lanes, so the cashier for the next lane is standing within 2 feet of where I need to stand to use the credit-card machine, with no barrier between us as there is between me and the cashier of my own lane), the woman behind me in line came RIGHT UP BEHIND ME and started loading her things onto the belt. Like, I was standing AT the end of the belt, and she was RIGHT THERE, within 12-18 inches. I turned and said apologetically (because she seemed like she thought I should get out of her way) “I just don’t want to get within 6 feet of anyone” (indicating distance between me and the cashiers and between me and her), and she looked at me without saying anything and then continued loading her items.

Every section felt full of people who being deliberately and pointedly uncareful. It was so unpleasant, I got only about 3/4ths of what I’d intended to buy: there were a number of sections that were just too swarmed with people. I wasn’t particularly worried about getting sick, but I AM worried about society-in-general giving up SIGNIFICANT safety measures for INSIGNIFICANT gains in comfort/convenience. Like, is it really SO WORTH IT to crowd around the eggs, or can we wait for TEN SECONDS? Is it SO IMPORTANT to start loading things onto the belt RIGHT AWAY, or can it wait for another half-minute?

Stressy but Productive Week

18 Replies

It’s been a stressy-but-productive week. I’m back to work, which is making me feel exhausted and busy, and the schedule change is stressful; and the housecleaners came back, which was stressful even though it was also great; and now that I am more than two weeks past my second Covid-19 vaccine I am going to a lot of overdue appointments (pap, physical, and soon mammogram and dentist); so I am just feeling very…well, I guess “exhausted and busy” from earlier in this sentence still applies.

And ALSO: I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that Rob is planning to go live with my parents for a couple of months, for fun and research: he said he wanted to spend some time with them; and he’s starting to think about where he might want to live after he graduates next spring, and one possibility is the area of the country where my parents live. And we (I am using that pronoun a little vaguely, because it was probably mostly “I” but when we talked about it he did agree) wanted him to get all caught up on appointments (doctor, dentist, optometrist) before he went—but he had let his driver’s license expire, so that was stressing me out (particularly because it turned out he never updated his address on the license, either, so that had to be done as well, but the form only seemed to allow EITHER an address change OR a renewal of an expired license), and also meant he couldn’t drive himself to his own appointments so I had to drive him and then wait out in the car, and also meant an additional appointment for the driver’s license. (One might ask why he did not book the driver’s-license-renewing appointment FIRST. Well, he just DIDN’T.)

But at least we have had unqualified success: he made all the appointments “we” wanted him to make (TONS of good adulting practice there, as it turned out, with him needing to ask me questions such as what is a PCP and who is the “subscriber” on his health insurance and what is his father’s birth year); he went in to each of them on his own; and now his driver’s license is renewed so if there are any further errands he can manage them without me.

And so far my own appointments are going well: pap normal, see you in three years; physical went well, bloodwork all looks good, I got a tetanus booster. The nurse made a big praisey deal about me losing some weight (it’s the 15 hours per week of an Active Library Job, plus the appointment was first thing in the morning, plus I was fasting for bloodwork, plus I was a little dehydrated, plus the last time I was weighed was the day after a Day Off from keto), which I hate but as a co-member of our shared society I understood she intended her remarks to be pleasing to me. My doctor once again handled the topic in a way I appreciate: she asked gently if I’d lost the weight on purpose, asked some questions about stress/anxiety/depression, added a thyroid check and vitamin D check to the bloodwork she was ordering, etc.: in short, treated it like a possible medical symptom, rather than as an Objective Good.

Housecleaners Are Back!

52 Replies

Thoughts on the first housecleaner visit after a year of “doing it ourselves”:

• I do it better

• but that would mean I’d have to do it

• which I don’t entirely mind doing! some of it is kind of satisfying, actually!

• but I do mind doing everyone else’s share for them, while they don’t do anything and/or have to be constantly directed/nagged to do anything

 

I’d been thinking of hiring housecleaners as something that we do for ME, something in MY favor, something that was a bargaining chip for ME—but actually it turns out we are hiring the housecleaners so that my husband and children don’t have to do their share.

