Yet Another Sunrise...

So I'm lying here on my bed, it's 5.52 am and as usual, I haven't slept yet. These sleepless nights are driving me crazy, because it means I then sleep the day away. And what's REALLY bad, is that I like it that way. I like working and reading all night and sleeping all day, only getting up to lie in the sun for a while. I like being awake when nobody else is, so nobody can make immediate demands on me unless they wake me up or send me an email. I like being a bit of a recluse whenever I can afford to take time out from life.

Of course, I can't always afford to do it. Even though most of my work is from home and can be done at any time of day, my other job (i.e. the one that doesn't pay all that well, but gives me emotional satisfaction most of the time) requires that I leave the house and travel to London when I'm needed, which could be a couple times a month or a couple times a week, depending on what's going on.

This week it was a couple times a week, because there was a bit of a crisis the other day, which has contributed to my week from hell - and consequently the need to sequester myself with a good book (or six) and a large amount of junk food and headache tablets.

I work with teenagers in a youth center in London. It's a pretty varied job - I'm big sister, general counsellor, sometimes cook, sometimes laundry maid, sometimes drugs counsellor, sometimes sex ed teacher. The main part is the big sister role: I talk with and listen to teens, sometimes about problems they're having, sometimes about things that they want an opinion on, sometimes just as a friend to hang out with. But I do plenty of other things too. I help keep the place clean. I give talks on contraception and staying safe from STDs. I help find accomodation for kids who need to move out of their parents' home for whatever reason. I bake a lot of cakes and cookies, since most of them don't get home-baked stuff at home - sounds silly, but it's amazing how much a plate of cookies can spread cheer and goodwill when you don't get stuff like that often. *laughs* I also act as a medical advisor about drugs, eating disorders, things like that. I'm neither a doctor nor a trained therapist, but I'm there to give out frank, unbiased information about what will happen to their bodies if they do X or Y. Sometimes teenagers take things like that better from someone who's nearer their age.

Occasionally, like this week, I get harder jobs. This week one of my kids (not literally my kids, but that's what I think of them as) got into a fight, hit the other guy wrong, and knocked him right into a coma. So much of my week was spent with visits to the jail and eventually raising bail money to get him out.

I don't know what to feel about the whole situation, really. I'm horrified, but at the same time my loyalty is to my kids, the ones I work with and see often. In my head I understand that teens fight, teenage boys fight often, and for teenage boys who are raised in an urban environment, usually in poverty, fighting someone who does something to piss you off is a way of life. I understand that intellectually, but it still upsets me. But this is my job, so I just have to suck it up and do what needs to be done.

My kid is 17, and the other guy is 21, plus he has a prior record while my kid is clean, so it's unlikely that he'll do hard time. Most likely he'll get parole, community service, maybe anger-management classes. I guess that's a plus, since in my gut I feel that he didn't mean to seriously hurt the other guy. He seemed pretty scared when I saw him. It's a very weird feeling, though, to know that a person you know (and quite like) put someone in intensive care, and despite that you're hoping that he'll get off lightly. Previously, I couldn't have stuck by him, job or not. I've never had much loyalty to anything other than my own morals, but through this job I'm learning loyalty to people, even when they do things that you don't agree with.

In addition to this, turning my already hard week into a hellish one, my mother - who I love to pieces, but has an unfortunate habit of doing things without paying attention sometimes - made a cake and managed to put 4 tablespoons (instead of 4 teaspoons) of baking powder into it. And didn't tell me until I'd eaten a quarter of the cake. So both she and I ended up with sodium poisoning, and although we didn't have to go to hospital, my kidneys have been killing me for the last few days, and I'm drinking so much water to flush my system, I feel like I'm going to burst. And now, to top it all off, I have PMS.

So staying in the house and reading and eating sandwiches for the next few days sounds pretty damn good. And that is the plan for today. I'm going to make a sandwich now, wash my feet (they get really cold for some reason) and then nap for a couple of hours, then read and eat another sandwich, lie in the sun for a while, pick up some groceries (just basic stuff) at Budgens, maybe buy a burger from KFC, and take another nap late this afternoon. This sounds like a perfect day to me.

Hope that you can excuse the long, rambling post - it IS now 6.25 am, after all - and that you have as good a day as I plan to.