I promise my life is more fun to live than to read about

So I am about due for another post that is not about alpacas and I think what I want to do is show you a little bit of how I live. I wish this post had some pictures or something but it does not. Weep.

I get up usually around 10am, sometimes earlier if I need to go to the laundromat or do other errands before work, or if I am woken up at 9am by a text message from someone who has no sense of what are appropriate texting hours, Valerie.

Then I check my email and go take a shower and maybe eat something small, get dressed, feed the cats, etc. I leave the house generally at 11:30 or 12 and walk about a mile to the train. On the way there I stop at either 7-Eleven or Dunkin' Donuts to stuff my face LIKE AN AMERICAN. I get on the train at 12:30-ish, go a couple stops over and then walk a few more blocks to my job.

I babysit and clean house for a living, but I don't have my kids until 3, so for two hours I am alone in the house. I do menial chores like washing dishes, folding laundry, and so forth. While I am cleaning I listen to stuff. I used to listen to Radio Free Burrito until my iPod died a tragic death, so now I've been listening to my Barenaked Ladies station on Pandora on my phone instead, or to country music on the cable music channels. (Yes, country. Deal with it.) If there is an hour's worth of laundry to fold (in a house with three kids you would be surprised how often this happens) I watch Doctor Who while I do it.

At 3:00 I get J10 off the bus and read the notes her teachers have sent home from school. I get out her Dynavox (a computer she uses to communicate) and put it on her wheelchair for her, and then we set up to play Monopoly. This takes an extremely long time because she likes me to read all the instructions to her, and to explain them in detail. Around this time T14 gets home and gives J10 a hug and then goes off to play video games for the rest of the afternoon. Sometimes he brings a bunch of friends over and I get to work in a house full of happy, giggling teenagers. Those are my favorite days.

About halfway through playing Monopoly it will either be time to take J10 to the bathroom, which takes a long time, or she will stop playing and decide she wants me to show her how to spell all of the words on the Monopoly board. The rest of the afternoon is usually taken up with folding even more laundry (her choice), giving her medicine through a G-tube, and putting her in her prone stander to watch Barney. Generally this is the same Barney video every day. I've had dreams about that video. She has dozens of them, but she wants to watch the same one over and over.

Once the parents arrive and I've given them any relevant updates on what the kids have been doing, I go back to the train and either walk or catch a bus home from there. I'm usually home by 7, and unless it's my night to cook dinner, I go straight to my room to decompress a bit and chat with friends. This goes on until either something interesting is happening upstairs (I live with a lot of people, so sometimes people are hanging out) or the people I am talking to go to bed. So around 9 or 10 I either venture upstairs or decide I am feeling hyper and need to listen to music and jump around for awhile. If I am being responsible I will do some housework around this time. And then it's round 2 of chatting with friends, usually either west coast people or my friends in Singapore and Australia (since it's late morning/early afternoon for them). I get to bed normally between midnight and 2am, sometimes later if interesting shit is going on.

Those are work days. Days off are spent doing errands, playing video games, blogging, and hanging with people. My life is kinda predictable and routine, but that doesn't mean I don't have a LOT of fun. I love my job, my house, my friends, and even my walk to work each day if the weather doesn't blow goats. Yay.

Alpaca!

My teacher died and I am sad and will also be doing many things this weekend in between being sad, so this week I am going to simply share with you some fun facts I have just learned about alpacas. See, I am only just learning about alpacas, so we can learn TOGETHER. Unless you are some sort of alpaca expert in which case you will probably find this post unamusing and maddeningly full of errors.

Fact #1: Alpacas are totally adorable and I want to hug them.

Their huggability is actually science.

Fact #2: Despite the apparently obvious sheepliness in the above photo, alpacas are not sheep.

They are however related to llamas and CAMELS.


Fact #3: Immediately before being shorn, alpacas resemble giant puffy sheepdogs.

An actual unshorn alpaca

Fact #4: Immediately after being shorn, alpacas resemble Colin Mochrie.

An actual shorn alpaca

Fact #5: I am just going to directly quote this fact from Wikipedia: "Because of the high price commanded by alpaca on the growing North American alpaca market, illegal alpaca smuggling has become a growing problem."

illegal alpaca smuggling
illegal alpaca smuggling
illegal alpaca smuggling
illegal alpaca smuggling

Fact #6: I am tired of learning fun facts about alpacas and I want to go back to bed.