Housecleaner Stress

24 Replies

Imagine you have a friend, and you see that she is sad and stressed and upset, and you say “Oh dear, why are you so sad and stressed and upset??,” and she looks at you, her tear-filled eyes full of suffering as well as the aforementioned tears, and says in a quavering, about-to-fall-apart voice, “Because people are coming tomorrow to clean my house for me!! so that I won’t have to do it myself!!,” and collapses into fresh sorrow and distress. How ridiculous. It is I: your ridiculous friend Swistle.

This evening I wondered if honestly I don’t prefer to just clean the house myself. Is it SO BAD? especially now that it’s been over a year and I have a bit of a system going? Which would I rather do right now: go through the rest of this evening fretting senselessly about tomorrow morning, and then go through tomorrow morning—or clean three toilets and be at peace? I’d rather clean three toilets. But ask me again tomorrow mid-day, when the cleaners will be gone and my house will be clean, and it will be the longest possible time before going through all this again. And when I will be looking ahead to day after day of not having to clean three toilets or three bathroom floors, not having to vacuum or damp-mop, not having to move everything off the kitchen counters to wipe them thoroughly, not having to deeply resent everyone I married and everyone I gave birth to. Someone else will have taken care of all of that / partially prevented some of that.

Mother’s Day 2021 Report

95 Replies

OH OKAY LET’S TALK ABOUT MOTHER’S DAY!

I would say that, for me, the absolute KEY was to shift to the approach of making some arrangements so that I’d have a nice day even if no one else did a single thing. (This is also the approach I now use for Valentine’s Day.) I don’t LIKE that this is the way it has to be, but I also don’t like feeling sad and resentful (and as if maybe I am a terrible mother and that’s why my children don’t love me), so I take what power for change is available to me. I aimed for arrangements that, instead of seeming like “I am celebrating myself!,” would hopefully seem more like “Mother’s Day is a fun day full of treats!”

I can’t remember which arrangements I’d already told you about, but here they are:

• I ordered pastries for us all to have for breakfast

• I ordered some nice chocolates to put out for all-day partaking (you’d think with five children the chocolates would be gone in a FLASH, but they are all very Suspicious about chocolate-box chocolates)

• I bought a few small/medium things (another kind of fruit jellies I wanted to try; a bottle of nail polish; a new moisturizer) that caught my attention in the week or two before Mother’s Day, without mentioning those items to anyone else as “Mother’s Day things”—just, I saw each thing and I thought “Ooo, I’d like to have that. Oh! It could be a little Mother’s Day thing!,” and I ordered it

• I said that I wanted to watch a movie of my choice (at home) and have snacks again, like we did last year; attendance was not mandatory, it was just on offer for anyone who wanted to join me

• I brought up the topic of what-dinner-should-I-not-have-to-cook-on-Mother’s-Day, and I suggested pizza (easy and we all like it), and Paul counter-offered that he could instead expend vast time and energy making lasagna and rustic rolls, and I accepted his counter-offer

• I presumed as if it were A Given that we would be going for “our usual” (i.e., we did it for the first time last year) Mother’s Day trail walk, so that we could have a pretty background and rosy cheeks for the annual Mother’s Day picture of me with the kids; I said that if anyone didn’t want to go on the walk, we could do a photo in the yard first, and then anyone who wanted to go on the walk could go from there—but everyone opted to go on the walk)

 

And I had a nice day, all day long. I woke up feeling happy and excited about the treats stretching ahead of me throughout the day. I did no cleaning all day long. Some of the children DID do Mother’s Day things; Paul had privately prompted/reminded them several times over the last few weeks. (Though one unvaccinated-and-non-driver’s-license-possessing child handed me cash and a printed-out photo of what he’d wanted to buy me, saying he hadn’t been able to figure out any way to obtain the item—so Paul could perhaps have been a little more clear on his availability to ASSIST.) One child had the good idea of baking a kind of cookie (oatmeal scotchies) that is widely known to be a kind MOTHER particularly likes even though everyone else is meh about them, and I felt that was a stellar idea, and showed some encouraging empathy development, as well as demonstrating to all concerned that a financial outlay is not required.

