Today's rambling: My brain is fried.
Written on Thursday, Apr. 18, 2002 at 8:07 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Another day spent mostly in the back room! This time, however, I had to ice cakes, which takes me ten times longer than just making the strawberry shortcakes. I'm a bit too perfectionistic when it comes to these sorts of things, so I stare at the iced cake and how unperfect the frosting is, and I keep trying to fix it, to make it smooth and flawless. Which just makes everything worse. So whereas Joanne could make the 30 cakes per hour that we're supposed to do, I'm lucky to get five done in that time. Actually, I'm not even sure I could get THAT many done, but I've never tried timing myself.

Then again, I haven't had much practice with it. But I'm just not a fast worker. A terrible thing in the world of grocery stores and mass production, I know, but I can't help it if I don't like things to be sloppy! In regard to some aspects, I seriously think I might have mild OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). When I lay out pieces of cookie dough on trays, I have to make sure that they're as evenly spaced from each other as possible. Zenon and John have tried to get me to more or less throw the pieces onto the tray, which is quicker of course, but I just can't make myself do it.

It makes me feel rather dumb. I mean, they're just cookies, after all. It doesn't matter if some of the rows are closer together than the others. Yet despite the knowledge that I'm being silly, I can't help but continue that behavior!!!

I'm like that with handwriting as well. Especially when writing lowercase e's. If it comes out looking funny, I'll write over it until the shape is better...and if I keep messing up, I'll eventually scribble out the whole word and start over. In high school, I remember my 11th grade Chemistry teacher would drive me up a wall. Chemistry has lots of parentheses and such, and most of the time his closing parenthesis wouldn't match up with the first (i.e. it would dip down lower or be less curved or something equally meaningless). There were times when I actually had to stop looking at the board because the desire was so strong to run up, erase the misbehaving symbol, and rewrite it!!!!

Is this some form of OCD, or is it just me being weird? It really gets on my nerves, and yet I can't stop. (I sound like I'm a crack addict or something...)

Right. So, I was TRYING to talk about work. Being in the back was pretty uneventful, though I did get to go on break with Geoff. But then EJ called him to the 'grocery back room' (which is what I usually just call the 'back room'), and so I went back to work. Around 2-ish, I had everything cleaned up and was working in the bakery again. A woman approached the counter.

"Hi, can I help you?" I greeted. She leaned forward, and with careful enunciation said:

"Plumber."

My mind immediately registered that she was picking up an order, and so my feet twitched in an effort to start walking. But then I paused, glanced at her uncertainly, and asked, "Cake order?" And she nodded as if I should have known this all along. As if there's no other sort of item one could have ordered in a bakery department. No, we don't take orders for rolls or pies or bread or pastries! Just cakes! How FOOLISH of me to have thought you could be here for anything else!

Mare said I should've looked back at her and said, "Electrician." John, on the other hand, told me a good response would've been, "No, decorator." Either of them would've been rather amusing.

Hmm, what else...According to Geoff, the previous two nights of 'sign-on, sign-off' were not done by him. He said he wasn't even home last night. It just happened again not all that long ago, but strangely enough it's still not really BOTHERING me...it's just making me very very curious!

He's off for the next 3 days (a mini-vacation that he very much deserves, since he pretty much works 6 days a week all the time, some days working more than his scheduled 8 1/2 hours)...I was cutting through the break room to get back to the conference room, and I saw him sitting in his usual corner, on his lunch break.

"There you are!" he exclaimed.

I grinned and asked, "Were you looking for me?"

"Where were you?" was his response.

I gathered up what remained of my stuff in the conference room, turned off the lights and the radio, and sat down across from him. We hadn't really said much when dear old Ryan came back. It was then that I looked at Geoff and asked, "I don't suppose you'll be in town on Sunday, will ya?"

"In town?" he asked, confused. I giggled and clarified,

"I mean, in the area. Around here."

Blah blah, he'd been planning on going to the shore, though he didn't think it would happen (it will; whenever he says he either 'doesn't think' he'll do something or he just won't do something, he does it)...A beat later he asked why, so I told him my little sob story about being the only decorator on Sunday, and how I figured that if he was going to be around then I'd ask him if he wanted to stop by for lunch. I always say these things in the stupidest way. I'm trying to make it sound 'non-threatening', so he's not backed into his corner thinking, "Oh my god, Stalker Alert! Get the hell away from me!" But it just comes out sounding lame.

He never actually gave me a response, and I didn't push him, for reasons stated above. Oh well. You have to give me points for persistence.

I think I'll go after the Ben & Jerry's vendor instead...

As Frank was passing me today, I wrapped my arm around his chest and pulled him back toward me, growling, "I'm gonna take you..." He likes it when I'm rough. *falls over laughing* I turned out being a little stronger than I'd thought, because after I released him he staggered backward a few steps, still off balance! Oops...

My first bread announcement was made over in the Hot Foods section, because John was sitting by the bakery phone and I'm too self-conscious to do the announcement with him right there. I didn't expect Geoff to page the bakery phone and cheer "Yay!!" when I was done. ^_^ He only does that sporadically now, so I never know when to expect it...At any rate, I was on my way back to the bakery department when John yelled out, "Who keeps calling you after you finish your announcement?"

Giveaway that Geoff had called, of course, and I doubled over laughing, eventually telling him who was cheering for me.

"I'm sitting here," he began, "and I hear you hang up. Then all of a sudden someone else calls over here saying 'Yayyyyyyy!'"

I was quite amused! (Sorry, Freddie Mercury memoir reference, there.)

Now I'm at home, and thankfully the ibuprofen kicked in because my head is only hurting slightly, as opposed to pounding ferociously as it was earlier. I think it's sleep deprivation. Heh. If there's one thing I am not, it's sleep-deprived. But since I'd slept so late the day before, I didn't get to sleep last night until after 4 am! So I think tonight is going to be an early night. Ugh, I think Mom might try to get me to go in at 7 tomorrow instead of 8, which she'd better not do, because I am NOT waking up at 5 in the morning. I already have to do that on Sunday, and I'm not looking forward to it!