I'm not a superstitious person, I think it's silly. I mean, my PO Box number is 666 (and yes, i do have fun explaining that to people, esp. very superstitious people who have to type my address in for some reason but who cannot bring themselves to actually type 666...). And, unlike one of my co-workers, I don't feel this is an "evil year" because there are 3 Friday the 13ths in "09. However, having said all that, today was one of those days that I wish I could blame on the date.

I had to be at Cracker Barrel at 8:30. I normally swing through drive-through somewhere and grab breakfast on the way, no big deal. But half way to work the low fuel light come on, even though I had put $15 in it just a few days ago. Turns out one of my siblings, you know who you are, had taken the car to a Mardi Gras parade last night and forgot to refill the gas tank, Great. Well, I didn't have time to deal with it but I decided I would deal with it on my way home.

While I'm eating I pull my e-mail up on my phone and see that my work schedule for Old Navy had come in. Great! I pull it up to see if I finally had more hours this week, they've been skimpy lately. I have 0. None. Nada. I'm not working a single day. So, now I'm really ticked. Note to self, go by ON on the way home and see what is going on.

When I get into the kitchen my store manager calls me into his office, tells me to bring my list of work for the day. Tells me that he is going to edit it down, he wants me to have an easy day and get out early because I've been staying late so much. Sounds good to me. He then proceeds to change my sheet around until he's added at least an hours worth of the work, simply in different areas, then smiles and heads our front, leaving me staring at his back. Several hours into the day he does send me some help for about 1 1/2 hours, but she is not the most... efficient worker, and so only gets about 45 minutes worth of the work done. Still, it's a help.

In the meantime we've had 2 grill cooks call in, and another leave 5 minutes into her shift. The opening cook finally has to go (several hours late) and so we have a server and a manager trying to run the cook line. Plus, they are really pushing desserts and the servers were out-doing themselves today. They aren't hard for me to do, but each one takes about 1-3 minutes, depending on which type it is and if it needs anything special done to it. Not a big deal, until they sell like 45 in one shift. Then it's a big deal, because I don't have extra time set aside to do them, I have to keep my other work up as well. So now I'm really far behind.

I'm supposed to get off at 1. At 12:30 one of my co-workers starts going on and on about how we are out of roast beef. It's a long story but suffice it to say that she and I don't get along, so I ignored her for awhile but I finally had a chance to get the roast beef cut. I'm not kidding, she has to have, loudly, brought it up with other people at least 5 times in under an hour, each time pointing out how my failing to do my job is keeping her from doing hers. Since we are out of the meat I clean out the stuff I'm working on and get it cut so she can get in the oven (I hadn't earlier because I had been specifically told to cut it last thing before I left, but sometimes it sells faster than we plan). After I get her a couple of trays I take them over to her section and leave them for her.

A couple of minutes later I hear her yelling about me to one of the managers, pitching a fit because she doesn't need it and doesn't know why i have to go around piling things in her area and making a mess. So the manager brings it over to me. I, angry at this point I will admit, explain that she;'s been pitching a fit to have me cut it for her and that we are out. The manager is like, 'Well, we're not out, there's plenty in the oven." I stare at her and she says, "Look, we just need to pacify her, ok?" and she walks away.

I'm not making this up- my eye starts twitching. I cannot remember the last time I was upset enough to twitch. Not that this one thing was so big, but she constantly tries to undercut me and make me look stupid/incompetent in front of my co-workers and managers and then to have a manager tell me that I needed to try and pacify her.... I very much wanted to show them how much I needed to be pacified but I restrained myself and just put the meat away.

By 2 my other manager is like, "Just clean up and go, you're over on hours." At 3 I ask if I can just go. My work isn't done yet, I've been given so many little "oh, just do this real quick before you go" tasks that I am no further ahead than I was an hour before.

Finally free, I head to a Mexican place to meet my car-gas-using sibling for lunch. That's when I remember the car is out of gas. No worries, I'll trade with them and they can put the gas back. Near the end of the meal I find out that isn't going to work, because there isn't have time before their job. And they can't after, because they have to meet their friends for a movie right after work. <sigh> I take the gas money and weave through the back roads to the gas station, hoping I won't run out before I get there. Then I head to the bank, to drop off my paycheck in the ATM.

It's being serviced.

Ok, Wal-Mart before the bank. The parking lot is packed so I have to leave the car on the far side of the lot and weave through the crazy traffic on foot. Surviving my experience I trudge through the door and am hit by a wall of pink and red. Somehow I had forgotten that 2/14 comes after 2/13 and Wal-Mart is PACKED with people buying gifts. There are mountains of stuffed animals and stacks of chocolate and employees shoving armloads of flowers into coolers. And it hits me- there will be no crappy purple bear or half-wilted flowers given to me tomorrow because I do not have a guy in my life. And suddenly I very much want someone to give me a crappy purple bear or half-wilted flowers. Or, more accurately, I want to be in a relationship-state in which Valentines Day might, for once since elementary school, actually not be a sucky day. But that's not going to happen in the next 12 hours. Utterly depressing.

After what feels like an eternity in Happy Happy Love Land I finally find what I'm looking for, stand in line for 20 minutes to buy all $10 worth of the stuff, and escape. It's pouring down rain. Cold, gray, heavy rain. By the time I sludge back to my car I'm soaking wet and freezing to death, it was 70 this morning so I don't have a coat with me. Ok, back to the bank and then home to warm up.

