eRamblings

I absolutely love my new job. My only job. And it really doesn’t officially start being my new job for another day.

I walked out of my last job for the last time last night. It was actually very sad for me. All those wonderful people. The ones I have interviewed, trained and worked with on a daily basis had become a bit like my kids. They were all young and in school. New and begging to learn. It was so fun to see them all grow and change into these awesome team players. And then to have them say so many wonderful things about my leaving. It just made me want to cry.

But such is life.

It was the best time to move on. I couldn’t have left on a better note. Funny, my boss agreed with me. We had another long conversation before I left. He really was a great boss to me. Personally and professionally. I will probably miss him the most. He helped me through some of my toughest times while I went through some of my toughest issues. He pulled and pushed and even though there were times I despised that, in the end, he made me a better person; a better employee.  I can’t thank him enough.

Now I really need to make time to go through my new apartment and start organizing and putting away all the crap still left in the boxes.

I woke up this morning in the worst mood. Tired from the black friday weekend. I worked 17 hours on Black Friday. Toughest day I’ve had in awhile. By the fifteenth hour, I had reached the edge. The sixteenth hour I had a caffeinated beverage followed by a cigarette in hopes it would get me through. When I left, I felt like death. Completely and utterly drained.

I keep thinking how interesting it will be to see how my life plays out in the next couple of months. I will be only working one job, which is nice pay. I will be living in my wonderful, new mansion of a two bedroom apartment. I am dating this incredible guy. I just feel that I am getting to such a blessed point in my life. I am pretty sure I could be content being here for quite some time. I am hoping to get to a point where I can fit being a volunteer paramedic into my schedule. Always been something I have wanted to do. But who knows what life may bring.

MOM boxes = morning of moving boxes

This is where my mother tells me every day, twice a day, to make sure I pack my morning of box so that I know where to find the coffee machine and all my other necessities.

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Izabel is scared. I can see it. She runs to me about every ten minutes and gives me kisses (where she reaches up and touches her nose to my mouth, smelling my breath) and then stands there not knowing what to do with herself. She eventually retreats back to her one spot on the bed.  But I can tell she doesn’t know what to do or where to go. Tuesday, on the other hand, is psychotically making circles round the apartment. She runs at top speed knocking stuff over and hitting the walls meowing as she goes. Not sure if it’s nerves or just thrilled to have some space to run.

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I am literally shoulder deep in boxes. In the past two days I have packed up my kitchen, living room, office and dining room. Just finished the bathroom, minus the shower curtain and towels. Tonight I will be breaking down the closet and drawers while washing the sheets. And tomorrow I have the morning to finish it all.

Holy crap I don’t know how I’ll be ready.

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I’ve reached the point where I am ready to just start throwing crap in boxes. There is all this random stuff left and I am not sure how to organize it. The annoyed what the hell do I do with non-organized stuff usually throws it out, but I think tossing it in a box and writing misc on it should be good enough for now.

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It’s the morning of and I was driving home this morning to make coffee and realized that though I remembered to not pack the coffee machine, I packed every single one of my coffee mugs. (refer back to beginning of this post - mom boxes). I pulled into the nearest gas station and grabbed some coffee and donuts. As I was pouring in cream and sugar I noticed they have flavors, so I treated myself to raspberry flavor shots in my coffee. I gotta say I may be investing in flavor bottles just to spice up my decaf coffee. I can’t seem to find the Ghiradelli chocolate coffee I love so much. I have settled on Dunkin Donuts, but it isn’t flavored with chocolate or anything. I didn’t like the idea of buying flavors to pour in my coffee simply because I am spending more money, but it is nice to have the taste.

So here I am sitting in front of my desk, crunching the box underneath me, drinking my coffee and eating my donuts. Outside of the music I am playing it is very peaceful. I am relishing this because I know in about four hours my dad will be coming over to oversee the process.  When he wants something done he is a commander. That’s why I like it. Things get done, but once he gets here there will be no silence until the move is over. Again, why I like it. But for just a little while I am going to breathe. Sitting here drinking my coffee - the donuts are gone.

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Song of the day - here. (#4)

More from Wordless Wednesday

Dear dear shoppers I have been in retail for over a decade and thought I throw out a few pieces of things that I have come across that may affect the way you shop.

