Sunday, January 8, 2012

Long, off topic, and cuss alert


So, sometimes you just have to push a boulder uphill, even though you know the grade is dangerous and you'll likely be squashed flat in the end, still you just have to try.  I had left work in the middle of Tuesday night with a sniffle, dripping, fever/chills, raw throat and the occasional dry cough....the lady at the Integrity desk told me I had earned 40 hours ATO which I was now free to take since the Christmas peak had ended.  Fine.  I talked to my manager, punched out, and signed the booklet and even walked the extra half mile to do so, even though I was getting more bleary by the minute, once I finally gave up and decided to go home.  It's like admitting it, makes it so.

I stopped by a drugstore and asked the pharmasist what concoction he suggested...he had no opinion, "There's basically only 5 active ingredients, take your pick.  They're all about the same"  which was what had my hazy head spinning to begin with when I asked him for his suggestion....I ended up with the only one that was for a runny nose, since most of the others said "congestion" and my issue DEFINITELY wasn't that.  I also got some Kleenex with aloe lotion since my nose was already raw and some juice.  Then I saw these cute little twinkle battery candles, and it was another hour before I made it home.  Then next 16-48 (in reality around 30) hours were a blur of bathroom, juice drinking, blanket wrestling, sweat, and a phone call to let work know I wasn't coming in on Wed. night.  I knew my points were adding up, but I wasn't worried because I had ATO.  I made it to work on time the following night even though I still felt crumbly, with my badge, robotussin, knee pads and juice.  I wanted to eat lunch in the car so I could take my next dose at 10:30, right on time, well, half an hour late.  I was working my butt off and concentrating pretty well, so well that break was 20 minutes over before I realized it.  I worked until the end of break and went to the after-lunch meeting.  When it was over, I asked my manager if I could take my break and he just shook his head.  "Go, go.  Get out of here."

That's when I discovered that I'd locked my keys in the truck.  I couldn't take my robotussin at all, let alone an hour late.  My cell phone was in the truck, so I had to use the company phone with all the buttons--free but almost impossible to use.  Dave said he'd bring my extra keys, but it would be a while.  "Just be here before 4:30" I pleaded.  About that time, I was reminded that it was pay day....oh yeah...it's so hard to remember since I come into work on Thursday night and it's Friday when I leave and payday is Friday.  It didn't feel like a friday.  It felt like a nameless day.  Although my lunch was also in the truck, along with any change I might have used in the vending machine, the coffee machine is free and I had some trail mix in my coat pocket.  When I went back to work we were doing a "sweep" which is every bin in order, basically without moving, non-stop, counting.  The bins are slowly being repaired and I found fewer defective bins, which means I only had to count once.  Believe it or not, I was making rate and making up my non-rate from before lunch.  At break, Dave had still not dropped off my keys.  When work was over, I was right on time clocking out, then leisurely put away my equipment.  I decided to blow off getting my check.  It would still be there the next day.  Dave had not only dropped off my keys but had gone the millionth mile and brought in my primary set from the locked truck, so both sets were at the security desk, weighing about 5 pounds.  My badge wasn't letting me out the turnstyle.  I was ready to cry.  What more could go wrong?

Since I had to walk the extra half mile to get clarification on my non-functional badge, I might as well pick up my check.  Most others had already left and there were only two lines remaining...5 people in one line and 30 in the other.  I just started laughing as I joined the long line.  Of course, of course, the K-O line was longer than any other...every week I joke that I should have switched to Terrell when I had the chance.  (The older men I work with think it serves me right for not wanting to take his name....which wasn't the point, actually, it's all so arbitrary, it just makes me laugh.)  So, after all this waiting, they couldn't find my check.  The guy looked through the alphabetized list like 8 times--there are a bunch of Martins.  Nope.  I had to go wait in line at the problem desk.  Sure enough, they had it.  No reason given.  "Anything else I can help you with?"--his ritual "Fries with that Burger" comment got him in trouble this time.  "Yeah, can you tell me why my badge isn't working?"

Turns out I had been fired at 12:01that morning, due to my accrued points.  Laughter bubbled up.  Fan-fucking-tastic!  I haul my sick carcass off of it's deathbed, force myself to come in, lock myself out of my truck, have no food or phone, work myself ragged and they dick around with my check before firing me.  How bloody cool is that?!?!  He offered to let me out with his badge and in some slight of hand, kept my badge and all my info cards....since he put me out the East Door, I had a half mile walk outside the building to get to my truck.  I didn't even open my check.  I was crying and watery mucus was flowing down my lip and I started coughing, which wet my pants a little.  And I couldn't wipe my face because my lips were cracked and my nose was raw and who were these fuckers anyway with both hands full of keys and my check and my knee pads  when my fever cycle shifted to chill.  I called Dave and I was hickupping and couldn't really see well enough to drive so I had to pull over.  It was 4:30 am. and the interstate was pretty active.  Getting in a wreck was the last thing I needed.

I did decide one thing though...I was going to sleep until Integrity opened and call and ask why my hours of ATO hadn't been applied to my sick days...at least they could explain why and possibly reinstate me if I really kissed butt.  Truthfully, I was too wired to go right to sleep.  I'd slept plenty in the last few days, enough for a week or two at least and I set my alarm clock for 10 am.  When I woke up, Dave was gone.  He'd taken Gretchen with him, wherever he was.  I called Integrity after searching the web quite a while to find their number (remember the problem-solver guy took my info cards when he snatched my inoperable badge.)  Finally, I got ahold of "steve" from Bombay.  I sounded like crap and he was very businesslike but kind.  He suggested that I go to the Amazon Staffing office and speak to them....which sounded like a crappy idea to me.  Sure, I WANT to drive back to Whitestown in the middle of MY night to beg for my job back....but I called Dave, who was on a quick trip to the woods with his dog to check on the camper (recent high wind storms may have blown it off it's blocks--again.)  He thought it was a great idea--and also, could I mail something he left on the table, special delivery overnight, at the post office?  Sure.

