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I never thought temping would be like this.

Bouncing from receptionist job to receptionist job, yes. And that's the majority of it. Thankfully, on the week before Labor Day, calls are few and far between. Funny, everyone seems to be "out of the office" or "at an off-site meeting".

But yesterday, I got a very different temp job.

I worked at a daycare.

Just for an afternoon, in order to provide the state-appointed number of adults in a room at any one time. And most of it was naptime. I was in the infant and toddler room.

What have I learned from this?

1. I don't know what to do with a kid. I don't know how to get them to do something, or to stop doing something. I don't know how to stop crying, or get them to go to sleep, or bring a shy child into a group. I have zero knowledge of this. None. Absolute bupkis. I don't even know how to hold one properly.

2. I like kids. I can't deal with them, but I like them. I loved babbling with one of them, then realizing I could understand what he was saying. I like making them grin or smile or look fascinated. I like watching them try things out, and I like seeing what they do know (we hold on to the rope when we walk) and what they don't (if I move fast with the rope, the other person holding it will fall).

Okay, don't freak out. I have no plans of immanent spawnage. Nor even plans in the next five years. But I think this was the first time I didn't run screaming from the idea of having a kid.

Which may be the scariest lesson of the day.

Worldcon update once I'm through with my games...

"For in this world fear, grief, toil, and peril are unavoidable, but it is of the utmost importance for what cause, with what hope, and to what end a man endures these things."
--Augustine

Yeah, That Augustine. Of Hippo.

Current reading is redefining him for me. "Augustine and the Limits of Politics", by Jean Bethke Elshtain. I had thought of him as just a morose, original-sin-happy, all-sex-is-evil, women-suck-too, early Church father.

I think I might have to read City of God. The whole thing. Elshtain is steadily redeeming him from the multiple negative associations. (Example--yes, he does counsel that wives should be subservient. But not because, as Aristotle would have it, they're inherently inferior. Instead, Auggy's women are equal in the eyes of God, but to maintain the peace and tradition of the household and thus the state, they should be subservient. I disagree at the end, o'course, but stating that women are not absolute inferiors is kind of radical for the time.)

Wow.


Plus, Jess just informed me that the sheep animation will be in the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater. Oh My God. Not only does she rock, but she has made my margin doodles world famous. Wooooooooooot!