In which this morning was your typical stupid Monday morning.

I went to bed early, so I woke up early.

Very early. Pre-dawn early.

I read for awhile. The sun came up. It was bright and cheery until dawn was complete, and then a valley’s worth of clouds rolled in and there was a 4-minute wind and dust storm. The sky turned from brown to sullen gray. It began to rain.

I read some more. I got up twenty minutes before my alarm went off.

I made a mug of tea. I cooked up a little pot of sticky rice. I took a shower. I noticed a repeating and annoying pain in my right breast; apparently I crushed it in my sleep last night and it’s pissed off about that.

The bed I sleep in is older than I am and there’s a trench down the center. I wake up every morning with pins and needles in my hands, arms, feet, or hips. The only thing that keeps me from sleeping on the floor is the temperature at night, but when it warms up that’s where I’ll be.

I got dressed. I made maki rolls. The sun came out. I packed the roll I was going to eat for breakfast to take to work with me because I was running late. I grabbed my purse, my coat, and put on my shoes.

It was a quarter to. Not enough time to walk. I decided to take the truck.

I went outside, threw my lunch on the truck’s seat, and then briskly walked my dog up and down the alley so she’d get at least a little bit of a run. It started to rain again. We returned to the truck… and it had a flat tire.

I pulled out my phone, texted my supervisor to tell him I’d be late, and hoofed it to work. In the rain.

I was twelve minutes late.

~ ~ ~
Saturday morning I slept in, threw on some clothes, and went immediately to the fabric store. I bought rayon knit fabric (1-1/2 yards of dark brown, and 3-1/4 yards of a gold color in the brown range), four spools of matching German thread, and a plastic zipper.

The zipper I intend to use to turn a too-small wrap around skirt into a non-wrap around skirt. The knit is for homemade attempts at clothes I’ve seen on Etsy but can’t afford.

Saturday night, Teh BF took me out after he got off work for a few drinks but I had a raging headache and felt like I was coming down with something. He took me home. I slept really hard.

~ ~ ~
Sunday I made a dress out of the dark brown fabric. I did some basic math in my head and cut out a bodice – a tube top, in essence – then cut out a four panel skirt. Then I realized that 9″ x 4 = 36″ and I was going for 38″ and I hadn’t left enough room for seams. I was worried that I was wasting $12 worth of fabric on a dress that I’d stupidly cut too small to wear.

Rayon knit is very stretchy; in actual fact I had to take in 3″ inches up the back seam of the dress just to keep it from sliding off my body.

I reinforced the seams at the waist and the hem and called it complete. It’s a knit tube top with a skirt on it – a blatant copy of a dress I bought from Etsy.

With the other fabric, I’m going to make the same dress with long sleeves and a loose cowl. Just in time for summer! Because I’m a genius like that.

Sewing slinky knit fabric on a regular machine sucks. I lost a couple of centimeters of fabric when the machine decided to stuff it through the plate down into where the bobbin lives… luckily I was able to hide the tear in the finished item, but having the machine eat my fabric was irritating. I want a serger. And if I actually continue to sew for awhile, maybe I’ll treat myself to one.

~ ~ ~
My first three calls today were from customers canceling their service.

During my interview here, I said that I what I wanted to do was tech support. “Not billing, not collections. Tech support. That’s what I’m good at. It’s a waste to put me in any other queue. I like to do third tier the most.”

Management managed to keep me out of the billing queue for quite awhile, maybe five months or so, but now a solid half of my job is apologizing for billing SNAFUs and explaining to morons that the Internet does-indeedily-do cost actual money and that when they don’t pay for it their account gets closed and their mail gets erased from the server. Permanently.

It’s a joy.

~~~
All but two of my first ten calls dropped out for 2 to 15 seconds. Two of them dropped off altogether.

Turns out that my freaking headset has failed.

Luckily, MR had one that he could give me so I’m back in business. I cannot even imagine doing tech support with a handset under my chin for 6 hours.

~~~
Today I received the two demi hoodies I ordered from Etsy with my some of my tax return. They were supposed to be custom made and I’d requested extra ease in the upper arms, but the blue one doesn’t fit at all because the arms are too tight and the hem is huge. The brown one’s okay, though.

~~~
I need a vacation. I don’t do much but sleep and work and eat and go to one of the two or three restaurants and bars Teh BF and I have added to our routine – and we’re very much following a routine. We do the same things every week, sleep at his place certain nights, sleep apart others. I’m starting to feel like W2 is too small and has nothing new to offer me. Which means I need a vacation because my attitude is going to shit.

I’m not gigging because the band leader is pissed off at me for some reason apparent only to him. I think it has to do with my turning down a gig last December: he asked if I could do it, but I had family stuff that night so I said no. He hasn’t booked me since. (Months later he gave me two pieces of information that I suspect were very important: [1.] the venue wouldn’t book the gig without me, and [2.] he really needed the money that week. I’m not clear on why he didn’t tell me that at the time; I would have complained, of course, but I’d have blown off my G’ma’s party to do the damn gig if he’d really needed me to.)

I’m not yet willing to bend to his demand for face time; I really don’t want to go listen to him say whatever it is that he has to say about what a bitch/non team-player/bad friend/prima donna he’s now decided I am. I’ve emailed but haven’t called him, because what’s really pissing me off is this: we both know that if I want to play there’s really no other game in town and I’ll have to call him eventually. That sort of manipulation just pisses me off. He’s also been telling the other band members that I think they all suck. High school much?

I’d like to audition for Grease with the local theatre company (I’d love to play Rizzo, though I suspect that I’m far too old to do so now) but my work schedule won’t permit me to do a musical. I work until 8 every night so there’s no way I could make rehearsals. Maybe I could trade my beloved closing shift with another tech and do a musical in the fall.

~~~
I lose my temper easily with customers. I say “no,” to them a lot. I talk over them because they tell me all kinds of dumb shit that isn’t germane, or they argue with me, or they’re just plain pissed off and aren’t listening.

I spend far too many minutes each week waiting for people who have called me to boot up their machines. Who the fuck calls tech support and doesn’t expect to need to have their machine on? It’s like going to an auto shop without your car and expecting them to be able to fix it.

See? I told you I need a vacation.

A vacation and a serger!