MY LIFE - MAY

Sunday, May 7, 2000

Today was another warm and sticky day in the weather. This is just damn weird weather. It's May and we've already had three days of 80°+ weather and the humidity has been rising a bit more each day. This just isn't something that should be happening right now. It's bizarre and just another sign that the world is going to end next week.

At least that's what this one guy told me, but he's probably just a nutcase.

That's the one thing that I've noticed since we moved. People are just really weird up here. I mean, they make people who live in Brunswick look normal and that's no easy feat. They're also really bad drivers too. I see people constantly cut each other off, swerve into the next lane, nearly hit cars that are easy to see in the middle of the day, and just about every other form of near-insanity. Shopping's just as crazy too. Just ask the guy who had just gotten into line and started swearing about how the wait was "fucking forever in this fucking place."

Hmm. Sounds familiar.

Almost sounds like the interesting fight I heard a week ago. It seems a large group of people were collected outside a house and they were all yelling at each other. One woman was yelling at a guy to get "his whore out of my house" only with more colorful words than that. He was yelling back that it was his house and that he'd do anything he wanted as long as he lived there. She continued raving about the whore in the house and that someone should call the police.

Then there was the guy in the parking lot at Tops today. Boy, he was pissed off at some girl as he was bitching about how he had been "fucked over for the last time." This was before I went into Tops. About half an hour later when I came back, I noticed he was still sitting in the van, yelling to someone about what this bitch did to his car (except that it was a van). This other person must have been trying to calm the psycho down, but it didn't work too well. All I kept hearing was "look what that bitch did to my car!"

Curiously enough, I didn't see anything wrong with the side of the van. Maybe I'm just blind.

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My allergies have been absolute murder on me this weekend. My mom came up to me today and asked me if everything was all right. I wasn't sure what she was getting at so I asked her what she meant. She said it looked like I was either high or ready to cry, and she was pretty confident that I wasn't getting high (quick, hide the drugs). My allergies were so bad that my eyes were completely bloodshot. I should've known that too, since I couldn't breath and I was sneezing a lot.

Nonetheless, I had to mow the lawn. Sure, make someone who's already having an allergy problem go out and mow lawn when he's allergic to grass clippings. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I guess it does, because I went out and did it just like I was asked to. The grass grows fast out here too, which meant it was high, which meant that there were a lot of clippings when I was finally through

But it's done now and I'll probably have to do it again Thursday or something. Now excuse me, I have to go and hide my water bong.

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I did some more thinking tonight and my pending transfer. It's just so monumental a decision for me that I can't help but ponder how things would work out if I decided in another direction. I think about how Lenny might react when I tell him. I wonder how Mike will take it, how Tom will take it, and how everyone else will take it.

It isn't that easy a decision and I wonder if I maybe decided too fast, or didn't think about it enough. Then I go and smack myself because all I've done is think about this move and how things would work out in either scenario. I pictured myself in Berea, trying to keep up with a frantic pace. I pictured Tom without any help and Lenny and Mike trying to work out a schedule when neither wants to work nights.

I spent two weeks thinking this through inside and out and yet there are still doubts. Will this work out in my favor, or will I burn myself out in the process? Am I ready for a high volume store? Do I want to leave the store I work at now? All of those things and more have rolled through my head and I haven't been able to think of many reasons against going.

Fact is, there's only one or two real good reasons to stay at my current store while there are a ton of reasons to transfer. Lenny himself told me to weigh out the pros and cons and right now, the pros are greatly outnumbering and kicking the ass of the cons. It just makes more sense to transfer than to stay in the store I work at now. And yet it still tears me apart.

Part of me just doesn't want to leave. I love working with Tom, Debbie, Jacqui, Mike, Jeff, and Lenny. I love working with all those people and I enjoy the customers. However, I know that I'm edgy. I haven't been the same for the last year or so and I wonder if maybe a change in scenery will make things easier for me. This transfer is an opportunity that I can't let go, and yet I almost did. I almost didn't go to Steve and tell him to go through with this.

Sometimes though, you just need to think of yourself for once and that's what I did. Somehow, this will probably backfire on me and make me look selfish. Well, fuck everyone who think's I'm selfish. Sometimes things like that have to happen.