picture half of this in limp exhausted capslock
Not my favourite day ever. Yesterday was also not my favourite day ever. Although it is a wonder what fresh-baked cookies and Orson Scott Card and a new lamp and fairy lights and a hot shower and a favourite sweater can do for one's mood, considering.
Yesterday: was running late for work because my contacts decided to go bad on me and I spent half an hour scrubbing at them desperately trying to make them stop going cloudy the moment I put them in my eyes. (Success: minimal. I wore glasses today.) Had Mum drive me at the last minute and had to calm down, I was so full of pent-up frustration and irritation and tightness. Got to work, was emotional for no good reason, started crying behind the calendars (honestly, right now I don't even remember why, except that I was tired and cross and didn't want to be at work and am tired of spending four hours every day accomplishing almost nothing), and then had about ten customers all day. aslkhdghghg. Also had a bloke (apparently?) trying to flirt with me by asking if I had read Twilight or Nicholas Sparks. (I said I read Twilight several years ago and did not like it at all, thank you, in my best polite voice. Also, I did not say, I find being flirted with as though I am a Girl Object extremely demeaning and I would put up a placard next to the register: Please Do Not Flirt With the Clerk Or She May Become Violent, if this might cause Management to raise an eyebrow or two. Also why would I want to text you when during ten minutes' worth of conversation we have not found one thing we have got in common? For once I was thrilled that I haven't got a mobile phone. ALSO ALSO, radioactively red hair is not "a weird colour for a homeschooler", thank you. We do not all wear denim jumpers and Birkenstocks.)
But Mum picked me up and I got a lampshade for the lamp I have had sitting unopened in my bedroom nearly since we moved here -- my last lamp having snapped in half some months ago -- and it is red and gold and Victorian-wallpapery and has got dangley bead fringe on and casts the loveliest golden-red light on the walls, and that combined with the fairy lights on the bed make my bedroom very cosy and interesting.
Today: slept nearly all morning, went off on the Angelmobile to Martin's before lunch to fetch Italian bread for Mum to make dinner with, discovered that while it is gloriously warm, it is also raining horribly, and while I love rain, it is not pleasant to ride in when one hasn't got a raincoat, and is wearing glasses, and when one is on a bicycle and so rides in the gutters so as not to be hit by cars, and all of the gutters are filled with an inch or so of muddy water, so riding to work would have been like riding in one great mud puddle, and all of my pants are currently out of commission, so I would be riding to work in a gigantic mud puddle in a skirt and stockings.
(Mum took me. But hey, Martin's had several loaves of my favourite rosemary olive oil bread, which I had rather worried they'd stopped making.)
Work went more quickly, except that I am currently menstruating, and got terrifically crampy early in my shift. ARGH. (Oh hey, that explains the wackier-than-usual moodswings and periods of weird over-sentimentality this past week!) People were sufficiently helped, and I sold gift cards, and only a few people put things back in really stupid places. But then I got off work and in the process of checking next week's schedule discovered that the schedule for Christmas week has been set up a whole week early, and I am meant to be working the day after Christmas when I won't even be here (we're going to my aunt's, and -- I kind of want to stay home, really, because this is such a lovely house to have Christmas in, and people wear me out more than usual, even though I love my aunt and cousins; but I'll have to talk all the time, and be that other self that is gregarious and cleverly funny and there won't be any sacredness at Christmas), and I thought I still had time to figure out our schedule and ask for the time off. (I did already have Christmas Eve off, thank goodness, because I'm meant to be helping at Dad's church.) And it was really horrible and I panicked and started sobbing right there in the back room, even though a moment after I read it I hadn't expected to become hysterical, and it took at least ten minutes to calm myself down enough to even go outside, and then I got into the car and started sobbing again and it was horrible. Mum took me back to try to straighten it out, and so I might be able to get someone else to cover for me, but I won't know until tomorrow, and ugh. I really don't even want to type about it anymore.
(Also: yet another Important Everyday Thing about My Employment that I did not get told: there's a calendar in the back room whereupon employees can write days they can't be in work ahead of time so that when the schedule's being set up those can be taken into account. THIS WOULD HAVE HELPED. [sigh] I like my jobs -- in some ways -- I really do. But I am tired and abrasive just now.)
But when I got home, Jonathan arrived with fresh-baked cookies, which was nice (Sarah and Hannah and Victoria already having reaped the benefits), and I feel much calmer now, although hot showers and lots of food tend to do that to me. I almost didn't even get on the internet; I nearly went straight to bed after dinner, but the shower has me feeling a bit decenter.