So, I climbed back on the interstate, my life one big spiral around a giant sink hole, consisting of concrete overpasses, flying buttresses, swooping on-ramps and multiple lanes.  I'd driven this path so many times in so many levels of altered consciousness, sleep deprived, exhausted, overworked, too sore to shift without pushing down on my knee with my hand, highly caffeinated, singing with the radio, and depressed as heck when my truck spit up her transmission.  It was almost a relief to think that maybe this would be the last time I'd be traveling this mobious strip of pavement.  I still felt crumby, my fever was lower, though.  I wanted to ask for the night off, but thought that would be pushing my luck.  When I got to the Integrity office, all the lights were out.  LUNCH...."Can I help you?"  It was some random guy in an Integrity vest, just like 50 others milling around with nothing to do, only this one seemed sort of territorial about me touching the office door knob when there was obviously no one in the front entryway.  Turns out, he was the person I needed to see.  He had about three options for me to be reinstated, including getting a doctor's excuse which would wipe out my points from the last day and a half, and get me excused for an additional 3 days--what with my weekend, I wouldn't need to be back to work until Tuesday at 6pm....and frankly, maybe seeing a doctor was a good idea anyhow....so "I'll take door number "Doctor's Excuse" to block, Jerry....."  He gave me a new info card with the call in number on it, and arranged for a new ID badge to be waiting on me come Tuesday.  And just like that, I wasn't fired, after all!  All I had to do was to get a doctor's excuse and go to the post office....

It was amazing.  I went to the post office and the tractor ad didn't need any special delivery, because it wouldn't get there any faster anyway, and would still make it in time for the classified's deadline.  The doctor at Direct Care was pretty flaky asking ME what antibiotic I wanted to take....(eerily like the pharmacist at 4am...why do these people spend years in school and thousands on tuition if I'M the one who has to decide?) but I was encouraged to know that somewhere along the line, I'd lost 14 pounds.... At the bank, I did not have my check in my wallet, only two empty stub packets...I didn't even waste time wondering if my check was lost, or in another pair of pants, or how long it would take to re-issue...sure enough, it had been on my front seat all this time, in plain sight with my charging cellphone, for any causal passerby to abscond with....but they hadn't, and I thanked them for allowing my haphazard life to continue wending it's way towards whatever conclusion might be in store.  Turns out I still had $4.05 in my checking account, before the deposit.  But I might have beat the clinic charges that I had just put on my debit card....so we're talking nick of time on that little issue.  I found some food at a little buffet that I'd feared was out of business...but my throat was too raw to do more than drink hot tea and hot-n-sour soup.  My spurt of energy was waning, as I hadn't really slept yet, so I skipped the CVS and went home.  There the siren-song of my velvet/micro-suede/mock sheep-fleece blankies were doing a Valkyrie  Operetta in the original Nordic tongue.

Don't get me wrong.  I love my blankets, they are soft and warm and light weight, sort of warm clouds, but I'd been huddled in them so much that all my body aches and chills had tangled in my mind and sort of been blamed on my matress, actually. So I was surprised that they seemed to float up around me and welcomed me into their seductive embrace.  The dogs climbed onto the bed an settled around me like guardian angels, warm ones at that.  It was about 4 in the afternoon and I hadn't had any medication in the previous 24 hours.  I slept like the dead until Dave got home around 8 o'clock, just in time for an hour's nap before he had to go to work.(crazy man!)  I lay there listening to him snore and giving him gentle hugs so I wouldn't wake him, but hopefully give him happy dreams and restful sleep.  I got up after a while and fed the dogs, let them out, let them in.  Checked my Face Book account.  Replied to a few.  Dave hadn't been to CVS either, and I had about 22 minutes until they closed to do it myself.  No problem.  I jumped into my trusty little truck and up the street we went.  The pharmacy had my items ready to go and I picked up some more juice.

I hadn't gotten the dogs anything for Christmas.  (It had been hectic, let's face it.  I was still wrapping presants on Christmas day with my mother-in-law's help while everyone else was still at church....)  There was Krogers, lit like a beacon just off shore, calling to me;  "Fresh beef bones!"  I knew the doggies wanted one....and hey, the buns needed some kale, right?  I actually bought healthy food and only spent about 25 dollars, another christmas miracle.  Back home with all my grocery bags, I shuffled through the door, keeping dogs in and porch cats out, without dropping anything.  But there is a stump family tradition (amongst the women at least,) of needing to rush to the bathroom first thing upon returning home.  I dropped everything in the kitchen and put Yukon out the back door to keep him out of the bones and put up the baby gate to keep Sal and Gretchen out of the kitchen for half a minute...except that, I used the rabbit's gate to shut out the dogs, giving them free run of the kitchen while I was gone....I returned to the scene of two very happy bunnies, upto their little rabbit necks in plastic bags, happily helping themselves to all the kale their little bunny hearts could desire.  Hilarious!  I grabbed the movie camera.  Precious came to check them out, possibly smelling the beef bones.  The buns just gave her a sniff and kept stuffing their little bunny gullets.  Now, if I can only get the movie downloaded and shared in some form!  It's probably the best movie I've ever made.

So much rambling, so little said.  I've taken up way too much of everyone's time but considering how little you've heard from me in the last two months, it all balances out.  I'm feeling much better, but have some inner ear infection that makes me stagger like a drunk when I rise quickly--no dizziness, tho--which is odd.  Smell ya later.  KIM