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2006-09-01 @ 1:00 a.m.
getting the gold wrapper....finally


As I was climbing the stairs at the community center I could hear the dulcet tones of Charlemagne drifting down. He's now "the important guy with the keys" as he told me last week in the elevator. I don't think anyone has ever entrusted him with keys before and he is truly tickled. Of course things would have been a lot easier if he had just passed the keys to someone else to open the building this week. But no. He likes being the Keeper of the Keys. And of course, I'm just there to do art. Okay and maybe to "do" the French Guy. I'm finally remembering to kiss back when he does double cheek kissing thingie because initially I was just standing there like some wax figure in the Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. I guess it was because its been so long since I've been kissed. Can you imagine what would happen if he actually hit mark?

But alas, Charlemagne wasn't hosting. He was just being the Key Guy. So I settled down to my art table and unloaded. I've been having a terrible quandary lately. I have lost my regular glasses. They've been gone for about 3 weeks now and I have looked everywhere. Its been terrible, because I can't see anything much smaller than Tom Cruise's ego, so I've had to rely on some Dollar Store glasses which have a depth of field of about 1/10000000000th of an inch. Ever try drawing with those? You look up at your subject...its all blurry. Then you look down at your paper and its all blurry unless all the planets line up and you cock your head at certain way. It's really been affecting my art, so I've been mostly scribbling out my artwork. This one from last night did manage to escape. Not sure why.



I'm getting really burned out on this model. We've been using her a lot lately. She's super skinny. Has a veiny neck, and artificially perky breasts. I'm sure for men, its all YAY! A skinny chick with big boobs! But to me, she looks positively skeletal. I just don't see the appeal of Nicole Richie skinny. It just gives me the creeps and its boring to draw unless you go all Tim Burton and draw some kind of "Nightmare Before Christmas" heroine.

Anyways, afterwards we were standing around talking. Me, "L" the hippie chick, and this woman Zue, who has been trying to be my new best friend the last month or two. She's been oddly trying to convince me to join sMatch.com. I actually asked her if my shrink had sent her last night. She looked at me quizzically. The way she talks about sMatch.com though, is the same way "A" talks about it. Relentlessly. What doesn't really check out for me is, she has had nothing but good experiences on it. (HUH?) And she has also now found someone she thinks she's in love with after only three weeks.

Another female friend who's been on sMatch.com since last November has had monumentally bad experiences. She said 3/4 of the men she has met were still married and attempting to hide it. One guy wanted to give her a check for $10,000 to help her out financially after only a week of chatting online. She was suspicious OF COURSE(!!!!!!) And she knew she could get in trouble for cashing a bogus check. She later found out that the check was, in fact, bogus.

Anyways, this Zue, said she'd look at my sMatch.com profile and photograph me and then write me some new text. Ha! Someone writing text for me. Lady, writing is one of the few areas, where I am the master of my own domain. Don't need any help there. Nope. Got it. Thanks anyways. Not sure why she is so interested in my welfare. Poor "L" the hippie chick just sort of faded out of the picture while Zue was talking to me. She went meandering to a tiny nearby art gallery while we chatted. I felt bad. This is the only night I get to see "L" and I like to talk to her.

I did strangely tell this woman that I was going in for a job interview the next morning. Not sure why. Must be those bossy Aries-types. They make you do things you don't always want to do. I had told her what my mom had said to me earlier on the phone. "witty! You've got to wear some make-up to the interview tomorrow! You always look so pale and drawn."

Pale and drawn? No make-up? I literally never leave my house without make-up. I always wear at least foundation, a little blush, lipstick and mascara. Always! Then Zue asked me if I had any make-up on. Can you imagine? Arghhh! Yes!!!!!!!! Just because I don't look like Tammy Fae Bakker doesn't mean I'm not wearing make-up. Sheesh!

The Comic Book Guy had co-hosted and he always brings in a large 40 ounce beer for after our art class. I don't drink of course, but the others do, so they all stood around chatting. Of course I was just standing there wondering if I looked like an albino because I didn't have any make-up on. The Professional Artist Guy was there...the one who just cut off his long ponytail Saturday. I don't know what it is about him, but he sure does look at me a lot. He's an Aries too. Lots of Aries in my life these days, it seems. Maybe they don't know what to think of Aquarians...like is it animal, mineral or vegetable?

Fortunately I was able to get up fairly easy this morning. I'm not really a morning person, but I had to shower and wash my hair for my job interview. I was pretty anxious. Okay...there were drugs involved. Momma's little helpers. Naturally I have anti-anxiety medicine since I'm a high strung artsy type.

I was originally going to call "A" before I went, but I also had a case of phone anxiety. Heh! Phone anxiety about calling my shrink about job interview anxiety. Sounds about right. So I just tried to keep busy, checking out some diaries this morning, listening to classical music, rolling a cat fur roller over my entire body pretending it was really a naked Johnny Depp doing it. I did drop "A" a quick line right before I left, telling him I would be more nervous if succeeded than if I failed. Go figure!

