I love my jobs.

First, there's the gym. I have added quite a few hours from my normal Saturday 1-6pm shitick, but it's still pretty groovy. (After I start working 22 hours regularly, I will update, probably with some bitching.) The coworkers there, like at many jobs, pretty much make it. I work with Mer, a refugee from El Salvador and a transplant from Australia. She's been living here for seven years, legally, waiting for the legal system to make her an official citizen. She finally got her green card in the mail on Thursday night. Her husband of twenty-odd years came by with a slim Fed Ex envelope and pulled it out for her. She was so happy. Immediately, after looking at it in joy, she rushed off to the office so that she could have it photocopied. Mer has three kids--one daughter off at college, one 18-year-old she wishes would leave soon, and a teenage son. She appears to be a good mother, and we share stories of her feisty daughter at home and my 16-year-old sister, Mi. She is not my favorite person to work with, but that's just because I have a lot of awesome people from which to choose. Her back aches and I hear about it, but, to her credit, I do believe it is a genuine complaint. She is also rather conservative, and once told a coworker that she was suspicious of black and Hispanic guys checking out her ass all the time, so for the first few weeks at work, she work long coats. The black coworker and I stared at each other and laughed and called her a racist. I told her to watch out for white guys performing the same maneuver. Mer and I work together Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from six to close.

Di has been there for three years and is accordingly burnt out. We sit at the desk on Saturdays with his laptop and portable speakers and blast obscene rap music. Sometimes we dance. He is a good dancer and I am not bad for a white girl from Memphis. He trained me when I took up the shift and we’ve been working it together for a year. Generally we are not overly concerned with being professional, but we get the job done, treat the members with respect (even the ones we want to physically harm), and don’t act like rampaging teenagers, unlike some of the other people with whom we have worked.

Di, without his fro, possibly makes it up to my cheekbones. He weighs about ninety pounds and wears baggy pants and long shirts to compensate. He is from Panama and has skin that could pass as white or Hispanic. He wears glasses and wants about 12 piercings and various tattoos. Recently we knocked that down to 11 by going to a tattoo parlor and procuring him his first piercing, in the cartilage of his left ear.

He’s got some intense emotional issues. From what I can tell, he’s been depressed since he was about fifteen years old. He is twenty-two now. He goes to a prestigious, notoriously difficult college in our area and it kicks his ass regularly, although I am fairly certain he is very intelligent. When he was a freshman, he lived in the dorm, but now he lives with his controlling mother and father, and I think some of his issues will continue until he moves out. I am passively encouraging this by periodically sending him Craigslist posts with affordable housing by his college, but I also think his mother would pitch a fucking fit if he ever tried to move out. He has a video game hobby that I am sure is quite expensive. He is a nerd with a capital N and wants to program video games one day.

Our history is one strictly of friendship, but I have harbored a slight crush on him since about the time I met him, and he has made it abundantly clear that he would date and/or sleep with me in a heartbeat. I am no longer certain if I am straight enough to sleep with a man, but if I were, he is cute but not my type. So we flirt occasionally and hang out and I am glad, because he seems generally happier and I am in need of friends who have never spent more than a few hours on my school's campus.

Mer, Di, and I also work with a bevy of trainers, almost all of whom I really like and have sometimes spent time with outside of work. The notable exception to that rule is Bry, who is The Asshole. Every workplace has one (or several); the one who works with us is Bry. We put up with him, but I recently confronted him about his assholery and now I think he is a little terrified of me. He flirts with almost every single woman with whom he comes into contact (and is, of course, neither single nor without parental obligations), and I surmised that he has a bit of an issue with women. He has a big issue with me because I am an assertive woman. So that's fun, but ultimately not a big issue, since we don't work in the same space, rarely at the same time, and I goof off during my shifts far less than he does.

So I like working at the gym, but I love working at the Writing Center at school. Currently I am on the clock. No one has shown up, nor is anyone likely to on a Sunday night the second week of school. We do indeed become busy, but not usually today. The lights are off and the sun is illuminating the room just right. It is very quiet. Ideal for doing homework, if I had any sort of inclination to do homework right now. Also it is a minute drive from my room, and about a five minute walk. Can't beat that.

But my absolute favorite is babysitting. I sat for four boys last night, all under six, and made $180. One day, if I ever become a lawyer, that might seem like chump change, but I am twenty years old and that is my car payment plus 86 cents. I really enjoy children, and I usually play with them instead of immediately parking them in front of the TV. I do dishes and I clean up and I'm patient and firm. I especially enjoy other people's homes, food, and cable television after their children have gone to bed. Last night I drove to B's house at four in the morning, having looked up tattoos on the internet for quite a few hours. And, when I was leaving this morning, the Ss texted me and asked me if I were available next Friday and Saturday. Score. Babysitting sometimes makes me feel isolated, particularly in the Ss' house--I think it's because it's brand new and they just moved in, so it doesn't quite feel like someone's home yet--and it isn't steady income, but I really love it. Just getting away from school is amazing. And I get paid for it! Can't beat that.

I'm not sure what it says about me, then, that I have blogged this much about work, but it's my life right now, and I'm having fun with it.