Zeo's Thoughts and Wanderings

Wow, haven't posted here in over 2 years.  I just...haven't felt the need.  I kind of wandered over to Tumblr and just fell in.

So, a quick update: lost my job in July.  Haven't found a new one yet, but I have an Etsy shop, Zeo's Soaps and Sundries, where I sell handmade soaps, lip balms, bath salts, and soon, cuticle oil.  I'm also running a GoFundMe campaign, trying to get a little extra money to help bridge the gap on weeks where sales are slow.

This week is full of soapmaking.  I have 13 more 2-pound batches I want to make, and I keep running out of ingredients.  Today, I ran out of lye, which is somewhat essential to making soap.  I have enough mango butter for one more, maybe two more batches.  I have some money coming in, so I'll be able to restock those ingredients, but dang, it's a fine balancing act I'm walking.  Once I get those soaps made and listed, I can breathe a little.

So, that's what I've been up to of late.  Anyone miss me?

This morning, I was woken up by an honest-to-goodness nightmare. I don't know exactly when it happened, but it was before the alarm went off, and it felt like I tossed and turned for a lot after it, trying to shake it off, and never did manage to fall back asleep.

It wasn't the old zombie nightmares, or anything worthy of a horror movie. No, this was something a lot more personal and a lot closer to home.

In the nightmare, I'd agreed to work the retail section of the print shop for a day, to help out. In the agreement, I wasn't supposed to work the counter or the register, just run the machines, which was why I'd agreed to help. That, and in my dream, my dad was the supervisor, and I was helping him out.

So. I walked into the main area, and this woman at the counter immediately spotted me and hailed me. "Excuse me," she said, in a snotty-haughty-I'm-better-than-you-because-you're-behind-the-counter-and-I'm-not tone of voice, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but MY business keeps YOU employed."

No one else was moving to help this woman, so I gritted my teeth, pasted on my best fake retail smile, and brightly answered, "That's not exactly how I'd phrase it, but how may I help you?"

She proceeded to go through this overly long and needlessly complex list of instructions that I summarized as, "So, you need three sets of this, in color?" I remembered my retail training, upselling, offering her binding or stapling. She went for the stapling, and I was feeling semi-okay at that point. Then she handed me the payment...a large handful of coins, mostly pennies. I knew she was waiting for me to have to count them all out to make sure it was right. I was shaking. Luckily, since I wasn't supposed to work the register, I just handed all the coins to Dad, who apparently had a change counter installed on the register just for smart-ass customers like that. I took the thick sheaf of papers and looked for the color copier.

And that's when I realized the color copier was a tabletop version. Flatbed. No feeder. No stacker. No stapler. I was going to have to hand-scan, then hand-collate, that job. I turned slowly to look at the self-serve area. The self-serve color copier was what I'd expected to find: feeder, stacker, stapler. But that woman was still at the counter, and I knew, I just knew, that if I took her copies to the self-serve area, she'd throw a fit.

That must have been the straw that broke me, because that's where I woke up, that woman's voice and words still in my head. I haven't had to work retail/customer service in three years now. But the six years I did work it have left me scarred. I've had people fling handfuls of change, mostly pennies, at me as payment, sneering, "You count it," while their children look at them, horrified by the manners their parents aren't displaying. I've had people point me out to their kids, "See, this is why you go to school, so you don't end up like her." Little do they know, I have a B.A. Fat lot of good it did me. People looked at me, saw the polo shirt and name tag, and treated me like something scraped off the bottom of their shoe. Treated me like a disposable person, like someone not worthy of respect or civility. And all I was allowed to do in return was paste on that fake smile and pretend like it didn't bother me.

Going by last night's mental blockbuster, I still have a ways to go.

I am amazed. Okay, to start, my hours got cut starting last week. I now work 9=4:30 instead of 8-4:30. Everyone's hours are getting cut, so only losing one hour a day is acceptable, given that it could be a heck of a lot more.

