Nothing much in Packrat

Really nothing to see here. I let time go by between entries because I don't really have anything to say. Even my paper journal suffers. Part of the reason has been that I have horrible allergy symptoms - I'm hiving in instead of hiving out, and this makes me feel full and crampy and very tired.

I love my job but lately haven't had the same gusto, the same will to do it, because of how unfair matters have been - giving raises to someone whose lack of doing her job is documented, and she's the highest paid person here, for example. Normally I pull out of it but this time - well, I've worked for my tribe in different capacities for about 30 years, including doing more than whatever my job entailed, and only now have I reached a point where I don't live paycheck to paycheck.

I'm also tired of others not doing their jobs. I have yet to receive reimbursement for my February trip - or should I say, proper reimbursement. The tribe sent me a check for well over 200 dollars when my expenses were less than $100. I turned that back in in March, but after three emails, a phone conversation and one in person, the matter is now finally going to get resolved because, I think, I cc'd the travel person's supervisor this time. It was such a simple matter but she never seemed to understand, and her email started out that she hadn't received travel clearance from me and didn't know what I was talking about but then she said she went to accounting and found my paperwork, supporting documents, and now she knew what I meant and it would be resolved. How hard was that to understand? They paid me too much; I turned it back in (after emails to notify her that I was doing so and why); then it's dragged on until now.

During our pow wow, the veterans fly the flags of tribal members who were veterans. Two of my uncles served in the Army; the youngest one's flag has already been flown (at my request). This year the veterans asked to fly the flag of my other uncle. I turned in his picture in uniform to the archives some years ago and asked for it so it could be copied for our pow wow program. The person over the archives has been looking for it in her computer, although I said I knew without doubt that it's in the archives. She didn't look for it right away and when I called (because I was gone when the deadline came and went, so the pow wow committee gave me leeway) she said she still had to look for it - she also has an assistant who saw it while working on the photographs - why not just let the assistant go to find it in the archives? Which is what is happening today, finally.

I finally got office supplies I ordered in JANUARY on FRIDAY. I even reordered them, and I'd had to get tribal letterhead from one of the government secretaries because mine hadn't arrived yet.

My counterpart forgot - again - that he was supposed to host our confederacy meeting; I used to contact everybody and add to the agenda but as I'm not going to do more than I have to anymore I haven't done it, so he forgets. We had a meeting anyway with one tribe missing. The two tribes represented both lived along the Mississippi and the other along the Missouri, so I call these, instead of our confederacy meetings, a meeting of the "SF of the Mississippi".

I'm working on my trip report - for a very good trip - and I feel the old flame coming back. I truly do love my job and marvel at times that I get paid to do what I do. One of my relatives went with my liaison (another relative) and me. When I pulled into the Effigy Mounds visitors' center amid all the lush beauty of the bluffs by the river, I said with a smile, "This is where I work when I'm here."

I haven't done a presentation since my big sickness and blanked, forgetting some things I usually talk about, but questions covered over the blanks I felt, and "they liked me; they really liked me!" Despite the blanks I felt, I still had to be told when to stop.

A highlight of the trip was a visit to a restored cabin, the oldest in the state still in its original location. I did something not usual for me; I saw the owner's truck parked in back (he lives there) and knocked on his door out of the blue to ask if my party and I could tour. He graciously allowed us in, where we talked and talked for nearly three hours!

He wasn't an absolute stranger to me, but I've not spoken to him in nearly a decade. We met when the committee that oversees an historic site associated with us took me to dinner, and they invited him because he volunteered there and is skilled in restoration. On my next trip, he hosted a dinner at his house. We had a cook out. On yet another trip, he met my mom, but I could never find his cabin on my own.

On my last trip to the area, an archaeologist showed me around the town, pointing out where mounds were or where structures had been built over them and old village sites, and he took me by the cabin. I don't normally drop out of the blue like that (I'm actually shy), but he just smiled and said, "Everything happens for a reason."

The Wordsmith had conflicting plans and couldn't go to dinner with us that night, so we planned on breakfast, and when I called for the when and where I told him that since he couldn't spend time with us we found another man to spend time with. He laughed. "I'm not surprised; you're very resourceful."

I received a book my counterpart has been working on since at least 1998 (his wife, my cousin, finally told him he couldn't tweak it anymore) and a panel about baby swings, and I bought books about the mound groups, paranormal Wisconsin, and a diary kept by a Southern lady during the Civil War (A WOMAN'S CIVIL WAR: A DIARY WITH REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR FROM MARCH 1862 by Cornelia Peake McDonald, edited by Minrose C. Gwin). Being a geek, and despite the fact that I bought some of these myself, I felt like it was Christmas!

So now I work on my trip report and get to relive that trip, and something stirs within again.