in the room the women come and go

Upon occasion the aquarium whores itself out rents its space overnight, allowing larger groups to sleep over. Our staff stays over, too: we give them activities and things to keep the kidlets occupied, though after midnight it's all up to the chaperons to keep everyone asleep and in line.

The one overnight I did was pretty fun, because of the people I was working with and all the girl scouts that were running around everywhere. Apparently the last one was a nightmare, though, with one chaperon for every twenty kids. The thirteen-year-olds raised holy hell all night long with the chaperons laying idly by, and then one of them has the gall to complain to my supervisor that we didn't manage the children very well. Which resulted in a big ol' hell no from said supervisor - apparently the were behaving so badly she had to threaten to toss the kids out of the aquarium at four o'clock in the morning (whether their parents were with them or not) if they didn't settle down.

Anyway. They've all promised that tomorrow's overnight will be ten times easier; as there's more chaperons, the age group's a little more forgiving, and there are plenty of staff on duty. Herein lies the rub:

- I'm scheduled to work at 10:15 the next morning, and come in early for six days after that.
- It's the first time this particular supervisor has been in charge of an overnight.
- It's a large group of cubscouts, with den fathers and what not. (Is that the proper term, den father?)
- The overnight crew for this particular adventure are all boys that have a tremendous love of fart jokes and have all bonded in a manly fashion. They're the funny guys, you know?

... and the kicker ...

- Out of the eighty or so people inside the aquarium tomorrow night, I am going to be the only one without a Y chromosome.

Oy.

I swear, what is it about my physiology that makes me hit my stride at two o'clock in the morning? It's always been like that, even when I was a little girl. Well, maybe not when I was really little, as my parents set a strict bedtime for me, though I distinctly remember being more awake before I went to sleep than at any other time. Because of this I've learned to function reasonably well with about two hours sleep and a nap at some point in the afternoon, as those in my college dorm can attest to. (There was this weird couple of days where I had deadline after deadline and I didn't sleep for about a day and a half - I wound up curling into a ball on the busiest lobby couch ever, and crashing for an hour or so.)

I met up with the girls (yay!) for dinner at around eight tonight, and we stumbled to Starbucks until about midnight. They were obviously getting sleepy and a little slap-happy, whereas I was full of pep and ready to go. I'll probably be awake until at least six, and then meet up with the girls around ten for breakfast at First Watch. I am so nocturnal it's creepy.


...Yeah. There was no real point to this post other to say that I miss my girls when they aren't here and to point out how appropriate this icon continues to be and how much I adore innerpoise for letting me use it.