the silly hat continues

I’ve missed just a handful of days of not wearing my Ogg-esque hat. Once was for getting up late, once was for just not giving a shit, and twice was so I could put my hair up in a bun and wear this awesome little “bloody” bow that had a little plastic meat cleaver on it. While wearing the meat-cleaver bow, one of the older ladies that words in another department told me my hair looked sexy. I couldn’t stop laughing.

On the plus side to wearing the tall witch hat, my store manager was able to see me the other day and say over the walkie “Turn around and come back the way you came.” She was able to see me over some rows of stuff and then informed me of some…gross stuff that I needed to “sanitize immediately. seriously. sanitize it.” because a customer smelled so bad she got visibly nauseous (at least it wasn’t a rehash of the person who trailed runny shit through the store)

A few short hours later, our newest supervisor stood with me to the side and just went off on a verbal rampage. She’s usually pretty chill and easy going, but the issues she ran up against made her tell our manager that she didn’t want to be a supervisor any longer if she was going to have to put up with the bullshit that she was put through. (Unfortunately, I have to be vague because it’s Store and while I am already paranoid enough, I really don’t need more reason to believe that people are stabbing me in the back)

Continuing about work: We had a little note attached above the time clock stating that if we wanted to dress up on 10/30 and 10/31, we have to pay $X, which goes to our store/company sponsored charity drive for those in need. While I think it’s awesome that we can dress up this year, when we absolutely could not last year, I really don’t see why I have to pay. The work “uniform” already makes us look like idiots enough as it is and I’m allowed to wear a silly hat through Halloween, so why do it? I don’t see why I should. And hell, if I want to be more “dressed up,” I can just do Victory Curls and finagle a wear to wear my little orange witch hat.

…in other news. I am not sticking with one book to read right now. I’m reading a handful. Anansi Boys, trying to re-find American Gods because I have a couple of copies on the kindle and some of them are messed up for whatever reason, The Sea and Little Fishes, The Science of Discworld (the first one), Mort, and Carpe Jugulum. I’m thinking of going for a Ray Bradbury or another Best New Horror, maybe David Morrell (I think he’s on the kindle right now).

I also decided, because I don’t think things through, to work on a baby blanket for Jamie’s boss. It’ll get rid of some of my yarn and hey, why not. I’ve never done a little baby blanket so it’ll be interesting.

Jamie thinks it’s a great idea and I figure if I can get a few projects done and out of the way, I can go buy more yarn.

meh

My eyeballs itch. My allergies are going haywire and I’m waiting on Firefly’s allergy to kick in (she’s allergic to fall. $200+ last year to find out) so we can be itchy together. But I think mine are mainly from spending hours ripping out this weird vine, this giant monstrosity of a berry bush, cutting down shrub/tree limbs, and hauling it over to our side of the fence.  I spent all day yesterday snotting, sneezing, and either blowing black out of my nose (leaf mold) or blood out of my nose.

I told Jamie my idea of keeping some of the tree limbs to the side so we can cut them into bits and use them in the firepit for Halloween and Firefly’s birthday (November 1st). It shouldn’t be too terribly hard to put a couple limbs to the side, but it’s something that we’ll have to work on later.

Jamie told me his idea of how we should throw Firefly a little birthday bash and invite a few friends over to hang out and love on the dogs. Firefly turns 8 this year (which means Bug and Hobbes turn 8 in February, and Cricket turns…2 or 3 sometime next spring/summer). We usually make them little tiny birthday cakes (because I have these awesome mini-cake pans!), but Jamie happened to find a skull-shaped cake/cookie pan and bought it, and we think it’d be an adorable idea to make her a Day of the Dead style cake. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be fun!

It just means I’ll need to buy a giant container of peanut butter because Bug ate the jar of peanut butter we had set aside for the dogs

yay insomnia

My insomnia is coming back with a vengence. I had…two? three? days of glorious partially rested sleep and now I’m back to not being able to sleep. The downside is, I woke Jamie up so now he’s wide awake.