But, I'm still making myself get up at 6, like I did when I worked at 8. That means I have an extra hour around the house. Last week, it still seemed like things were being cut close. Today, however, I got up, took a shower, got dressed, browned the pierogies in butter for my lunch, packed the rest of it (grapes, string cheese, yogurt and an apple), warmed up breakfast (leftover pancakes with butter and honey), ate breakfast, and still had forty-five minutes of computer time. I'm just stunned that I managed that.

After living in Arizona for almost a year now, I can empathize with my great uncle who lived in Tucson. He called my grandmother (who lived in PA) one winter, complaining of the cold. She asked him how cold it was. He replied, "It's only seventy!!"

She hung up on him. :)

Right now, it's "only" 66. I still have a few windows open here, because I'm cleaning and I overheat, but yeah. I've had a few days of "Wow, it's cold!" and it's still been "summer" temperatures for what I grew up in.

Also, I quit my job at 2Wire Tuesday. I start as a key operator (production only) at AlphaGraphics on Monday.

I'm tired. I have heartburn. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, and that the customers can sense that I don't really know how to help them.

I've been told that last feeling goes away, that after a month or so, there's an inner epiphany, that everthing makes sense, that we see the patterns and get into a groove.

But when does a groove become a rut?

There are two modes of thought about this place. For those that have moved up, moved off the phones, it's a wonderful place. For those who haven't, it's a torture pit.

I'm hoping the second feeling doesn't sink me before I get the opportunity to hit that first feeling.

Well, I'm at work today. No rest for tech support. And that's all I'll say for that.

People are going to start requesting early release very soon. Unfortunately, I needed it the past two days (sick on Tuesday, flat tire yesterday), so I can't today if I want a decent paycheck next week.

We took Dante's bandage off yesterday; the toe still looks a little swollen, but a lot better than it did Monday. He still has maybe two doses of antibiotic to take, and a checkup on Monday to make sure it's healing correctly.

The tire turned out to have a razor blade in it. However, since I took it back to where we bought it, they fixed it for free. Discount Tire rocks.

On a completely unrelated note....we saw an ad for those detoxification foot patches the other day. Matt's skeptical. I'm curious. If it stays slow today, I might do a little more research into them. Just because.

(repeated conversation yesterday on my lunch break)

"What are those?"
"Dried hibiscus flowers."
(silence) "You eat those?"
"Yup."

Only one person I offered one to accepted. She said they were different, and interesting, and not that bad. She also managed to peg the texture: fruit roll-up like. The flavor, to me, is somewhere between a dried cranberry and a dried cherry. Red. They're high in antioxidants, and a natural refrigerant. I haven't eaten enough in one sitting to notice any difference in my temperature, though. Plus, a bag at Trader Joe's is only like a buck-fifty.

Side note, for blogofstench. I found the site with the Sims2 machinima I mentioned. http://www.atlas-enterprises.net/ I highly recommend the three-part series "Awakening." Each part is about 30 minutes long, IIRC.

Working retail, there is no such thing as a holiday.  :)  In general, I don't mind this, as 1. I don't celebrate them anyway, and 2. it's time-and-a-half, plus a paid day.  What I usually mind about it is the fact that it's impossible to predict traffic flow, and we get about 20 calls (at least), "Hi, are you open today?"  I'm always tempted to say, "Nope, we're just hanging out answering the phone."

But something that really touched me?  One of our regular customers came in, and she felt bad that we had to work, so she brought a pair of $5 Starbucks giftcards, one for me, one for my coworker.  Awww. 

It's been a rough past few days.  

Friday, I woke at quarter to seven, thinking, "Wait, was it this Friday or next Friday Kate was off...?"  I was 90% sure it was next Friday, but there was that 10% of doubt.  So, I called the store to double check.

Just a reminder: I live an hour's drive from my store.  If I'm to be there at 8 when the store opens, I need to leave right at seven, if not a little before.

No one answers the phone until 7.  The GM looks at the schedule, "Nope, Kate's not here, you're in today at 7."

Crap.  "Okay, I'm on my way."

