ok. punctuation and capitlization? not so much. too much damn effort. that requires typing extra. you know, stretching my already overworked little pinky over to the shift button. and folks, that just ain't happening. so, if you can struggle through the faux emo-style writing, you can catch up to where i've been. one word:

working

yep. i wish i had something exciting to say like "i went on this faaaaaabulous vacation to aruba and managed to pick up a few inexpensive housekeepers!" (that would truly make my day, a housekeeper.)

anyway. but i didn't. so i'll move on and stop obsessing at the thought of a nice little lady in a white apron who would clean my house...

i'm stopping.

the woman i work with just moved to the east coast five or six months ago. she moved because her husband was dying of cancer and his family only lived a few hours from their new homehere. she wanted them to be near during his final days. other than his family, she had no friends, no family, nothing. (she is from hawaii.) they have only been married three years. one year after they were married, they found out he had cancer. his condition worsened, he started having episodes (the cancer had spread to various body parts, causing various dysfunctions.) she would work our ten, twelve, fifteen hour days, whatever. and rush home to take care of him. i started pulling a few longer shifts, just to send her home early. at one point, she called me in the middle of the night, he had been rushed to the hospital and she had... no one. i stayed with her the night, and generally was a friend. yay for me. his family? not a peep.

he gets worse and worse, i'm taking more and more work, he is dying and his family still hasn't visited. finally, when he collapses and is taken to the hospital and she has to take off from work, his family decides to visit. he is put into hospice, she takes off work and his family goes back home.

so, let me summarize my confusing writings at this point: the man is on his death bed, she has no one to support her and his family has left.

these past two weeks have been spent trying to do both workloads and then spending the evenings in the hospital with her. i forced everyone at work to write a card with nice words it it. that was amusing.

"here. write a card for annie."

"what?? why? what do i say?"

"i don't care. just write a card, dammit."

"naaaaah."

"write the card, or i'm writing one for you that says 'sorry i was such a fucking nitwit asshole to work with. i promise when you get back, i'll buy you lunch every day and always listen to everything you say.' there. i like that. i think i'll write one to ME to. heh."

"gimmie the pen."

i was the only person with annie when her husband passed away last tuesday. not a priest. not a family member. but someone who doesn't even know how to say hail mary's.

reaching out to someone and easing their pain has been an amazing experience. alot of it was small things, things no one will ever know about. fixing her mistakes after she left. extra work. longer hours. forcing people to write the cards and then have them pretend it was their idea. buying flowers and saying they were from "everyone". generally creating the illusion that everyone cared. it has been so rewarding to watch it work. to watch her feel supported and cared for. and, in turn, the rest of the employees blossom and grow under her gratefulness. a nice little cycle, it is.

but yes. that's where i have been. i'm very, very tired. i am so tired of work and my office. i'm tired of staring at my desk. i'm so tired that today i genuinely thought it was wednesday. "oh? it's thursday? fancy that!" it doesn't matter when my next day off is, cause i'll still be there.

i need to start a hobby, or something. but it's rather difficult to find legal things to do after the hours of 10pm and before 8am. i think i'll say sleeping is my new hobby. yes! i like that. i realize i'm becoming terribly one dimensional. conversation is even difficult

"so, what do you do?"

"work. and you?"

"well, i work at blahblahblah and i love to do blahblahblahblah!!..... you?"

"work. i work for fun. i work for recreation. i work for work. i work for worship. yeah. i work all the time. all the time."

"oh. well. *silence* you have fun with that!"

my mother took it upon herself to teach me how to play bridge as a hobby. which, i thought was fantastic. upon sharing my key to a potential two dimensional life, my darling sister, who lives a multi-dimensional, sparkling and generally social life wrinkled her nose and raised her eyebrow. "bridge? what's next?! canasta?" she said bridge the way a person's grandmother who was lying on her death bed might say "negrophelia" when her grandson announced that was his new hobby of choice. sorry, joy, you can't always chose your family.

bwahaha. bring on the shuffleboard.

in related news, i recently found out a large group of people i work with think i'm in my thirties. THIRTIES! dear lord. do i dress that badly?! my figure that dreadful?! apparently so. because when they discovered my real age. their response? "no wonder we thought she looked so good for her age." so your saying that i look bad for my age? yeah. i could have answered that question.

oh yes. i'm a redhead now. which means i can have a temper. hooray tempers! i recently lost it with a salesperson. wherein i informed him that yes, i found it perfectly acceptable to speak to him as if he were a child. because, when i tell him something seven times and he doesn't listen the first six, how am i SUPPOSED to speak to him?!

also, i've become quite unfunny. i've lost that trademark spirit and fire in my family that demands we go against convention. i've become afraid of the man. i find this very sad. where once i was a trouble maker and spent my time not giving a damn, creating harsh memos for everything and generally endearing myself to everyone by saying what they were thinking. now i am all miss conventional and middle aged and play by the rules. and just typing that out makes me hate myself. maybe i need to go to a family reunion or something to get my fire back. i have no idea. but i think red hair is a nice start, no?

