Bizzaro Land

The other day, I was sleeping. I often do this. I was, however, having a dream. About my work. Here it is.

First of all, I was swimming in the snow. No, I don't know why, but I was trying to get somewhere or do something, and one of my CSMs, we'll call him Cornrows Guy because of his hairdo (those of you reading this who work with me know exactly who this is), was about 7 feet tall and yelling at me to hurry. There was also some sort of wooden platform structure thing, but I'm not sure what was up with that. I was seriously trying to maneouver in like five feet of snow. It was ridiculous. Then suddenly, as dreams do, I was in some store (NOT my work, it was more like TJ Maxx or Ross), and I was walking behind my sister (who happened to be Christina Aguilera) and we were arguing about something involving my wedding and her stealing the show, and we started pelting each other with beauty products, which was when the area we were in turned into the express registers on the north side of my store, and it was covered in tiny travel deodorants and things like that and Christina Aguilera had really kinky blond hair cut short like Renee Zellweger's was in Chicago, and we were really mad and there was more pelting, and then I started to wake up a little, and the dream turned into a lucid dream and I started freaking out because we had made all this mess at my work and I was trying to clean it up and then I realized that I should tell a CSM about it and then I realized that it wouldn't matter because of the security cameras and then I went to go tell a CSM that is no longer a CSM (Buzzcut Guy!), and as I was about to cry at him with handfuls of deodorant in my hands, I woke up.

I am crazy.

Nerdy Book-Loving Girl

It's been awhile.  I'm completely exhausted.  I'm moving again at the end of May.  I have a job, I don't remember if I've mentioned that.

Honestly, I kind of don't care about playing catch-up right now.  Probably because I've had 3 hours of sleep and I work 1-10 tonight.

I'm alive, I gave up on The Scarlet Letter and Mrs. Dalloway and whatever the hell else I was trying to read.  I'm currently reading Lord of the Rings, and it's actually really good.  There's a few parts that you really have to be awake for or they sort of slip by you and you have no idea what you just read because you mostly stared at it and turned the page, but other than that, it's excellent.  I keep running across words I don't know that Tolkein didn't make up, and I don't have a dictionary and I'm usually at work when this happens, so I may never expand my vocabulary at this rate.  In any case, I'm almost done with Two Towers and am making my way steadily to The Return of the King.  It's a one-volume book I got out of the library, since I was having issues finding Two Towers when I started getting close to being done with Fellowship, and so I switched to the one-volume set, and hope I didn't miss anything.

So, I'm supposed to go with MB to her friend's house today to do laundry while she dog-sits, and we're supposed to leave in about 5 minutes and she hasn't even taken a shower yet, so we might not be going.  Hopefully the dogs don't poop inside or anything if she's late.

Edit approximately 30 seconds after I clicked publish: MB is now in the shower, hahaha, so apparently my thoughts were a catalyst or something for her.  Heeh.

Anyway, my birthday was yesterday and now I'm 25.  I'm going to go get coffee and hope that I get to take a nap before work.

Blargh

Life has been happening.

I quit the job at the survey place in favor of working for an actual corporation within my comfort level.  So I'm finally back in retail.  I've had two hours of training in the fitting room, three hours of training on the register, and my next time working is on black Friday.  Hopefully as a cashier, since I'm not trained on the floor and I would rather die than be in the fitting room.

I can't remember if anything else has happened lately.  Lots of things have happened, I suppose.  I don't really know where to start.  I never really know where to start.

I think some good things will be happening soon, though.  So, yay.  Also, I only have two more Christmas presents left to buy, one for M and one for my mother.  Everything else is done.  I'm so excited.  I still don't know if I'm going to do Yule or Christmas this year, but we'll figure something out.  I'll honestly probably have to work on Yule, and the store is closed on Christmas, so there's a pretty good chance that we'll have to do Christmas with me regardless.  Maybe.  I don't know.

My fingernails are finally growing back.  I'm still sort of trying to quit smoking.  I really should just quit.  Seriously.  I don't want to end up on oxygen when I'm older.

If I ever stop always being tired, I'll start posting more regularly.