• If you are mean you will not get help. In fact it will only make my personality come out like I do not care. Because if you are mean, I do not care
• If you are nice, I will do everything in my power to help you
• If you approach me with the statement I realize you don’t do this, but - IT’S NOT GONNA HAPPEN. If you’ve ever worked in retail you are so aware of all the people who think they are the exception to the rule and you know that this is one of the things at the top of the list of things you will not do.
•  I cannot get the CEO on the phone. I am just one of the little people and will gladly take suggestions, but YELLING at me is kind of pointless. FILL OUT A COMMENT CARD it will go straight to corporate.
• Telling me “I can’t believe you don’t know where such and such is” even though we have a billion products is completely unrealistic.
• Telling me “I can’t believe you don’t carry such and such” is stupid because if you truly wanted to go to a store that has everything on the planet try searching google.
• Knocking on the door before or after we open will not get me to open for you. We have posted hours - use them.
• If you don’t have a receipt we do not know how you paid, how much you paid or when you paid and though you are all honest people out there (snort) I cannot take your word and give you cash back or put it back on the card you supposedly paid with.
• All food is charged back whether you just carried it around in your cart for an hour (imagine a gallon of milk) or brought it back because it is the wrong size, color, weight, etc. No we cannot donate it because there are weird mother f*&%$s who do creepy things to food. Don’t put food in your cart unless you really, really want it.
• It is so incredibly helpful if you hand a cashier, guest service person or just simply a clerk working any unwanted items rather than shoving them on the closest shelf. Imagine you are at home, would you just shove whatever on any shelf? Would you want friends and family to shove odd ball items on your shelves?
• Do not yell at me when I offer to help you and you don’t need it because when you do and I don’t offer - well that’s gonna piss you off more.
• Register etiquette - it is a must in order to keep my job to ask if you want a credit card. Get over it. Say no politely and move on.
• If you spill something, or your kid spills something, tell someone because the next person that walks by will inevitable slip and sue and that’s just a big pain in the ass. Remember it could be you that walks into that spill.
• If a worker gives you really great service TELL SOMEONE or fill out of comment card. Good people are a bit hard to come by and we usually only get the negative comments.
• Do you really think I (or anyone else for that matter) is going to tell you, if and when a certain product will be going on sale or clearance? Yes I do know that and no I won’t be telling you. Sorry.  You do realize I could lose my job for that.
• I understand people who want to look at furniture, before buying and taking it home, to see if there are any scratches, but when you are buying a $50 piece and then ask me to open four or five different boxes - WAKE UP - it’s a $50 piece of furniture, what did you expect?
• Those of you who return dead plants that you killed; the planting soil, the pot and all - uhm, I don’t know what to say to you, but really? Returning a plant? Why don’t you just return the food you didn’t eat which spoiled in your fridge.
• I am all about price matching and helping our customers, but when you read a sign wrong, well, you read the sign wrong and just because you read the sign wrong does not mean you get that price. Get over it. I do it too. But you read it wrong. Plain and simple.
• My least favorite comment and when I want to punch someone is when they say something to the effect of, “Oh, you don’t have it. Well I am just going to go to such and such to get it. They have it” Fabulous. Go to such and such. I don’t care, but standing there telling me like some two year old is really annoying.

The other day I woke up with a small headache and didn’t think much of it. With allergies being kind of crazy lately it isn’t something new for me. As I was getting ready for work I realized it really was a headache and so I took some aspirin, but an hour or so after I got to work it was a full blown migraine. I couldn’t see very well, my equilibrium was way off and I felt sick to my stomach among the other standard headache symptoms.  I went home and passed out for four hours, but when I woke up it was still there in the back of my head.  I got up and ate some food then slept again for about eight hours, but even then it was still there. It finally seemed to lessen when I officially woke up the next morning almost twenty hours later. I couldn’t believe it.

The migraine had come on so fast and it had stayed with me longer than I remember ever having one.

Now days later, I still feel as if I have a headache just lingering. I am concerned that it could turn into a migraine at any moment, but have been really light on the medication.

I am guessing if it isn’t allergy it could very well be a bit of stress. I have been feeling a strain with all that is going on in my life right now which is completely ironic because it is all good stuff, but I think the change alone has me miffed.

In about ten days I will be moving into my new apartment - finally for all the people asking if I have moved yet. I unofficially accepted an offer at my second job for full time employment I am just waiting for the offer in writing to give my two weeks at my first job.

Though these don’t seem like much to me they are huge, so many factors and so many possibilities of different outcomes. Mix that with the fact that I have been working sixty hour weeks and I am a bit overwhelmed. (and just a bit of a tid bit - I started keeping a toothbrush at Raindrop’s house last week)

I will have three days to pack all my stuff and one day to move it then a day to unpack and a day to clean the old place. I am pretty sure it is more than enough time to do it, but I keep wondering if I have enough boxes, if I will pack well enough, will I have enough people to make it easy, what about all the heavy items - and the worries just go on.

