black fried day

I’m full of cake and milk and malice so bear with me.

Thanksgiving wasn’t as terrible as I anticipated.  We usually all congregate at my dad’s mother’s house, as per tradition.  But, through the years, every time one of my male cousins reaches sexual maturity, he knocks up some girl and then has to visit her relatives for the holidays.  This has led to a decreased number of relatives who come over.  Fine by me.  This year, it was mostly my sister and me and our cousin and his boyfriend.  We all sat in the living room while the relatives with children sat in the kitchen and the older relatives sat in the dining room.

My sister and cousin mostly talked about drinking.  I don’t drink so I didn’t have much to add to the conversation.  And as much as I might have residual ill feelings toward my sister, she’s quite the comedian.  My cousin’s boyfriend really took a shine to her with her quick wit and sardonic delivery.  I’m telling you guys, she’s more cynical than I am.  But she’s funny so she can get away with it.  I just sat back with my lemon pie and listened.

At one point, some random toddler waddled in and went over to where my sister was sitting and just stared at her.  Shannon visibly tensed up as the little girl bore a hole in her head with her inquisitive eyes.

"Who is that?" I whispered to her.

"I don’t know but she’s freaking me out."  Then, she got up and moved away from the girl, cringed, and sat closer to me.  The little girl kept staring.  Shannon kept freaking.

I’m telling you guys, she dislikes kids more than I do.  She’s a bitchier, female version of me.  I can respect that.

We all went home and then prepared for my mom’s mom and my uncle to come over and have another Thanksgiving meal with them.  More fried foods and cake and pies.  And gravy coma sadness.

Black Friday wasn’t as bad as anticipated, either.  Had to be there at 6AM instead of the usual 3:30AM.  I did have an irrational fear of sudden diarrhea, though, based on the enormous amount of fried turkey and greasy mac and cheese I ate the day before.  Fortunately, I made it through without any oozing.  The five shots of Pepto I guzzled before and after bed might have helped me out with that. 

Surprisingly, I also didn’t have many rude customers.  Although, I did have a few gray hairs who came up to me and said something along the lines of, "Excuse me.  I have two shopping carts and three shopping bags filled to the brim with clothing and there’s approximately twenty people in line behind me but could you tell me the price of each piece of clothing as you scan it thanks!"

And I’m all like:

But I did have time for a cold pop.

I was also surprised at how busy we were.  I’d say I stayed at my register 98% of the time and as soon as there was a break in the long line and I was able to leave and attempt to straighten something, someone else came along and brought fifteen people with them.  It was like working an assembly line.  I went on autopilot at one point.  Scan, collect money, bag, rinse and repeat.

We were short-handed, as we always seem to be when it’s busy.  I was supposed to have three other people with me but I only had one guy, a new seasonal hire who tried too hard with the customers.  I had some outside help from extra coworkers, though, who saw the desperation in my eyes.  They swooped in and picked up the slack from the two losers who called in "sick."

It was also ugly Christmas sweater day at work.  I looked so hard to find a freaking Christmas sweater.  Looked for an entire week.  There just wasn’t anything out there.  I didn’t wanna pay much, ya know, because I was only going to wear it once.  Went to Goodwill and the dollar stores and nothing.  I finally found one at one store but they only had about three to choose from.  I guess I lucked out.

I brought it home and showed Mom. 

Mom:  "Oh, I like that."

me:  "It’s perfect."

I tried to get a coworker to take these pictures and as you can tell, she flunked out of cell phone photography 101.  Every time she tapped the screen, I saw the phone move so I knew they’d be blurry.

I was right.  Ehh.

"How about you grip the phone tighter and lightly tap on the screen," I said.

"Okay," she responded.

Not only is it blurry but look at that composition.  I mean…really.

"So, are you hung over or something?" I asked her.  I could have done a better job taking the picture myself.  With my feet.

I made her drink a big cup of coffee and give it another go.  It still required some cropping and editing but I didn’t want to be a creep about the picture taking so I settled with this picture:

<table cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ align=”center” style=”margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;” class=”tr-caption-container”>

Guess who this girl is??