Ballszilla!

I went to work two hours late (sanctioned) because I didn't get hardly any sleep last night, and today still managed to be tedious and long.  Woo!  I stood out there for an hour and a half this evening before I went home and absolutely no one would take a survey.  And the ones that agreed didn't qualify for a survey.  Goody!

While I was at work today, S had an equally long day rearranging the entire living room by herself.  Crazy woman.  It's pretty great, actually.  I'm now on the other end of the couch and in the corner by the windows, and I really dig it.  It feels sort of fort-ish.  Ha. Anyway, she did an incredible amount of work, and between that and digging out a bunch of clothes that were by the bed in the bedroom, she definitely kicked ass today.  Go S!!  Also, she found my other ballet flat I've been missing for four months that I swore up and down was under the couch.  It was under the couch.  And she found a shirt I've been missing for almost a year, so I'm really excited to get to wear it again.

I'm attempting to catch up on the laundry, since now that I'm working, it's not really getting done and everyone is out of clothes.  Joy.  Sometime in the next few days I am going to have to go through and sort all the laundry so we can have J take it downstairs and we can start getting it all washed again.  It's Mount Laundry in the hallway for now, though.  Oh god.

I'm taking Girl Child trick or treating on Halloween, and I'm all excited because I get to wear my glow in the dark Toy Story shirt and have it actually GLOW.  Yesssss.

While I was sorting the laundry out into what we need immediately tomorrow and what we can wait on for later this weekend, I got confused about some shirts, because S and I trade shirts around a lot.  (We both wear huge shirts when we're just hanging out at home.)  So I was trying to ask S about it, and I said her name, and she said, "Ballszilla!"  Because unlike a normal person, she greets people like this sometimes.  The hilarity was too much for me though, as it made me collapse laughing.  And then she yelled things like, "Floor!  Lamp!  Wall!  Dog!" and got great amusement from me laughing at this stuff.  I laughed so hard and for so long that I cramped my abdominal muscles and made my entire face hurt.  It was great.  She and Girl Child were sitting there laughing at me laugh silently, clapping like a retarded seal.  I love being here.

So today hasn't exactly been exciting or anything, but all in all a good day.  I'm too tired to write anything of substance, sorry.  If I could, I'd get all Link Round Up or ranty or some shit, but I'm just too exhausted to put a coherent sentence together.  I may do a picture update sometime soon, though, because I need to perform a camera dump very, very soon.  It's completely full.  I've got pictures dating back to April on that thing.

I'm obsessed with playing Solitaire on my iPod lately.  I don't know what to make of this.

And now, laundry!

I Am Bitchy Tonight

Well, I finally got to the point where I'm about to start mentioning even more new people, and I had to create a spreadsheet (Okay, a table in OpenOffice!) to keep everyone straight, since I don't use identifying information on this blog.

Today was kind of a busy day.  I'm really starting to not like RP very much - I liked her okay when I first started working at CAR (pseudonym!), but I'm seeing more and more that she's not a very nice person.  She sucks up to Boss a lot, and is his pipeline of information on what happens when he isn't there.  I don't like this very much (I can see why my coworkers at the fast food restaurant didn't like me very much), especially because she stole 3 different people out from under me today because she was being a competitive bitch.  CRN gave one of the surveys back to me, since I was the one who originally talked to them, and they decided to come back while I was bringing in someone else and talked to RP, who wrote her name on the screening sheet when she knew full well that it should have been mine.  So CRN gave it to me.  Woo.

Anyway, my other problems with her are that she's only 20 years old and has a baby that she isn't a very good mother to - she told me a story about how her son is so bad that when he was 9 months old, he said "bitch" and got spanked for it.  NINE MONTHS OLD.  What is this person doing with a baby, and why don't I have one?  I'd be a better mother than her.  And it's not like he said bitch, anyway.  He made a sound that sounded like it, while babbling, which is a thing that infants DO.  Christ on a stick, people.

One redeeming quality of RP is that she's stupid, so she agrees with everything I say, even bullshit.  Also, she thinks I'm a great singer, so it's nice to have the ego stroked a little bit, even if I know it's because she's an idiot with no life experience.

Anyway.  I'm starting to look for a better job, because I kind of hate this one sometimes, especially since Boss drinks on the job.  Actually, if he hadn't offered me the job on the spot, I'd have probably gotten a job with Old Navy, because they called for an interview on my first day at CAR.  Figures.

I think that's enough bitching about work.  Of course, I don't really have much to write about.  I had an idea for a story earlier, it just popped into my head, and I wrote down the one line that was in there, but I'm letting the rest float in my head for a bit before I put it down, because if it's actually good, it should stick.  (At least according to Stephen King.)  Maybe there's still a chance of me getting to write that novel I've wanted to write since I was a kid.  I would love that.

Anyway, I need to go and do stuff before I go to bed.  I have the house to myself tonight because J and S went to visit a friend of S's and they took the children.  Also, M is at work, so it's just me and the puppies.  Who are passed out on the floor.  I don't know how they are able to do that, since I've been really loud.  (I really love singing.)

Why is Coheed and Cambria so awesome?

Lunch Break Post

I made an error in my last post - the Toddler's birthday is not, in fact, tomorrow, but is coming up.  I should probably not write stuff when I'm tired.  Ha.

I'm at work on my lunch break right now.  I just found out what my first paycheck will be, and I'm so excited about it.  Part of me is a little terrified to spend any of it, in case this job doesn't work out, but I think it might for the short-term, at least.  I still haven't figured out who is going to be called what on here, and I don't have very much time at the moment to deal with it.  I'll work on it today, though.  Heh.

There really isn't much going on and my attention span is not the best at the moment because my blood sugar crashed right before lunch and I almost fainted.  Whee!  Also, my lunch is now over, so I shall be going.  I'm going to try to start posting more frequently again.

Update Fail

Okay, so I've been really busy lately.  I don't even want to touch this right now - in fact, I'm about to go to bed.  Here's a quick bullet-point update, which I may or may not fill out sometime over the next couple of days.

• I quit my job at the dry cleaner after four days because there were roaches around the clothes, the owner was dicking me around with getting my I-9 and W-4 filled out, and it was just generally horrible.
• The owner of the dry cleaner tried to refuse to pay me.
• Three days later, I got hired on the spot at a data collection place at my local mall, and I'm now a recruiter for bringing in people to do surveys.
• Life has been okay, except maybe a little sleep-deprived.
• I went swimming last night.
• I recently read Under the Dome by Stephen King and it was fantastic.
• We did an iPod switch again in the house not too long ago - I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, because I acquired this iPod when I was still posting regularly.  I have J's old Classic, Girl Child has my purple Nano (and my old pink Nano), J has S's old black Nano, and S has a Touch that she won in a drawing from her bank.
• With the Classic, I have enough room to finally get all my music on it at the same time, and I can even put movies on it.  I have Tangled on it, which is probably my favorite animated movie of all time, even better than Toy Story.
• It took 3 days to convert the Tangled file to iPod format.  I was sure my poor computer would explode.  It is inexplicably awesome to be able to watch a movie on an iPod.  No one else gets it, except Girl Child.
• Girl Child's birthday is on Thursday, and I have no idea what to get her.  So is the Toddler's, but he's easy.
• Christmas is coming, and I'm already panicking about present shopping.  Whee!

I may post at some point to give better details about work, once I get around to assigning pseudonyms for all the people I work with, because there's a buttload.  Woo!

There, I updated, is everyone happy now?

I May Just Die Now

Okay, so I don't know how the people with jobs have the time or energy to write anything worth reading.  I barely had the energy to make myself dinner.  Or the ability to get up and walk, for that matter.  I'm not kidding.  I spent four hours on my feet at work today, for the first time since I lost my job in December 2009 (when I'd regularly stand for 9-10 hours and be mostly fine), walking and shifting and reaching over my head and lifting heavy groups of hangers to bag orders, and that plus my decision to walk home (I was at the location within my perceived walking distance today) caused me to be unable to move around until about six hours after I got home.  I am not pleased with this development, and I really hope that my resistance to that kind of thing returns quickly, or I'm just going to die.  Maybe now.  Maybe I'll just fall over sideways onto the couch right now and just die.  Blah!

