The Curse(s)

As I've found out today, there are many curses going around. The first one is my brothers. When we were younger and getting in trouble, my mother would always say "I hope you have children just like you when you are older." I actually got that one more than my brother did but nonetheless, he was still cursed once or twice. After spending the day with George and Chandler (his 7 year old daughter), I've come to realize that he has the reverse curse. Now before I go any further I just want everyone to know that I love my niece very much and would die for that little girl.

But she has lost her mind.

I have come to the conclusion that my brother didn't get the exact curse my mother wished on him. He got the reverse curse. What is the reverse curse you ask? Instead of his kids being just like him when he was younger (good for the most part) he got a kid just like me when I was younger. (I used to be told that I was the devil's spawn and that if I had been born first, I wouldn't have had any brothers or sisters.)

Within 20 minutes of being at my house, she was already in tears. Why?

Because I offered her yogurt.

A pretty harmless offer that sent her over the edge. She didn't want yogurt. She wanted fish sticks. Then she decided she didn't want fish sticks, she wanted chicken. So then my brother asked her if she wanted two pieces. She said no. Just to verify, he asked if she wanted one piece.

She said no. Then he asked if she wanted yogurt. She said no. So he asked her what she wanted. She said "I don't know." All this while crying.

While this drama was unfolding in the kitchen, I was on the phone to my dad trying to figure out how to do my brother's taxes with his education deductible thingy. He could hear her crying all the way in the other room. And he just started laughing like a grandparent who knew what his son was going through 'cause he had gone through the same thing with me.

Finally she settled down, but within 1/2 hour, she was crying again. This time because I told her she had to turn the tv while she did her homework. I'm a bad Auntie.

After a while, I just kinda tuned her out while she did the whole Cybil thing 'cause I swear by the time they left 3 hours later, I think she had cried an additional 3 times. For what I don't know. But that's my brothers curse. The only thing that I look forward to when I have kids is that the reverse curse will be in my favor as well and I'll have wonderful like kids that will be just like him.

Now my curse....CLOTHING!

On Saturday afternoon when I had left for the day I only had one pallet of clothes that I wasn't able to put out. When I first "took over" that job (Lord knows I didn't ask for it nor do I still want to be doing it) there were something like 6 or 7 pallets that were sitting on the dock plus the stuff that came in nightly that had to be put out. Frankly, I was very impressed with myself that I was able to get it down to one pallet.

Less than 48 hours later, I'm back to 6 pallets. Why? Because the people that do our ordering are dumbasses who don't know how to order. Case in point:

If you have 97 pairs of mens dress slacks and you only sell 2 per week, how many should you order to replenish? The answer seems pretty obvious to me. Zero. Why? Because no one is buying them. They come in a pack of 50. Why order a box of 50 to replace 2? Makes sense right?

Wrong.

The buyers think, We've got a rush on these baby's! Lets order 5 more boxes so they won't run out!

WHAT?

This is my curse. No matter how well I get the stupid boxes of stupid clothes out, I will always end up having more stupid boxes of stupid clothes. No matter how hard I work.

Does anyone know the name of the guy in mythology who was forced to roll the rock uphill forever? I really want to know his name. Why?

'Cause that's me.

Make the snow stop!

I'm going nuts in my house. My father picked the weekend of the biggest snowstorm of the winter to come from Chicago and visit. Which is fine. If we could have left the house. If it doesn't stop snowing soon and be able to dig out I will go crazy and start running around the house, screaming my brains out. Or I'll be in a corner rocking "please make it stop. please make it stop. please make it stop."

Question from my 7 year old niece

"Do you have to be married to have a baby?" - Chandler

Complete silence by me for about 15 seconds

"Go ask your mother." - me

I found my boyfriend!

