Back to the Grind

(Double post today because the other one was a saved draft that I needed to edit.)
Yesterday was my first day back at work at both jobs. At the Park it was School Patrol Day, where all the school patrollers in Calgary get to have a day celebrating them. (School Patrollers are grade 5/6s who guard crosswalks and make sure kids can get home safely.) That means 7000 kids in the Park during the day... It is a rather painful experience. I was in a site called The Rectory, which was the home of the rector or minister of the Anglican Church in a town. I stood in the kitchen because I could put a chain up and keep some distance if I needed to from the kids. Well, I had one girl who told me my clothes were ugly (I wear a mint green floor-length skirt and a flower patterned blouse - rather nice actually!) and was chased out by her friends who told her how rude she was. 
I had another girl, closer to 11 or 12, ask me about washing dishes in 1910. I explained that we would wash them by collecting water, heating it on the stove and washing in basins. She replied "yeah and I know I just came from Dominican and the ladies were washing clothes in the river so I understand why they had rivers in the old days now." (Internal monologue: Ummm... What. The. What?!) External voice: "Um, we didn't build the rivers... They were there before."   The girl: "Really? Ohhh..." I was tempted to go into an explanation about why most cities exist on rivers but I think it would have just flown over her head. The chaperone in the room (not her mother, but someone else's mother) didn't actually know how to react, so she just walked away.
It was also my first day back at the pharmacy, and was a rather nice night. Things were slow and I didn't have and difficult patients. I had one understanding regular when I called her 3 times after getting the cost of her order wrong... Then I got into a discussion with my PM about pharmacy history and the practice in other countries. As I told my dad when I got home, only I could go to work at my pharmacy and come home with a book on history. My PM gave me a book called "A History of Pharmacy in Alberta" because I enjoy history of my work. It's actually quite dry and a poor historical reference, but it's interesting that someone took the time to do the work and put everything together.