I Got A 72 Pack Of Prismacolours For Christmas. Naturally I've Been Playing With Them Ever Since.

I got a 72 pack of Prismacolours for Christmas. Naturally I've been playing with them ever since.

"Javyka" from storytellerkris' tale of magicians and mysterious disappearances. She is not wearing near enough jewelry. Her hair isn't right. I forgot the henna on her arms! Many thanks: this pose is based from the stock photo by jlior-d4ver1j on deviantart. There are so many wonderful things on deviantart.

Oddest Things Sent Via Mail Part Two:

- A five pound gummy bear. Not five pounds of gummy bears... a five pound gummy bear. These things happen. I do not know the flavor.

- An incubator.

- A gingerbread house.

- While not really strange, there was a beach-body fitness workout equipment. Sent to our mayor. The man is known for being photogenic, pretty, and overly concerned with being in shape.

- A coconut. Today a coconut arrived. Someone stuck a bunch of stamps and an address onto a coconut. Nothing can top that.

- A radio flyer wagon.

It was a bit of a difficult day. Scratch that, it's been a difficult few weeks. I have balanced on the knife's edge of exhaustion with any teetering leading me into the abyss of emotional meltdown. Bridges collapse under the cracking point of stress. After a full eight hours of sleep that did not feel like nearly enough (I love you, Inventors of Zzzquil!) and one crying jag at work (how very embarrassing but what wonderfully compassionate co-workers), my state of mental balance was somewhat less teetery. Somewhat. It was clear I dearly needed the weekend to hurry up and get here. I arrived for my shift early, always a plus. It means I have enough time to get something done before the barrage of customers. But the mail deliveries that are supposed to arrive at 10 or 9:30 at the earliest, had already begun arriving before me! This frustrated my manager and perplexed me. The next atypically early letter carrier was Kyle, arriving ten minutes before we'd even opened our doors. I pounced: "What's going on?" "Trying to beat parking. The Fruit Guy's here." Okay? Fruit Guy has been setting up his mobile kiosk in our expansive parking lot for years. I hadn't noticed a correlation between his popular stand and our delivery times. Mind you, things can sit in front of me for hours before I notice them. Besides, my pet theory was Friday. So I had a deluge of parcels already before opening, minutes before the doors swung to release the flow of customers stomping up to my indefensible desk. My wonderful manager had taken my paperwork with his own sizable workload, and there were few problems left in our official sticky note format all over my desk and back wall. I can handle that.

The problems began.

Canada Post informed us back in April that our recalled stamps credited us with about $16 000 but the credit memo they sent a month later was only $8 000. No further money or communication was sent so our head office wanted to know where the missing $8 000 went! Suspicions of theft were implied and security measures taken. Knowing that we are not thieves, and certainly not of that inconspicuous amount, I waited for my partner to arrive to cover me from customer fire while I entered the enemy camps of Canada Post. I called Canada Post five or six times. I could get no further than the automated messages. It seemed that no matter what button I pressed I always wound up on the same recorded voice cheerfully asking me to press one of three buttons that did nothing. "Just get me a person! Please!" But the unsympathetic and cordial voice just reminded me that I could press one for technical difficulties... As I cursed the recording both with inside voice and outside voice (my partner cast a few glances at me) the computer my partner used froze twice, lost connection with our vital barcode scanner, and refused to obey the touch screen three times. Never mind the customer questions that were either answered with "write your name here and the addressee here" or "yes, that's the actual price of a stamp". I hung up the phone after the third failure and prepared myself for the fourth. My manager had sauntered into our corner at some point to watch the daily chaos and deliver my finished paperwork. I fixed the scanner, my partner collected the money for a stamp, and the computer screen was unresponsive once again. "Not again!" my colleague yelped. I grabbed my much smaller manager by his little bony shoulders and shook him while loudly lamenting to the heavens. In front of customers. Yes, I'm still employed. Probably because he has watched my ambiguous mental footing over three weeks. Probably because this was out of character. Most definitely because he is the most forgiving manager with extensive patience and possible contention for some kind of sainthood. Eventually things began to work in our favor. Slightly. There was a definite atmosphere of careless desperation veiling our corner of retail post.

Arachnophobia and curiosity

So, there apparently exist yellow spiders. I was plucking dead heads from the bright yellow pansies in the backyard. One of the pansies suddenly stepped forward on its leaf, four legs at a time. I jumped back with far more agility than I've ever showed before. A yellow spider. A large yellow spider. No visible marks or dots, just yellow. It sat there. I stared. Fascination warred with fear. It was such a bright colour but it was an eight legged aberration. Finally amazement won out over all and I ran for my camera. When I returned the spider had vanished back into the leaves. If I poked at the flowers again it might emerge... Fear won this time as to where it might reappear. So no pictures. Yellow spiders exist? Too scared to Google the name.

It came back

EDIT: In the middle of posting my computer decided to restart. Stupid lemon? Stupid user?

I am glad the previous tale finally uploaded as it provides the needed backstory for today.

29 November 2013

She came back today but I didn't recognize her. Now, today was already not a good day. I was tired and too many crazies had appeared in a row. However, my friends were working and a few friends appeared in the line up, so whenever I felt like I was about to fall apart there was a smiling face somewhere. The power of a familiar smile! I would not have stayed glued if not for them. Still, there were many crazy people flocking to the post office today. Madam Low returned today to pick up a parcel. Part of the reason I didn't recognize her was the fact that she wouldn't look at me. I figured she was just distracted by the Christmas stuff scattered helter-skelter. She handed me her delivery slip (the little barcoded paper that scans into the computer and tells us where the parcel is hidden) without a word. So I asked her for her identification, as with any customer. No ID no parcel. Now she has to face me and she is glaring. I still don't recognize her and I'm not too put off by the glare. This is retail, after all, lots of people come in glaring nd stay that way. She did look like she was trying to kill me with her mind and that was mildly confusing. Then I saw her name and aha! Still don't recognize her face but I remember her name now. Okay. I fetch her parcel and say "there you go!" I am every bit as nice to her as to any other customer. For one, it's safer that way; for two, why start trouble? "Look up if there are any more parcels," she demands. Okay, I can do that. Except my computer just froze. Again. Poor little computer froze very often today. I wait for a moment for it to live again, but decided to just switch to PO1, the other computer. My coworker is indisposed in the back and not using the computer at the moment anyway. I tell her my computer is frozen and I'll use the other. I do, I check, nothing new for her, so I tell her "we're all good!" She turns on her heel and leaves. I help the next customer and my computer unfreezes.

I found out later that she'd walked straight to the front cash and asked my coworker, hereby known as Braids, what my name was. (My nametag is somewhere I'm sure.) Madam Low complained that I was rude, degrading, and she'd had an incident with me last week. Braids, surprised, admitted I was tired and had had a bad week (they took away my days off before I got them!). Low said I shouldn't have that many bad weeks and needed to improve my attitude. I was flabbergasted when Braids reported this to me. Braids had been shocked too. I admit to being a little freaked out for the rest of the night. Nothing can happen as long as Low's complaints stay local where everyone involved knows me, her, and the story. But if she complains higher up it could cause me trouble; she's making false accusations and I can't prove her accusations are bitter falsehoods.