Oh, baby in Wherelings and Whenlings

there is an infant asleep on me. also, my keyboard is broken (the t and y keys don't work; i have them permanently on my clipboard. my typing has adjusted, in the past several months, to click crtl-v whenever i need them - even when i'm on someone else's computer).

the infant is not mine. he is five months old and he is my roommate's and i babysit him twice a week.

somehow i ended up with more jobs than i really want or need in the past few weeks. i'm teaching spinning twice a week, i'm working in a full-service cafe (where i'm learning to cook! i mean, i already knew how to cook - they wouldn't have hired me otherwise - but i'm learning to cook Officially and In A Kitchen, which is fun).

so that's three jobs, and then i got an email from my "summer" employer saying we'd be starting up again in march - which is great, because i love that job, but surprising, because march is definitely still Winter (especially in chicago), and what i do is lead bike tours. in the snow, apparently

anyway, the point is, that working generally sucks because i am a big advocate of leading a long and healthy life, and a big believer that sleep and leisure are a big part of leading a long and healthy (and happy!) life and guess how much sleep and leisure i get when i have three jobs? i mean, what's the fucking point of living if i don't have time to do it?

i have been holding three jobs for approximately two whole weeks and i'm already losing my shit.

i'm also losing my shit because if there's anything more depressing to me than feeling like a slave to paid work, it's winter, and right now it's winter and i'm a slave to paid work and i cry for no reason and i feel lonely and angry at night and machine-like during the day

but! because of my true commitment to figuring out how to live a life in which i can prioritize leisure (see above), i only have to survive a couple more months. karen-of-today is too overwhelmed by the pain of life to do anything about it, but karen-of-the-past knew this was coming and set something up for karen-of-today to look forward to:

in april, i'm heading to la for a family reunion, san francisco for a best friend reunion, tucson for a desert reunion (which, to be honest, is what i'm most excited about. i can't wait to get out of this loud polluted hellhole and into the mountains), and then phoenix for another friend reunion (and a cheap flight back to chicago). only two weeks, but it's something, and when I come back, spring should be in full force here in the midwest.

i just have to make it through six more weeks of winter.