Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Rude Awakening

Yesterday my kitten, Portia, got hold of one of those plastic rings that come off of gallon water jugs. She played with it for hours, tossing it up in the air and jumping after it, pouncing on it, throwing it across the room and chasing it, etc. It was adorable.

So this morning, when I was still barely awake, I didn't think much of it when she was playing the same way on the bed. I just figured she had that plastic ring again and was having herself a ball with it. And then her toy landed on my neck.

Yes, it was a dead mouse. :-/

Monday, September 7, 2009

A Night at the Operation

Jeffrey Cohen nearly made me embarrass myself at Mazzio's. (Which would have been really sad after I spent all day yesterday embarrassing myself at Casey's and Walmart!)

I'd been wanting to read his Double Features Mysteries for quite some time, but I hadn't seen any of them in local bookstores and I rarely buy online anymore. Well, today I was lucky enough to find a copy of his latest, A Night at the Operation, in Sedalia Books and Toys so I snatched it up and took it with me to read while I was eating. I made it to page six before one of his off-the-cuff one-liners caught me by surprise. I was just glancing away from the book for a second to look at my plate and I literally did a double-take. And I had a mouth full of salad, so it was almost a spit take!

I haven't finished the book yet. I'm at chapter nine and saving it for the laundromat tomorrow. It's a fun book, well-written and I'm enjoying the main character's sense of humor. It's also fun reading a book by an author I've seen often on the Dorothy L list and I enjoyed finding my own agent, the fabulously sharky Janet Reid, listed in the acknowledgements as a bad influence blogging buddy.

No more spit takes, but I'm warned now and enjoying this immensely. Now I'm going to have to get my hands on the rest of the series!

Unarmed and yet dangerous

I think the lesson here is: never volunteer. NEV-ER VOL-UN-TEER!

About a month ago one of the managers asked me if I could work yesterday, Sunday being my regular day off. I said sure, but then all the managers got moved around and we got a new manager from another store and in all the confusion I didn't get scheduled, so I volunteered and they scheduled me. They scheduled me, in fact, at eight o'clock in the morning, which is five hours earlier than I usually work

To console myself for having to drag my sorry self out of bed at six A.M., I stopped off at Casey's for a nice cappucino and that's where it all started. One of the clerks came up behind me quietly while I was looking in the donut case and when I turned around I elbowed her in the small of the back. Hard. She said she was okay but it had to have hurt her. It hurt me!

Embarrassed and appalled, I paid for my donut and cappucino and started to leave. As I was making my exit a nicely-dressed elderly gentleman approached, so I tried to hold the door for him. The lid came off the cappucino, it hit the ground and spattered all over the poor man's pants!

All I could do was apologize and leave before I hurt anyone else. As I backed out, the clerk I'd elbowed was helping wipe English toffee spatters from the gentleman's shoes with a napkin.

Turning into the Walmart lot, I almost dropped my donut. Twice.

I finally made it work, where everyone was gathered around the front windows watching two or three young men getting arrested and having their car searched. (Nothing like being drunk and disordely on the Walmart parking lot at 8:00 Sunday morning!) Then, let's see . . . . I almost hit Shelena with the produce cart. Then I almost hit Keith with the produce cart. I dropped about a half a dozen boxes of cookies, kept sticking sell-by labels to each other instead of to the product, and paged for a manager when, as it happened, I didn't really need one. Oh, and the vending machine ate my change but kept my corn chips.

I also discovered that we got in the first shipment of cider this season, but I didn't spill any which, under the circumstances, probably counts as a minor miracle. By the time I got off work I was almost afraid to drive home, but at least I've learned my lesson.

Never. Volunteer.