Ode to Sisyphus

I should have recognized the crash beside me this morning for what it was: an evil omen. Apparently, I had flailed in my sleep or somesuch and knocked the mini digital clock off my bedside table. The noise awoke me, and, blinking, I turned on the lamp next to me. I fumbled around for the clock on the floor, replaced it on the table, and glanced at the time.
3:01 AM.
Be still my heart! Three o'clock in the morning! Ray Bradbury spoke of it as the most evil of times. It was the time when men could not sleep--when all the troubles of the world hung upon their souls. At 3 AM, the middle of the night was over, but dawn was still too far away to be a comforting thought. In "Something Wicked This Way Comes," the evil carnival arrived in town precisely at 3:00 in the morning.
A foreboding moment.
And all I could think was, "Well, shit. Now I only have about 3 hours until I have to wake up. I'd better stop thinking."
Well, too bad I didn't stop thinking. All it takes is one 3 AM omen and I'm all "Beware the Autumn People!" for the next few hours. So much for a good night's sleep.

Then came the orientation for substitute teachers. The only "orientation" I could discern was maneuvering all of us toward piles and piles of paperwork. There were a couple of "important tips" pages and a brief interlude of role-playing, but nothing terribly substantial. Mostly packets. Even the icebreaker wasn't that successful; everyone still felt vaguely estranged to one another.

After the paperwork extravaganza, I was mentally exhausted and famished. But lo, dear reader--my day was not yet over. I skedaddled to my beloved children's museum to scarf down a sandwich like a madwoman, change into grungier clothes, and prepare to pump water out of the lower levels of the museum.
Oh, yes. We were flooded.
You see, we here in Northeast Indiana got to experience a torrential downpour a few days ago. Fort Wayne natives have learned since they were this tall that we have a three-river system. The consequences of this system include complicated flooding.
And so does my beloved science center.
It was rather catastrophic when I appeared yesterday. Both restrooms were flooded (the men's more completely than the women's) and the cafeteria was pooling water. Water was oozing in pools through the walls into the traveling gallery and the storage area (about half of our employee parking lot is underwater). As I left yesterday, Shane, one of my supervisors, showed me the latest disaster: oil and water, leaking up through an iron grate near some mirror exhibits. It was left over from the days this used to be a power plant, he said.
"An historic mess!" I exclaimed gleefully.
Shane giggled, as only Shane can. Especially in a moment of crisis.

My job yesterday and today at this museum was to, for a four-hour shift, extract water from these new aquatic situations.
I'm not sure I can properly convey the overwhelmingly Sisyphean nature of this task using words. I will try.
Yesterday (Thursday) was not so bad. I got to move around quite a bit. Swept some water into drains. Repositioned a few vacuum cleaners in the bathrooms. For a while I simply monitored one. The frustrations set in as I worked with a vacuum in one corner and watched a water puddle grow larger across the floor. I fought nobly: I attempted to mop the puddle toward the drain in an effort to contain it, and then I noticed that the drain was clogged. Fan-fucking-tastic. So as I stood and watched the puddle grow larger, I began to feel powerless. I began to ask what I had done to anger the gods. As soon as I came up with answers to my own question, I stopped asking. But the fact is, I realized that I could not do anything about that growing problem, and must only work on the small part that I could do. But that was peanuts compared to today.

Today Chris, another supervisor, tossed me in the traveling gallery. Things were more flooded today, but we had more people, better equipment, and more efficient systems, I think. My job in the gallery was to clean up very large puddles that were forming. When I was done with the puddles, I could swing outside to help with other marine problems for a few moments.
Unfortunately, I got a push vacuum that only works if you pull instead of push and move at relatively glacial speeds.
I could almost hear Sisyphus laughing in my ear as I would work infinitely hard to remove a huge puddle--which involves anticipating the flow of the water, if you have to go really slow--only to turn around and see the ones that you just cleaned up starting to reform.
For three hours, I did this.
At one point, I almost accidentally overheated the machine. Joe, the maintenance man, stopped me. Little did he know that I would have loved to set it aflame.
After these three agonizing hours of rolling the boulder up the hill only to watch as it tumbled back, Shane came to my rescue with an astoundingly fast push vacuum. It was incomparably faster. I felt like I could bring in my hounds and harness them to make it a chariot. I wanted to name it. I think I almost cried.
Regardless, I didn't do this for long before being stuck in the storage area eliminating a huge pool of water with a vacuum that was very difficult to empty. It was about the fifth time emptying that damn thing that it slipped and I sliced my thumb open, blood spilling all the way down my hand.

Time to go the fuck home, I told myself.

Incidentally, I did not get home until after 9:00. I wanted to get a required employee urine drug test over with (part of the substitute teacher rigmarole) at RediMed. And RediMed is never Redi. I wonder if anyone has ever died in the waiting room simply trying to see a medical professional. I could believe it.
Well, I'm about to fall over and die in bed. I don't think I'll be waking up at all during the night, 3 AM or otherwise.