Pull up to the ATM, stick in my card, yadda, yadda. It starts processing. And processing. And processing.

"We're sorry, your transaction has timed out. Please retrieve your card and try again."

There is buzzing and clicking but no card. After I poke the slot a few times it starts buzzing again.

"Your card has been retained. Thank you for banking with Wachovia."

I can't back up because there is someone behind me. I can't pull forward because I don't want the machine to decide to give the folks behind me my card. So I have to slide out a door that can barely open, tightly squeezing between the car and the building. This means I rub rather hard against the car. The wet car, covered with sticky dirt the rain has loosened. In my uniform shirt. Did I mention it's white? And that the dirt is a lovely deep shade of black? Anyway, I trudge inside and tell the woman at the counter what happened.

"Oh, yes." She laughs. "It was hanging up earlier. Give my your drivers license and I'll go get it for you."

"it's in the car."

"Well, you can't have your card back without it."

Back through the rain, squeeze back through the tiny gap, find my drivers license, back through the rain into the building.

After the woman chats with her friend she finally disappears into the back. Some time later she shows up with my card and another ladies card, who has since come in. They take care of her first, because they know her. Once everything is settled the teller offers to finish my transaction, if I want to bring my check inside. After I tell her I'll just wait Ms Perky reminds me that she'll be off Monday because it's a holiday, and again she asks me to just bring my check in. A smile frozen to my face, I assure her that I am in no hurry.

When I get back to my car I have a voicemail from my mom, reminding me that it's almost supper and I volunteered to cook tonight. Guess what I had forgotten? Thankfully, half way into my story about my day she decided my dad and she would just go out and Matt and I could scrounge something up when we got hungry. And, bright point of the day, she found Crocs on sell and bought me a new pair! And new Croc flip-flops. So that's cool.

It's a hot shower, some pjs, and a call to a friend later and I feel better.

But my left eye is still twitching.

Thought I'd give y'all an update on what's been going on around here. About a week and a half ago my grandmother (my dad's mom, the only grandparent I have left) fell and couldn't get up. My aunts took her to the hospital and her blood sugar was extremely low, so they were going to keep her for a day or two until they could get it stabilized. That has turned into them finding out that she has a very nasty place on her heart (they debated putting in a defibrillator) and a mass/tumor (probably cancer) in her colon. When they checked the tumor they found that it had ruptured her colon and so she had gunk dumping into her abdominal cavity.

So, they did surgery yesterday and removed the mass, repairing her colon as best they could. She's stable, but in critical condition and in ICU. On top of that, they also found out yesterday that she has VRE, which as a antibiotic-resistant infection. Also, they are checking her lump nodes to see if the potential cancer has spread. So they are dumping a ton of drugs into her to try and combat that. My mom has been up there for a week to be with her, and my dad is going up tonight to get her and see MeMaw again.

My family would greatly appreciate your prayers right now, it's been rather stressful on us all.

 

I realize that this blog is horribly, terribly outdated. I was busy, and then when i found out that i wasn't going to Norway I didn't even want to write here anymore. But now I do. I want to write, and I want to stay in touch with y'all, my friends and family. So I write again! Keep my accountable, send me nasty letters promising all sorts of terrible things if I don't update. K'?

This afternoon I was driving my dad's big, ugly, rusted farm truck with the window rolled down and the sun on my arm and Keith Urban blaring and I realized, “I missed this.” I have missed the feeling of being a country girl, regardless of how little of one I may have been before. I like my huge ugly truck and my country music and my crazy fluffy hair. I even like Alabama, though I have no intention of living here forever. But right now, this is good.

Last Saturday I went to New Orleans to an open house at one of the colleges I'm considering going to next fall. To tell the truth, I was surprised. I was homeschooled, then at a tiny private school. I was not ready for a public school environment. It's old, and smelly, and a bit sad looking. But the program is sound and I like their equipment and the teacher I talked to, and the students in the film department seemed happy with what they were getting so maybe I should adjust my expectations and get over it.

New Orleans... It's a city. I'll give it that. But I'm not sure it's a city I want to live in. I was walking down in the French Quarter and the humid air recked of sweat and beer and pee and musty buildings, a smell so thick that it pushed back when I tried to breathe. The streets were covered with trash and there were drunks and adicts and homeless men on the corners. The clubs were blaring music at deafening levels, a different song attacked my ears at every doorway as the men working the doors tried to lure me inside with promises of 3 for 1 drinks or free body shots. Photos of fully nude women, and men, hung in windows at eye level, with neon signs over the doors promising “Full Bottom Nudity”, “Personal Lap Dances”, or “Female Impersonators – You Have To See Them To Believe it!”.

Don't get me wrong, there are parts of the city I love. Old shops filled with treasures, antique jewelery and first run books and plume pens. Wonderful restaurants that just catching a whiff as I walked by made my stomach growl. Beautiful buildings and parks, filled with live jazz music and art and street performers.

But there's such a terribly sad underside; nasty and rotten in places, in others simply tragic and heartbreaking. When I left, after only one day, I just felt tired. So tired. And so I ask myself, do I want to live there 4 years? Can I live there 4 years? I don't have an answer to that question yet.

           

   

Hiding out in Denver 

 

I think Dave Berry hit the nail right on the head.

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?

A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?

A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?

A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?

A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?

A. Shut up.