10.2009
Remember that whole business of potentially moving to Birmingham, AL to look for work? The plan was to stay at my brother's place, while he worked his seasonal job with the Halloween store up here, and I would hopefully find something decent enough to support a life for me and Jeff.

Well.. yeah, that didn't work out. For TWO reasons.

1.) LANDED A JOB! Praise my Quaker God in Heaven! It's retail, it's part-time, but it's a job. And it's with a store that I'm obsessed with and a company that promotes very good things for the earth. I hesitate to say the name of this store, just in case that I'm Googled by somebody who wouldn't care for me to say the name of the establishment, but I will say that they deal with handmade bath-and-body goods. Also, the retail environment of my company is far different than any other I've experienced in the various stores and operations I've worked for in the past. I'm encouraged to be myself (social, weird, and bubbly... they dig that kind of thing. These are qualities that are not encouraged in office environments).  I enjoy my coworkers, my managers seem to like me, and I'm happy there.

I worked my toosh off from the end of October and all through the holiday season. I had multiple, consecutive days on end where my daily schedule consisted of the following:
a.) Wake up
b.) Cram food into my yap and get ready for work
c.) Drive the hour and ten minutes to work
d.) Work for eight and a half hours
e.) Drive the hour and ten minutes home
f.) Cram food into my yap and get ready for bed
g.) Bed
h.) And this brings us back to "doe"

I'm not complaining one bit, because I feel productive and energized. My coworkers are an entertaining lot to work with. I love the products that I sell. Life is good.

I have the day off today and work has slowed down since Christmas, naturally, but I'm still maintaining decent hours and I'm looking forward to a hopefully bright future with this company.

2.) So... my brother and Carrie broke up.  It's weird, because she was a part of our lives for so long and now she's not. I feel mostly for my brother, but the positive side of this is that he moved back to Michigan and currently lives across the street from my grandfather. I won't focus on the negative of the situation, because I'm trying to focus my mind forward to better things, but I will say that it's been hard for my brother and I hope that things work out for him in the future.

My brother is adopting a puppy from the Michigan Humane Society, today, so that'll hopefully cheer him up and keep him busy for awhile.

11.2009
First Thanksgiving without my grandmother = fairly quiet. We ate, we drank... it felt like something tremendous was missing, but it wasn't an occasion for a major grief episode.

Also, my two gerbils died. On the same day. Which happened to be Thanksgiving. What gives? I love my tiny rodents, but I can't stand it when they die (and when gerbils die, it's not pretty). I'm going to take a break on tiny rodents for now and maybe adopt a third guinea pig, which I've been wanting to do for awhile. What can I say... I can hear my biological clock "wheeking." :-D

12.2009

DAMN, this month flew by. I worked my ass off. I felt tremendous pangs of guilt for actually ENJOYING the weeks leading up to Christmas, which is something I haven't felt in about three years.  It being the first Holiday season without my grandmother has had its intense moments, though. Every now and then, a grandmother would walk into my store with her older grandkids and it would trigger a severely emotional response on my part. I would have to duck into a corner or our back room and have a sob session before I could feel like myself enough to continue on with work.

The holidays were good, though, and if I had the ambition, I would tell you all about them.

But that's my update for now. I'm hoping to post more pictures and entries, soon!

Peace, love, and retail bliss

-Emily