Irritation
I made a suggestion to my boss about a way to do something that would make things easier for our mortuary as well as the others. My boss agreed, and I spoke to someone who helped implement it.
I then heard my boss bragging to someone else about how he did it. He must have felt a little bit guilty, so he came into my office and told me that he had thought of doing that weeks ago.
Probably because I'd mentioned it to him weeks ago. Point being, he took my idea, let me implement it, and is calling other companies taking the credit, acting like it was his idea. Not that I'd get anything for it anyway. But it irritated me.
If I were to admit to one major, major flaw of mine, its that I am somehow incapable of credit. This kind of stuff, I am not kidding, happens to me all the time.
Our yearly work Christmas party is held at a hotel overlooking a body of water with boats docked. Mid December, nighttime, many of the boats are decorated with Christmas lights that reflect sparkly, softly moving bits of color onto the inky black water below.
The tables in the party room are draped with white fabric tablecloths and each table has a floral centerpeice with lilies and glitter. The tables surround a hardwood dance floor. I think it would be a perfect spot for a wedding reception... (but I'm not getting married)
Last year, there were signs announcing which area was designated for what company party. Our mortuary party, to my amusement, was next to a meat packer company party. We were all making jokes about that. "Hey, we're in the same business..."
Dinner was exceptional this year. I was concerned that there wouldn't be anything for me to eat, i.e., I'd find some sprinkling of death in everything (pig, cow, fowl) so I macked down on the bruschetta on toast being passed around by the servers as appetizers. When dinner finally came up, there was a spinach salad sans bacon and tortellini and sauteed vegetables I could eat, along with a table of various desserts, where I helped myself to two. (a fruit tarte and chocolate cake)
There was a DJ for dancing. Earlier, I told my boyfriend to bring his CD so we could request a couple songs off of it. I said, quote: "The music is going to suck."
It's a company party. The ages and music tastes will range. Therefore the music will be completely generic: Celebrate by Kool and the Gang. Macarena. The Electric Slide.
After dinner, I tell my boyfriend I want to dance. He doesn't. A power struggle ensues. My attitude: Fuck you I wanna dance, his attitude: Screw You too bad I don't.
Finally he caves. He says, "We'll wait for a good song."
Or maybe its a trick. I'm like, "there will not be a good song. You should have brought your cd!"
He argues, "The DJ isn't going to play a song off my CD!"
I say, "He will if you slip him five bucks!"
We sit not speaking while the dj plays Celebrate by Kool and the Gang, Macarena, and Electric Slide. My boss goes out and dances the electric slide with about 10 other company employees. My boyfriend says, "It looks like line dancing. It embarasses me."
I sit and wait it out. No good songs yet.
When I hear Brown Eyed Girl, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I need to change my tampon before its so saturated it drops out of my crotch when I finally do make it to the dancefloor. Company party, of course it's the heaviest flow day of my period.
After washing my hands, I check myself in the mirror. Hair looks nice. It's curled in big waves. I have a little bit of a shimmery lavender highligher on my browbone, my eyeshadow is pink, matching my shiny pink silk camisole. I'm applying a little bit of lip gloss when my coworker pops out of a stall.
Its the coworker I have problems with. The one I write mean things about in my blog. One of her many annoying traits is incessant talking. Hearing her voice, I lean over the marble counter looking in the mirror focusing intently on my lipgloss trying to block her out.
"You look pretty, "She says, "Gosh, I've never seen you look like this. At work heck, we never get dressed up or put on make up, huh? We never do!" She waits for me to respond.
I shrug. There's another female employee in the bathroom with us. My coworker deverts her attention to her. I feel guilty now because my coworker has been nice to me and I'm not being nice back.
The other employee leaves, now it's just me. I turn to leave as well, but annoying coworker is between me and the door. She faces me, and starts recounting the events of the day. She had to drive to another city two hours away to pick up a body. The deceased had few friends. He was found dead in his apartment five weeks later. Coworker had to get him from the Medical Examiner's office.
"I got back in an hour and a half," she brags, "What does that tell you?"
"No traffic?" I take a guess.
"No, there was traffic," She says. "I was doing NINETY in the van!" (bodies get picked up in vans. Hearses, or "coaches" are reserved for funerals)
She explains, "They didn't find the guy for FIVE WEEKS. I was driving down the freeway with all the windows open, spraying deodorizer with one hand behind me and the other hand on the wheel all the way down!" Apparently the stench was beyond comprehension.
She's standing there in her long velvet dress, I'm in my shimmery pink camisole with shiny lipgloss on my mouth, and other women from the hotel/other company parties are walking in. I'm hoping they don't hear us.
I finally get back to the table. My boyfriend's finished his wine, and now he's sipping my champagne, trying to drink up enough courage to get on the dancefloor.
The DJ plays Staying Alive by the Bee Gee's. Boyfriend figures what the hell.
We get up and dance.
Christmastime, our mortuary gives out Christmas cards and the occasional gift. We work with a lot of churches, since so many funerals happen at church.
My boss goes out and buys boxes of famous brand chocolate Candies. I'm talking to Rebecca, another admin assistant at one of our mortuaries, and she says that her church refuses to give this particular brand of candies out. Seems the company is pro-choice, and she goes to a Catholic church.
I realize we've given out boxes of the candies to every Catholic Church in our vicinity. I don't tell my boss though. It's chocolate. It's good.
When Bad Things Go Well...
I wanted to come up with some extra cash for the holidays. I decided to make some holiday greeting cards and sell them. It was late. I made 7 cards. I fell asleep.
