Okay so number one - my ring arrived yesterday and it's so gorgeous in the proper gold. My aunt described it as a "queen ring" and my friend at work screamed when she saw it and hugged me so hard. It made me feel delightful, frankly. I know my fiancee did a wonderful job but seeing how excited other people are for us makes me feel amazing. I like showing him off like this. It feels good.

Life is generally being more good to me in that I'm less exhausted. I had a wicked migraine over the weekend, but it passed pretty fast and easy once I took a break on Monday. My doctoral classes started on Monday - they seem pretty straight forward and I'm really excited to be in another research course. I really do like the act of doing research - it feels good to my soul in a way that I cannot explain. I like learning things. Nerd alert, I guess.

We also got the yard done - it's been pretty overgrown with the bushes and the trees. It feels much cleaner now but it's definitely a bit ugly as far as what it looks like with everything chopped down. Nate, my fiance, wants to keep the bushes and just take better care of them so I GUESS that's what we will do. I just wanna chop 'em all down so we don't have to worry about the upkeep in general.

I will say work is still a smidge frustrating but I'm becoming used to the fact that people just do not fucking read and beginning to accommodate for that. Which is kind of depressing, I guess? The bar feels low. But I sent out an e-mail that was approved by everyone who was in the meeting and a week later they were wondering why we were doing something a certain way. WELL, that's explicitly what we told them to do! That's what we communicated to them! That's what you guys approved! This happens multiple times a week. It's wild who gets to the upper echelons of this job.

First: Site Updates! We figured out how to make everything stay in one place and only the middle reloads. Now it's all component based. I'm still fighting with myself on header font but I'm sure this is something that bothers ONLY me...but this website is also only for me so? Definitely something I'll need to fix.

Now into general life updates...the last few days have been really tiring. I went to the alternative school for the first time today and had a great time! I, however, also met with my research team today and I was the only one who actually updated my portion of our paper. Which is kind of the theme for the day. Most of my department did not do what they were assigned to do. As a result, I am in a position where I am enormously frustrated and also where I feel responsible for their failures.

It is frustrating because it is our job to be compliant and in line with the law. Their assignments were simple: Update the services for your students. Realistically, this means that they need to go in and click some buttons and check it against the student schedules. This doesn't sound complicated because IT ISN'T. However, people still find a way. One of my co-workers gave me a sticker for my laptop today. Considering I've put everything that these people need to know about this process in e-mails (and how to do it!!) and reiterated it multiple times AND OFFERED THEM HELP - it really sums about how I feel about everything.

Okay, so a few updates have occurred to the website though I've also commissioned a small website overhaul from someone on vgen too. I have been SLAMMED the last few days. Like oh my gosh. So I've mentioned we have a ton of teachers who work with me that I am over, but moreover I'm the primary person who manages all their caseloads and ensures all their paperwork is done. It sounds easy. It is absolutely not. When I tell you that people DO NOT READ I mean it.

I write e-mails where everything is so nicely laid out with perfect directions and I guarantee you someone will still do it wrong - not that I really mind. It's job security. But more importantly - things I am excited about: Today I totally updated the site, got some DBD games in with my FIANCEE (sorry still on cloud nine about that, lol), and also completely recreated the spreadsheet we use to manage everyone at work. It looks SO much nicer and I feel much better about it now that I've had my hand in it.

In the coming week I have a meeting with my research team so I really need to do my literature review. I might work on making a space of the website that is just a literature review section of major academic articles which sounds like a nicer way to organize my thoughts. Look forward to that in the future!! I also think I could benefit from doing more academic reading in general, so a literature review section feels like that would really help...

So my typical blogs usually aren't this focused on systemic issues, but I was confronted with an issue today that makes it hard to ignore. I am a Jewish woman - specifically Jewish American. My family is also Jewish. We went out to eat tonight at a Cuban restaurant on a street named for a very famous civil rights activist. My aunt said something that made me pause which was: "I would never date a black guy." I replied this was racist and was greeted with the typical "I don't think I'm racist; I have black friends." I don't need to dissect the problems with this statement, they are fairly obvious.

