Banana Marshmallows

Some things make me unreasonably happy. For example, the song Missy, epic orchestral music, office supplies, cuddles, singing loudly, and banana marshmallows. (You know, those ones that are ALWAYS stale? I’m pretty sure they let them get stale right at the factory so that no one will ever know what they are like when they are fresh.) My relationship with banana marshmallows is a complicated one though.

I was walking through the kitchen, feeling kind of blah, and I decided I wanted something to snack on. After casting around for something to spark my interest in eating it, I remembered that we had bought a $2 bag of banana marshmallows (that were probably on clearance from Easter) and my face lit up like a frigging candle. There was no one in the kitchen to see how crazily happy I was about these stale banana things, so I continued to beam like an idiot for quite some time, until I walked into the bedroom with them and Bryan laughed at me. I’m not sure whether he was laughing at me because of the stupid grin I had on my face and the way I was holding the bag of marshmallows as if it were a teddy bear, or just at the fact that I’m sure he believed that I was going to sit down and eat that whole bag of marshmallows in one sitting. (Which I did NOT.) Anyway, that was a bit of a downer on my marshmallow high, but I still had them, and could be eating them at that very moment. So I cracked into the deliciousness and all was well in the world. After about two fifths of the bag of them, (I struggled really hard at picking a fraction for that number, because half was WAY to much, and a third was not nearly enough.) I decided that they were losing their appeal, and sealed them up and put them on the table beside my desk. My irrational glee at the idea of eating these marshmallows had passed.

This morning I woke up and sat down on my computer, because that’s what I do, and thought, without any trace of excitement, (because it’s really hard to be excited when you are just waking up, unless it’s Christmas,) that banana marshmallows for breakfast sounded like a smart idea. An hour or so later, I realized that I had devoured the entire bag. (Remember back when I was defending myself about eating the whole thing in one sitting? That’s because it took TWO sittings.) This made me depressed. At the beginning of the bag I was practically giddy with excitement about these marshmallows, and now I am downright sad about them. Partially because they are gone, but mostly because I feel like a bad person for sitting down and eating such a ridiculous amount of candy all at once, and partly because my stomach is upset because marshmallows and some freezies are the only things I have eaten all day, and also a little bit because I ate so many of them that I didn’t really enjoy them anymore.

Tl;dr: I was happy because I had marshmallows, and now I am sad because they are gone, and because I ate all of them by myself. My feelings towards banana marshmallows are complicated. The end.

Distraction

I had originally written a long and elaborate series of words about the tiny herb garden that I recently acquired, and then I remembered that I have to close at work tomorrow, ALL BY MYSELF and I am terrified, and that is much more interesting than me not knowing how to identify a bunch of plants. Maybe I will talk about my plant-related confusion another day.

So work. I am SO SCARED to close tomorrow. It is a Monday night, so hopefully it won’t be busy, but I don’t have a good driver helping me, and I don’t want to have to call the store manager in the middle of the night and ask her what the crap I am supposed to be doing, so I will have to figure it out. I am just concerned that ten million people will decide that they want pizza at 10:30 on a Monday night and I will have to make them by myself because I will be the only one there because the driver will be out delivering ten million pizzas. I am also concerned that I will forget how to do all of the computer things that are necessary for a close because I still haven’t ever had to do them myself without some serious prompting from someone else.

I guess time will tell. I’m sure I will have a ridiculous story to tell tomorrow night, but I will be too tired to tell it, so maybe the internet will hear about my exploits on Tuesday. We’ll see.

The Work Day from Hell

(Note: I’ve decided to use fake names for my coworkers because I am not sure how they feel about me talking about them on the internet. Not that it will really help, but at least I can feel like I am providing some kind of anonymity.)
Today I ran the store for the first time. For eleven and a half hours. From opening, at 9:30, (after getting out at 12:40 AM on my close last night,) to a scheduled 8:00, which turned out to be 9:00 when I finally got out. I had Will there helping me out, but it was still largely my problem to deal with things that came up. It was a Thursday night, so needless to say, it was stupid busy. People like pizza on Thursdays. Something about it being pay day or something. Not only was it ridiculously busy, my first shift as manager, and my seventh shift ever, but I was saddled with the two worst drivers in the store.

