Until the Stars Are All Alight

Written last night...

Go call your parents and tell them how much you love them. I just talked to Nico and one of the girls from work got picked up an hour-and-a-half late, by her cousin, because while she was at work her parents were killed in a car wreck. Hit head-on by a drunk driver.

And none of us are really sure what's going to happen to her or who she's going to live with now or anything, because none of us really talk to her. I mean, we do, but we don't have deep conversations with her. She's only 16, but that's all I really know. I don't even know if she has any siblings. And now I feel guilty about not talking to her.

But really. Go hug your respective moms and dads.

~*~

Sooo...Thanksgiving.

Pretty typical, except we were in a completely new house--that of my brother in Tulsa. (I swear, taethowen, one of these days I am going to come see them and stay longer and we'll meet up!)

The coolest part: my niece Pauletta. (Or Pauly, or Polly...she had two different things in her room and they each had one of those spellings on it. I think she prefers Pauly and I'm running with that because I prefer it, lol.) OMG. I know she's, like, going to be fifteen in February, but MY GOD she's suddenly a TEENAGER and all COOL. Seriously. (I think I may have ranted about this when we saw them before the reunion, and if I did, whatever I said applies--times ten.) I wish we lived closer, we had a lot of fun together and I think we have a lot in common.

Like, we have the EXACT SAME poster of Orlando Bloom from PotC2 hanging on our walls. Granted, hers is next to Johnny Depp from the same movie, and a few pictures from magazines, while mine has a poster of Orli as himself and a Superchic[k] poster next to it, but still. Way to rock.

My sister Alicia commented on how her hair was looking darker and then caught herself--"Or are you putting something on it these days?" and Pauly was all, "Yeah, I colored it." I held up my hand for high five and said, "Ha, you cheat too. Go you!" ^_^ (We both have lighter red hair and dye it deep, auburn red.)

We watched She's the Man, which is really really really funny (and based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which I now feel the need to read and see how they compare). Most of the funniness is because Amanda Bynes is actually not that good at pretending to be a guy (or is good at not being good...yeah, you get the idea), despite the fact that Pauly pointed out that she probably didn't really need to wrap up her boobs. XD

The first night we were there we waited up for my OTHER brother to show up, and we were in the computer room, messing around on the internet, and encountered a weird popup ad which posed as a salesperson--named Greg--trying to IM with you. Said things like "This is a limited time offer and if you click on this link within the next few minutes you'll get even more savings!" (I think it was for a paid movie and music download service, IIRC.) We were bored and they have sufficient virus protection, so Pauly started talking to "Greg." Or rather, insulting him. "no i dont want your stupid offer u shithead" and the like. At first I was kind of surprised but once I realized that it was a bot that responded to keywords on your end, it actually got to be kind of funny. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about, chat with the Snapeybot.) "Say this! Let me type one!" And the oddest thing was that the bot kept insisting that it was real. If you asked if he was real he'd go "I'm a real person :-)" But then he wouldn't respond to stuff that a real person would try to use as a sales pitch--like, when it claimed to be from LA I typed "Really? I have a friend in San Diego" (yes, you, GamgeeFest) and if I was a salesperson I totally would have jumped on that. But Greg? Nope. Silence. Maybe you had to be there, but it was really freaking funny to us at two AM.

I wore one of my reversible shirts the day we left, and when my grandpa found out it was a men's shirt he said something about how the Bible says a woman is not supposed to wear "that which pertains to a man." GAH. Maybe if I had a little more of that which pertains to a woman, men's shirts wouldn't fit me so well and it wouldn't be an issue. And, I'm sorry, but I've discovered that because they AREN'T tailored to contain boobs, men's shirts--the button-down variety, anyway--fit me really well and look pretty damn good on me. So I have no intention of giving them up. (Wore one of my dad's old shirts today, as a matter of fact.) And if you ask me, a shirt's a shirt. Shirts "pertain to women" as much as anything else. They may be tailored differently and have the buttons on the opposite sides, but they're all still SHIRTS, for pity's sake. It's not like I was wearing, say, an athletic cup. Or boy underwear (I know one girl who does! O_o).

Me and Laurien are both fine, but I hit a deer on the way home Wednesday night. I saw him way in advance and by the time I got to him I wasn't even going 20 miles an hour (I wouldn't have hit him at all if he had jumped left instead of right!!), so it was more like I tripped him and he fell onto the hood. He freaked out and kicked until he slid off of the hood and then ran away in the blink of an eye, leaving no trace other than a bit of white fluff in the air. I think he's fine, I double-checked my car when I got home and there was no blood or dents or anything, so he couldn't have hit anything too hard.