So! Stuff.
(I’m trying to remember to update this thing)

I’ve decided it’d be a good idea to make a list of the books I’ve read. I wanted to see how many I can get to in a year (or a couple months, whenever I forget to write them down and whatnot). I started with October 1st because I had finished reading The Shepherd’s Crown by Sir Terry Pratchett. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

+ The Shepherd’s Crown by Sir Terry Pratchett
+ Eric by Sir Pterry
+ The $64 Tomato by William Alexander
+ Best New Horror #7, edited by Stephen Jones
+ Equal Rites by Sir Pterry
+ Best New Horror #5, edited by Stephen Jones
+ Uncle John’s Haunted Outhouse Bathroom Reader
+ Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Sir Pterry
+ A Slip of the Keyboard by Sir Pterry

As you can see, I’ve been on a Sir Pterry kick again.

And hey, that’s 9 so far. I’m currently going between Mort (Sir Pterry), Uncle John Presents Book of the Dumb 2 (it’s one of the bathroom readers. they’ve got interesting little factoids in them), and The Science of Discworld (quantum physics! I’m pretty sure I’ll start up a horror novel sometime soon to spice things up a bit.

I’d love to get my hands on Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson (aka: The Bloggess) because I read her blog and I have her first book. It was a tossup between her and Sir Pterry and, well, Sir Pterry won out. I have no doubt that I will get her book soon.

In other news:

Jamie and I did yardwork today. His dad stopped by to help, so they did the yard while I ripped apart this weird berry bush and the damned vine that is determined to keep growing. It took me approximately 3 hours, but I got most of it up (98% of the time I was over on our neighbor’s side of the little fence because it went haywire on their side. they encouraged me to have at it). The brush collection people are going to hate us this week. I have two piles of brush that come up to my knees/hips, and one pile that is currently over my head. When we go to move the brush to where the brush collection people will actually pick it up (thank you Roanoke for being so weird), I’m going to have to spend some more time sawing bits of it down so they’ll actually take it (max. length is 6ft and I know I’ve got a few peices that are way longer than that!)

And then I spent forever trying to curl my hair for Noah and Rene’s wedding today. I ran out of time, so I wasn’t able to get the front of my hair done, so I did it up in Victory Curls instead. I had a few girls compliment me on how neat it looked. And I tried to get a photo of it, but they all turned out crappy (boo). Oh well, I’ll be doing Victory Curls again soon so hopefully I can get a decent photo of it then. (the plan is to do it for Halloween. I’ll be wearing my Nanny Ogg hat and I think adding the Victory Curls with it will change it up and make it look neat)

And now that I’ve got insomnia again, I have the urge to make a “Layered Cake” (from Firefly) inspired tutu. Not for the dogs, because they’ve already got one that I need to tighten up, but for myself. And a couple other ideas for some tutus that would be fun to do.

yeah…whatever

I was informed recently that Jamie is “distracting me from doing my job.” How? I really don’t know. Apparently one of the overnight managers got all pissy because he was wandering around looking at stuff and happened to pick up an item that didn’t belong on a shelf, so they had to stomp up to where I was and tell me that a) he doesn’t work there (no shit) and 2) they’ll “pull me into the office and coach me” themselves. I had to repeat myself that I had no idea where Jamie was, I thought he was sitting and reading, and I was too busy re-setting registers to deal with whatever is going on.

Apparently I am not to be believed. This manager told me that they were going to inform my manager (ok) and “this needs to stop, now.”

Ok, so in the almost three years that I’ve worked at Store, I have never had an issue with Jamie showing up a little early before I needed to be picked up. Even when I was in the back of the store doing stuff and Jamie was sitting on a bench near me and the store manager walked past while I was doing stuff, it’s never been an issue.

We’re under the impression that this manager is going to try to get Jamie banned from the store. It’s kind of funny because the store manager likes him, my manager likes him, he’s volunteered to do stuff for the store manager and my manager (little things like pull out trash bins from registers while I’m dumping others). He’s a paying customer, and now he’s making it a point to buy a little something each time he shows up and this particular manager is there.

I can’t even talk to my manager about what’s going on because she is on vacation (again), but I told my supervisor and she thinks it’s ridiculous. I told one of the other managers and his response was “Pshh, they’re crazy. Don’t listen to them.” I think maybe it’s because they don’t have someone awesome like Jamie (their loss. Jamie is awesome)

I’m trying to not dwell on it. It makes me irritated. And I think I pissed them off because my only response besides “I was doing xyz” was “ok.” I think they were betting I was going to react negatively or something. I like to think I’ve worked retail long enough to usually not get caught up in that kind of petty crap.