But it raises a question that has been addressed by scholars for years: Racism within minorities. This has a term: Interminority racism. Jonathan Christiansen defines this racism as "the tensions and conflicts that arise between different minority groups, often as a result of competition for scarce resources in increasingly diverse urban settings." Yet my family is not in competition for scarce resources. Indeed, we are what is typically considered upper middle class. This interminority racism was a demonstration of abject white privilege. Despite how Jewish we are, despite how much we are hated by the same people who hate other minorities - my family still finds it appropriate to make racist comments while partaking in the culture of another race on a street celebrating the civil rights movement.

The lack of awareness is baffling. The lack of introspection is baffling. What do I begin to say to my family about this? There is no convincing them they are wrong because they feel secure. Jews were a "historically enslaved and abused people" and they "suffered much longer than black people did anyway." Since when did basic human kindness require a measuring of how much one group has been oppressed? It's bizarre and frustrating in both measures. How do you talk to people who are so convinced that their hurt is greater than another's?

Okay I ACTUALLY have energy to blog a bit today, yippee!! So today was the first day other teachers came back, which I thought was going to be harrowing. But it wasn't at all! I'm shocked how much everyone trusted me immediately and was happy for me. Even my friend who I felt was overstepping before absolutely is not. It was still a bit overwhelming trying to manage everything, but in a good way. Which gives me sufficient brain power to talk about the big things today: MY RING!!!!!! So I am officially engaged as of just a few days ago and I couldn't be happier. I've been with my partner for a year now, but we've been best friends longer and basically living in each other's brains. He is easy for me to love and for the first time I feel like it is easy to love me. He also makes me feel pretty which sounds silly but it is so true. I've never felt so pretty before. He had a jeweler make my engagement ring but unfortunately they sent the wrong one. It's supposed to be yellow gold. Not white gold. :(

But besides that kerfuffle, he got down on one knee in the privacy of our home and laid his heart out to me about how I'm the only woman for him and how much he loves me. It felt private. Intimate. Beautiful. It was nice to do it outside of the public eye in a way that was only for us. I'm sure it still worried him that it wasn't "romantic" enough - but I loved it so much. Not only that, but look how beautiful that ring is!!! Wowie...I cannot wait to blog about the yellow gold one fr. He did such a good job - he knows me so well and knew I would love it!!!

Technically, today was my first day back at work which was exhausting in its own right. I had a huge meeting today that spanned multiple hours and I can feel my brain still cooking despite it being many hours later that I'm writing this. It was nice to see people I hadn't seen in some time, but gosh was it hard having to pay attention and do extended practice on my attention span again. I've just been kind of floating from thing to thing and stream of conciousness for two months now - so I was like really struggling to pay attention.

It didn't help that I had so much to do today. My job is primarily paperwork right now, but we have 313 students and multiple case managers so I had to go in and manually create packets out of all 313 students. There has to be a faster way, clearly, but I don't know what that is or how to do it. When I say it took me HOURS to sort those students...it took me four and a half hours! And that was already after my huge meeting that took multiple hours!! I even ended up staying late!!! Raugh!!!!

I want to talk more about my ring and my engagement but I'm absolutely fried rn like crispy dough. So I'm going to go take a long, luxurious bath instead and I'll update the blog with my engagement and love story tomorrow! But I did get home to the most gentle, loving hug of my life. And my cat cuddled me too which was nice too, I suppose... :)

Hello world! This is the beginning of the webbed site and its first post. There will likely be changes as things develop and as I find various ways to used neocities, but I've wanted other places to host things beyond just toyhou.se and I'm happy that I found a template that I can begin to customize. Now onto today's vibes...tomorrow is the first day back at work and I'm genuinely terrified! I'm going into a whole new role and there's a lot of complications besides, most namely that my dear friend is moving out of the role I'm moving into. And she isn't precisely ready to give it up resulting in a little bit of friction. I'm worried that it's going to cause a rift between us in a way that I'm not ready for or worse that I'm much worse at the job than her! It's hard following up someone who has done so well and been so thoughtful in their role. But my new fiancee has been extremely supportive. I feel very lucky to have him in a way that makes me wonder what it is I'm doing right to deserve him. He's the love of my life in a really beautiful way that I thought only happened in fairytales. I received my engagement ring just a few days ago from him and great googly moogly!! I'm in love with it...but that will have to be its own post!!