The girlchild and I went to the mall Sunday. By the time we took off to go, I was tired (we were out late* at a birthday party the evening before), but she still wanted to go so off we went. It was busy, the annoying kind of busy where people stand mindlessly in the middle of isles rather than, say, move to the side and space out. We went to the bookstore, grabbed a bite to eat and cut out of there.
On the way to the parking ramp, we motioned to the 2 cars that had been waiting patiently for many minutes while streams of shoppers went across in the pedestrian area only to have a young generic blonde college/high school type try to race in after we motioned the cars on - she stopped only after noting that not only would she be running me down but also my cute 9 year old.
While in the mall, I noticed the trend of little girls trying to look like women and women trying to look like little girls. Sometimes I enjoy the people watching there and sometimes it makes me feel sad. This time, I just felt weird and wanted to get out of there. We saw many goths and mall punks. There was also a notable number of minority kids dressed in the ever popular urban looks: much like M.I.A. and the Japanese FRUITS styles. We approved.

This last night (I just got out at 7am and now am working my office job here also - I can't figure out if it's yesterday, today or tomorrow!?), I did my first overnight shift at the shelter. It was pretty uneventful although my staff partner and I were informed of a late night verbal scuffle revolving around a man's very loud snoring. Looking through the past log notes, it seems to be a pretty common but hard to remedy issue. After this month, I will be on my own for these shifts - I'm a little nervous but it will be good experience in being more assertive and independent in situations that intimidate me.... Working overnights will allow me my valuable "alone time" that I so need to maintain my sanity.

Off to do some number crunching, or at least some data entry of numbers, the computer will do the crunching part.
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* late = 9:30pm on a Saturday night