Suddenly I Have A Craving For Poptarts
It's nearly mid-July, which means two very special things:
1) there's a lot of gorgeous sunny weather out there I'm doing my best to enjoy when I'm not trapped inside a mall, which has for the most part been using Shady as an excuse to take longer than usual walks around the neighbourhood; and
2) I am roughly 1 week away from having the two most commonly used words in my vocabulary being "f'ing backpacks."
You may laugh, but once again I must remind you: it's nearly mid-July. I've already received the set-up instructions for when we turn the store into "back-to-school hell". (Though not necessarily as far as the kids are concerned. More and more over the past few years all the kids who come in shopping are surprisingly revved up to go back to classes. I can't tell if this is because they miss their friends, or they've already regressed about how much they bitched about the homework, or if it's simply due to the fact that they're shopping for new swag. Sadly, from what I can tell, it's mostly the latter.)
Mind you, this year I am a lot more prepared for the crushing crowds that await us in August. Having cut my teeth on last year's "hey, new mall, new store, let's all flood the place at once!" stint, I'm armed with more staff and have already been prepping the stockroom to receive the impendingly exorbent overstock. So I am cautiously optimistic about this year...which I'll really need. Between last back to school and the Christmas season, I brought myself to the threshold of totally burning myself out, something I've only been recovering from in the last moth or so. (And mostly by deliberately easing down from my usual pace at work.)
In other news of the season, I am alarmed to discover that I am apparently quite tasty. Not in a "seriously, I don't need to hear about what you & Mel do when no one's around" kind of way (though to answer that, I generally say or do something silly, and Mel verbally lambastes me for it. Not quite as glamorous as you'd been hoping, is it?), but in an "itchy without the tasty" sort of way.
Yes, with it being near mid-July, it's mosquito season. And for some bizarre reason, this year I'm getting eaten alive. I don't understand it. I've got bite marks all over my arms and legs, and even a small community of them at the base of my spine. In years past, the mosquitoes have hardly cared about me. At worst I'd get one or two bites a season. A season! And now I've been bitten more times in the past 2 weeks than I've suffered probably in the last 5 years.
Quite honestly, I'm baffled.
Even with Mel joining me on our walks, she is left alone. But me...I swear there's a neon "free buffet" sign hovering just out of my line of sight that all the blood-suckers are responding to. I haven't been itch-free for ten days straight. Normally I can Zen the itchiness away and ignore it, but that's been particularly difficult a task when you Zen out one itchy spot, only to have four more start itching. Honestly, is O+ that popular with the mosquito crowd now?
Other than that, it's the typical "calm before the August storm" for me. Laundry's in the process of being laundered, my cat is hunting the dog, Mel is still asleep and I'm contemplating having a Corona at 10am whilst diving into the 'Battle Royale meets 1984' book "The Hunger Games."
That, and I have Nyancat stuck in my head.
Help?
Labels: can't sleep mosquitoes will eat me, nyan nyan nyan nyan nyannyannyannyan nyan nyan nyan
posted by Phillip at 6:38 AM
