Hey there. It's freezing outside, and the wind is howling, but my flannel pajamas and the fact that it's Friday have lifted me out of the little pool of angst I've been stewing in for the past couple of days. I've been in a foul mood since Wednesday -- the Very Bad Day the title refers to. It went like this:
Wednesday morning, on my way in to work, I stopped off at the ATM and withdrew $30. I had about $4 in my wallet, but I neglected to go to the grocery store last weekend, so I knew I'd need to but lunch that day, and I was planning to stop off at the store and pick up some dinner on my way home. Plus, I needed gum, a Diet Coke, and some cigarettes that morning. I popped into the store, took care of the immediate needs, and went on to work. The morning was uneventful, and when lunchtime rolled around, I grabbed my wallet and set off for the cafeteria next door to work. When I got there, I looked in my wallet, and... no money. Nothing in there but a few confused moths. At first, I thought I must have dropped the cash I'd had, but then I remembered that, after I'd bought my stuff that morning, I'd put the change away in the wallet, tucking it inside the folded twenty dollar bill I'd had left over. I knew I hadn't dropped it. That meant it had been stolen from my bag while I was working. Fuck. I unhappily trudged back to the ATM and took out $20 more so I could eat, and then went back to tell my boss that there were apparently sticky fingers at work in the library. She was horrified, and immediately decided that the door to the staff office, where my bag resides during the day, must have been left open, allowing a stranger to walk in and pilfer the money. I'm not sure I buy that. For one thing, the bag was hidden under a desk, behind a hard drive, not visible to anyone walking by. For another, there are plenty of thing in my bag that are worth far more than the $24-30 the thief got -- my Handspring, for example, plus my cell phone, CD player, and the 30 or so CDs that were in the bag. None of that was taken. The wallet was emptied, then put carefully back into my bag, so it looked like nothing had been disturbed. I don't think a random thief would have done that -- if someone walking by had decided my bag looked appealing, they would have ducked in and grabbed the whole thing, and taken it somewhere else to empty it. (We've had a rash of thefts lately where bags are taken into the bathrooms and emptied, then stuffed behind the toilets and such.) Besides, would a stranger take the time to stand around in the office, just a few feet away from where I was sitting, to search through my bag for my wallet? I doubt it. So, I have a strong suspicion the thief was a coworker, which stinks. I like all of my coworkers, and I consider most of them friends. I hate the thought that one of them ripped me off. Plus, what with the money problems I've had of late, I don't need to be giving money away to someone who can't keep their hands to themselves. My boss made me send an email out to everyone, warning tham to keep an eye on their stuff, so I had bunches of people wanting to talk to me about it at work. It just sucked, in general.
The rest of the day was somewhat blah -- I was pissed off about the theft (not so much the money, because it's not that big a deal, but the fact that I have to lock my bag up and give everyone the hairy eyeball now) and we seemed to have a higher-than-usual number of patrons being rude and yelling at us for no particular reason. I left work that evening determined to make myself some dinner and curl up in front of the TV, with my brain turned off, for the rest of the night. It was snowing like mad when I left, so I was drenched and cold when I got home. I put on my flannel pjs, and called my mom to bitch about my day, while putting a pot of water on to boil for spaghetti. The stove is electric, and usually takes just a couple of minutes to boil a pot of water. I got off the phone about ten minutes after putting the water on, and noticed it was barely steaming, so I picked up the pot to see if the burner was working. When I moved the pot, a large shower of sparks, followed by flames and the smell of burning plastic, shot out from under the burner. (As Josh said, that really sounds like something that would happen to a Sim. I think I reacted like a Sim too, hopping around hysterically for a few seconds, before getting it together and shutting off the burner.) Thye fire went out as soon as I turned the burner off, so that was okay, but still... not good! So what do you think I did? Call 911? The fire department? The landlady? No, I called... my mom. In Vermont. The person who was least able to help. Yeah. I'm good in a crisis, I am. "Mom! Fix it!" She, being a smart woman, told me to unplug the stove and call the landlady. I found the plug and killed the evil stove of doom, then called Patrick to get the landlady's number and called her. The stove is all fine now, apparently -- the landlady thought the burner was shot, but when I took the burner out I found a wire that was broken and badly burnt. I left the door unlocked for her, and a note warning about the wire, and when I came home last night, it was all patched up. Hurrah. I used the stove tonight, and the house isn't a smoldering wreck, so it's all good. I have a blinding fear of fire, so I'll confess to getting up and checking the stove during the night... I'm feeling a little paranoid now.
In happier news, I'll be heading to Florida with my mom in May, to visit my grandparents and aunt and uncle and cousins. I'm looking forward to it -- we haven't seen them in a few years. Also, I applied for two librarian jobs yesterday, both at the same library in New Hampshire. They both sound really good, and they're in an area I like, so please, send me good luck wishes. I need a new job badly, and this would be a good step up for me.
Um. Yeah. Long time, no entry. You're not really surprised, though, are you?
