It might be just possible to find better parents than my mom and dad were, but I think there's no way I could be better at it.  Mostly because I don't have the inclination for it, but then, I don't know if they did, really; getting married and having kids was just what people did, back when Mom and Dad got together in the late 1940s.

That may be unfair, though.  Mom told me once she was pretty thrilled when I was born, when she was 40 and thought she couldn't get pregnant any more, and she was all set to have another one after me if her doctor hadn't ruled against it.  So I guess she really did actively want kids.  She would have made a terrific Grandma, and I always thought it was a damn shame she didn't see more of her one and only grandchild, who lived (and still does) halfway across the country.  And Mom gravitated towards little kids whenever she was out in public.

Once we were having dinner with our contractor in Colorado.  His kids were young at the time, and Mom was talking to the younger one, the little girl.  Instead of asking, "How old are you?" she said, "Are you this many?" and held up three fingers.  Mom knew how to talk to kids.

I don't.  Didn't care for them much when I was one, either; I always gravitated to grownups, and at least once I had to be told to run off and play with the kids my age.  I suspect Mom always thought that that was something I'd grow out of, as my sister had, and I'd start to be interested in kids when I was older, but I never did.

Dad was more of a hands-off kind of parent when I was little; he went to work at The Office every day, and left me to Mom.  We got closer when I got older, though, and I'm glad to know he was proud of the way I turned out.

Mostly it doesn't occur to me that they're gone, but I do miss them sometimes when I think about it.
   

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I learned some things about being a manager this week.  One was that I really ought to have everybody's phone number stored in my phone, or at least have a list somewhere at home as well as at work.  The big thing, though, is that I learned I am inevitably going to screw up a lot of things the first time the situation arises.

The trick is not screwing the same thing up the next time.

I have the weekend off, and the coworker who called in sick today arranged for somebody to cover for her before I even heard about it, so things are looking pretty good for the moment. 

Maybe I can persuade myself to paint the bathroom this weekend.  I've been neglecting a lot of stuff I know I need to do around the house, but I think I'm about to reach the point where it annoys me more to put it off than to buckle down and do it.

At work I've been the acting head of the reference department since the end of January, when the real department head got shifted to one of the branches.  She then decided she liked it there, and applied for the permanent position of regional manager. 

We just found out today she got the job.  She's pretty excited about it, since the lovely new library building on that end of town is progressing nicely and should be ready to move into in another few months.

Where this leaves me, nobody has said yet.  I'm assuming they'll have to formally announce that her position as head of reference is open now, and if I want it as a permanent gig I'll have to apply and interview for it.  I'm pretty sure that they'll give it to me if I do, if only because I've been doing the actual job for five months now and have had no major disasters yet.  Assuming, of course, that I don't totally shoot myself in the foot during the interview, which I've been known to do before now!

I'm not sure what I want to do.  It'd be hard to give up the interim salary I've been getting and go back to my previous level, but I could do it; I'd just have to budget more carefully than I've been doing lately, and stop buying books again.  For a while in January and February I was walking around muttering "Hell, I hate being the person in charge" on a daily basis, but I find (now that I think about it, and rather to my surprise) that I don't do that so often any more.

There are still times, though, when I hate being the person in charge.  Had some of those last week, regarding a new employee who may or may not be working out.

My therapist pointed out a couple of weeks ago that on some level I must have felt I was up to it when they first asked me to do it, or I would have said no then.  True enough, I guess; but I certainly didn't feel up to it for the first month or so after I said I'd do it.

Now I have days when I feel like I might possibly be about to get the hang of it.

It's a quandary.  I guess I'll have to flip a coin, and see which way I want it to come down.