skip to main |
skip to sidebar
so- work. i worked my first day at dairy queen on monday. i donned the apron and baseball cap and watch out ice cream world! it was overall an okay experience, much better prior to the hour and a half of cleaning after the store closed. that was sad. i caught on pretty quick though- i only got to make a few things because we really only made whatever someone ordered (imagine that) so the rest wil just have to wait for another day, another customer. i made about a bazillion blizzards though, especially the new cheesecake kinds, and let me just say that i make a mean cheesecake blizzard. oh man, the blizzard machine and i totally duked it out all night- it won a few battles, but ultimately i won the war. it was bloody though. or at least i had strawberries and ice cream ALL over me! i bleach-penned the heck out of my shirt as soon as i got home and threw it in the laundry. OH! AND- so i worked from 5 to close (10 + cleanup) so i had to take a half hour break at 7:30. so, genius that i am, i remember that i started my curs-ed period that morning and completely forgot to bring anything with me to work… i know, awkward, right? well i didnt have any money to go buy anything, so i decided that it’s about 13 minutes to my house- i’ll drive home really fast, grab some stuff plus something to munch on then come back and start work again. so i run out to my car… my little civic… and it wont start. i had left the lights on, because there’s no beep or anything. im mortified. so i go back in, and form another genius plan. i’ll call my mum, have her or dad drive in now to jump my car before it gets late, and also bring some stuff for me. of course, my dad answers, so i have to explain the whole situation to him plus where in the bathroom to look- poor guy. he agrees, i make myself a hot fudge sundae and wait for him to get there. he comes in a little later and i start walking out the door to the car and he’s like, “wait, dont you want your…” and has them tucked into the hem of his t-shirt. i just laughed and shoved them into my pocket and said. “oh yeah- sorry about all that. thanks dad.” the rest of the story is pretty self-explanatory, but i laughed really hard when i realized that if i wouldnt have forgotten the stuff, i wouldnt have known that my car was dead until 11:30 when i got off work, and both of my parents would have been asleep… oh boy. my life. im so bad at being a girl. yeah. that was work. i was tired afterwards, especially my left hand from wiping tables and counters and fighting the blizzard machine. and i have to admit that it was humbling to walk around the restaurant in an apron and cap with a bucket of soapy water and a towel scrubbing tables. but i guess humbling is what we all need… especially me. my mind would wander so much while i was outside of the kitchen that i kept trying to come up with some role to play- motivation to wipe the tables, you know? hahaha. i kept coming up with these college girls in nyc trying to work over the summer to raise enough money to finish school and become a pediatrician or something noble. not like an actress 
. i was trying to incorporate exciting things like terminal diseases and boys, but student over the summer was as far as i got my first night. exotic, right? and really original. but i have three more days this week. i’ll work up something exciting.
someone told me last night that if they were in an arranged marriage, they hoped it would be with me. that made my whole day... i think.