The whole day was a bit of a fiasco, but the worst didn’t really start until the dinner rush. My drivers were alternating on boxing pizzas, which is always a bit dicey, because while one of them seems to be able to read the labels, the other just takes the first box and the first pizza and puts them together, regardless of what the label says. Needless to say, disaster ensued. At LEAST two pizzas were switched around and delivered to the wrong places. I only heard from two customers, at any rate. Who knows how many suffered in silence. I shouldn’t let the drivers box, but if they don’t do it we’ll be even slower. One set of people called back and were really good natured about it. We were swamped with deliveries, so they said that they would come out and pick it up, and all was well with that order. Another wronged delivery recipient called, and were much less friendly about the whole ordeal. (You can’t win ‘em all I guess.) At this point I had a lobby full of people, I was the only one on the phones and front counter, Will was buried in pizza orders, and my drivers were both out on unnecessarily long delivery runs. I am pretty sure I sounded like an absolute idiot on the phone with these people, as I had like ten people trying to talk to me at once and I was trying to get advice from Will on what to do for these people. In the end they opted to come pick up their order too, because god knows when my drivers were going to get back in. So they brought back their pizza and talked to Will about the order. I was too busy freaking out and being frazzled to talk to them, and Will seemed to have it under control. He took the old pizza, (though why that was necessary I am not sure,) gave them the fresh one, and all appeared to be well. After another little while of running around like an idiot because I didn’t know how to deal with it being as busy as it was, Will and I noticed that the pizza we had taken back had vanished. One driver had gone home and the other had no idea what happened to it. I just pray that it didn’t get brought out to a customer, but I am seriously worried that it might be the case. I suspect that I will hear about it later, and who knows what will happen, in that case. I know I would fire me, if I were the boss and that is what has happened.

The Most Interesting Part of My Day So Far*

Here I was, being all domestic and cutting up an onion in the kitchen, and this quiet sort of constant hum asserts itself on my awareness. I don’t really notice it for a while, cooking happily and blinking away onion-tears, but then I realize that it is getting louder. My directional hearing has never been very good, so I am not surprised that I can’t really identify where it is coming from. I assume it is a sound from outside somewhere and move on to crushing garlic in a damn poor excuse for a garlic crusher. As I listen to the ambient sounds of the house, I realize that this noise sounds something like a motor. In fact, it sounds remarkably like a small motor boat, skimming over water, complete with the pulsing rhythm as it skids over waves. For almost a whole second, my brain is satisfied with that answer. There must be someone boating. That’s fine.

Wait, what?

There is no body of water within miles of here that could support that kind of boating, never mind within earshot through closed doors. What the hell could it be? Then suddenly… It stops. I shrug and move on with my life, stirring spicy things into my pot of pungent mush. I go into the living room to check up in the internet, when all of a sudden: BANG! - from above me. What the hell was that? Is the woman upstairs throwing furniture? Then comes a terrible sound like the house is going to come crashing down on my head - Have I told my family that I love them lately? I’m about to be crushed by the two upper stories of my house. Should I try and make my peace with god? The bookshelves are shaking, the light fixtures are trembling, the whole building is about to come down, I’m sure. - Oh no, wait. That’s a vacuum cleaner.

          *Aside from my conversation with my most faithful reader, of course.

Disaster Averted

Aside from some very minor, and not particularly amusing disasters yesterday, I would say that my first day of pizza-making was a success! Actually, I think it may have been one of the less awful first days on the job that I have experienced. Let me tell you though, rolling pizza dough is exactly as hard as it looks. (That is to say very hard.) A person needs a lot more hand-eye coordination than I possess, but I managed to avoid throwing any dough across the room, so good on me.

The fact that I will eventually hold the title of ‘manager’ at this place doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot. More responsibilities, like a quarter more per hour, and otherwise exactly the same work. But what can you expect at a place where there are never more than two people working at one time?

On a non-pizza related note, I made some really revolting cupcakes this morning for no reason whatsoever. I had a box of cake mix and a sleeve of cupcake… sleeves (?) so I made cupcakes. As it turns out, you really can’t substitute margarine for shortening in that kind of situation. You will wind up with frosting that is nothing but margarine and sugar, and it will not be at all delicious. At that point, Bryan showed up and saved the day with a stroke of genius a flash of inspiration chocolate syrup. Now I have a bowl full of watery, poo-coloured frosting that is fit for a king. Or maybe a starving baker.