Anyway.. today I learned the Spanish word for stapler (es grapadora, apparently) and that you can get cramps in your knuckles.  I also learned that I need more pants than I currently have.  This whole owning only two pairs is not going to cut it for work.  Anyway, I worked for four hours today, and I've started helping customers for real.  As long as I stop forgetting that starch exists and remember to double-check the cash register when I close it, I think I'll be fine.  (My cash register training took less than a minute - I don't know how exactly to use the credit card machine, but I imagine I could puzzle that out myself if I really needed to.  I guess I'll find out on Monday.)  I actually really prefer the main store, where all the action is - it just feels friendlier, and I can walk there and back.  Please, scary boss man, let me have that location!

Today was also an excellent day at home - when I got home, S and the Toddler were outside because S was having a smoke, and you pretty much can't leave the Toddler in the house these days if you're going outside, because he will have paroxysms of grief over it.  It's kind of hilarious to watch (hey, the kid regularly gives me injuries, I'm laughing at him when he's ridiculous!), but it's really annoying to cope with, so he gets to go outside a bazillion times a day right now, and that works out well for everyone, pretty much.  Anyway, they saw me coming and he met me in the yard with a knee hug.  It was really, really cute.  After I went inside, I ate what was in my lunch box (I really don't need to pack a lunch for work - I never end up eating it, so I'm going to get grazing food instead) and watched Children of a Lesser God, which made me miss using ASL.  It also made me cry.  And I learned how to say "fuck you!" in sign language, which I'm sure will come in handy.  Haha.

J ended up waking up really early (about 4:30), and he wanted to get food, so S went to McDonald's for him, and the Toddler went along, and he almost climbed into his car seat on his own.  (I often put him in the car, so I've occasionally been asking him to try climbing in on his own.)  When they came back, I took him out of the car (S's hands were full), and I asked him if he could say my name yet, sounding it out for him very slowly.  And he said it.  Then he said it again.  And then he demonstrated for everyone else in the living room (Girl Child completely lit up), and then I used it as a form of bribery later when I was about to give him a bath - I told him if he said my name, I'd put him in the tub right then, and he immediately said it.  I'm pretty sure he knows that he's saying my name, S is really the smart one in that department, being his mother and all.  But oh god, what a rush!  Every time he says it, I just want to grab him and kiss his face off.  Totally made my day.  (Seriously, this is the absolute best part of my day today, and I mean that.  I would be more excited about him finally saying my name than if someone gave me $1000 right now.  Not that I would pass up $1000.)

Anyway, I played some FFX later in the evening, worked on my iTunes playlists some more (because I'm just never going to be done with the tweaking, I think), and then I had the idea to look up speech pathology, which I've been thinking about on and off for about 10 years now.  I think I'd like to become a licensed ASL interpreter and also get a speech pathology (or assistant) degree and work with deaf children and adults to help them learn to read lips and speak.  Maybe.  I've had a look at what you have to go through just for the interpreter certifications, and it's going to take me like four years just to get that, and usually a speech pathologist has a master's degree, so it's going to be a very, very long time before I get that, if I manage to do it at all.

Right now, it all kind of hinges on having a car.  Doing the math in my head, if I spend absolutely no extra money for about four months, I should have enough saved to get a car that runs.  Of course, Christmas is coming up, so I'll tack on an extra month for Christmas.  But in any case, I should be able to buy a car by this spring, and hopefully I'll have my permit issues sorted out so I can start driving.  (Though if I get the car and can't drive it yet, I'll just figure out how to make it be so S can drive it until I can drive it myself.  If she's agreeable - I haven't talked about this with her yet because I haven't had any prospects for getting money until this week.)

I can't think of anything else to say.  My brain isn't working very well - I'm really tired and I took two naproxen and a Zyrtec about half an hour ago, so now my brain is extra not working.  See?  I can't even make words be sentences.  But I'm off tomorrow, so I'm going to sleep a lot.