I've been sick lately -- the Cold from Hell, which I initially thought was a sinus infection until the bouts of marathon sneezing and nose-blowing began. I ended up taking one full day off work last Friday (when I woke up with a fever and sinuses that felt like they were on fire, thus my suspicion that I had a sinus infection) and two partial days (when I had the full-blown Cold from Hell). I went to work last Monday and felt like death on toast, so my boss sent me home. I worked all day Tuesday, because a coworker was out, and felt miserable all day long. It didn't help that it was apparently Annoy the Living Hell Out Of Mary Ellen day, either -- all day long, all I had was either clueless people who needed to be led around by the hand, or people who were unbearably rude and demanding. Gah. Wednesday, I really wanted to call in sick -- I had spent Tuesday night sneezing, blowing my nose, and whimpering, while trying to watch Buffy through watery eyes, and I just fely horrid. I didn't call in sick because I wasn't sure the coworker who had been out that day would be back Wednesday -- she tends to take a lot of days off, and if she isn't there, I have to be -- and my hunch was correct. I got a message from her on my cel phone Wednesday morning saying she wouldn't be in, so I doped myself up with the strongest cold medicine I could find, and went to work. Even that wasn't enough -- I spent the morning trying to help students with a handful of Kleenex clamped to my nose, trying not to sneeze all over the place. When my boss came in, she gave me a stern look and asked why I hadn't kept my germs at home. I felt okay by then -- my nose was still running like a faucet, and I was sneezing every three seconds (Oh yeah, I'm sexy. That's right.) but I was so giddy from the medicine I'd taken that I didn't care. I didn't want to leave them shorthanded at work, but I also didn't want to spread my germs to everyone else, so my boss told me to go home, and not to touch anything on my way out. I straggled home, and spent the rest of the day on the couch watching mindless TV. The cold has mostly passed now, which is good, except that my nose is all chapped and sore, and I won't get to spend any more afternoons on the couch, snuggles under a blanket watching TV. Oh, well.
One happy thing: I'm going to Florida in May! With my mom! Hurrah! See, I was supposed to go to JournalCon 2 back in October, but what with everything that had happened in September, I ended up staying home. I was going to go anyway, but my mom asked me not to, and since I'm terrified of flying anyway, it didn't take much to convince me. The problem was, I'd already bought my plane ticket. American refused to refund it -- I called, and a very snotty woman told me I couldn't get a refund, too damn bad if I didn't want to fly. I emailed, and got no reply, until a month of two later, when a travel voucher for $235 appeared in my mailbox. Hurrah! I immediately called my mom and started pestering her to go to Florida with me, so we could visit my grandparents. This past weekend, I finally got the go-ahead from her to buy the tickets . I don't envy the poor woman who booked the tickets over the phone -- I was nervous and excited, and afraid I'd mess something up, so I asked 8,000 questions and hemmed and hawed and was generally a pain. She was sounding annoyed until I said "Hey, I'm booking these tickets so my mom and I can go see my grandparents -- wehaven;t seen them in almost 5 years, and I'm afraid I'm going to mess up or something." There was a long pause, and then she said "Oh, that sounds so nice! You'll have such a good time!" After that, she was careful to use very small words to explain everything to me, and was even patient when I had to call my mom on my cel phone (while still on the regular phone with her) to get a security code thingy for my mom's credit card. As soon as I got off the phone with her, I called my grandparents to let them know we were coming. My grandpa, who is normally very quiet and somber and stoic, ansered the phone. When I told him we were coming, he said "Great! Maybe we'll even pick you up at the airport." He also advised me to leave all my guns and expolsives at home, and said that, if I couldn't bear to part with them, I could always Fed-Ex them to Florida. Hee. (Okay, so maybe that's funnier if you know my grandpa. But trust me, it was hysterical.)
So that's a happy thing. An unhappy thing was having a fight over the phone with my brother recently -- we have this fight about once a year or so, and it just makes me tired, and sad. We were having a nice conversation, joking around, until he started listing off all of my personality flaws, one by one. He told me that I'm incredibly self-centered, and that the only reason I finished school and have a decent job is because I'm all "me me me me, and fuck everyone else." His evidence? Things that happened when we were little kids -- when I was 4-8 years old. Sigh. I've talked to my mom at length about it, and I can understand, I guess, what makes him do this. I just wish he could understand that I'm not trying to compete with him, and I never have. I don't think I'm better than him. I don't think ill of him, period. I think he's a wonderful person, and I love him more than he knows. (And I know this is disjointed and probably doesn't make sense, but there was a lot more to the conversation I had with him, and I don't want to rehash it all here. It just makes me sad, and tired.) I'm trying to shrug it off, but damn, it hurt. I like my brother a lot. He's smart, and funny, and a really sweet person. He's had a rough life, and he's made some bad decisions, but he made them with the best of intentions. he and I -- we're very different people. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. But I still admire him, and beyond loving him, I like him a whole lot, just for who he is. I'm getting tired of trying to make him like me -- I mean, I know he loves me, but I don't think he likes me very much. There's a difference, and... well, it just makes me tired, and sad.