 

I would be very interested to hear stories (good and/or bad and/or mediocre) of how YOUR day went, if applicable, and/or if there is anything you want to change for next year.

First Day Back to Work in a Pandemic

22 Replies

I feel very fortunate that my job is so low-paying, and so unconnected from other things a person/family might need (health insurance, pension, long-term career possibilities), that it was possible to leave it for over a year and then come back to it, without suffering much in the way of ill effects. These are not things a person might normally feel grateful for (“Yay, low pay and no benefits!”), but a pandemic turns some things upside down. (It helped, too, that our college kids have both been living at home, so we have not been paying the increased living costs of college room/board; we saved more on that than we lost with my missing income.)

Today was my first day back to work and I was on one level very happy to be going back (I LIKE this job; I LIKE contributing income; I am also grateful for the physical and mental activity it forces me into), and on another level I felt jittery and unsettled. Almost all of my co-workers at the library have continued to do in-person work throughout the pandemic (with several closures/quarantines when a worker was diagnosed with Covid-19, making me glad of my decision), and so everyone is more than a year ahead of me in terms of changes and new ways of doing things. I imagined myself bumbling around doing everything wrong and making everyone gasp in horror as I failed to take certain precautions that are now automatic/normal for them.

Also, I worried some of them would resent that I was able to leave for a year and then come back—though, everyone knows my job is the lowest paid, and they know it’s the grunt work, so my hope was that they’d mostly be glad to see me because I’d be picking up everyone’s least-favorite tasks again. There were several happy sighs when I went out to collect the book drop this morning: no one likes doing that, and my impression is that when I’m not there it turns into one of those tasks where some people feel like they ALWAYS end up having to do it because other people disappear or pretend to forget or pretend to be busy, and anyway I think it brings considerable relief to have a person whose JOB it is to do it. But also, I had to use this Coping Thought: if any of them DO resent me, there is nothing I can do about that; those are feelings for THEM to process/handle. And also this Coping Thought: most people don’t think very much about other people, or hold on to fleeting feelings of resentment/”Must be nice!” for long. If I just come back and do well at a job that makes everyone’s lives easier, this won’t be an ongoing issue—and if it is, then we’re back to the part about how those feelings are not mine to deal with.

One of my primary fitness goals for the pandemic was to preserve my library-job-gained ability to go down on one knee and get back up again, again and again and again and again and again throughout a shift. I am happy to say I seem to have succeeded, or at least today was not physically difficult—though perhaps we should speak again tomorrow, when the soreness might kick in. Well, I kept MOST of the strength and balance, anyway!

But my back is bothering me, which it did before the pandemic, too. I am going to lean toward doing yoga videos that address back pain/strength and core strength and see if that’s helpful over time.

It was pleasant to be back at work. I liked seeing the books/shelves/materials again. It felt good to feel useful. It felt good/reassuring to remember how to do the job. It was nice to see co-workers again, and to overhear bits of their conversations as I worked nearby.

I did feel a little bumbling and slow. There have been some changes that are obvious and co-workers knew to tell me about; but other changes are more subtle, or were done a year ago so no one even remembers until I have to ask about it or until they see me doing something wrong and have to correct me. And there have been changes to the countertops, and to storage areas, so I was constantly trying to find the pencils, trying to find the bags, trying to find the paper recycling, etc. But that will get easier each day.

There are also things that are now buried more than a year deep in my brain’s filing system: for example, all the little tricks to try when I can’t find a book where it’s supposed to be. And I couldn’t make a beeline for every correct aisle anymore. And I found I was struggling a little bit, just to the point of amusement not to the point of concern, with the alphabet. This job is so good for the aging brain!

I did not like wearing a mask while doing an active job, but I’d anticipated that I wouldn’t (it seemed safe to assume that NO ONE would like that), so that wasn’t a surprise. A few times I had to slow down my pace to make the mask less of an issue: it was starting to suck in against my mouth because I was breathing harder, and that was making me feel a little claustrophobic and queasy. But slowing down helped my breathing slow down, and mostly resolved the problem. It was still unpleasant and humid, and I was happy to get out to my car and take it off. When I got home, I used a cooling/freshening facial mist, and that felt nice. And it WAS fun to CHOOSE a mask to wear.

