And isn't this exactly where you'd like me? (I'm exactly where you'd like me, you know.)

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Elizabeth has put on her big girl panties and faced a problem head-on rather than ignoring it and hoping it would go away. And I feel much better now.

Here's the scenario:

The grad tab. I finished it last night. I thought that cover looked awesome and I put everything together the way it needed to be. . .a job well done, I thought. And a job well done it should have been, since I spent 7 1/2 hours here yesterday. Saturday.

(I've forgotten the meaning of a full weekend.)

Anyway, I come in today and my boss Vi tells me she's "very disappointed" with the thing. Partially because it was up until today that it took to get it finished (well, yesterday, technically) and partially because the biggest high school failed to send me a principal's letter to include on the pages. She completely chewed me out, saying she clearly can't trust me to do things, that I'm doing this, that, and the other wrong, and that she's going to have to be on top of everything I do from now on, because clearly, I am the biggest screw-up to ever walk the halls of The Peak, and possibly the entire earth.

So she leaves, and I sit there, angry as I can be, wondering how long it would take me to find a job and, therefore, rent money if I were to just up and quit.

After a little while passes, I go back into her office. I tell her I've had a little while to think about what she's said, and she says, "Yeah, I've thought about it, too." Then we had a pretty good conversation, actually, about how I am here all the freaking time and if she's going to be saying I don't care about what I'm doing and how I'm taking the lazy way out all the time, then that's just not fair.

Then she completely blows me away. She says that she knows how hard I work, she doesn't actually hate me as much as it appears she does (Her exact words were, "I really, really like you.") and that she was partially so completely angry at herself.

The thing you have to understand about me and this job is, had I not known someone here (CousinCasey, my actual cousin), I probably wouldn't have known about the job, let alone gotten it. And I'd probably still be living with my father, unemployed except for the temp jobs I worked. So when I got here, CousinCasey was the person that, for all intents and purposes, did all of my training. Vi told me things here and there, but it was pretty much CousinCasey that taught me everything I know. And I came in here with no experience whatsoever, except from writing for my college newspaper. But I was in the news department there for a semester, and then I wrote a column. That kind of "training" is hardly enough when you jump into being an editor/writer/photographer/layout person/copyeditor. So, essentially, no experience.

Vi proceeds to say that she's never felt like she "connected" with me, because she wasn't the one who did the training, so I don't do things exactly like she wants them done, because she wasn't the person who taught me how to do them.

There was more to the conversation, but that was essentially the gist of it. So she apologized for being bitchy, I apologized for not doing things the way they needed to be done.

I know that was kind of a Cliff's Notes version of the entire thing, but you'll just have to believe me when I say that I felt a lot better after the conversation, and I think that maybe, just maybe, she'll cut me a wee bit of slack when things aren't done exactly as she's like them to be done sometimes.

Or maybe not. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Everything aside, I think the grad tab turned out better than I expected, and I'll post a picture of my supremely cool cover on here after it prints tomorrow.

I didn't "run" yesterday. I probably should have, but work took over my life. Maybe I'll be able to get out tonight. Then again, maybe not.

That's the thing about this job. By the time I finish my work every day, I'm too exhausted and oftentimes drained to get out and move around. I know I need to just do it, but that's not as easy as it might sound.

I'm also probably chaperoning a group of Girl Scouts Wednesday for a trip they've been talking about taking. Vi told me to take some time off tomorrow, but I told her I'd rather do it Wednesday, since by that time, I'll have racked up enough time to have my 40 hours covered and be able to have a real day off. (Our weeks go from Wednesday to Wednesday, which is really one of the weirdest things I've ever heard of in my life.)