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To-day was a bit on the stressful side.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened to make it stressful. I'm starting to think things are finally back to normal with a co-worker who was displeased with me for awhile. None of my customers were particularly crabby or stingy or overly needy. I was glad to be in a section on the floor I rarely get. I even almost won free lunch (almost being the key word. Curse you, Becky, for selling faster than me! I shall defeat you next time, MARK MY WORDS). Then, I got all riled up in a discussion with fellow co-workers about the crap that is the servers' schedule. There is so much drama surrounding this schedule, it might as well have its own show on Lifetime. For reals: if you want to strike up a conversation with a server who isn't being particularly chatty, mention the schedule and prepare for the floodgates to wash away. Everyone is displeased with the way the scheduling manager is handling the organization and distribution of shifts (disclaimer: the previous manager who dealt with scheduling DID NOT have this kind of trouble. It helped that she didn't copy and paste every week's schedule from the previous one, just to save herself time on account of being RIDICULOUSLY LAZY. Rant over). I was having yet another complain-y session with a few co-workers, addressing my quandary of never getting night shifts when I was clearly not hired to simply work during the day and make $5 a shift, when I realized that A. all my constant bitching and moaning was not helping my personal, emotional health, B. I hadn't done anything to try to address the situation except hedge and joke about how I want more night shifts with the scheduling manager, and C. the co-worker I was having trouble with, BECAUSE OF SCHEDULING CONFLICTS - who I recently started getting along with better - was RIGHT THERE while I was complaining about the very situation that led to our drama. OY. And also, could I BE any less tactful?
That was probably a rather confusing and way-over-explained tangent, but it lends to the portrait I'm trying to paint here. I was stressed out at work. I was exhausted. I had just worked a very long day after two days of doubles and another night shift (I picked it up, because HEAVEN KNOWS I don't get scheduled to work nights!), so I was completely drained, both physically and mentally. I texted my family to see what they were doing for dinner and secured an invitation to join them for my mum's homemade chicken tortilla soup.
Next scene: go to parents' house for dinner. They aren't eating, they're putzing around upstairs (they're in the process of redoing the upstairs bathroom. It's going to look gorgeous when they're finished, but in true Dado fashion, it's taking bloody forever). Wells is clingy and wanting me to help her study for government - hello, a subject I hated in high school. Also, I'm done with school, babes. Like I want to pick up a textbook when my brain is fried on a Sunday night. I start reading a catalogue they received in the mail from my alma mater (Go UD!), and my mum keeps interrupting me with inane, detailed questions while I'm trying to read. All things considered, I'm not in the pleasantest of dispositions, and I'm sort of taking it out on my family, snapping and being all short-tempered and crankypants and whatnot.
We finally sit down to dinner, and my beautiful little sibling proceeds to make my night by making it her personal goal to cheer me up. This is the same kid who, not so very long ago, would have snapped right back at me just because that was the age she was at, to prove she's just as snarky as I, to win the upper hand. Ever since I once again moved out of the house and we started working together at the 'bee's, she's been so incredibly starved for my attention that she literally clings to me when I'm trying to leave my parents' house and begs me to stay just a little while longer. It breaks my heart every time. My adorable, grown-up-way-too-fast baby sister is seventeen years old and will hug me tightly for five full minutes as she tries to convince me to hang out with her more frequently.
Photo from this summer. I ADORE this little girl.
People say we look alike, but we just don't see it.
At dinner, Wellie is at her most insanely random best, pulling out all the stops in her attempts to make me laugh. Mum and Dado are, of course, wonderful as well; Mum cooks some Philly chestnuts after dinner as a treat, and Dado randomly places a single M&M in front of me every time he walks by - dark chocolate, of course. Finally, after we've been finished for awhile and are reclining in our chairs chatting, Wellie gets up an whispers something in Dado's ear. They get up and do "the dance" in a wildly successful attempt to make me laugh uncontrollably. I wish I had a video to post of the hilarity, but I shall have to resort to humble words to describe the insanity. "The dance" is something Wellie performed out of nowhere a few months ago - nay, longer than that, I'll say a year or so - in celebration of something or other. Basically, she stands with her feet evenly spaced apart and slowly swivels her hips back and forth while holding her arms at powerwalking-esque ninety degree angles and swiveling them the opposite way.
Sound complicated? Trust me, it's not. My dad and brother? CANNOT DO IT TO SAVE THEIR LIVES. Pretty much the funniest evening EVER occurred this past year sometime when we realized that all the women in our family can do it and the men cannot. We immediately chalked it up to genetics and the fact that girls are cooler than boys. Any time someone in our family busts out "the dance," we all lose it. It's so simple and ridiculous and not even the slightest bit cool, but it works for us. And when my dad and sister went for "the dance" tonight, I couldn't help but laugh out the irritability that had been poisoning my demeanor. I love my family so much it hurts sometimes, to think that someday I won't be able to have these moments with them. I want to capture every one while I can.
I'm feeling energetic tonight. I hung out with Daniel for a bit, which was lovely as always. Then he left to be all fabulously academic, and my original plans involved changing into pjs, doing multiple loads of laundry, and either watching Back to the Future or yet more episodes of Friends. [Sidenote: I have been on a ROLL lately with the Friends-watching. For serious. I'm rocking through season three presently, watching such gems as The One with the Jam ("Remember when your mom used to drop you off at the movies with a big spoon and a jar of jam?" and The One with the Race Car Bed ("Do I have a middle name? Okay... Monica... Faloola... Gellar.").
