home

Arrived home after a flurry-filled (but uneventful) five hours on the Thruway. Found two unpleasant surprises.
1) The goldfish did not survive and was floating in the tank all glassy-eyed. He has been buried in the garden with minimal ceremony and perhaps I will build him a cairn.
2) There was a message on the answering machine "reminding" me that the mandatory alcohol awareness training I must undergo [before Jan 1!] in order to keep my job is "tomorrow morning at 9 am" and I must be there, but there is no time or date on the message.
So I returned the call. "Um, when's this 'tomorrow', and why are you calling it a 'reminder' when I was never initially notified in the first place?"
"Oh," she says, "it was yesterday. But it's been rescheduled for the 11th of January."
"Does that mean I can't work for the first ten days of the new year?" We had to have this training; it would be illegal for us to work after Jan 1st without it.
"No, you're fine," she says, and offers no further explanation. I do intend to press the matter. This is the second time, by the way, that I was not told what time the training was. (And the first time it happened, it was scheduled during my vacation.)

Oh well. Holidays are over. Back to work. Stupid work. Stupid life. Grumble.

On the upside, I did get an email from Z, which I will answer tonight very happily. I had only heard from him once this whole time, when he called on Christmas day and the connection was dropped after two minutes so he never called back. I figured he's busy; the gift decoration contest is today, I believe, and so late tonight would probably be a good time to call him.

I had all sorts of artistic updates I was going to make to this, witty and pithy little short pieces of cleverness that would so neatly sum up my state of being, but I can't remember any of them now. So I will simply leave you with the tidbit that both front doors of my car are smeared with mud from dog greetings, from my four-footed nieces.
I will be sad to wash them off.

Monkey is my co-pilot

Ug. Back to work. Worked like a fiend today. Busy busy busy. Am sore. Wonder if it's just that I'm out of practice, what with having four days off? Or maybe it really was that busy today. It was, kind of. Anyway.

Came home to a dark, cold house, empty and silent, and very strange compared to the last few days of light and crowdedness. (Although my parents' house is large enough that it's not really often that crowded, even with seven of us and two dogs and four cats etc.) Had eaten at work, so there wasn't even an excuse to warm up the kitchen. I turned the heat on and took a shower and am wandering around naked to remind myself that living alone does have its perks. Although it's just not the same without Z here. I am trying to psych myself up to get all kinds of shit done while he's out of the way, but since I'll be at work every day until he comes home, I doubt I'll really be able to get much done.

I do wish we had a cat, at least, but it'd be a lot of responsibility and apparently I can't even sustain a goldfish for more than a month, so, oh well.

Am pretty bummed about the goldfish. I can't decide if it makes it worse that I really didn't like him all that much.

At least Z seems to sort of miss me. He did send me a nice email today. I do miss his emails-- the way we first courted was via email and it was full of awesome. He never emails me anymore.
But I tried to call him just now and they were just sitting down to dinner, so, no go. I am too sleepy to wait up for him to call me back. So, to bed I go. At least I have Monkey!
(Z's giant stuffed monkey accompanied us to Christmas last year. This year I brought him to sit in the passenger's seat, so I wouldn't be alone. I'd intended to bring him into the house, but Lizzie, Scout's sister, really likes to chew the faces off big stuffed animals, so, I decided Monkey would be happier guarding the car. He was my companion on the ride home today and I've just brought him inside to be my companion here. He sort of doesn't say much.)