in which i relive the agony of last week in order to better appreciate small mercies

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiousity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

today i left work while the sun still shone. last week was all pain and mosquitoes, and it is good to have a reprieve. my shift working with my autistic clarence (or Clarence, if i may, because he likes to line toys up on the heat register and then walk up and down the row, leanining slightly forward, as though he were in italics) has been moved from an 830 start to an 800 start, which isn't a huge deal, except that with bus schedules being what they are, i have to leave the house at the unholy hour of 645, instead of the more reasonable 730. with the onset of the snow and whatall, buses not running up the hill and such, i was leaving at 630 most mornings last week in order to arrive in surrey at 800. such-and-such a staff member is still on vacation, so i've been filling in in the out-of-school program in the later-afternoon-early-evening. taking the bus means that i alone do not arrive at work in tears because of the road conditions, and that i arrive at all, and so twice last week i stayed on to close so that those driving to langley, or to coquitlam with their infant child in the backseat, could leave while it was still light. i know. i'm a saint. both those days, parents did not leave themselves enough time to get through the snowtraffic, and both those days, parents arrived after six to pick up their children. this means that for two days i worked from eight til after six, but more importantly, i left the house at six thirty IN THE MORNING and got home just before eight THAT EVENING. add to this two weeks of working with three distinct age groups a day, to the point where i can't even think age-appropriately anymore, and i'm putting eleven-year-olds on time outs and asking five-year-olds what they think the best thing to do in this situation is, and to the fact that Clarence is currently figuring out how hard he can hit me in the face before i have to put my own safety before his, and you have what they call 'a rum go of things,' which has distinctly less to do with a bottle of rum than i'd like.

today the sun shone. i left the house at a suddenly-tolerable 645, and left work while it was still light. Clarence was glad to see me, and did more pushing and poking of my face than open-handed slapping. only two of the clarences hurt-themselves-or-were-hurt-by-others badly enough to draw blood, and i didn't once mention that we could set them on fire. it's supposed to snow tonight, and if the surrey schools are closed tomorrow, then so are we.

and there are no mosquitoes in winter.