It's been one of "those" weeks...

Everything that could possibly have happened to cause little hiccups and bumps in my week without causing total catastrophe has. Most of it happened yesterday, actually, but I've been grumpy and tired all week, so I'm overall worn out and just done with everything. Thank the gods that it's Friday... I finish work at 1:00 today (instead of my usual 4:00, which in and of itself isn't half bad-- I actually love my job and have a pretty good setup-- but this week it's just been way. too. much.)

It all culminated yesterday morning. I had just gotten to work-- I'd honestly been at work for maybe fifteen minutes-- and was doing some cleaning (including emptying my shredder and packing it into a bag + compressing as much as I possibly could) when I smacked my forehead off of the empty chuck end of a RedWing dental lathe.

I've had my fair share of incidents with dental lathes,
but yesterday took the cake. At least nothing got ground
off my hand this time!

What is a RedWing dental lathe? This contraption is a RedWing Dental Lathe:

I use it at work for a vast number of things -- trimming, grinding things out, polishing, etc etc etc. It's like a jewellery lathe but bigger and more powerful. And heavy as heck.

And let me tell you, smacking my forehead off of it HURT. It prompted a headache that lasted all day, and when I got home I showed Rory and he noted that not only was my head bruised where I had smacked it, but there was a bump too.

Now, I'm a somewhat clumsy person but that just started my day off on the worst possible note. Sufficiently grumpy (and embarrassed at my ridiculousness), I then dealt with a headache for the next seven hours. Midway through my day I gave up and took a couple extra-strength Tylenol and an NSAID for the inflammation. Didn't help much, but it dulled the headache enough that I could attempt to get more paperwork done.

The whole "confidence" thing. (a story)

I have struggled with my self-confidence and sense of self-worth my entire life.

As an elementary- and junior high-aged child and preteen, I could count on half of one hand the number of actual friends that I had, but had to use both hands and feet and borrow a few more to name all the kids that I knew who made me feel miserable. Not a pleasant period of my life by any stretch of the imagination.

At the time, I couldn't understand what was wrong with me, what I did to warrant being treated the way I was... looking back, it's a lot easier for me to see what elements of my personality and my home life put me in such stark contrast to my peers and influenced it. I was little, smart, very precocious and didn't really have much in the way of social perception. It's taken me a long time to realize that the way I was (it wasn't a matter of "acting" for me, I couldn't for the life of me do anything that wasn't true to myself) made a lot of people-- both children and adults alike-- very uncomfortable.

Me, circa 9th grade. This picture would have been
right around my 15th birthday.

As a result of my personality and my home life-- a mixed race child in a low-income family living at the edge of a very affluent neighborhood, most of my peers being caucasian children from very wealthy families-- I was socially ostracized, and treated quite cruelly by many classmates for years and years. And since I went to the same small school for elementary and junior high, I was with many of these selfsame classmates for a full ten years.