Category: Personal

I’m 38 years old.

When I look in the mirror, I sometimes remember being in my painting class in college and trying to do a self-portrait. It was not one of my more successful works. I could never get my own face right – the angles eluded me somehow.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see myself as having changed all that much from that 20 year old struggling with paint and brushes. The lines on my forehead are a bit more defined, but otherwise I don’t think I look all that different. The hair is longer than it was then, and it’s bottle-auburn shot through with bits of grey, not blonde. But the face is the same.

I wonder, will I still look in the mirror when I’m 70 and be able to see that same girl?

Since 2/29 I’ve had exactly one day off, and as of last night I don’t have another day off on the schedule, thanks to my backup taking an emergency leave of absence. I am TIRED and really, really stressed out. I’m not a robot. I need time off, to recharge my batteries, be with my husband, and take care of mundane things like laundry, never mind trying to have a life.

I have no intention of putting up with this level of stress for much longer. The main thing that’s kept me from screaming louder about the situation is my vacation, scheduled to commence on 3/31. If I have to, I’ll grit my teeth and slog through until then, but once I’m back from Rome, things need to change, and quickly.

A drone at the corporate HR department told me that since I am an exempt employee, there is no limit to how many hours I can be made to work nor how few days off I can have. Frankly I’m not sure that’s really legal, but I haven’t had time to find out what the situation really is.

Anyway, I’ll try to keep blogging regularly but if I post less frequently, now you know why.

On the good news front, my car is back from the shop again. Here’s hoping I’ve used up my accident quota for the next 20 years or so.

The flowers that bloom in the spring,
Tra la,
Breathe promise of merry sunshine.
As we merrily dance and we sing,
Tra la,
We welcome the hope that they bring,
Tra la,
Of a summer of roses and wine.

(The Mikado, Act II)

The cherry blossoms are starting to bud at work this week. The sun has been shining for the past several days, and it’s starting to feel like Spring in California.

Unfortunately, things continue to be screwed up at work. The ongoing understaffing issue has moved well into the realm of the bizarre. The most recent hire started Saturday. On Sunday, she was in a car accident and is now in the hospital. I don’t have all the details but it sounds like she’ll be fine eventually. For now, though, she’s out of commission, and no idea when or if she’s going to be coming back to work. And I’m still significantly understaffed.

What I can’t figure out is, if the job market is so tough these days, why is it so hard to hire people to sell shoes? For months now, this store has suffered through a string of people who either quit within a week, are incompetent, and/or have attitude issues. The stress of having to deal with the lack of staff caused my predecessor to resign, and after only 3 weeks it’s starting to get to me, too.

Despite the fact that I am not normally a superstitious person, I am starting to think something is beyond the normal range of wrong about the string of bad luck we’ve been having. I need to get the store feng shui’ed or something – anything to change the current vibe and help us get a full staff onboard.

At least we have the pretty cherry blossoms to admire, and the sweet smell of Spring in the air.

Just finished a 7 day stretch of work, no thanks to the gal who quit without giving notice. I get one day off, then 6 more days of work. Repeat for the next three weeks or until I finish staffing up the store, whichever comes first.

What I want to do tomorrow: get a pedicure, go clothes shopping, have a nice dinner somewhere.

What I’ll probably end up doing: laundry, grocery shopping, clean the house, catch up on some paperwork.

I need a vacation!

My blog has been going for about 6 months now, and I’m still enjoying the process. Keeping a more or less public diary is an interesting challenge. There’s things I’ve been meaning to blog about for months (such as my thoughts on my ipod), and then there’s the things that I feel are too personal to write about in a forum that is, thanks to Google, more or less permanently archived. Then there’s the issue of making time at all to post – with no Net access from work, I can only post at home, and I’m frequently too tired to take the 30-60 minutes it takes me to compose my thoughts, gather references (if necessary) and put together a spell-checked, more or less thoughtful post. And then, there’s the things I know I want to write about, but somehow when I actually sit down to blog, I fin myself posting about a completely different topic.

Today, for example, I’d been meaning to either finish off my review of William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition” or rant a bit about Nordstrom’s unique egotism when it comes to hiring. But instead, this post is about something else.

I’ve noticed some interesting results from my webstats page. The little review I posted on The Davinci Code – one of the first posts to my blog, in fact – has generated the vast majority of traffic to the site. For example, in the month of February 2003, it generated more than 80% of my overall traffic, which comprises between 40-50 unique visits to the site per day. Not bad for an unadvertised personal blog that scarcely a handful of friends link to.

I’m somewhat amused by this, because IMO the review is not particularly thorough or insightful. But for whatever reason, it’s gotten into the search engines and people are reading it. I’ve considered going back and expanding on it, knowing that it’s getting so much traffic, but have decided to leave it be for now.

Some other phrases that pop up regularly in the Search Strings report: “schroedinger’s cat”, “lagniappes”, and “donald rumsfeld vietnam”. Most depressing search string: “jews are bad” – although the silver lining is that if someone is really looking for proof that jews are bad, my site isn’t going to help them. And most offbeat: “are there trees that don’t change colors” – now how did that string get someone to my blog?

I’d post a link to the webstats page itself but I ‘d need to change the robots.txt file first, to make sure the search engines don’t go nuts on all the links within the stats pages. And I have to get ready for work now – my blogging time for the day is done.

My parents came out here to San Francisco to spend 2 days with me as a pre-birthday celebration. We managed to squeeze in 5 wineries, 2 museums, 3 good restaurant meals, Shabbat dinner at home, and a nice long walk through the more nautical parts of Fisherman’s Wharf. Not bad for 2 days, especially considering Dad had a cold.

Scott and I aren’t the neatest people on the planet at the best of times, and with both of us having been busier than usual recently, the house was, to put it mildly, a mess when my folks came over. I’m sure my parents were pretty shocked. The few times they’ve been to our place in the past, it’s been scrubbed thoroughly beforehand. At least the litterbox was clean.

And although I remembered to get fresh candles for Shabbat, I totally spaced on getting a challah. I felt very guilty about it, but at least the food and the wine were good. Scott did an excellent flank steak with potatoes and spinach, with chocolate mousse for dessert.

My actual birthday is tomorrow, and I’ll be working the closing shift, so any festivities will be minimal. I may treat myself to a chocolate muffin for breakfast though. Mom pointed out last night that I missed being a February 29th baby by only 14 hours. All things considered, I’m just as glad to be a March baby instead.

Anyway, only 2 years until I hit the big 4-0. That’s pretty scary.