I don’t even know if most of you know what I do for a living.

(Well, besides entertain y’all, that is.  But, I do that out of the kindness of my heart… not for the non-existent paycheck.)

I decorate cakes.

Not like these cakes, I hope.  And, not as fancy as these cakes.

Nope.  I’m some where in between the two.

Anyhow - at my job, we have several cakes for sale out front.  A customer can come in, pick one out, and have a message written on it in just a couple minutes while they wait.  I don’t know if this is common practice at other places, but its very standard for us.

So, today while I’m at work, this guy comes in with his two kids and spend several moments looking over each cake and discussing the pros and cons of them all.  Finally, a consensus was met, and they chose a fairly nondescript cake.

When they arrived at the register, the cashier politely asked the father if he’d like something written on the cake while they waited.  The father peered at the children and suggested, “You both decide what it should say, since its for my birthday.”

As I overheard this, I looked at the two children.  The older brother, about 10, and the little sister, about 7, looked a little nervous about being given such a responsibility.

This is where I stepped in.  I leaned down to the kids and started whispering to them, “What should we make it say?  What’s your dad’s favorite color?  What does he like?”

I could see their eyes light up.  They each had their own ideas.  The boy wanted blue writing and his dad’s favorite college team on the cake.  The girl wished for green writing, but definitely wanted some hearts around the cake also.

I nodded happily.  “I think I can manage that!  Hold on, okay?”

The kids smiled as I walked away.

The cake they had chosen wouldn’t allow me to add the college team design to it, so I rummaged through my supplies and grabbed up an identical yet undecorated cake.

Quickly I put the college team logo on it, wrote Happy Birthday Daddy, We Love You (in both blue and green, mind you), and of course put some red hearts intermingled with the words.

It was… uhm… a little ‘busy’ looking.  But, it was exactly what they wanted.

And, when I took the cake back up front, the kids ran to the counter to inspect my work.  Smiles grew from ear to ear on both kids.  As dad walked over to check it out, he smiled at the overdecorated cake.  Then, as the kids started gushing over what details they had recommended, he smiled larger than his kids.

The dad thanked me a good heartfelt ‘thank you’ that is rarely heard anymore, and left the store with his over estatic kids.

I had made their quick trip to the store to get a simple birthday cake one that made all of their days, and made the dad’s birthday hopefully a little more special than it started out being.

I thought that when I went out yesterday to get some photos of Elizabeth’s sister-in-law, that I was just going out for a fun, casual event.

Not that it wasn’t fun or casual, mind you. It honestly was an enjoyable time. And I literally have over 300 photos to sort through, cuz I’m cool like that, yo. I really think we got some good ones. I’m excited to look at them again with fresh eyes.

Anyway, I went to sleep fairly early last night. I was just spent. And today… I hurt. My muscles are sore. My legs are throbbing, the middle of my back hurts.

I’m not complaining. Seriously, I’m not.

But, now I can honestly say that I worked yesterday.

Wanna check out some of my work? You can click here, if you want.

One luxury in working in one place for so long is that anyone can find you.

Case in point, today an employee comes to my little section of the store and lets me know I have a visitor. Visitors aren’t rare occurrences for me. Normally they are planned visits, though. This impromptu visitor threw me off a little bit.

I stick my head out the door and see my dear old friend Melissa whom I’ve not seen in over a year. I spent some time talking to her, the husband and their adorable 14 month old daughter.

Once or twice I’ve had friends that I’ve literally not seen in 5 years or so track me down because they know that someone will know how to find me if they go to the store. More than once, I’ve gotten a phone call from an employee at the store saying something like: “(insert name here) says that you know them. They want to talk to you.”

In fact, I was the ‘best woman’ and an old friend’s beach wedding after 3 years of not seeing each other. All because he knew he could find me just by asking the right people …

Mr. Teenage ‘I think I’m a cool thug’ Boy*:

You might think you’re a gansta.

You might think talking in incomplete sentences that are constructed of entirely made up words is makes you sound cool.

You might think that respecting females or your elders is stupid.

You might think that you know everything.

You might think taking $50 out of my wallet was no big loss on my part.

Uhm, I work for my money. I pay bills. I run a household. I live paycheck to paycheck, buddy.

You just totally screwed up my finances, not only for this week, but possibly for months to come.

I will survive just fine anyhow, no thanks to you, Mr. Gangsta.

I hope one day you’ll realize that stealing that $50 today only confirmed my preconceived notions of you as a ‘person’.

I hope one day you know how it feels to be ripped off.

I hope one day that karma bites you hard, and you realize you deserved it.

Until that day, steer clear from me. I may have no proof you took my money, but I’m not stupid. You turned any current or future ‘pointed fingers’ towards yourself a long time ago, all by yourself.

From this day forward, you will understand how it feels to not get any respect. You will understand how this woman is smarter than you. You will understand that I want nothing to do with you.

If I had my choice, I wouldn’t see you again. Until that obvious fate takes its toll, I will do my best to make my disgust for you known. And, I will do it so slyly, maturely and effectively, you will not even be aware that it has happened until you pause to reflect on your day.

Oh, and by the way, when I run out of Diet Coke, cigarettes or gasoline, and have no money to replace them, you will understand the effects of your moronic actions today.

Consider this your notice.

* An employee at my place of work.

Why, oh why, did I bother calling my employer last night?

I told him the scenario about my tire.

We even shared a laugh about the stupidness of the situation.

I asked him nicely to leave a note for the other girl that does my job, letting her know that I couldn’t make it in to work last night. Also to please leave in the note that I would be in tonight.

So, why do I get phone calls early this morning, asking if I’ll be in to work tonight?

Yeah, that would be because my employer didn’t leave a note.

Uh huh. Nice.

I brought the printer from the ancient-computer-that-no-one-uses and hooked it up to the newer computer tonight at work. I guess, technically, I should of asked if it was alright to do this. But, I didn’t care whether or not anyone else wanted it downstairs. I did. So I moved it. It would of never been done otherwise.

And, actually, I suppose I shouldn’t be using the new office computer anyhow. All the user names are password protected, and I’m not listed on the welcome screen. But, I helped set up the computer when it was brought into the store, and set up all the users. I suppose it was a little sneaky of me to ‘break in’, but one of the users never changed their default password.

Its not like I did any harm to the computer.

I did add my department as a user, afterwards, and made it password protected too. I’m sure that’s going to piss off the manager. I don’t care. He’s so computer illiterate that it’ll take him months to realize I’ve added a new user, let alone that he doesn’t know the password to get into that account.

But, I figure that my job does have a need for google images on rare occasions.

Honestly.

I didn’t do all this just to be facetious.

Okay. Maybe a little bit.

Over a thousand people attended the DQ Ice Cream Social tonight.

How do I know this?

We counted the DQ sundaes that were made, of course.

Just to give anyone who is curious an idea of how big a DQ Social is in this town, check out this photo.

And, that doesn’t show all who attended, of course.

How does this all work?

Years of experiance.

Thank goodness the owners of the DQ have 26 years of experiance of these Ice Cream Socials under their belts.

Otherwise, this would be a complete disaster.