First of all, I've been having to pack up all my shit from my mother's house. She's moving this weekend, and it needs to be gone. So far I've packed three fucking bags for goodwill, gotten most of my salvagable clothes out for myself, come to the realization that I collect way too much crap, and managed to knock over a huge tray of little tiny beads all over my carpeted floor because I'm that fucking talented... So, yes. Not even half done. And she moves out this weekend!

Ha ha ha. Oh, what a laugh that is...

The most amusing part of going through all my belongings since early childhood is the memories I come across... For instance, pictures and postcards from a forgotten trip to Catalina and Tijuana At age 12. Or the styrofoam porthole I took closing night off the stage of "Titanic" in my senior year of high school.

But best of all, the letters. The oldest of which I believe was sent to me from a friend of mine back when I was 9. I don't remember this friend at all, but she seemed quite upset that some little girl named Fawna kept stealing the "C" jumprope at recess.

The letters from junior high and high school are great, too. Last night I realized my best friend from seventh grade might possibly have been insane.

I only have the last few pages of what appears to be a very long rambling letter from her. The first page starts in the middle of a sentence about her wanting to have five kids. She then goes on and on about how much she loves her boyfriend, etc. etc, blah blah blah...

A few pages of this and other random crap, and the letter ends with a full page of the following written over and over again:

Tiff + Tiff = B.F.F.L 4 Ever

Turn the page over, and you find a similar thing happening, only this time with "Tiff *hearts* Tim" written far too many times for a healthy chemical balance.

And, by the way, isn't "best friends for life forever" quite redundant? Yes, I thought so.

Enough with all that fun, I feel like turning my attention to my other source of amusement: Work.

I've had an incredibly full schedule these last two weeks. Which is good, seeing as I'm flat broke. But, I swear, I've covered about five times for my coworkers since I've been back working.

It's kind of funny, though. While I was gone they changed the selling format. One of the new things they added to give us support is a clipboard where the managers and all of us little peons can write "thank you" notes to each other. On the current page, almost every single one of the thank you notes is to me.

The last one is from tonight. We got a new assistant manager, and she and I closed the store alone. As I was leaving, I saw the note she left for me. It went something like this:

"Tiffany - Thanks for making my first night here a wonderful one! And the panties looked great!"

Um... yeah. That looks a bit bad, eh? I'd like to state for the record that she was referring to the underwear rack that I completely re-organized and stocked. And I must have simply made her night wonderful because, you know, I'm just cool like that.

So, with the new selling technique corporate is introducing, every district has a theme. Ours is (I'm not fucking joking here) "In Da Club." That's right. Everyone is encouraged to say and write things like "bling bling!" and "Fo schnizzle!"

I'm frightened.

Seeing as we're supposed to be club themed, I have been wearing my best clubbing clothes.

My boss felt the need one night to tell me I look like a "goth Pippi Longstocking."

I don't know whether to be offended or flattered.

before - after