(A side-note: When I take Edward for his Remicade treatments, we are there for several hours, and we are double-masked the whole time. During his treatments, his vital signs are taken every 30 minutes. One of those vital signs is blood oxygen. Even while he is breathing through two masks over several hours, his oxygen level is just as high as it ever was when he didn’t have to wear masks. So that is a reassuring thought, when I am feeling a little panicky in my mask: I may be uncomfortable, but I am still getting oxygen just fine.)

Patrons are being allowed in, but only in limited numbers at limited times. My supervisor says almost everyone is being good about wearing a mask, and that the few people who are being difficult about it are the same people who were difficult about things before the pandemic, too. That is some interesting food for thought.

Frozen (the Movie); Grocery Shopping Report; Vegetarian Meals

50 Replies

I thought I had something interesting to tell you, and then I got here with my coffee and spent some time checking email and Facebook and Twitter, and now my mind is just blank.

(Sort-of spoilers for the movie Frozen in this paragraph.) This wasn’t the thing I was thinking of, but Paul watched Frozen for the first time and he is fully shook. “THIS MAKES NO SENSE AS A WAY TO HANDLE THESE POWERS.” “EVEN IF IT DID MAKE SENSE: WHY WOULD ANNA HAVE TO BE ISOLATED TOO?” “OKAY BUT THEN WHAT IS THE METAPHOR HERE.” “YOU CAN’T JUST HAND OVER ROYAL COMMAND LIKE THAT; IT ISN’T EVEN HERS TO HAND.” “WHY IS ELSA THE ONE EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT, ANNA IS CLEARLY THE MAIN CHARACTER, ELSA JUST HAS ONE GOOD POWER BALLAD.” He also keeps singing “And I’ll be doing whatever snow does in summmmmmmer!”

Oh, I remember what I was thinking I was going to tell you, but I hope this won’t be disappointing, since I’d said it was something interesting and it’s just another grocery shopping report. (Which I am still finding interesting, but I realize that may not be true of us all.) This most recent time, I went back to my old familiar grocery store: I’ve been shopping at another store 20 minutes away because it’s newer and much more spacious, and because they were being more careful with Covid-19 precautions. It was nice feeling comfortable going to the closer one again. The extra travel time to the further one made the whole thing more of an ordeal.

Grocery shopping in general is fading into something far less stressful, especially now that I’ve been vaccinated. I still gladly wear a mask, and I still keep my distance from other people, in part because vaccines DO SOMETIMES FAIL, and in part because no one can tell I’m vaccinated, and in part because I would like everyone else to keep following masking/distancing guidelines. But I don’t feel as STRESSED about it anymore. I feel LIKELY to be protected.

And supplies seem pretty normal now. I am casting my mind around trying to remember if there were any weirdnesses or shortages, and I can’t think of any.

OH!! You know what’s coming back, in my stores?? DIET SODA VARIETY. There was diet root beer, diet orange, diet 7-up, diet ginger ale! And CHERRY COKE ZERO!!—which isn’t, as you might conclude from the ALL-CAPS, a passionate favorite of mine, but it’s something I enjoy having on hand, and maybe soon there will be ORANGE VANILLA as well! Again, not as passionate a favorite as the caps would indicate, but the scarcity had come to represent the shortages of the pandemic. And I have not given up on ginger lime diet Coke; if you know it’s been discontinued, maybe don’t tell me yet, just let me come to that realization naturally.

Rob asked for some vegetarian frozen burritos, and I got a few of those, and then I spent some time looking at other vegetarian frozen meals, and I bought a few for him to try: some Healthy Choice Power Bowls and a Sweet Earth curry. If you have experience in this area, do you have any you’d recommend? I wasn’t sure which ones were worth spending a little more on. And it was a little tricky because some of them seemed to be co-marketed as vegetarian AND low-calorie, and he doesn’t need low-calorie, and in fact it would be good for him to get a few more calories.