And I had also had an interesting horoscope. It said: You've been ready for success -- and finally, success is ready for you. This is thrilling -- but also just the teensiest bit scary. Everything's coming your way, and that means change -- big change -- is in the works.

When I got to the store I had to go to customer service to ask where to go. Naturally the two customers in front of me had the most complicated, complex difficult problems imaginable which made me late for my 10:30 appointment. I am absolutely anal about being on time. I finally got sent back to the HR department. And yes, I was trying to stand straight as I was walking, Zue. I met the woman, who only looked to be about 23, but I'm sure she was much older if she was in charge of such a large store. She asked where I wanted to work within the store and I said floral, bakery, deli, cafe. In other words, anyplace except the cash register. I'm terrible with crowds. I'm terrible with numbers. And I have memory problems because of my meds and I could just see standing there trying to remember the code for rutabaga. PLUS....what if I saw somebody I didn't want to see like Married Guy or Zenshrink. I couldn't very well leave my post. I'm in plain sight. So I hope that she understood when I got specific and named off various departments.

She then asked me if we talked to my boss what would she say were my best qualities. Would you believe I forgot to say sense of humor? Heh! I guess I was trying to be all official and shit. Anyways I said 1) I was always on time (which I am, except when I get behind dumb-asses at the counter), 2) that I cared about what I was doing and didn't just phone it in and 3) that my boss always calls me her cheerleader, because, despite my somewhat cynical sense of humor, I actually care a great deal about people and do a lot to help them with their problems and prop them up when they are down on themselves. She thinks that's my best quality and is alway complimenting me on it.

The HR manager then asked about hours and I said I was completely open except for Wednesday night because I was an artist and took a class that night. And that, my friends, was the turning point of the interview. My creativity. I told her about my career as an artist and she opened up a book and said, "How would you like to work in "Create-a-Cake"/Panisserie?" I didn't exactly know what that was, but shook my head vigorously, since the words: cash register or toilet cleaning weren't invoked. Yay!

So she called the manager from that department over and I guess its the part of the bakery where they decorate all the cakes and cookies and drizzle chocolate on things, as in....

DID I JUST DIE AND GO TO HEAVEN?


Holy fruck! Me in the middle of vats of chocolate? Now what did that horoscope say? "Everything's coming your way, and that means change -- big change -- is in the works" Oh man this is going to be so much better than listening to a bunch of people bitch about how crappy their lives are. I mean, I suddenly felt like I had just gotten one of those chocolate bars with the gold wrappers in "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"! Woot!

So the bakery manager took me over to her department, with its marble display cases full of fruit tarts, creme brulle, chocolate mousse cups, croissants, dome chocolats. She introduced me to her crew. I hope there isn't going to be a quiz, because I instantly forgot everyone's name due to my close proximity to vast quantities of chocolate.

So I guess I will start training around September 16th. Rather amazingly when I left the HR office I was walking towards the front door to go to work and who do I see? "A"! He was standing up at the customer service desk at the front of the store, so I came up behind him, grabbed his elbow and told him my good news. He seemed genuinely happy and smiled. Later when I got home, he had also sent me an e-mail saying, "Hooray for you!"

I called my mom from my car and told her the news. She seemed happy. I then called my aunt. She wasn't home, so I left a message. Why did I call her? She's a premiere cake decorator. Me? I haven't baked a cake since that one in my Easy Bake Oven in 1964. And I've only baked cookies once in high school friend in the 1970's. In other words, I have absolutely no experience whatsoever, even resembling cake or cookie decorating. So tonight I finally got ahold of my aunt and she will be giving me a crash course on cake decorating and frosting and making rosebuds this Saturday. I just don't want to go in there and start squirting frosting all over my coworkers unless they're cute and let me lick it off them.

I did give notice to my boss today. It was difficult, especially since they had just paid $500 for a seminar I was going to attend down near NYC at the end of the month. She was very sad and kept saying nobody would ever be able to replace me and that I had made people's lives better. Gah! Stop!

If I was so awesome, why didn't I work more? There were weeks I had to struggle to get 4 hours of pay. And recently when you hired an assistant, I wasn't even told about the position. I did like my job, but my god, the constant canceling of appointments with little or no notice? Annoying. Co-facilitators dropping out of groups with no explanation? Annoying. Having to drive all the way to the office for a meeting that is supposed to last an hour and then its only 10 minutes long? Annoying. A client smashes my car window...nothing is done and my boss allows her to continue to attend groups and I lose pay? Annoying. Sure, the goods outweigh the bads, absolutely, but the bads were largely avoidable if someone would have just been on the ball. That's all I'm saying. But I will miss the place. Of course I will still be receiving services there, I just won't be walking freely and writing erotic haiku on the company fridge.

Instead I'll be down at my new job, making canoles with this new shape I just thought up. Not sure where I'm channeling it from, but take a look. I think they'll be big hit....





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