Personal Assistant Needed

Is it entirely necessary that seemingly all of my responsibilities fall into one week? This week I have:

professional duties (work)
economic duties (taxes)
academic duties (study for test/pick a grad school)
familial duties (umm...talk to family)
physical duties (nothing dirty, you dirty minds, what I mean is training for a race in two weeks)
journalistic duties (edit a story for a friend; help a journalist with a project)
cat duties (pet the monster)

etc. etc.

It is Monday and I am already behind. I have to get a prescription refilled this week, and I got a lecture when I called the doc's office about how a)I should have already had an appointment made and should have known about this policy and b)how I didn't bring them my insurance card last time and I need to bring it this time. When I got home from class today, Dad helped me replace the air filter in my car, and in the process we discovered a nail in my front tire. Note: we are not stupid, we understand that the air filter is not located in or near the tire, we just meandered on down to the tire portion of the car in our (and when I say "we" and "our" here, I mean "Dad" and "his") perusal of general car maintenance. I was so distracted already this morning during my early shift at work that I forgot to ask off for next weekend for the race I'm running, and by the time I called my boss in the afternoon she had already made the schedule for next week (deep breath any race team members reading this, it is getting worked out, I will be present at the race).

Point being, in a matter of 24 hours, I have tacked on a doctor's appointment, a trip to the tire doctor, and a lot of general running around to fix my work schedule, to my already busy, stressful, overloaded week.

When I have this much going on I become more scatterbrained than usual and thus end up backpedaling a lot, and as a result seem to accomplish even less than was originally planned. Today in class we had discussion over a book I spent all last week reading and a paper about said book that I wrote yesterday, and when we gathered round in a circle to chat about "Islam and Modernity in the Middle East," I felt like my reading and writing had been a waste of time. Because when my professor asked us to dissect the author's thesis, I thought, "Crap, what was Homestar's thesis?" Perhaps that was a trifle due to the rambling, scholastically saturated text of the book; I'll go easy on myself and say that's true.

Metamucil

I am getting so old. I had one beer with dinner and I am down for the count! Not drunk, mind you, just so sleepy!

I know, wah wah. Big whiny whiner. You love it.

G'night! Enjoy staying up late with the other youngin's! I'll be sleeping like the old woman that I truly am inside!

Unreal Life

I slept for 13 hours last night. That's what five days of waking up no later than 5:15 will do to you. Toward the end of my slumber my body was attempting to snap out of it, but I was also in the midst of a lot of REM sleep, so I kept waking up in the middle of my dreams.

Hold that thought. I'll get right back to it, but first I must offer a detail of my real, conscious life so that the conclusion of this post will make sense. This past week I bought a bottle of 300 vitamins for only ELEVEN DOLLARS. I was (still am) so excited.

Okay, time to combine the two above comments. In one of my dreams last night/this morning, I had a HUGE bottle of vitamins. It was the size of one of those drums of Muscle Milk protein powder. In my dream I opened the bottle and curled along the inside wall was what I discovered to be a thick issue of Seventeen magazine. I recall thinking, "Score!" in my dream and then showing it off to friends. "Hey guys! Look what was in my bottle of vitamins!"

If only I could get vitamins plus a magazine for only $11 in real life.

Confession

Sometimes I read too much. My head spins with words and I can't escape them. They are in no order, just whirling around. And sometimes I am hungry and absolutely exhausted when that happens and all I can think, amidst the whirling words, is, "Sleeeeeeeep."

There. I admitted it. Sometimes I read too much. Are ya happy?

Smooches, love you guys!

"Pretty Crowded Today!"

Well this morning at work was, in a word, crazy. It usually is, but I won't take you down that path. At one point I declared that I might have a panic attack, to which Millie requested, "Please don't." (I didn't.) I'll spare you the overhaul of details, but the highlights included the deep slicing of a finger, the spilling of cold milk/hot milk/water, LOTS of customers, and...I'll stop there.

But there was one hilarious moment.

There is this little boy, who we'll call "Toby," who just makes my life every time he comes in. The first time I met him he walked right up to the counter, resting his chin on it, and spoke to me even before his mother did, declaring, "I'd like a kid's hot chocolate with peppermint." I was immediately taken. I will always have a bias for people who awkwardly and loudly declare their feelings to strangers; no one likes to be alone in their questionable habits in life.

There was no way I would forget his name after such an encounter, so about a week later when he came back to the register I greeted him and said, "Toby, would you like a peppermint kid's hot chocolate?" Duh, of course he did. He gave me a big grin, watched me write on the cup, explained that he would like whip cream on the top and the bottom of his drink, watched me scribble additional whip cream notes on the cup, then split to the other end of the counter to wait for his cup of tastiness. His mother smiled and said that, "We're working on him being too friendly." She said this with genuine affection, expressing that she didn't want her kid to be a bother to others, and I tried to control my passion in expressing to her that her kid is awesome, and not to ever let him lose his flamboyance.

And encounter number three, you guessed it, happened today. Third times a charm. No no, TOBY's a charm. Today during our crazy rush he marched right up to me making drinks and shouted, with the charm of the five year old that he is and the casualness of the adorable seventy-five year old that he inevitably will be, "Pretty crowded today!" Huge smile as always. He all but elbowed me, you know, one of those middle-aged man jabs to the rib cage, accompanied with a hearty "Heh?" sound effect. I chummed it right up with him, "Sure is! Are you going to school today?"

Toby: "Yep!"
Bailey: "Do you like school? What grade are you in?"
Toby: "I'm almost in first grade."
Bailey: "You're in first grade?" (It's pretty loud inside Starbucks)
Toby: (completely polite, no snobbish childish snickering at my mistake) "No, I'm almost in first grade."
Bailey: "Ohh, you're almost in first grade, you're in kindergarten?"
Toby: "Yep!"
Bailey: "Are you excited for first grade?"

And to answer this question, Toby knelt down a little bit, began his "yes" with a build up of Y's, and punctuated the whole word with a jump off the ground:

"YYYYYYYYYYYes!!"

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited for the first grade myself now. That enthusiasm is downright infectious. Thanks, Toby. Keep it up, we love you. Whip cream on the top and bottom, got it.