But still...that 90%.  So I sent a message to the department e-mail to Kate, to call me on my cell if she got the e-mail.  

I was about halfway there, had just gotten through the rough section of the drive (construction for a light rail tying up most of the road, and will be tying it up for another year at least), when my cell phone rang.

Yep, it was Kate.  

So, since I was already halfway there, I went ahead and finished out the drive, got a coffee, an apple, and some gluten-free snack bars, hung out at the grocery store, and just went in to work about an hour and fifteen minutes early.  

Kevin, the department manager, said to me later that day, "And I even left Scott several large notes letting him know Kate was going to be _late_ this morning because she had to get paper from another store!"

(shakes head)

Well, I got out of work about half an hour before I was originally scheduled, so Matt and I went grocery shopping, and then went for Chinese food.

I didn't think.  I ordered General Tso's.  I love General Tso's chicken.

General Tso's is breaded.

With wheat flour.

(thunks head on desk)

Saturday was ROUGH.  I wanted to smack customers for being rude, stupid, snarky and condescending.  I was having trouble thinking, trouble with simple math and simple concepts, and I just wanted everything to go away.  However, that was my own doing, and now I know I need to find a good recipe for General Tso's sauce and make it at home with non-wheat breading.

One of my best friends is worried because she's getting married next summer, and the location she's booked only allows catered food, and she doesn't know if she can do a reception safe for me to eat.  I'm so, really, completely touched that she's worried about that.  :)  I have to remind her, though, that it's HER wedding, and HER budget, and that's what she should worry about.  I'll be happy for her, and attend and be happy for her, and throw rice balls at her head, whether I can eat or not.  :-D

No real problems so far. I like the GF bread (still have to make a loaf using the new yeast, though), and I really like the quinoa pasta (made with a blend of quinoa and corn flour). It tastes like, well, pasta, as opposed to the whole wheat stuff I tried back when I was going low-carb, which tasted like crap. The only problem I've had with the quinoa pasta is probably pan-related: I seem to get uncooked ends from time to time. A bigger pan with more water would fix that, though. A bonus is that it only takes 5 minutes to cook.

I also made gf chocolate chip cookies, using the recipe found here http://www.glutenfreebakingandmore.com/freerecipes.html near the bottom of the page, with a few slight changes: I doubled the amount of vanilla, added a teaspoon of almond extract, and used a cup of mini chocolate chips and a cup of Heath bar pieces instead of just chocolate chips. The vanilla and almond changes were based on years of making the Mrs Field's clone recipe from www.topsecretrecipes.com, and changes I'd made to that recipe as I went. They were tasty; I took some with me to meeting last night, but we got there late (hidden turn, drove past it three times) so I just offered them after meeting to the sister who recommended the GF trial and a few of the other sisters. They all liked them, and one said that if we hadn't told her they were GF, she never would have guessed. Tastewise, they taste like normal cookies; there's just a slight texture off-ness from the rice flour.

I made the quinoa pasta for lunch today, and a quickie white sauce since I was out of tomato-based sauce. Short recipe:
splash of milk
pat of butter
spoonful of Miracle Whip
parmesan cheese
garlic powder
black pepper
Mix and heat through.

If it's a quickie "let's see if this works" type deal, I don't bother measuring.

I've felt okay this week, other than a screaming headache at 2 am Thursday morning, and waking this morning so tired I just went back to bed (woke the first time at 6:30, the second at 11). I was tired Wednesday and Thursday mornings, too (Thursday because of the damn headache), but I've been tired since 1997, so a little worn-out-ness, I don't count as unusual. Sleeping from 9:30 pm to 11 am and still feeling tired, that's unusual.

I work closing tonight, and I'm prepared to work 9 am to 7 pm tomorrow, if the situation with my desktop publisher hasn't been resolved. Today's dinner will be leftover stir-fry from last night (extra-firm tofu, snow peas, edamame, broccoli, carrots, water chestnuts, and rice) and a couple of cookies. Yay, cookies!

I wanna go back to bed....