Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Kaboom (A to Z Blogging Challenge, Day 11)

Note: This is my K post for Day 11 of the blogging challenge, which would have been April 13, but I'm running way behind, so I'm writing about Thursday, April 21. This is not the happiest post, so feel free to back out now.

* * *

The day started out roughly. I'd gone to bed around 12:30 a.m., which is too late to get any quality sleep when I have to get up at 7:00 a.m., but there was Netflix to watch and I'm a night owl on day person hours, so whatever, it was past my bedtime.

I got up at least twice to relieve my hamster bladder. (Yay, life over 40!) Each of the several times I woke up, I was surprised it wasn't time to get up yet. Turns out I kept waking up because I was overheated and not getting much relief from the box fan. When the alarm finally went off, I damn near leaped out of bed. I was ready to shower and leave behind the apartment I'd been hiding in since I got home on Tuesday.

I did my opening shift duties at work, reminding myself it was okay to go slowly. It was the same thing I'd said to myself when preparing to drive to work in rush hour and the rain. I had $3 and fed junk food to my hunger, knowing I would get real food at my dad's when we met for dinner. Still, I tipped from hungry to hangry pretty quickly, which is never good. I soothed myself by doodling.

I found out Prince died. No!!

Two customers arrived, one good and one who reeked of entitlement. Not today, snobby.

Good customer finished her transaction and left. Snobbo lingered at the counter, smacking her gum. Uggggggh stop stop stop NO DON'T BLOW A FUCKING BUBBLE! Whoa, Prince died! she said, as she ignored me and scrolled through her phone. Dear sweet lord please leave.

I resumed coloring. Manager came to the desk and asked if it had been busy. Noting that it was mostly dead, she brought me a task to do. Yay, work! Turned out to be about 5,000 fliers that needed to be cut in half with The World's Worst Paper Cutter.


It wasn't all on me to cut them, but it was around, oh, 1:00 p.m. and I was due to stay at work until 6:00 p.m., so away I went. Occasionally, I wouldn't pull down the handle sharply enough and I would completely fubar a flier, which my hangry balled up and hurled into the recycling bin.

A short while later, I had a flyer-cutting snafu while talking to a coworker... who then showed me how to properly use the paper cutter.


Thanks. I got it.

I cut fliers in half for most of the afternoon. For the longest time, I made no noticeable dent in the huge stack. I began to regret saying I would stay late to make up hours I won't be working this weekend.

Yet another coworker arrived and got all up in my personal space about three times. I'm feeling pretty stabby, so if you could back out of my bubble, that'd be greeeeeeat.

Every few minutes, I would take a break from cutting paper and check Twitter, which was exploding in Prince news. I unfollowed and then blocked a woman who took the world to task for mourning a celebrity they didn't personally know. I guess she was calling out people who never mentioned the person in question before and then got on Twitter like #RIPFavoritePerson #ForeverMissed #NamingMyKidsAfterYou or whatever, but this was a straw too far. She'd done the same thing after David Bowie passed and had tweeted a few other things I didn't like, so today was a good day to kick trash to the curb. I really like Prince and his death comes just a few days after I had a cry/mini-meltdown that was sparked in part by the oh-so-happy reminder that everyone I love is going to die. (It was a hard week.) That short sobfest, compounded by the deaths of everyone from Michael Jackson to Robin Williams, made me feel my mortality like a sliver of glass in my heel.


In the late afternoon, I had finished cutting about half the fliers and decided to leave work a little earlier than planned. I managed to avoid most of the afternoon's torrential downpour but still soaked my flip flops in a puddle. I took a nice, scenic route to my Dad's apartment and only encountered one asshole driver who bore down on me like I was his girlfriend on a conjugal visit. Hope you enjoy getting to the traffic light 3.5 seconds before I do!

The rest of the night made up for the weird-ass day. I finally got some food and beer, Dad and I went through some old family photos, I felt a sob catch in my throat when I saw a picture of an aunt who passed away almost 28 years ago, and I drove home while lightning flashed in the clouds. I looked up as many Prince videos as I could find online and cursed myself for no longer owning any of his music (such is the way when one abandons CDs and hasn't finished perusing iTunes for replacements). I wept a little, knowing I was crying for Prince's passing and crying for everything else too.

No comments: