I am not a girl of summer
Not only do I not enjoy hot weather but as I get older it effects me quite adversely. We are currently in the middle day of a 3 day intensely hot spell - hovering around a 100 with oppressive humidity. I wish like hell I didn't have to leave the apartment and my a/c but I was not only scheduled to work today but I also volunteered for a shift tomorrow - I did that last week before I knew the forecast. Although to be truthful since I need the money I'd probably have taken the shift anyway.
When I got to work at 10 this morning the first thing they did was send me outside to the garden center to give Carol a break. By that time it was in the high 80s with nasty humidity and even though I was under cover and it's open enough out there to catch any stray breeze AND there was a fairly high powered fan pointed directly at me I was still a gooey, sweaty mess after 20 min. Thank god they didn't try to send me out for her hour lunch because I would have had to flatly refuse. I'm susceptible to heat exhaustion. It made me incredibly sick a couple of times when I was younger. I sweat so much that my skin can't breathe and instead of cooling me down it just makes me hotter. I don't know how Carol (and a couple of other ladies) stand it. But Carol has problems with the cold but not the heat. I can take the cold. Vive la difference! Even inside it wasn't that cool and it wasn't just me that was suffering. And they won't let us have a plug in fan at the registers. You can bring in a battery powered one but that gets pretty damn expensive after awhile. By the time I got off at 4 pm I was gooey and sticky and a little nauseous and light-headed and head-achey. When I got home, for the first time the temperature in my apartment had gotten all the way up to where I set the a/c at 85. Of course I'm usually home before the hottest part of the day, too. Oh well, after tomorrow it goes back down to it's normal high 80s and low 90s. I'll just have to persevere. And I feel like such a whiner when I think that there are people enduring this with no a/c at all. Hell, I used to be one of them. Maybe I'll just shut up now.
I know the heat makes people cranky - hell, I'm one of them! - but for gods' sake people, pick your battles! It's amazing what people choose to get pissy about. One woman wanted to pay her credit card bill with me. I apologized and explained it wasn't something I could do but that she could take it to Customer Service (about 20 feet away with no lines) and they'd be happy to take care of it for her. She just about flipped out and went on a rant. By the time she wound down she could have been halfway through paying and that much closer to going on her way. A man was pissing and moaning that we were charging $1.98 for eclipse glasses. He said he wasn't going to bother. Not bother safely watching one of the greatest shows on earth when all he'll have to do is pay a lousy $2 and step out his front door? Oh well, his loss. While I was on my way back on my first break a man stopped me in lighting and was wanting some pretty specific information. I told him I'd get someone to help him. He started bitching and wanted to know why I couldn't help him. I informed him that I was helping him by finding him an employee that could give him the correct information instead of the dis-information he'd get from me. And one man kept both me and the 2 people behind him standing around for 2 minutes at the register while he chatted on the phone. I was the only cash register open at the time and it was only 2 minutes because I didn't wait any longer. After 2 minutes I cleared out his transaction, pushed his cart to the side and waved the lady behind him forward. He immediately got pissy and hung up his urgent phone call. I explained very nicely that his call seemed to be quite important and I didn't want to disturb him but that I didn't want to keep everyone else waiting either. To which the lady said, "Thank you!" while staring at the man. People, I know that probably 90% of the First World population is practically grafted to their smart phones but please! hang up when you get to the register. That's just rude and incredibly inconsiderate.
One of my customers today was in the disaster management office of Jackson County (where I live). He saw the 'eclipse glasses' we're selling and we began talking about it. Even though the fallout of the eclipse will more likely be under the purview of the police (crowd control, people pulling over on the highway when the eclipse occurs, etc) they've still been gearing up for it. I hadn't thought about it but damn near every hotel/motel/camping ground has been booked for a couple of years. I guess we have people coming into the area from Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. to study and photograph the eclipse. Crazy times people, even now that we know an eclipse isn't a harbinger of the apocalypse. Or is it?
OK, 3 hours after getting home, taking a shower and sitting my ass in front of a fan (which I can now turn off because the apartment is down to 76 degrees) my headache and nausea have finally abated so I think I can go get myself something to eat. Then I'm going to watch the newest episode of The Mist and probably go to bed and read for awhile. Even though I stayed up until midnight last night to try and sleep in this morning I was up by 6:30 because that really is sleeping in for me. I won't fight it tonight. Oh, and btw, does anyone have a favorite recipe for yellow squash they'd like to share? One of the guys at work brought in a big box of squash and cucumbers and I helped myself. One of the ladies at work scoops them into boats and fills them with chicken enchilada filling, ladles on the sauce and covers them with cheese and that sounds pretty damn good. I also saw a recipe for squash puppies - hush puppies with pureed squash in the batter. They're supposed to be very tender and moist and they looked great. A nice way to turn something very carby into a little more diabetic friendly.
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