Speaking of buying things:

Jamie bought me the Charlie cookie jar! I’m so excited! I love Charlie; I think he’s adorable. Jamie said that he felt that he should buy me one because he’s had bad luck with our cookie jars lately (two tops broken) and we really need another cookie jar with a top.

Getting ready for Halloween

This is not all of them. Some are in a bag so I don’t re-wear them this month.

I thought it’d be a fun idea to wear a pair of my silly earrings every day until Halloween. Jamie is all for the idea and has encouraged me by buying a couple new pairs. I don’t think any of my coworkers have noticed what I’m doing and I’m fine with that.

I’ve failed wearing my skull heads the entire day because they are heavy and were starting to hurt my right ear, but I made it through most of my day. I’m having fun with it.

Also, we’re allowed to wear silly hats (the stipulation is we have to wear the hat every day until Halloween) and I’ve been wandering around with a witch’s hat (bright read with silk flowers, I call it my Nanny Ogg hat). Most people stop me and tell me they think it’s adorable or looks good with my face shape, coworkers are telling me that I’ve either stolen it from our store manager or tell me that it’s the perfect fit. I’ve had one person ask me where my broom was (in the shop) and multiple people ask me if I’m the good witch or the bad witch (depends on the situation)

I was wearing the hat and grabbing something out of the stock room the other day and had to laugh a bit. I’ve recently finished reading The Shepherd’s Crown (by Sir Terry Pratchett) and realized that Tiffany Aching is right. There is no good and bad witch, there’s just the witch who’s doing whatever is in front of her. I did the job in front of me and went to the next.

While wearing the Nanny Ogg-esque hat, I’ve had small children follow me screaming “It’s a witch! Daddy! It’s a witch!”, children being told that they are lying when they try to tell their parents that a witch just walked by and I have turned a corner, and on one occassion, have had a small child scream because “the witch is coming to steal me.”

Wow. What do you people teach your children?

So…plans

…I can’t even remember when I last updated this thing.

I have a plan and the plan involves updating this thing as well. I realized that when I go to update my tumblr, I write more than just a paragraph or so and it looks really weird. At least, to me it looks weird (and I’m too lazy to look up how to do cuts on it). So, I figure if I want to write stuff up, like plans and whatnot, it’d be better to just do it here. Even if it is only for myself.

So.

Jamie brought up the idea of having a goal notebook and he told me about it. It’s take 5 to 7 goals and make two your main and work towards achieving them. He asked if I’d like to do it with him and I said sure. His goals and my goals are slightly different, so he has his notebook and I have mine. He’s got four or five goals he wants to work towards while I currently have two (besides finances, that is a goal both of us are striving towards. I’m not counting it on here)

The first goal is to become a little bit more…spiritual? Or, at least, be a little bit better than the super lazy pagan that I am. I do not intend on carrying around a Book of Shadows and whatnot, but I want to see if I can do something for the eight holidays besides what I do for the three I usually celebrate, which is light stuff on fire and have a beer. (I usually do something for Samhain, Yule, and Beltane). It might be the usual light-stuff-on-fire-and-drink-beer, but it’ll be something.

The second goal is to work on my artsy-fartsy stuff.

I’m being a little more descriptive on my art goals, for instance:

+ Work on comics
– 4 thumbnails
– 4 penciled sketches
– 4 inked
– 4 finished
– Scan them

Then again, I need to scan all the comics I’ve done lately. I figure that if I can work in sections of 4, I can get more done and feel more accomplished by getting them done

+ Work on writing
– minimum 400 words per writing, although this isn’t a must. I’ve got a flash fiction piece that comes in at about 160 words and I think it’s pretty cool
– Work on finishing stories (this sounds easy, but I’m terrible at finishing stories)
– have a friend, or Jamie, read and critique

+ Work on yarn crafts
– I have lots of ideas
– hats
– scarves
– socks
– little toys
– stress balls
– etc