GLORIOUS.] Then, I realized I had energy. Possibly enough to go out with co-workers. And look cute. For serious. I'm rocking the autumnal style of a short skirt (not TOO short. I'm not a hussy, people. Nor quite that bold.) with tights and hott heels. This is going-out type clothing, people!
You know, I was always staunchly anti-tights. Up until this very autumn, the fall of my twenty-third year, I hadn't worn tights of any variety since I was possibly about six years old and my mother made me. My mother is the sort of woman that declares once it is chilly outside, you wear hose with a skirt. Or just wear pants. Every other woman in attendance at a winter function could be wearing a skirt and my mother would bust out the black slacks because hey, they're dressy. She went to my cousin's wedding a month or so ago and called me practically two times a day during the weeks leading up to this event with countless fashion inquiries.
To put this in context: I am my mother's only source of fashion information. Her seventeen-year-old daughter chooses to deck herself out in textbook Hollister (not the slutty stuff) and Aeropostale (without all the corduroy). My mother has no close friends. No, really. I'm not exaggerating or being mean or anything. She keeps in touch with her one good friend from high school, who still lives in PA. She has a terrible relationship with her one sister, who also lives in PA. Her best friend is my Dad, who similarly, only has her for a friend. They are there for each other more than one hundred percent, and that is all they need. I've always found this to be both admirable and a little sad. My friends in high school would always talk about how they had to stay home and watch their siblings because their parents were going out to dinner with their friends, or going to such-and-such's soirée, or meeting so-and-so for a movie. My parents never did that. I believe they hung out with my little sister's best friend's parents once. And I don't really know why they were invited, because it was an evening centered on playing cards, and my parents don't play euchre (I know. They've lived in the Midwest for thirteen years and DON'T PLAY EUCHRE?!? O THE TRAGEDY!). We don't have any close family within a twelve-hour drive. So we were each other's friends. We kids, of course, found circles of fellow kids to chillax with, but my parents were always totally fine with just having each other. That astounds me.
I love spending time with my guy. He's incredibly good to me and we get along swimmingly, probably because we laugh at each other's insane sense of humour. However, I have absolutely NO PROBLEM AT ALL when he's all "Hey, I have ish to do tonight, so I'll catch you tomorrow," or, "Hey, Taylor and I are hanging out tonight and we haven't chatted in awhile so is that cool?" He never has to make excuses as to why he isn't hanging out with ME ME ME ALL THE TIME OMG PICK ME. Never. Busy tonight? Sweet! I can watch a guilty pleasure movie like The Secret Garden and not feel silly! [Sidenote: he has totally watched this with me. Now THAT's a keeper, ladies.] I can browse blogs on the internet and suddenly realize three hours have passed! I can read Agatha Christie and get visibly excited when Hercule Poirot is close to nabbing the murderer! [Yet another sidenote: he's totally seen me get nerdy with books, so this probably doesn't count either. Hmm.] Similarly, he knows he can call me to say hi and I'll say, "Hi I love you but I'm hanging out with work people tonight so I'll talk to you later." See? We can have friends AND still see each other pretty much every day.
NEW TANGENT THAT IS VAGUELY RELATED BUT ALSO SORT OF NOT, AND ALSO, MY GOSH I'M A.D.D. TO-DAY: Practically every serious couple I've known has gone from perfectly normal, sociable individuals to the glued-at-the-hip, incapable-of-going-anywhere-without-the-other type once they found "that special someone." I have ALWAYS been highly displeased with this type of behaviour. I HATED that my friend would just disappear or become someone else, just because they had found a boyfriend or girlfriend. I always thought that your significant other should complement you (different from "compliment," people) and help you to become the best version of yourself - YOURSELF - and not dramatically change you in any way. He or she should accept you for who you are. I have known many people who were a vibrant, sparkling, unusual personality that, once attached to The Significant Other Unit, became a much stifled, quieter version of him or herself. Does that make sense?
Now, people have tried to tell me, "But Holly, it's called MATURING. They were SO CHILDISH before. Now that he or she is in an adult relationship, it ALL CHANGES." To which I say: HELL NO. Just because we're "adults" doesn't mean we can't have fun and be random and a little crazy at times and ridiculous when we feel like it. People can still have fun even when they're fifty-five years old and have gray hair and reading glasses and three children (yes I did just describe my father, who is a quiet, reserved sort of individual in social situations, but has one of the most playful spirits I've ever known, a joy that only reveals itself when he's with my mum and sibs). Story example: the other week, Wellie (the Little Sib) was taking photographs outside for her photography class. Her assignment was to take photos of "letters" she found in nature/ordinary objects/creative ways to invoke the alphabet/etc. She was struggling a bit, and I joked that she should just write a letter on a piece of paper and photograph that. So my dad immediately found some post-it notes, drew random letters on five or six, and proceeded to sneak out back and post them all over the porch for Wells to find. My mum, dad, and I hid in the sunroom, giggling at ourselves, watching Wellie creepily from the glass doors as she came around the side of the house and indignantly noticed my dad's trickery. SEE?! BE OLD(er), STILL HAVE FUN AND BE WEIRD AND EMBRACE YOUR INNER CHILD. These are the things I will remember about my dad when he's gone, not what he got me for my birthday or how nice our house looked.
That tangent got way out of control. I should have warned you at the onset of this post that I was in a random sort of mood.
I still have energy. I still rather want to go out with chums tonight, but now it's coming on eleven and I have to work tomorrow night and I still haven't done any of my four loads of laundry I know need to be done and I should probably be responsible and go to bed early for once in my bloody life. But I still look cute.
