These are the flowers I got for Valentine's Day. Gorgeous, eh? I took them out to the four feet of sun we get for an hour here in the armpit of Hermit Mountain so I could get a decent picture. Everytime I do anything outside, ESPECIALLY if I'm trying to take a photo, the cats have to inspect my subject first. Always makes me laugh, and I always get their stamp of approval. Though sometimes they have to paw, claw, and/ or chew on whatever it is first.

These last few days of work have been the slooooowest eeevvvveeeerrrrrr. Also surreal. I feel kind of like I'm dreaming, and like I'm standing back, invisible, watching these days of change. It's really weird. I don't know if I've ever felt this way. Pretty huge changes though so I guess it makes sense. I'm leaving the area I've known for 17 years, that I grew up in, AND my job of eight years, that was pretty much my entire adult life. Yup, definitely don't feel quite awake.

Besides each work day taking forever, there's still the comraderie to enjoy. I won't miss the job, but I'll miss my coworkers for sure. PainterLady got me this beautiful handkerchief for Valentine's day, I think she said she got it in India. It's pink with blue trim and litle blue flowers, really beautiful, and it's so so soft. (My all black wearing, spiked collar, tripple wallet chain steel toe combat boot goth self from ten years ago would have a heart attack if she knew she would be wearing a pink handkerchief to work someday.) So yesterday at work Ted says, "A pink do-rag, huh? There's the Bloods, the Cryps..."
"And the Fluffy Bunnies!" I said. "See, you make a peace sign and curl your fingers down, and that's our gang sign."
"No, I think you should have to hop with your hands curled up, like this," Ted said, and then proceeded to demonstrate. This is a 6'5" sixty year old man here. I thnk everyone's stomach hurt after all that laughing. I will certainly miss laughing with them.

However, I will NOT miss Bosslady accusing me of cheating, which she did the other day. In these route evalutions, one thing we get timed on is vehicle loading. Well, my vehicle is in the shop so I have a loaner from Maintinence. There's an inner door between the drivers seat and rear cargo area, which we never close, but on the loaner it was closed and locked. And my key wouldn't work! I had to climb in the back and fiddle with the inner workings of the latch mechanism so I could get it open and load my vehicle. We have 15 minutes as our maximum allowable time, and because of that lock it took me 9 minutes. Yeah, still WAY within limits, but BossLady called me into the office. "Why where you messing around when you were supposed to be loading? You don't get time to mess around. There's no way it should have taken that long. It was a light day, none of the others took that long."

At this point my blood was boiling, pounding in my ears. I tried to explain about the lock, and ALSO the fact that the loaner has a big steel table bolted right where all my stuff usually goes. Neither my regular vehicle NOR the other carriers vehicles had that, so it was hard to try and get all my stuff to fit in. She just looked at me for aminute and then said, "Well you don't get paid to do that." At this point I was literally shaking with fury. "There was NO WAY I could have loaded faster with that vehicle," I told her. Then I got up and left the office, as this was in the afternoon and I had just finished for the day.

Having my integrity questioned like that, I started crying when I got home, from anger and at the unfairness of it. All I EVER do is try to do a good job, and it's never enough for her. I was so angry, in fact, that two seconds after I walked in the door I turned around and drove back to work. The whole way there I was trying to stop crying and think of what I was going to say to Bosslady. I wanted to walk into her office and tell her that I did NOT appreciate her suggestion that I was wrong, and that if she was going to change my time on the paperwork (which had been suggested) she better do it through formal channels because I in turn would file a formal complaint. Ah, the freedom of resigning! No more being cowed by this woman!

I have listened to my coworkers talk each other out of filing formal complaints before, saying that it's not worth it to go up against this woman. She will scrutinize your every move, make your life hell, and ultimately accomplish her goal of getting you to quit since the union makes it really hard to just fire us. Last week Joanne came in, trying to work, but she was so sick she couldn't do it. She was scared to cal in sick because she used up all her sick days having surgery. Well, when she told Bosslady she had to go home, Bosslady yelled at her until she cried. Every time I let my guard down and think, man Bosslady has been actually nice lately, boy do I regret relaxing.

So when I got back to work, I was still shaking and crying. I sat in the parking lot for a minute, rehearsing what I wanted to say. Then someone walked by and I turned my head. i didn't want anyone to see me like that, let alone Bosslady. I didn't want to walk in, voice breaking and hysterical, because I thought it would undermine my asserting I'd done nothing wrong. Or maybe I'm just still cowed. Anyway, I decided that I would wait until the next day, when I was calm. Also, every morning the previous day's paperwork is on our desk. if she didn't change the time then I would just let it go like always and thank the gods that it's almost over. I went back home, had myself an Irish Carbomb, and paced in anger for the next several hours.

Aaaaaand now I just wrote a fricken novel hahahaha. Wish it could have been all fluffy bunnies, but I really had to get that off my chest. Oh, and you know what fluffy bunny gang members deal in? Candy and easter eggs!!!!