And then it was August and I was wondering why in hellfire I can’t just go work at my own shop instead of all this job-swapping bullshit I’ve been doing, because this dopey king paid me 157.5M for a fucking teapot and believe me when I say that would set me up for life. I’d even pay real taxes on that shit and still be completely fine.
Of course, if I start asking why Shop Titans isn’t real I’d also have to ask why Animal Crossing and Hay Day can’t be real. If we start to question this it all falls apart. Of the three, I would give the greatest priority to Animal Crossing. I don’t have to work customer service in Animal Crossing, though I did recently download Happy Home Paradise and have already designed one home. (And then I promptly forgot that I had it. Go figure.)
In other news, this happened in the middle of my bakery shift on the Fourth of July because, I don’t know, my life has been one long comedy of errors since September.
I would say the sprinkler burst, but “sprinkler” is the wrong word for what that thing was doing. It just exploded over our heads in the middle of an almost-out-the-door rush and the floor filled up with black water in seconds, and it smelled like tar and it was disgusting. All the food was very clearly ruined, but we still had a couple of brainless nitwits who for some reason thought we might still be working on their drinks and that those drinks would be completely uncontaminated even though filthy pipe water was spewing all over the restaurant??? So many people tried to get back into the restaurant that we had to lock the doors, literally why are they like this. We then spent a week getting aggressively asked dumb questions like “Did you get flooded” on account of the industrial wind machines we brought in to help with the damp, because stupid people love to feel clever. Then after that the floor in front of the stairs was so spongy it was like walking on a springboard, and I spent probably another week tripping over those fucking boards every time I got near the stairs. Cue all the look-at-me-I’m-smart people asking if we’d had water damage. It was a relief when the water finally evaporated and the floor went back to normal. I’m amazed I didn’t break my neck while delivering customer orders.
July Reading Stats
Books Finished:
Total Pages Read: 533
Abysmal. I don’t know what’s wrong with me this year.
Speaking of things that are wrong with me, the bookcases got moved, goddammit. Last month I said we weren’t discussing it, too heavy too time-consuming too much work too lazy blah blah blah and then I moved them during an extended weekend when nobody was watching me closely enough.
Anyway, I’m pleased with how the swapperoo turned out. I thought I’d be crippled the next day, but I was fine. I even managed to shorten my dining table for the first time since I got it. It has a middle leaf that has always been kept in place because I had nowhere to put it and preferred a longer table, but I needed to free up some space because the linens dresser was moving to the spot right next to the table and it’s a lot thicker than the bookcases, which means less room for the table. Long story short, I had no idea what the table was even called but I managed to find the product name in my old email invoices because I never throw anything away, and I found a very helpful video on the vendor’s website that told me exactly how to take the leaf out, and now I have plenty of room.
And after all that labor, I now have a tidy little reading corner and it is niiiiiiiiiiiice. Circe has started hanging out right in front of the bookcases (that’s my girl), now that they’re no longer blocked by the table, and I have found that it is actually surprisingly comfortable down on the floor. The best part is that the move opened up a lot more of my floor, and the living room feels far more spacious than it did. This was a good decision. And, since I moved my DVD collection to the TV cabinet in my bedroom, the DVD bookcase now houses my entire Redwall collection, which neatly fits on one shelf. Not gonna lie, I am very pleased about that. I haven’t quite decided what else will live on that shelf. Right now it has my reference books, foreign language, sheet music, art books, and ARCs, but I still have some room to play with. Adding the DVD case was a last-minute decision and it definitely wasn’t planned, but I knew that I wanted to repurpose that bookcase somehow and wasn’t sure where to put it. And then three years of Animal Crossing interior design experience kicked in and I realized the bookcase could be used as a room divider to create a closed-in reading corner, and the results really speak for themselves. Now if only I would read.
The annoying part, which is always the worst part of moving the bookcases: pulling every book off the shelf and putting them back on again. I swear it doesn’t look like that many books when they’re on their shelves, but they always seem to multiply when they’re on the floor. Literally who let me buy this many books. This is ridiculous. I haven’t even read most of them. Circe was judging me hard. (But I have to admit that the final result is incredibly satisfying.)
Currently Reading
Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
No progress this month.
Foul Heart Huntsman
Chloe Gong
Current rating: 4.5-4.75 stars. I still hate the way Chloe misuses verbs. I am becoming fonder of Phoebe but I’m only 56 pages in, so there’s still a lot of time for shit to happen.