GOODNIGHT INTERNET SCOUTS

Re: My Brains

In a recent post I alluded to my gifted teacher (as in, teacher of the gifted program, although she is also gifted at teaching), who is in hospice. I was in the gifted program from 2nd grade until I left high school, so I spent lots of time in her class. (Lots, but never enough.) We did lots of great activities in there, like logic sheets (you know, those things that are like "Benny sat next to Mimi, who sat next to the person who ordered pasta with meatless balls" and then you have to figure out who ordered what and who sat where?) and playing with magnets and making our own bubble solution. Another thing we did a lot of in her class was personality tests, so I've always had a fondness for them.

I'm thinking about this right now because Whimsy posted about Myers-Briggs types, and out of all the various personality tests I've taken, I've always found that one to be the most useful. I almost always come out an INFP (Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving), although occasionally I'll come out INFJ (Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging). In all honesty, I feel I do a lot more judging than perceiving, and in reading the descriptions, it seems that I am opinionated like an INFJ but disorganized and "floaty" like an INFP.

Here are some things I find fit me very well from these types:

• "They rely heavily on their intuitions to guide them, and use their discoveries to constantly search for value in life. They are on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things." (INFP)
• "They may be awkard and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they're feeling on paper." (INFP)
• "Situations which are charged with conflict may drive the normally peaceful INFJ into a state of agitation or charged anger. They may tend to internalize conflict into their bodies, and experience health problems when under a lot of stress. "
• "Because the INFJ has such strong intuitive capabilities, they trust their own instincts above all else. This may result in an INFJ stubborness and tendency to ignore other people's opinions. They believe that they're right."
• "INFJs are rarely at complete peace with themselves - there's always something else they should be doing to improve themselves and the world around them."
  

And stuff I find to be less fitting:

• "Generally thoughtful and considerate, INFPs are good listeners and put people at ease." [I would call myself a willing listener, but not exactly a good one. I zone out easily.]
• "In conflict situations, INFPs place little importance on who is right and who is wrong." [hahahaha no.]
• "On the other hand, INFPs make very good mediators, and are typically good at solving other people's conflicts" [EMPHATIC NO.]

So what I gather from combining the two types is I live in my head a lot, I am ~thuper thenthitive~ and I have a smidge of a messiah complex. All in all, that sounds absolutely correct.

An interesting thing about INFP and INFJ is that, while websites usually claim these types to be rare, an extremely disproportionate number (maybe 80% or more) of my close friends fall into these types. (Another close friend is an INTJ, which is also supposed to be rare.) I suppose it's just a matter of a bunch of sensitive nerds banding together, but it's interesting to think about, anyway. In fact, I have very few close friends who are extroverts, and I've found the few who are to be the relationships that have taken the most work (on my part) to maintain. That doesn't mean I don't like extroverts, just that I relate to people on a very different level than they usually do, and it's a lot harder to find the place where we can meet in the middle.

Another personality thingy I find pretty interesting is the Enneagram types, of which I seem to be a Four. I rambled on about Myers-Briggs quite a bit so I won't go into this much except to say that the description fits me very well, but that I don't like Enneagram as much because it focuses too much on your weaknesses and what you can change about yourself, where I feel Myers-Briggs tends to be approached more from an angle of embracing who you are. In any case, the tests are fun and can help you figure out how you relate to the world, and how best to connect with other people whose personalities are different from yours.

This post is pretty boring if you are not me

This morning I woke up feeling angsty. The specifics aren't really relevant, but basically I was comparing myself negatively to other people and making myself feel inferior. I hate when I get like that because it can easily turn into a spiral of "everything about me sucks and is wrong and everybody hates me!"

But this time I didn't let it spiral, because I have to work today and I'm moving this weekend and I need to stay calm and not waste my emotional energy on stupid things. I decided to do a meditation instead. And I'm not very good at meditating, but I did actually manage to unstick myself a bit. I still feel sort of crappy, but what I did become aware of is how rarely I feel that way these days. I mean, I still get down pretty often, but a few years ago I basically lived my entire life comparing myself to other people and feeling bad about it. Everything I did was an effort to be "better" than I am, which meant I could never spend time developing who I actually was. I'm not sure how I got most of the way past that, but it seems like I have, since feeling that way is now an unusual thing instead of my default state.