Disorientation

After nearly four months (or four years, or possibly eighteen years depending on how you calculate things) I will be an official employee as of tomorrow.

Yes, I managed to pee in a cup not once, but twice (or even three times if you count the time almost four years ago), and pass the background check again (and actually that also was the third time in four years). There were also interviews with four different people. All for a job which I've been doing successfully enough this whole time that they opened the position in order to hire me (or someone at least as capable) in the first place.

So... if you're wondering why your cell phone bill is so high, now you know.

Anyhow, tomorrow I receive my secret decoder ring and learn the company handshake. At least, I think that's what is supposed to happen. It must be really important stuff because I'm supposed to be there at 7:45 in the morning. Without admitting too much, we'll just say that is multiple hours before I normally get to work in the morning. Adding in the additional commute time during rush hour, I do the math and come up with the fact that I need to get up really, really early. As in, a time that is closer to when I normally go to bed than when I normally get up in the morning.

This could actually be a problem. This might be the highest length of time spent getting a job to having a job in the entire history of the world. After all, I missed a trip to East Germany in 1988 because I overslept. And look what happen to East Germany.

Not that I'm saying my being late for my first day of work after eighteen years of working there would bring down the company or anything.

Nah...

You also can't make an omelet if you drop the eggs on the floor...

All I was looking for today was a good excuse to get out of mowing the lawn.

It all started out well -- I managed to stay in bed until almost 10am, which is something of a miracle in itself. By the time everyone was fed and everything was cleaned up it was time for lunch.

Then I talked to my parents on the phone until the dark clouds rolled in, so everything was looking very promising.

However, as dark as the clouds were, they refused to dump rain so I was forced to go outside, drag the mower out of the garage, and plug it in.

Halfway through the front lawn the power went out in the neighborhood. Naturally the long half of the lawn was still uncut.

I spent the downtime checking out my neighbors' new kitchen-in-progress (Hotter was working on the wainscoting, whatever that is, at the time) and then I got the entire egg production of four chickens for the past three days. What I was going to do with nine eggs we'll never know, because while I was out walking the dogs later, the cats knocked over the container and four of them landed on the floor. Four raw eggs on the floor don't make a mess or anything...

Anyhow, the power came back on after half an hour so I had no further excuse to put off finishing the lawn.

So there we have it. Another perfectly good Sunday gone.

A defensive move...

This is what I do in the morning:

1. Turn off the alarm that I set for 6:30 just so I can be happy I don't have to get up at 6:30.
2. Go back to sleep.
3. Turn off the alarm that I set for 7:00 just so I can enjoy not getting up at 7:00.
4. Go back to sleep.
5. Throw the bitey cat off the bed a few times.
6. Get up.
7. Stagger to the kitchen. Feed the cats.
8. Stagger outside with the dogs and sit on the concrete in the backyard while they do their thing (because if I don't go outside with them, they run out the door, do a u-turn and come back inside, and then have accidents in the house).
9. Come back inside with the dogs and feed them.
10. Slowly wake up.
11. Get dressed and walk the dogs.
12. Take a shower and get ready for work.

Note that at no time before step 10 is there anything like "Brush my hair" or "Become presentable". That's because I live alone in a house and I have a fence surrounding my backyard, so nobody has to know that I just got up a 9am, or that I'm looking like the creature from the black lagoon when I take the dogs outside.

However, this week my neighbors were having their roof redone. So step 8 1/2 was: "Wave to the roofers as I take the dogs back inside."

Clearly I need a higher fence.

Rich Inner Life. Really.

I was finishing my weekly trip to the best supermarket ever, and the checker asked me if I did anything fun this weekend.

So I tried to remember what I did for the past two days, and the first thing that came to mind was that I mowed the lawn. And while I was mowing the lawn, I was trying to track down the source of the "la la la" song that was stuck on repeat in my head.

About two mower-widths into the lawn, I realized that it was the song that the Smurfs sang as they went about doing whatever it was that Smurfs did. (Jojo the Enforcer watched the Smurfs when she was little -- I saw a lot of the episodes because I was nearby.)

Then I thought about Gargamel for a while and wondered what exactly it was that he did. I think he was an evil sorcerer or something. (Imagine that interview: "Describe a problem you faced and what you did to solve it." Given the number of episodes where Papa Smurf outwitted Gargamel, I can only imagine that Gargamel would have a hard time answering that question.)

Then I tried to figure out what exactly the Smurfs actually did, other than get into trouble. I could do that job. Except I'm not blue. But wouldn't that be discrimination?

And these thoughts carried me through mowing and edging the lawn.

So all this was going through my head as I was standing at the checkout counter and I finally told her I didn't do anything all weekend...