Learning to Count

Today was the first day of census training, and man was it a long day. The entire day consisted mainly of filling out employment forms and getting fingerprinted, but that managed to be startlingly complicated. I kind of thought that people who were hired to work on the census would've been hired based on their ability to competently fill out forms, but that does not appear to be the case. The most popular way to fill out a form appears to be "fill it out as fast as you can without reading it or waiting for instructions, then get another one when you realize you've screwed this one up." This is especially bad because the government tends to be rather tetchy about how its forms are filled out. But we eventually got through it, and hey, I'm getting paid! I made money today, woo-hoo!

I think the worst part of training was not actually the training itself, or even the forms. It was the pumping. I was told we were going to get a morning break, so I fed Robert at 7:15, then figured we'd get a break midway through the morning and I could find a private place and pump then. But all the problems with the forms meant that we ran late all morning, and we did not get our morning break till literally noon. I was about dying. And then the place I was allowed to pump was the baby nursery, next to the daycare. It had a rocking chair and stuff, but I had to move a crib away from the wall to get to the outlet, which ate into my very small window of time (not to mention the fact that I had to go to the bathroom SO MUCH.) Oh, and speaking of windows, this room has two of them. Not to the outside, one is to another, occupied nursery, and one faces right into the busy hallway. Needless to say, despite my discomfort, stress prevented me from doing much productive pumping during that break. During the longer lunch break, I organized things a little better, found a slightly more protected position, and did somewhat better. While we were waiting in the endless round of fingerprintings, I gave it yet another go, since I hadn't really gotten much that day, and someone walked in on me. Sigh. This will be a fun three days .

Robert and M did well though, Robert was in a mostly good mood, and M managed to watch him and write his necessary paper and lecture at the same time. Robert was also good at the neighbors, according to their report, and thoroughly charmed the visiting grandchildren. I choose to believe that report, even though the moment he saw me, he started crying like he was starving, obviously forgetting the three bottles he'd gotten while I was gone. He  didn't nap as much as he usually does, which tends to happen when the schedule is disrupted. He was fussy in the evening and went down hard, but early. I got a couple of cute pictures of him in the jumparoo first, though. =)

I have realized that we are out of bread and I am out of budget. A conundrum indeed. I think I may have some buns that aren't too stale around here somewhere. I've got plenty of cheese and lunchmeat, all they need is a vehicle in which to brown bag! Ah well, back to work tomorrow!