Back Aches and Swindling

Very Random Post Ahead!

There is a little man who is living in my spine at the moment. He's running up and down, playing my vertebrae like they're some sort of xylophone, and every once in a while he grabs his little ice pick screwdriver and jams it between vertebrae and twists. I think he's trying to tune me. It hurts. He's been there since yesterday, but yesterday it wasn't nearly half as bad as it is now.

Why does it hurt so much? Because I'm a glutton for punishment.

So I woke up early today to go to work with my kids. I've been pretty psyched for this - we've been planning to do a service weekend for a while with the teenagers at my parish, but we've been rained out until now. I used to be highly involved with the youth ministry (see my post here), and I've missed it very much. Well, I don't miss the bullshit and drama that certain higher-ups may or may not have created, but I do miss working with my kids.

So I wake up at the ungodly hour of seven (urk...I am not a morning person, especially not after partying the night before), somehow manage to do what's necessary in the morning (shower, brush the teeth, try not to kill the dog as I trip over him...), and get my tush in the car and on the road. I make it to the church by the time we were all supposed to meet (a novel occurrence - anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm usually five to fifteen minutes late...to everything).

And I arrived to...old people. And the two other adults that were scheduled to be there. None of our kids had shown up...none at all.

Yep. Lace covered grey-haired ladies' heads like ancient cobwebs as they sat in the pews and prayed. Father Neil stood at the back of the church, waiting for the music to key up so he could walk down the aisle. He gave me a slight disapproving look as we snuck into the church and made our way towards our chosen pew.

Mass proceeded as it should have, and still none of the kids showed. So we made our way to the house we were to work on for the day, figuring that even if it was just the three of us, we could at least make a dent.

Which leads me to why I'm a glutton for punishment.

In hindsight, moving those pieces of drywall probably wasn't a good idea. Nor the old furniture. Or the television(s).

I arrived at work today (yes, I went to work after engaging in the child labor camp wonderful service opportunity) practically crippled. I hobbled my way into work, hand on the small of my back and moaning pitifully about how awful I felt.

And then my boss told me she was run over today by a truck.

I think my thunder may have been stolen slightly. Although, I gotta say, she had a damned good story. Apparently she was at the farmer's market, and some bimbo ran her over. Literally.

She was walking out of the entrance of the farmer's market, and some lady drove by her. She looked over, and realized that the lady had stopped, and put her reverse lights on.

Unfortunately, my poor tiny little manager (she might weigh 100 lbs soaking wet and weighed down with a few bricks) barely had time to jump out of the way as the dumbass hit reverse with all the enthusiasm of a madman escaping zombies. Or a tween who's spotted free Miley Cyrus/Jonas Brothers/Taylor Swift tickets.

And why? Because she saw a parking space she wanted.

Ridiculous. She clipped my manager, then sped away. And you know what the kicker is?

She damn well knew what she did. She waved at my manager and mouthed the word "sorry" and drove away.

Bitch.

So she was in worse pain than I was. All night long we bothered our co-workers, begging for any painkillers they might have on hand.

On the upside, I almost made two hundred dollars in donations today. We're running our donation drive for a couple of the local no-kill animal rescues until Christmas, in the hope that we might be able to help them out a little bit. Our store gets no profit from this, and 100% of the proceeds are going straight towards the rescues. I'm just asking people to round up their spare change - if they buy an item for $1.49, then they could donate $0.51 towards the cause, and then pay $2. It's working pretty splendidly - I've already gotten over $500 so far (and that's just my total...it doesn't include any of the other slaves worker bees).

Everyone at work rolls their eyes at me whenever it's donation time. I always look forward to it because a.) I'm fan-fucking-tastic at it, and b.) every dollar earned really does go towards helping an animal in need. A lot of the rescues now are really hurting for money because of the recession, and animals are getting dropped off in record numbers.

So, I hope that we can get as many donations as possible this year. Sure, I may remind some of a cracked-out cheerleader when this time of year rolls around, but mneh. I don't think I care very much, because every dollar earned is like a little mini-win for me - it means that one more animal might get the medical treatments that it needs. One more animal might be able to be adopted out faster. One more animal might be given a life that it was previously denied.

I would also like to give a special shout out to Twinkles, my co-worker's (Pumpkin) fiancee. He was an awesome sport and bought one of our calenders (yes, we're selling calenders and sweatshirts and tee shirts this year for the rescues). He, of course, told me I was swindling him. Pumpkin tried to convince him that they could use some of the coupons in the back of the book.

He glared at me as she mentioned wanting to get a new fish tank stand for a bigger fish tank.

Whoopsies. Sorry there Twinkles. It's all for a good cause...heheheh....