Blah blah blahppity blah!

Yeah, that about sums it up. As usual, all workin workin workin, and not much play. Pretty soon I'm going to take a chainsaw to the nice old man in my life.

I've also not been posting because the past two weeks have been pretty rough and you just get tired of writing the "Woe is me!" posts. You want to write about good news or funny stories, but both are running a bit thin. As Chris Rock said,
"Stop telling me the same shit, over and over! Why don't you go out and get kidnapped, have some new shit happen to you!"

In some good news, I haven't had to work with Angie, hardly at all, since my last post. She's gone to days for the most part, where she's making a whole new batch of friends. Our paths barely crossed over the weekend, though she was up to her old habit of assigning tasks to fellow employees -- the ones who don't challenge her. There's this teenage boy named Christian. He's about 6'4, somewhat gangly, with a mop of blonde hair covering his blue eyes. He's just a sweetheart, and rather harmless, kind of like a great dane puppy. As I was standing there, he was paged by Angie, who, on her way to punch out, started assigning him things to do. "I'd ask J.," she said, "But she hates me." Well, not that I want people to think I HATE them, even if I do, but at least it's good for something. "Tell her 'no!'" I exclaimed. He just kind of shrugged nervously and smiled. I felt like patting his head.

I finally closed with her on Monday night, and was completely shocked to find her behavior totally different. She was quiet, she wasn't constantly paging fellow employees, nor did she do her drive-by inspections. Even the other employees noticed it. I did what I always do when I completely can't stand someone - I stayed out of her way. I know there are people in our lives we may really dislike, but I also don't believe in treating them like dogshit or trying to start stuff with them. Basically, my philosophy is back off and leave them alone. Put as much distance between them and I as I can. If they want to mess with me, I can respond, though I find that so tiresome. So, I've left Angie to her own devices. That girl will hang herself.

Another piece of good news is that for the first time since I started at Shop-n-Smile at the beginning of March, I will have THE ENTIRE WEEKEND OFF! Yes, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (they tend to think that just giving you ONE of those days off is some kind of privilege). They have recently rotated bosses around at the store, and the new one is a true Shop-n-Smile disciple and pushes everyone to be the same. I just want to go, "Dude! Look around you! You've got tired, old fart me who's working a second job, and a bunch of teenagers coming here after school. We're not converts, we just need some extra cash." After numerous promises of lightening my schedule (we've had about EIGHT employees quit in the past three weeks), and numerous promises broken, he finally did what he said and gave me one free weekend. I'm so giddy I can barely stand it. Tomorrow will be my 19th day straight working 8-13 hours a day, so as you can imagine, I need the break!

I have no idea what I'm going to do, especially since Beau will be working full-time both Saturday and Sunday, but I hope it involves lots of low-key things like sleeping, gardening, playing Civ IV, cleaning our yucky apartment (we hardly eat or just LIVE in the place anymore), teaching my cat how NOT to steal my pantyhose, and watching lots of gory forensic shows. I've been dying to fly my kite which is still in the packaging, and REALLY want to go tubing, which is a big past time here, but that'll have to wait for another time. Maybe we'll even squeeze in dinner and a movie one night.

And in even better news, Beau and I will be celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary in early July. I'd like to say, "Wow, the year went by so fast!" but Ha Ha Ha! No. It was a long and crazy year, but a really amazing one too. It's going to take a whole 'nother year just to recover from it. We've lived in four states (if you count NYC for me and our brief stint in Wisconsin) and two countries. Here's hoping we can tone that down to one country and/or one state from now on.

I've even asked for the whole anniversary weekend off and we'll be going camping up near Libby, Montana, where there are lots of "Beau's special places." For him, it's the kind of places where you are hip-deep in a river fly fishing, with mountains all around you and NO ONE (no one), for miles and miles around. Very A River Runs Through It. It sounds really nice, and a little scary. I've been slowly collecting camping equipment for the big trip (three days is a BIG trip for us), though Beau thinks I'm insane for insisting on bringing the air bed.

- "It'll pop."
- "No, it won't. And besides, I got this gorgeous blue blanket to take with us...it'll be so great. I got it for 65% off and it's Columbia brand, so you know it's good. And it's just like a down blanket, but you can WASH it! And what do you want us to do, sleep on the GROUND?!"

I know the cowboy inside him is screaming his fucking head off.