"And part of me feels so good.(I bet this is how Pooh feels after burping up honey.)"--DarthFredd

I miss this kid like The Dickens. I mean, he's this funny online but just as funny in real life. And cute! And sweet! And I miss him. Me loves me some Fredds.

My Sister The (Rookie) Salesperson Who Gave Up Her Decent Job To Sell Cars:

"This is fun! I. Love. Selling. Cars! Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!111!!!11"

Porkchop:

"Fun? FUN?! Whatever floats your boat, dear. I mean, some people's idea of fun and a good time is having sex with llamas. So, you know, fun is a very relative word."

There are times when I love my job. There are also times when my job makes me want to crawl out of my skin and scream. Now would be one of those times.

I've stayed late every day this week. We've been slow all day, but now ten minutes after we supposedly close, I have a showroom full of people and I'm expected to wait. It's far to glorious outside to be sitting in a dark office with no windows. Or, for that matter, to be locked in a building with all men who, in such weather, only want to talk about breasts and... breasts.

I want to cry.

Remember Salesman X? I understand, he's a little difficult to forgot. But I have another amusing little story about him. (Oh! If he could only read this and understand the hours of mirth I get out of telling and re-telling his tale of woe and embarassment. I'd venture to say he would need years of therapy.)

Pre Hand Job Incident, Salesman X bought a car from the company and I took care of his paperwork. I made a tidy little sum off of him (the profit off interest rates and product sales is purely at my discretion, I can choose to mark either up as high as I choose as long as it's within state limits) right around nine hundred dollars. Now, please understand, whether an employee is purchasing a vehicle or a regular customer, I am more than happy to bargain regarding product prices and interest rates. But when they don't so much as put up a fight, I see no reason to discount anything.

It was public knowledge that I actually profited the company off an employee, earning respect from my managers and good-natured ribbing from my salespeople. The general school of thought was that if he was stupid enough to let me, why not? He knew what he could get, yet he forfeited his rights of lower prices in favor of reaching across the desk, patting my hand and saying "I don't mind if you make a profit off me, as long as you make money."

*cue the wretching*

This past week, he decided to purchase another vehicle, this would be Post Hand Job Incident. He had taken quite a bit of flak for allowing me to profit the company, so he had a pretty fool-proof plan designed as to how I wouldn't make a penny. Which was more than fine with me. It's been a long month and I just wanted to get his paperwork finalized. Through the entire paperwork process he went on and on about how I will not be making ANY money off of him and how I would never "rip him off" every again.

However, his fool proof plan? His personal bank loan? Hah. Didn't happen. His bank of choice refused to loan him the money. Which meant that I was responsible for securing his loan. Now, let's all think about the logistics of this. Do you think, after everything I've been through with this sniveling weasel, I am going to even ATTEMPT to get any sort of favors pulled at the bank for a lower interest rate? You can bet your sweet rosary not.

So. He resigned the paperwork. Gratefully, actually. He was quite thankful that I had gotten him approved, period. However it was at a much, much higher interest rate than he thought he deserved. I gave him some nice little speech about refinancing the loan in a year. But the most beautiful part of the entire thing wasn't sticking him with an obscene interest rate, it was the quiet knowledge I just made the company a cool fifteen hundred dollars.

Since he was blissfully unaware of the $40 extra he would be paying in his car payment of interest alone, I was unable to say:

"Consider this a tax, for the next seven years you will be forced to think on a monthly occasion of how you should never, ever say foolish things about non-existant sexual favors. Actually, if you ARE getting sexual favors, you shouldn't be talking about it period. But that is another lesson for another day. Because, if you had just kept your vile trap shut, you would be able to SAVE that $40 and buy a handjobs on a regular basis. Any way you look at it, you got screwed. You didn't get a handjob in the first place and you most certainly won't be able to afford them now."