And as far as the new job go, with my apartment stretching my budget a bit I am trying not to focus on the fact that I hope I am good enough to keep my job. A friend of our family just signed on a new house and she has just lost her job. Holy cow, does that frighten me. Not to  mention just being new at a place gives me the willies. Not that I am not used to it being that we often moved while a I was a child.

It’s just this change thing.

I like change, just not at first. At first I fight it. I try to ignore it. Then one day I wake up and it is the norm and all is well. I know this. But it doesn’t seem to be making it easier.

Met up with a couple of my girlfriends and some of their girlfriends and basically had a blast. A couple of drinks and hours of dancing amidst a sea of people. I dig that.

Well most of it anyway.

What drives me nuts is the guys who insist on grinding their cock against your ass. WTF? Do they really think that is sexy? Do they really think a girl is gonna go home with them because of it? Course I do suppose it’s happened once or twice. But hello, I am not going to meet my future husband in a bar, then again I suppose that isn’t what most drunk people are thinking about at 1am.

We have devised a nice little plan that seems to work, but last night was oh so efficient. Whenever one of us is having a guy grinding problem we raise our hands in the air which signals to us that they’ve had enough. We grab that particular girl’s hands and swing them through the middle of our group and to the other side. Completely away from the guy, cutting off any entry to our circle. It looks like a simple dance move. No harm no foul. But let me tell you some guys are so clueless.  Couple of them kept edging their way around continuously harassing and just being an ass. Finally we got fed up and decided to tell them to bugger off which I hate because it should be a fun and relaxing night, but the guys get pissed when you tell them no.

Gotta say I also left with a bad impression of one of my closest friends. We were all dancing in our circle and out of the corner of my eye I see her hand grab something. I turn and she is taking a full beer from some guy we had exited from the grinding earlier and raising it to her mouth. I grabbed it, sloshing it over the edge and looked directly at her screaming “Are you fucking nuts? NO!!” And then pushed the full beer back into the guys hand. He looked a bit confused then shrugged. Not two seconds later I had to grab the beer from her again. I had had enough. I am not a frickin parent, so I turned the guy around and pushed him away from us.  I mean does she know nothing? You never, ever take a drink from someone’s drink unless you know them really well, especially if out and about on the town. Does she know nothing about roofies? I mean, who does that? WHO. DOES. THAT.???

Other than that I had an absolutely fabulous time considering I didn’t want to go out in the first place as it was after working a closing shift. I was a bit tired.

Song of the night right here (skip to 1:34/3:08 if you can) couldn’t find the much better remix version we heard last night though but it’s still the song we were all singing as we left

I find myself, almost two years later making similar changes that changed my entire life, but I think as before they are changes for the better. Not just baby steps in the right direction, but real moves to set me up for the life I want to live. The place I want to be in life, not just today, but many years in the future too.

My second job offered me a full time position today. They used to have a floor supervisor position which in the recent economy they hadn’t filled, but feel I would be a good fit. I haven’t accepted yet. We will retalk next week. I need to crunch some numbers and just make sure it is what I want.  But on all levels I feel like this company, this job is perfect for me.

It will make my outsides match my insides.

There was a day very recently that I left my first job completely upset - tired, headache, body sore and just truly wanting to go hide in bed to recoup, but I had to go to my second job that night. After ten minutes of being there, I completely forgot how awful my day had been before I got there. I was laughing and relaxed. Peace radiating from within.  The atmosphere at my second job is incredible. The people are wonderful, shockingly enough that includes the customers. I don’t even know what it is specifically that they do differently except that I am treated like a human being, not a robot who must work harder and faster at all times.

I am happy and peaceful right now. In all areas of my life, but one. My job. My first job is stressful and way too much at times. I deal because that is what I do. I am happy because that is who I am. But to replace that one last thing would make me that much happier.

Seems a bit unrealistic looking back to know that I have come so far and survived through so much.

Once again, I am changing where I live, what I do and solidifying who I am. For the first time in so many years, I finally feel like the real me. That bubbly, overall cheerful person who just adjusts to whatever because I don’t care what comes my way because I know it’s nothing to me. I will always overcome obstacles. Just the past decade it hasn’t been with as much gusto as I used to have. So much has happened. So many things I thought I had left behind, but really have been carrying the whole time. I have finally forgiven myself, those involved and the circumstances that became.

Now things just roll off. With very little effort or concern. Nothing can really defeat my happiness because it comes from within.

How very long and hard the road has been to allow me to see that again.

My happiness comes from within.

No one can make me feel anything. It is my choice.

No one can make me do anything. It is my choice.

I choose to be happy and at peace. I choose to be a good person, someone who is open to all people and possibilities.

Not to say I won’t have bad days because without them I can’t truly enjoy the good ones.  But it is breath of fresh air to have a multitude of incredible days.