It snowed and iced a bit Thursday night, and left enough on the roads (well, our road if not the highway) that I wasn't about to drive to work Friday. So I called in, and Ken tried to get me to come in, but I told him no, there was ice on our road, I couldn't drive on it, and I didn't have anyone who could drive on it that was willing to come pick me up at two in the morning. So he said fine. Then fifteen minutes later I get a voicemail (at my house, my phone sometimes gets such bad reception that it doesn't ring but will notify me of the voicemail) and it's Nico saying that I was lying about there being ice and that I was expected at work. So I called back and insisted that there was ice (my aunt, who lives on the same 40 acres as my family, had nearly gotten in a wreck earlier in the day because of it), and Nico finally says fine, but I have to deal with the consequences. I ask what they might be and Ken says I'd be suspended for a week if I didn't show up (AFTER he had already okayed me not coming in!!). So I ask to talk to Ken but the phone gets handed to Candise and I have to repeat the whole damn thing to her, and she finally is like, "Whatever," and HANGS UP ON ME. Pity, too, because we were getting along so well. So I go and tell Dad and ask him (again) if he'll come pick me up (the answer was more or less "not no but hell no," except he doesn't swear), and he points out things like the last time I tried to drive on this stuff it cost $54 to get Laurien out of the ditch, and that there's a whole section of road where they've cleared out the trees, so it's not a matter of going a little ways into the ditch and getting stopped by a sapling, but down a 50-foot hill, and Mom (who had followed me down the stairs) pointed out that even if had been just slush (it wasn't) when I left at four, it would have been ice when I came home at two or three in the morning and it was seven degrees outside. (And while I'm typing this calmly, at the time there was a lot of me yelling and being mad and crying, because it was beyond frustrating to be in that position.)

So I weighed the worst case scenarios--If I called in, I lost my hours for that night and got suspended for a week--which I could have spent doing things like getting some extra shifts at the Steak House, getting my oil changed, getting my hair cut, going Christmas shopping, making cookies, that sort of thing. (Another reason to hate day shift: It is really hard to do some of that stuff because I'm working all the hours that other places are open and therefore can't GET to them.) On the other hand, if I tried to drive on the ice, my car skids and I end up at the bottom of the ravine dead. Or even okay but with a totaled car. (It makes me sick to my stomach to think of Laurien ending up that way, and I really do think that I love her the way some people love their kids. Except I think most people don't leave their kids out in cold windy parking lots.) Either way, I wasn't about to run the risk.

So I called Ken back and said, "I'm not coming. Last time I tried to drive in weather like this it cost $54 to get my car out of the ditch and I was lucky that there were trees to break my fall." And he said he'd mark it down, then asked if I was crying. I said maybe, because I wasn't, but I had been crying less than ten minutes previously and apparently you could still hear it in my voice. He said not to cry, I think he said there was nothing to cry about (which made me want to scream but I restrained myself), and I asked if I was suspended. He said no. So I think he was just testing to see if I was telling the truth, his theory being that if I was just being lazy I would have gotten scared of being suspended and come on in.

So I don't know what's gotten into Nico that he felt like he had to try and get me in trouble. The roads were clear the next day so I only missed one night of work, plus I called in nearly three hours ahead of time (and it wasn't like I called during a rush, either) so if they were really short they could have called in someone who lives in town (or at least right on the highway instead of three miles from it)--and they couldn't have been too short, because he told me that he got to go home early. (Last night he only talked to me if he had to, as of tonight he's still irritated at me but not so much that he didn't call me to tell me about the car wreck. I think it's going to end up like our fights usually do--we're both so stubborn that neither one of us will admit to being wrong, so eventually we both just drop it and move on.) ETA: As of today I think we're okay, but then I only saw him on my way out.

Anyway. Today there was a mandatory meeting at the Steak House (which sucked that I had to come in on a Sunday, and I'm not even entirely sure that we're getting paid for it--we didn't clock in, but they did pass around a sheet so they would know who was there). Brian, an older guy who's been working there for a little while--cooking and prep, mostly--is actually going to be the new manager. (Not the shift manager, I think Paula's still going to be my direct supervisor.) And I think he's really nice, so yay! ^_^ He's also going to wait tables and basically do every job in the restaurant so he can see what needs to be changed. (The one suggestion made today was that we get mashed potatoes, because we're constantly getting asked for them. And seriously, what kind of non-chain restaurant south of Kansas City doesn't have mashed potatoes? Even KFC has mashed potatoes.) And we're having a contest for Christmas bonuses--the three people who sell the most appetizers between now and the 21st are going to get $300, $100, and $50 respectively. I doubt I'll be in the running, working only three days a week and the lunch shift no less, but I'm going to try. You never know, right?

OH. There's a special going on at our Wal-Mart's optometrist's office, eye exam AND contacts for $99. So yesterday, I had to go get another nosepad for my glasses (the last one lasted THREE DAYS OMG!) and while I was right there I made an appointment. I could have contacts as soon as WEDNESDAY, and I cannot WAIT. No longer will putting on eye makeup be a total waste! *happydance*

So yeah. I have to be up in a little less than four hours. Damn day shift. Will post this tomorrow after work, if all goes according to plan (which it hasn't, the last few weeks).