Yesterday: was running late for work because my contacts decided to go bad on me and I spent half an hour scrubbing at them desperately trying to make them stop going cloudy the moment I put them in my eyes. (Success: minimal. I wore glasses today.) Had Mum drive me at the last minute and had to calm down, I was so full of pent-up frustration and irritation and tightness. Got to work, was emotional for no good reason, started crying behind the calendars (honestly, right now I don't even remember why, except that I was tired and cross and didn't want to be at work and am tired of spending four hours every day accomplishing almost nothing), and then had about ten customers all day. aslkhdghghg. Also had a bloke (apparently?) trying to flirt with me by asking if I had read Twilight or Nicholas Sparks. (I said I read Twilight several years ago and did not like it at all, thank you, in my best polite voice. Also, I did not say, I find being flirted with as though I am a Girl Object extremely demeaning and I would put up a placard next to the register: Please Do Not Flirt With the Clerk Or She May Become Violent, if this might cause Management to raise an eyebrow or two. Also why would I want to text you when during ten minutes' worth of conversation we have not found one thing we have got in common? For once I was thrilled that I haven't got a mobile phone. ALSO ALSO, radioactively red hair is not "a weird colour for a homeschooler", thank you. We do not all wear denim jumpers and Birkenstocks.)
But Mum picked me up and I got a lampshade for the lamp I have had sitting unopened in my bedroom nearly since we moved here -- my last lamp having snapped in half some months ago -- and it is red and gold and Victorian-wallpapery and has got dangley bead fringe on and casts the loveliest golden-red light on the walls, and that combined with the fairy lights on the bed make my bedroom very cosy and interesting.
Today: slept nearly all morning, went off on the Angelmobile to Martin's before lunch to fetch Italian bread for Mum to make dinner with, discovered that while it is gloriously warm, it is also raining horribly, and while I love rain, it is not pleasant to ride in when one hasn't got a raincoat, and is wearing glasses, and when one is on a bicycle and so rides in the gutters so as not to be hit by cars, and all of the gutters are filled with an inch or so of muddy water, so riding to work would have been like riding in one great mud puddle, and all of my pants are currently out of commission, so I would be riding to work in a gigantic mud puddle in a skirt and stockings.
(Mum took me. But hey, Martin's had several loaves of my favourite rosemary olive oil bread, which I had rather worried they'd stopped making.)
Work went more quickly, except that I am currently menstruating, and got terrifically crampy early in my shift. ARGH. (Oh hey, that explains the wackier-than-usual moodswings and periods of weird over-sentimentality this past week!) People were sufficiently helped, and I sold gift cards, and only a few people put things back in really stupid places. But then I got off work and in the process of checking next week's schedule discovered that the schedule for Christmas week has been set up a whole week early, and I am meant to be working the day after Christmas when I won't even be here (we're going to my aunt's, and -- I kind of want to stay home, really, because this is such a lovely house to have Christmas in, and people wear me out more than usual, even though I love my aunt and cousins; but I'll have to talk all the time, and be that other self that is gregarious and cleverly funny and there won't be any sacredness at Christmas), and I thought I still had time to figure out our schedule and ask for the time off. (I did already have Christmas Eve off, thank goodness, because I'm meant to be helping at Dad's church.) And it was really horrible and I panicked and started sobbing right there in the back room, even though a moment after I read it I hadn't expected to become hysterical, and it took at least ten minutes to calm myself down enough to even go outside, and then I got into the car and started sobbing again and it was horrible. Mum took me back to try to straighten it out, and so I might be able to get someone else to cover for me, but I won't know until tomorrow, and ugh. I really don't even want to type about it anymore.
(Also: yet another Important Everyday Thing about My Employment that I did not get told: there's a calendar in the back room whereupon employees can write days they can't be in work ahead of time so that when the schedule's being set up those can be taken into account. THIS WOULD HAVE HELPED. [sigh] I like my jobs -- in some ways -- I really do. But I am tired and abrasive just now.)
But when I got home, Jonathan arrived with fresh-baked cookies, which was nice (Sarah and Hannah and Victoria already having reaped the benefits), and I feel much calmer now, although hot showers and lots of food tend to do that to me. I almost didn't even get on the internet; I nearly went straight to bed after dinner, but the shower has me feeling a bit decenter.