Next morning, I take all 7 cards to work with me. I figured what the heck. If anyone likes them, I can take orders. I showed my boss who then ordered a bunch of custom cards with the mortuary on the cover. (now if he would only hurry up and pay me)
I took the original (non-mortuary) cards to a local family owned liquor store. I ask if they'd be interested in selling the cards for me. Before I can ask, a customer buys two.
The son (of the owner) behind the counter says no, he has no counter space left and nowhere to put the cards. I'm thinking, "You would if you moved those dusty nail clipper/keychains that no one ever buys," but I didn't say that.
I also thought, "you just watched one of your customers buy two from me the second he saw them," but I didn't say that either.
Like I really wanted to bully him into selling 5 cards for me.
I just thought it was so cool that I sold some so fast. Someone close to the printing department at my work saw one of my cards and told my boss they wanted me if they ever lost the person who does their printing. Which made me so happy. I'd love to have another job. Mine sucks.
Nightmare job story of the day:
Girl from another location brings a body over. Dead man. Pretty tall. She needs to pull him from the gurney to the table. I don't want to help, but she can't do it herself. I'm walking over to help, but she pulls the sheet off him. She runs out of the room, and starts coughing and gagging.
I was in the hallway, a distance away from the room, but I saw this. Seems the guy really stinks.
I tell her sorry, you're gonna have to wait til my boss gets back. I am not helping you.
The smell of dog shit makes me sick.
I do not want to know what the smell of rotting corpse will do to me.
I was standing in line at the drugstore yesterday.
My items on the conveyor belt: Kahlua, vodka, and tampons. Behind me, a man had beer and cough drops.
Yay big drugstores. Christmas is rad, all the booze goes on sale.
A friend is doing poloaroid manipulations. I bought an old polaroid so I could do it too, but its much easier to do it digitally. Voila! Above is my fake polaroid manipulation...oh, I should crop it into a square like a real polaroid. My friend is a purist. He'd be so mad to see this.
Shelby turned 40. We celebrated by going out to an overpriced greasy restaurant. Everything was a la carte, my a la carte side dish baked potato was $15. (lets not even talk about the entrees) The place was full of 70 year olds chewing on meat.
Shelby's dad had a heart attack two years ago, and he was eating a fat 21 ounce prime rib. ?? If you've had a heart attack, wouldn't beef be the first habit you'd drop? I mean, that's what clogged your arteries in the first place.
Nothing vegetarian on the whole menu except a beet salad. I don't like beets.
This I find annoying: I can't even find salads without meat. Why can't I get a salad without dead pig parts in it? WHY?
Every side dish was soaking in butter or cream or both. If I have a drop of fat, I will gain ten pounds in one millisecond. It was so frustrating.
Shelby had a hunk of fat on his prime rib about the size and softness of a babies fist. (That's a damn good analogy, if I do say so myself)
Nice view though. 70 cents for the potato, and $14.30 for the view.
It's Saturday morning, and I'm lovin' life. I am so happy.
The boyfriend went fishing. (the phone was ringing at 5:30 a.m., that's just wrong!)
I got up several hours later, weighed myself--up 3 lbs from yesterday, but I think its water retention as my boobs hurt and I downed a bunch of chocolate frozen yogurt last night, so I'm expecting my monthly visitor. Hurry up, monthly visitor! I'm looking forward to seeing you! This month I'll be really happy to see her...
At the mortuary, we have a stand with pamphlets that have titles like, "Healing thoughts for a greiving heart..." One of them is titled, "Mourning a Miscarriage."
A funeral arranger--single, female, looked at that one, and quietly said to me, "Some of us don't
mourn them..." and we both giggled knowingly.
I just made a cup of my favorite coffee, I'm looking out my big beautiful window at the view and its gorgeous, there are hummingbirds coming up to the hummingbird feeder, I've got the whole place to myself, and my day is a beautiful empty, work-free page before me, freedom, freedom, freedom.
What to do??? I could watch a dvd I've been meaning to watch forever. I've been putting it off because it's educational, a getting to know your camera dvd. I've got too many buttons and contraptions on my camera. I've got a decent camera I always keep on automatic focus. That's lame. What the heck did I make six months worth of payments for.
Ooh, another hummingbird! He's bobbing his head up and down as he sips from the feeder.
You'd think this is so charming and lovely, me with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning looking out at hummingbirds, but those little bastards are noisy and territorial. First off, there's one guy who has claimed the feeder as his. He sits on the perch facing out, and keeps watch. If any other hummingbird comes near, he chases it, chirping and screeching. The other hummingbird will chirp/screech his anger at being chased, and we hear these loud hummingbird wars all day. Sometimes if I go outside, the little bird gets pissed off at me for coming too close to his feeder, so he'll zoom by my head, his little wings all buzzy loud by my ears. Sounds like a gigantic frikkin' bee, and its a bit disconcerting.
Once when the boyfriend went to put fresh hummingbird food in it, the little bird got all pissed off. The aggressive one is probably female, now that I think about it. It's not as brightly colored. There's another one we call Pink-head. That's probably a male. The aggressive one also perches in a tree nearby. When she's not perched on the feeder, she (I'll not call it he anymore) sits on a tree branch facing the feeder, so she can watch from a distance yet still dive bomb other hummingbirds coming too close to the feeder.
Maybe I'll spend today watching the dvd of how to work my camera, then take pics of the hummingbirds.
It is so gorgous today. I can't believe it. Just beautiful. Me, my coffee, my computer, and a big window with hummingbirds on the other side. What a lovely, lovely December morning.