A Mortifying Appointment

62 Replies

I have a story to share with you / inflict upon you, and I was going to lead by saying I had a horrifying story to share with you, but you know what, this is not the time in our lives to use words such as “horrifying” without making it clear what KIND of horrifying we are talking about. And anyway, “horrifying” is an exaggeration and what I really mean to say is that I have a MORTIFYING story to share with you. And even so, everything was okay, everything IS okay, everything was/is deep-down fine—but MORTIFYING still applies, in my opinion. Here we go.

So today I had my first pap test in, as the receptionist pointed out TWICE, four years. To my mind, this was not odd: at my last one, in spring of 2017, the nurse-practitioner said to come back in three years for the next one, so that would have been spring of 2020, and perhaps you noticed we had a little pandemic right around then, so I put it off until now, and I’m not saying I felt None Nervous about that, but three years already seemed kind of arbitrary and four years didn’t seem TONS different than three—and, REGARDLESS, that is what I DID, and a receptionist gasping about it (TWICE) does not make it possible for me to go back into time and do things differently, so what is the point of it? JUST MAKE ME THE APPOINTMENT

(A side note: I COULD have my pap done at my usual annual appointment with my regular doctor. And I DID do that once. And her office accidentally mis-stored the samples so they were no good, and so I had to have it RE-DONE, and after that I felt a certain loss of confidence.)

Anyway, what was nice is that my OB/GYN’s office has, since my last appointment, opened up another office in my town, so I don’t have to drive 35-40 minutes like I used to. Everything was a little unfamiliar, because of the new location and because of Covid-19 precautions, and I was a little on edge ANYWAY expecting to have to deal with MORE gasps about why it had been so long, and also I don’t think anyone feels utterly comfy with a pap. I feel a LOT more comfy than I USED to (pregnancy/labor/childbirth cured me of a lot of nudity/exam issues), but it’s still just an uncomfy thing to have done.

Finally we are at the mortifying part: the nurse-practioner came into the room to do the exam. AND I KNEW HER. I’ve known her since her eldest daughter and my eldest son were in preschool together. Her secondborn and my secondborn went to preschool together. Her youngest and my twins are in school together. We have encountered each other at many, many parent events. We have chatted many, many times. I will continue to see her at school events for the next couple of years, and around town for who knows how many years after that.

Well. Well. What is to be done, in such circumstances? I suppose I could have said “Oh hey wow, I didn’t realize this was with someone I knew, I’m going to have to get dressed and reschedule.” And knowing I truly did have that option was helpful, I guess, except that it’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which I would actually do that.

Instead, as we chatted about our kids and updated my medical records (GAH, she is seeing my history of anxiety and all my other personal stuff!), I talked myself through it. “This must happen to her ALL THE TIME,” I told myself. “This is FAR MORE AWKWARD for me than it is for her—and much of HER awkwardness might be empathetic: feeling that this might be awkward for me, wondering if I knew that it would be her, etc.” And I thought back to when I was an in-home elder caregiver, and I’d wondered ahead of time if helping someone shower would be too awkward to manage, and then I did it one single time and was like “Oh! This is just another human body! This is no big deal at all! It’s not NUDITY-nudity!”—and after that I was ONLY worried that the OTHER person would feel awkward, since for THEM it was being naked in front of a clothed stranger, while for me it was just normal work and no big deal.

Still. STILL! This wasn’t even just a regular doctor appointment, this was a PAP. And a BREAST EXAM. And QUESTIONS ABOUT SEX AND CONTINENCE. And a KEGEL TEST. WITH SOMEONE I KNEW.

I WILLED myself through it. Like, “Welp, here we are, this is happening. Being all awkward/embarrassed about it, and/or apologizing for perspiring, and/or acting self-conscious, will make it WORSE. Being cheery/chatty and pretending to be unself-conscious and totally fine with it (this is my strategy even when I DON’T know the person) will HELP. So let’s get this show on the road and then I can GO HOME, AND PERISH LATER IF NECESSARY.”

And so I did. And it’s fine. It IS fine. It’s fine. This is her JOB. This must happen to her FAIRLY OFTEN, if she’s working in the same town where she lives and has children. It’s FINE. (NEVER AGAIN.)