A mishmash of topics.

Work. We've finished training the newbies for night shift. They both have previous call center experience and they catch on very quickly, which is great!

The best  part about work, though, is that my schedule may be changing soon. I talked to my supervisor about bumping me to a mid schedule (especially now since we're almost overly-stocked for night shift), which would entail 10-6 and 10-7 shifts. I'll be able to run errands before things close, to visit with Mom when she gets off work at 6pm, to actually free up my evenings now and again for friends and family... you know, if my request is approved. I feel confident that it will be; my supervisor has mentioned that there are some upcoming changes in the department. She also asked if I'd be willing to talk to her about attending an upcoming leadship/customer relations training course, and I told her yes. If they're thinking of bumping me up to customer relations, however, I'm asking for a raise. We'll see how that pans out.

***

Daisy. My nerves are shot. I am so wound up about taking Daisy (my sweet furbaby, a fifteen-year-old cat, who still lives with my Mom because of my poor husband's cat allergies) to the vet tomorrow. My father, a life-long dog person and disliker of cats, absolutely loved Daisy. She was the exception to his UGH-CATS rule, and she was his couch snuggle buddy. Ever since Dad died, her health (which wasn't the best in the first place -- I'm pretty sure she's going blind, because she has cataracts in both of her eyes) has declined rapidly. She's begun losing control of her bladder on her way to her litter box and she hasn't eaten a thing in nearly three days now.

The only time all week she has come out from hiding in her "spot" underneath a corner table beside the couch, Mom says, was yesterday when J & I were visiting Mom before I had to go to work. She came out to meet me when she heard my voice and I picked her up and cradled her, swaying her side-to-side like a baby. After a few minutes, I sat with her on the couch, next to J, where she snuggled between us and slept the entire time we were there.

I'm afraid that the vet will give us bad news. I want to be optimistic, I want to think something can be cured with an antibiotic or a shot, but I just don't know. It's so hard to think about letting her go, even harder now that Dad's gone, but if there's something wrong with her that can't be fixed, it's not fair of us to keep her around if she's in pain.

***

Home. Things have been going well at home, as always. I feel more and more like this new apartment (I keep saying new, but we've been here for three months) is our home, because I know we'll be here for the remainder of our time in this town. I've been in a crazy nesting mood, too.

I want to decorate and I've begun looking at furniture that we'll soon call ours (keep in mind we're not buying stuff just to buy it -- we actually need new furniture, and since everything here right now was ours individually before we knew each other, it's simply exciting to be making purchasing choices together for our stuff to replace my stuff -- isn't that gross? -- we're saps, sorry).

Also, as I type, I've just put a pan of Mexican cornbread in the oven. Here's the funny thing about that -- I don't cook. I've never cooked. Granny and Mom have been pillars in the community of feeding people here with their amazing food, yet I don't cook. I've never had an interest in it. Well, since I got off work a couple of hours before J tonight, he asked me to go ahead and make the cornbread for our supper according to my Granny's recipe (I have her old recipe boxes filled with her recipes -- I wanted them for her handwriting, not for my cooking prowess, but J has made good use of them for sure). Being the melodramatic kitchen-phobic that I am, I apologized to my poor Granny the whole time I was mixing up the cornbread, because I'm 110% sure that I've screwed it up somehow. BUT. What if it comes out and it's awesome (however unlikely that may be)? Mexican cornbread for everyone I know and love! Huzzah!

***

Family. You wanna know what's super? My little sister (she's 23) and her husband finally moved into their very first apartment today... after being married for five years and living with other people. I'm so elated for her! I haven't seen the place yet, but Mom followed them today and said that she thinks it'll work out well for them, since they finally found somewhere to take all of their animals (two snakes, one bearded dragon, two ferrets, one giant black derpy labrador, and a cat... I think) without an insane pet deposit. Finally, a place all their own. Now all my sister needs to do is get her driver license and she'll be good to go!

Mom is still having some pretty dark days lately. She misses Dad so much. Little things still set her off -- and that's normal, of course, after a death -- but as much as I know and accept the fact that she has to go through these stages to get to a better place, but I want to absorb every single ounce of her sadness and tuck it away to protect her from it.

***

Timer for the cornbread just went off. Cross your fingers for me, y'all. I'm going to go assess my damages, apologize again to my Granny if needed, eat supper, and snuggle the hubs when he finally gets home.

Sherlock is a beautiful creature.... wait.

Yesterday was filled with wonderful laziness.

J got up and went to work at 6am (ughhh, inventory) and I flipped over and went right back to sleep (which shows how poorly I've been sleeping lately -- normally I can't sleep without him next to me) until 10am.

After waking up, I trudged into the living room with my heating pad and a Diet Coke, wrapped myself up in a blanket and snuggled up on the couch for some Sherlock. I must say, even though I am thrilled at the promise of new episodes in the fall, I do believe that even Netflix is judging me a little for re-watching the first two seasons so many times. I love TV shows so very rarely that I obsessively re-watch them when I find one that I like.

So after some Sherlock and then Wreck-It Ralph (which I adored), Kristi texted me to ask if I wanted to go see Beautiful Creatures with her -- and of course I said yes! Kristi and I are guilty-pleasure-book-series buddies. We went through the entirety of the Twilight saga together (both books and movies) and we've both been anticipating Beautiful Creatures because we both read the book when it came out a couple of years ago. We met at the theater for a matinee, and luckily we were the only people in there aside from a couple who sat very far away from us (teenage kids -- I don't think their agenda was to actually watch the movie), so we were free to do what we do best -- MST3K style. We dissected the discrepancies, approved of the parallels, and concluded that the end of the movie was actually better than the end of the novel. It was fun. I haven't gotten to do that with her in quite a while -- not since The Hunger Games.