So with Jim working the night shift (11:30pm - 8am) and me working the morning shift (6am-noon) we never see each other. I'm usually going to bed when he's waking up and when I leave for work in the morning, he's not even awake yet. And when I do get home from work, he's already asleep. So for the past week it was like the other one didn't exist. I finally was able to stay up long enough last night when he got up so that we could spend time together. Albeit it was only for an hour but time nonetheless. And the great thing about being used to getting up at 4:30am every morning is that I can't sleep in past 6am on my days off. Which is what happened today. I got up and had breakfast ready when he walked in the door and we got to spend three whole hours together before he went to bed. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

There's at least one new year's resolution that I've been trying to stick to and that is going back to the gym. I found out last week that since March '04 I've lost 11 lbs. Now I know that's not alot but since I usually gain 10 lbs a year, I'm ecstatic. Which makes me even more determined to keep going to the gym so that I can lose the next 15 lbs that I want to lose. I want to lose more than that in the long run but I have to do baby steps or else I get frustrated and overwhelmed (like last time) and I stop going. Go Me!

So at work I've been thrown in to taking over clothing. yeah me. Some days I like, most days I absolutely can't stand it. On Monday, there were 4 pallets of clothes when I got in plus 2 more in the cage. Now, we have been having a real mild winter here in upstate NY and therefore, no one is buying anything winter related. And that's all we have in the clothing section right now is winter stuff. Nothing is moving and all the buyers keep doing is sending us more of the same stuff that isn't selling. And we aren't allowed to put anything in the clothing cage which is about the length of two hatchback cars (if even that) and we aren't allowed to put anything in shrink wrap and put it up on C tier. Which leaves me in a conundrum on where to put everything so that it doesn't all fall over as soon as someone touches it. After 3 hours of getting through 3 of the 6 pallets I had, I freaked out. It was too much. I felt so overwhelmed that I couldn't think straight. It didn't help that my manager told me to get everything that was in the cage (more boxes of stuff we already had) out on to the sales floor. I lost it. I went to my personel manager's office and had a 2o minute anxiety attack. I've started to notice that I only have anxiety attacks at work. The last 5 have been at work. Interesting.

My dad is going to be coming up finally on the 21st. Should be a fun weekend. I have off Saturday and Sunday of that weekend. Go Me! Which should be great so that when I go back to work on Monday I'll have 6 pallets of clothes waiting for me. Can't wait.

Can I just say that http://www.dooce.com is probably the best blog I've ever read. I'm addicted to it. It's usually the first blog I read in the morning. (Sorry Allee) I love it. She's sarcastic, funny, and loveable. Check her out.

My one goal for this year is to save money and the rate I'm going already, I'm gonna be in more debt. I have probably about $250 worth of work I have to do on my car and only 30 hours/week to do it on. Why don't I have any long-lost relatives that want to leave me lots of money?

Happy New Years!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new years! I had a blast over at Rae and Laura's...met some new people, did a little karoake, some drinking. Some of us were more drunk then others but a good time nonetheless. Here's some of my resolutions for this year:

1. Go back to the gym. I'm tired of my knee and syatic nerve always hurting. I know that if I lose some weight, it will help a lot.
2. Walk the dog more. I've gotten lazy with the dog since the weather has gotten colder. It's so much easier to just let her out in the backyard instead of having to get on an arsenal of winter protection. Plus, the more I walker the more exercise I get which goes back to #1.
3. Save money every week. This will probably be the hardest of them all 'cause I almost never have extra money lying around. I really don't know how Jim and I survived this past year with the little paychecks we bring home. But I'm gonna try to save it as best as I can. Even if I take back bottles and just deposit the $1.20 I would get back I guess that's something.
4. Stop obsessing about the past that I can't change. We've all made mistakes and I've made a few in 2004. I guess I just want to stop worrying about how I could have done something differently and instead look to how I'm gonna fix it. I always seem to do the "What if's?". I should be looking to "What now?".
5. Pay off at least one bill that is in collections. Let me tell you...I have a lot of bills in collections. I have so many that they have stopped sending me the statements saying how much I owe them. Is that bad? My goal this year is to pay off at least one. Don't care which one as long as I can get it to come off my credit report. Last year I don't think I paid one thing that was in collections. I'm afraid to find out my credit score.

Well, I have more but they are more personal and frankly, I'm afraid to admit them to my boyfriend let alone all you people. Which means I probably won't keep them. Sigh. Oh well. It's back to work tomorrow in clothing! Dear God, what have I done wrong to get dumped in clothing? Later people