ok- so leah story of the day- my dad re-teaching me how to drive a standard. so i learned how to drive this little '91 honda civic or whatever two summers ago, but then ended up driving a different vehicle because of the winters here. then, when it was finalized that i'll be here and working all of this summer, i get the civic again. this time for real. i think. so anyway, i learned how to drive the thing back then, but never really practiced or perfected it. so today we decide to have a touch up lesson, which my dad decides to begin with my backing out of our uphill-inclined driveway. now, im the type of person that likes to know why things are the way they are- for example, what words actually mean in french, not just how to pronounce phrases. then i can use the same words in other situations. same goes with cars… kind of. i at least want to know what i will be doing and why and when, before i am expected to do it so i can know how to use it in various situations, right? yeah well we all conveniently forgot all of this and so i manage to get out of the driveway, where i stall the car in the middle of the road, not a busy road, neighborhood and all, when TWO cars decide to come down the road toward me… except that there is almost no room to get around me on either side and i conveniently forgot how to start the damn thing and get it out of the way fast enough… so while im trying to figure this out, both cars edge past me on one side, one of which is driven by a gym teacher from my high school who once yelled at me in front of an entire blood drive group that i had organized (but who otherwise liked me?), and the people nonchalantly standing outside the house across the street talking hear and see the whole thing… and just kind of stare. ok, i dont get embarassed easily, but this whole 19 year old learning how to drive AGAIN thing was pushing at my limits. so after these cars impatiently pass, i get started again but dont really remember the things from two summers ago, all of which have to happen really fast when you first get started. thank god for my dad, who can handle anyone in a car (you know, professional driver and all…) - he put up with me when i ended up almost crying because i was frustrated and didnt want to do it anymore… and after starting and stopping about a bazillion times along our long windy road, and then starting and backing back down the hill of our driveway about a bazillion more times, we drove around the area in both directions and managed to actually smile a little. him more than me, but i was thinking about smiling. by the end of it, he said i did extremely well for my "first" time, but he said that last time too. i dont know if i can do it by myself though. i mean, the basics i got, but it's the tricky stuff like downshifting into turns and how many times to take your foor off the clutch… oh boy. this may be a long summer. but next time christian needs me to make a lowe's run with her car- i will be able to confidently answer, "yes! i can drive a stick! send me anywhere! i will triumph!" take that, convention! (that phrase really isnt appropos at all, it just makes me feel better when i yell it at random intervals throughout the day).wow can you tell i dont get out much anymore? i'm enjoying this no responsibility thing way too much for my own good. please call me and save me from myself. four days till the beach! woo hoo!
So last Monday, I decided to go up to the creek behind the house that’s across the street with this golden retriever that apparently lives down the street but has become the neighborhood dog. I never had a dog. I ran around the yard with it for a while the day before. So we’re walking up the creek yesterday and if he ran ahead of me I would call “Hey pup!” and he would come bounding back into sight. (I climbed a Tarzan vine again- even farther this time than last time because it was dry!). The dog runs up a hill ahead of me and I decide to turn around and go back. I yell, but he doesn’t come back. I start walking back down the creek (I’m barefoot, wearing a beater and Bermuda shorts and wonderfully smelly) and all of a sudden I hear a bird or something up on the hill. It gets louder and I realize it sounds like a cat or some animal dying- it’s this hissing screeching shriek full of more pain than I’ve heard in a long time. It creeps me out and I freeze, then slowly start walking again. Then, I hear the dog running through the woods back to me- I turn around and he’s bounding down to the creek (and me) with a raccoon in his mouth- still alive and shrieking louder than life! All four of its legs are sticking straight out and it is furious. All I can think of is how cats like to hunt things and then bring them to their owner as a gift or something- my cat lays animals in varying degrees of wholeness and life at my door or at my feet all the time- always more dead than alive though. So this dog’s running toward me and I’m terrified that he’s going to lay the thing at my feet (bare, mind you) where it would bite, scratch, claw at whatever it could- it was injured and angry and that's what injured and angry animals do… and it could certainly have run faster than me through the woods if I tried to run away from it on the ground. Nevertheless, I see him coming and so I take off down the stream- I had no idea where I was stepping (or on what) and I’m ducking under tree branches and running like I'm being followed by an axe murderer, and then I realize that the dog is following me and catching up and loving every minute of it like the running games we had played the day before! So I stop and face him, throw out my hand and yell “NNNO!” a couple times to freeze him in his tracks. He stops, looks at me, and drops the still screaming animal on the ground about 10 feet away from me. It immediately tries to fight him so he picks it back up and I scream at him again and try to motion for him to take it away. He finally takes off with it, still shrieking, up the hill and down the stream where I was heading. He stopped and looked back at me once, but I just yelled no again. After he disappeared, I just stood there shaking form running with adrenaline and holding my breath when I didn’t know if he would listen to me or not. Then I laughed and started walking again really slow. I was afraid it wold be laying somewhere almost dead and I would step right next to it and end up getting bit anyway. Then I heard the dog barking back up at the house and I wondered if he thought I was hurt and was trying to get someone’s attention or something like in the movies. That’s what golden retrievers do, right? When I got closer, I yelled for him and he ran down to me, raccoon free. I patted him on the head and asked him if he had killed it, then he followed me back to my house and I went inside. It was quite an adventure.