I came home after the movie and J had already gotten home from work. He cooked dinner (some sort of concoction of chicken, noodles, salsa, and cheese -- I know it sounds odd, but the man has skills and it was delicious as always), I made brownies afterward, and we settled in for a night of Lego Harry Potter on the Xbox.

J had another morning shift today, so I've been bundled up and reading most of the morning (currently re-reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five). I left for a while earlier, to drop off J's drill at the restaurant (because on top of a manager, he's a handy-man -- ha!), and I somehow came home with an order of coconut shrimp and broccoli and cheddar biscuits for lunch.  Yum.

I have to go to work shortly, which is a bummer, but maybe it won't be too bad. I've been training the new girl for the past week in the evenings and she seems to be catching on quickly, which makes being there a little more fun than usual. We'll see...

Until next time, lovelies.

Gray

Hello, lovelies.

Pardon my absence. I've had some rather gray days the past couple of weeks...

...but I'm sure that my colors will come back soon. 

Love.

Rain, rain, go away...

...come again some other day -- perhaps a day when I am off work and can enjoy the delightful lull of your soft pattering on my windows. A day when I can curl up in a blanket with a book and a cup of coffee.

Cliche though it may be, my favorite rainy day activity truly is reading.  If I'm to be completely honest, my favorite any-day activity is probably reading, as well, but for the sake of the introduction to this post, we're focusing on a few of my rainy-day recommended reads. These are books I've read recently that I could not put down once I opened them, and thus they were devoured in a day's time. Click on the links below the books to open their respective GoodReads pages if you want to check out their synopses.

Anna and the French Kiss

While scrolling through one of my favorite bookworm-fabulous Tumblrs, I stumbled across a post that advertised this eBook for a one-day-only price of $2.99. I checked out the synopsis on GoodReads and decided it was worth a shot. This book made me laugh, and though it didn't make me cry, there were some heartstring-tugging moments toward the end -- but it was a fun read. Yes, it's your stereotypical YA romance novel formula -- boy meets girl, boy and girl like each other but there are circumstances that get in the way, etc. -- but the characters were more realistically written (at least in my opinion) than they normally are in these types of books. They have more depth because none of them are perfect, all of them have problems, and they have conversations to get to know each other.

Flat-Out Love

Man, oh, man. I adored this book. One of my lovely friends recommended it to me, and I snagged the eBook right away. At first, the writing and the dialogue come off a little strong -- I thought that Jessica Park was trying a bit too hard to make her teenage characters sound witty and intelligent -- but then farther into the book, I couldn't possibly imagine the characters (that I had gotten to know and utterly adore) speaking any other way. I had tears rolling down my cheeks by the time I finished. 

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

Last (but definitely not least) is the book that I highly recommend to anyone anywhere who has ever in their life worked in the book industry. When I regale my mother, husband, or friends with work stories involving customers and the questions they ask, I am always encouraged to document them so that I may compile them into a book at a later date. Looks like someone beat me to it, ha! In this magical book, you will find clueless customer classics such as, "Did Anne Frank ever write a sequel?" and "I read a book about thirty years ago. It had a green cover. Do you have it?" and "Can I return this once I've read it? Why isn't there a place where I can do that?"  It is simultaneously hilarious and sad. If I hadn't worked in the book industry for nearly four years, I would suspect that some of the scenarios in this book are made up... but I am living proof that these questions are actually asked every single day by readers and non-readers alike.

If you have any book recommendations for me, hit me up in the comments -- unless it's that Fifty Shades (or Fifty Shades inspired) crap, because then I'd be forced to advise you to go get properly laid.

Mixtape Monday #2: Soundtracks

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for well-placed music in other forms of media -- TV shows (I'm looking at you, Scrubs), movies, commercials, whatever. I adore music, and I am ten times more likely to like a mediocre film with a phenomenal soundtrack than I am to like a phenomenal film with a mediocre soundtrack. I've learned that there are very few instances in which amazing movies are produced with amazing soundtracks...

Tracks 1, 2, & 3 are from Almost Famous, which is my favorite movie of all time. I could write an entire blog post on how beautiful and perfect the movie is, but I'll spare you (for now). The music is phenomenal and it makes my heart physically ache for a time period in which I was never alive.

Penny Lane is my spirit animal.

Tracks 4 & 5 are the opening and closing tracks from [500] Days of Summer, which is the best not a love story I've ever seen. It lured me into a different sort of music scene by tempting me with classics by The Smiths and Hall & Oates, and then it tricked me by making me love a song by an artist who otherwise annoys the hell out of me (*cough* Regina Spektor *cough*). Well-played, guys. Well-played.

Tom & Summer love vinyl ♥

Tracks 6 & 7 are the opening and closing tracks from Juno. Who doesn't love smart-mouthed, knocked-up sixteen year old Juno? I'm pretty sure this soundtrack didn't leave my car's CD player for four months. Special mention to Kimya Dawson's "Loose Lips" for being an especially fun sing-along song. Broken hearts hurt but they make us strong.

Also, why is Ellen Page always so freakin' cute?

Tracks 8 & 9 are from Love Actually, my second favorite movie of all time! "Jump (For My Love)" makes me laugh out loud to myself every single time -- if you've ever seen this movie, you'll know why (and if you've never seen this movie, what are you waiting for?!) ...

"Just in cases."

Track 10 is sort of a bonus -- it's from Disney's Hercules and I jam out every time it plays on my iPod. Megara wins the sassy Disney gal contest, hands-down.

Bitch, please. I have the most fabulous hair, too.

I wrapped this one up before I was ready, so prepare yourselves for part two sometime in the future.

Do you have a favorite movie musical moment?  Hit me up in the comments or make a mix of your own and drop me a link!