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.
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