The Change I Want to See

Everyone came home from Nebraska. Safe and sound. I was a little surprised, if we're being totally honest. I think an itty bitty part of me expected them to get into an accident. Restitution for me being so thrilled to have alone time. I got restitution enough, after only a few hours I was bored out of my mind and missed the babies. I missed the babies every day. But I got used to it and now I'm primed and ready to have an apartment all to myself (on Friday).

I did a few fun things though. I drove to Lindsborg (little Sweden) and wandered around taking in Lingonberries wherever I could. Vegan baked goods--not good. I tried to give them a real honest shot. I tried to give them a more than honest shot. But alas. Gross. I watched the meteor shower. I walked in the rain to the movie theatre and watched Funny People. I had such a low-key week.

Aaaand I'm tired. I'm trying to decide if I really fucked up my knee or if I just am experiencing pain from standing for 9 hours today. After I got home, I sat on the couch and read to Genesis and when supper was ready I popped up to run to the kitchen with her but found my knee in such immense pain that I couldn't hold myself up anymore and crashed to the ground. I sat on the ground for a while moving my leg back and forth to get it going again and I was fine. Well, I haven't really been "fine" in a while. When I'm not at work I walk with a limp. I don't know where it came from and I can't really tell what it is exactly that hurts but it does.

So, then I called all of the places where I put in my resume--all of the places that remembered me and seemed excited about me, and they all said, "The position has been filled." Subsequently I told my boss that I wasn't going to be leaving and that I'd be happy to take over Alisha's hours when she leaves at the end of the week. The truth is that I'm not totally happy to take over Alisha's hours at all and I don't really want to keep working here. But if everything goes as planned (and, let's be honest, it rarely does), this is a temporary gig. I'm not anxious to start planning Phase Two (or what phase are we on? 136?) anytime soon but I am aware that this won't be forever. I'm also aware that I'm now considering myself a writer--that's what I want to do. Until I can make money doing that, I'll have to make money doing something else and this is a decent something else. Especially since more than ten percent of the current population doesn't have a fall back plan.

But more than anything else I decided that if I won't be changing my job, then I absolutely need to be changing my attitude. On Saturday I was in such a goofy mood. I got in to work and everyone was tired and weary and complainy. But I had been in such a weird little mood and I didn't feel like being irritated along with them. I had three cups of coffee and Weezer stuck in my head. I was throwing ice into glasses and wiping down tables and taking orders and doing the robot for my co-workers while singing, "You'll never do (slap the counter) the things you want (slap the counter) if you don't move (slap the counter) and get a job. Waste my days! Drown away! It's just the thouuught of yoouuu in love with someone else." And you know what happened? We all started doing the robot and laughing and no one else was being tortured by coming in to work. I started thinking, "What if I was that person that people looked forward to working with? What if I didn't feed the discontentment the way that everyone else did? What if I was the girl who did the robot when we were slow?" And that's my new mission. Might as well grow where you're planted, I suppose.