Unemployment Update
No, I’m not technically unemployed. I still consider myself officially unemployed, even though I am currently stuck in fast food limbo and can’t seem to get out, because I am not employed in my industry. Every decision I make lately seems to take me from bad to worse, and I don’t know how to stop it. Case in point: I’ve moved bakeries. More to the point, I’ve left one bakery for another. (My very soggy Fourth was not the reason for leaving, but it sure didn’t help.) The original bakery had a plethora of problems: there was no training program; things frequently broke and never got fixed, and we ended up resorting to “temporary” workarounds that just became the norm; we were always running out of ice because the ice maker was small and slow; the managers were always finding new things for us to do, which then got added to the daily task list; we were regularly required to work hours-long solo shifts, because “it can be done by one person”; building maintenance kept turning off the AC during heat waves and then couldn’t be contacted; staffing issues frequently became my issues, because it was my phone that would start blowing up if somebody decided not to show up for their shift; and there was no direct deposit what the fuck. I cannot believe I lasted three months at that place. The final straw came when I went to pick up my paycheck and it wasn’t there, because after all the shit we put up with they couldn’t even manage to pay us on time.
I wish I could say I’m thriving at the new bakery, but after a week the best I can say is that it’s not the other place and there is at least some form of training and a binder full of drink recipes. I know that sounds super basic, but, besties, believe me when I say the last place did not have even that. I am stressed as shit, for reasons other than newness, and I’m not having a good time. I am really hoping I can settle into this job the way I (eventually) settled into the last one. Mostly I figure that if I got used to the last job I can get used to anything, and I don’t regret leaving, but at the same time this first week has been so awful that I’m beginning to regret where I landed. I had an absolutely cinematic post-work meltdown on Wednesday, and, even though Circe pulled me out of it, it’s not good that it happened. The one bright spot is that this place has direct deposit, and, as with the last bakery, I like the food. I even signed up for the rewards program like a sucker.
Other than that, I’m not happy and I don’t know where I go from here. I was hoping I could use this job to get some breathing room as I take a break from job-searching, but it’s starting to look like I’m not going to be getting that.
July Socials
Fuck, I’m too tired and depressed to do a full social roundup. Here’s a list instead.
- Pics 1-5: I went home on the Fourth, after the bakery got flooded out, and my dad and I went out for ramen. The chopstick wrapper included instructions for the chopstick-inept. At some point during the day, I picked up Hato and cuddled her and she parked herself on the couch and stared at me like she was expecting payment. I left the room and looked back and she was still there and still staring. T_T
- Pics 6-12: One of the best parts of July: I had lunch with Diane and her husband, and tried abura soba for the first time. I got the sukiyaki ramen with a poached egg. It was amazing. Picture of chili oil bottle included because of its funny spout. After lunch, we went to the Japanese department store next door, then a bakery (had to try the iced chai because I frequently made them at the bakery), then a claw machine store. I fully get why people get addicted to those claw machines. I ended up buying five tokens to try for a kitty keychain but failed every time, lol. I only got the keychain because another patron took pity on me and got one for me. (Must study her technique.) And then after all that trouble the tassel came off the bottom of the cat head, and I keep forgetting to try to fix it.
- Pics 13-20: One of my uncles was in town – well, in Virginia, so close enough – so my parents and I went down for dinner with him. We got there a couple hours early because better safe than sorry with Virginia, so we were able to spend some time at the newish Japanese market in Vienna. It was amazing and I will be back. We were early enough that we were able to sample some of their cafe foods, of which the croquette curry was a highlight. Also I now take a professional interest in iced lattes and ordered an iced caramel cream, which was okay. Their iced caramel was way prettier than the ones I used to make, but mine tasted better. I managed to limit myself to two snacks and a kitty dish, because I can never resist calico merch.
- Pics 21-28: The actual dinner lol. I guess we were particularly hungry that day. We went to a Peruvian restaurant of whose branding I heavily approve because of its extensive use of an octopus logo. Everything was delicious. Dinner was especially exciting because I got the call for a second interview with the new bakery about halfway through the evening. Still hoping I can make it work.
ACAD Update
More like no update. After a meteoric start, A Cat A Day has quietly fizzled out. It all started with a one-day break that turned into a weekend break that turned into a week turned into two weeks and now it’s closing in on a month and I haven’t drawn any cats. I managed to fill up two pages and started on a third, but at this point I don’t know if or when I’m going to continue. I suppose it doesn’t really matter even if I do. Nothing makes me happy anymore.
