Events

Y'all. A lot has happened since I last wrote.

I will begin with a small anecdote. It was the start of my Friday night...I showed up to this apartment complex in Belle Meade and knocked on the door. I had a pen in my right hand so the guy could sign his receipt right away when he came to the door. You should first know that I usually tuck the receipt into the fold of the heat bag to keep it from flying away in case of a breeze or gust of wind, but where it is still easily accessible. It's a handy little trick that a co-worker taught me one time when she saw me chasing a receipt around in the parking lot. We don't have to talk about that though...
But this time I didn't have the receipt really tucked in there well, so as I was knocking on the door, a light gust of wind blew one of the receipts away and in an effort to catch it I threw out my right hand, and in order to have the hand free to actually catch the receipt I had unknowingly thrown my pen straight up in the air, and I realized this as I was reaching for the receipt, so then I forgot about the receipt and was looking around in the air for my pen. All of this was happening as the man was opening the door, and just as I realized my pen was flipping through the air straight above me, it landed on the hot bag right next to the receipt. I'm sure I looked a little confused and astonished at the same time as I looked up at the guy, and he looked a little impressed and calmly said, "That was a mighty trick." I made a joke about having practiced it a lot, and he gave me a $6 tip! Which isn't too shabby for an average Friday night.

But you before you go thinking this Friday night was average, I want to stop you. It wasn't average. I'll summarize parts of it for you:

Best tip: $20 (on an $80 order to Laurelbrooke. Also, the tip was brought out to me by a 10 year old girl on rollerblades. It was delightful.)
Worst decision of the night: to stay and close for one of my coworkers. Didn't get to leave until 2 am. I also was scheduled to open the next morning and work an 8 1/2 hour shift.
Best line of the night: "Don't expect a tip from them...they are kind of white trash. Also, they have this illegal daycare thing going on..."

Best line of the night led into worst experience of the summer...
It was my last run of the night, to the white trash/illegal daycare duplex, at around 11:30 pm. Obviously, it was dark, and you know how when you're making a sharp turn, like turning around in a parking lot for example, your lights don't shine on the area you're planning on actually driving on, because you're not facing that way yet. That might sound confusing. Don't worry about it. Just bear with me.
White trash duplex was at the end of a street in this duplex neighborhood, so I just parked all the way on the side facing their house, and was turning in what looked like a sort of circular end of the road turn around type of deal to leave, and well it was not a circular turn around. Just a plain old dead end. I found this out because all of a sudden I was up on a curb that my lights didn't shine on because lights point straight ahead of your car. Again, this might not make sense. Whatever. Then all of a sudden my car slammed down and back up again and it sounded like something smacked the bottom of my car really hard. I let a few profanities slip, then just kept driving on, and soon realized that my front left tire was flat. I said a lot more profanities as I put my car in park, still on this dang dead end street, and realized as I got out that I had completely blown out my tire. There was a huge gash in the side of it. So I called my boss, he sent this guy out to supply me with a car jack and a lug wrench because my car jack is broken and my lug wrench is too big for my lug nuts. Go figure.
By the time I got back to headquarters, it's after midnight and I was driving on a spare that was pretty low on air itself. And I still had closing duties to perform. As I already mentioned, it took until 2 am from that point to finish everything (like cleaning off every surface, mopping, etc). I stopped by the gas station to put air in my spare, took the long/slow way home, arriving at 2:30 am. I then wrote my dad this long note explaining everything and asking him to get a new tire on my car in the morning before I had to be at work. Then I went to bed, miserably tired, dreading the next day.

I forgot to add that I had just been diagnosed with bronchitis that morning...I'd been sick for a good week and a half leading up to this. So that added exhaustion and a lot of coughing to the mix.

But my dad got the issue figured out, and bought me 2 brand new front tires...they found multiple holes in the side of my right tire as well, and said it was a miracle that one hadn't already blown on me. (I house-sat out in Franklin a couple weeks ago and may have grazed the curb that I parked my car beside a few times...)

The next day, Saturday, I somehow made it through my 8 1/2 hour shift without too much coughing, and managed to get a lot of deliveries with also lots of down time. My boss had this fold up lawn chair in her office that we set up for me to chill in in the back, and I fell asleep more than once in that thing. It was the only good part of that day. I almost fell asleep a few times while driving in my office, and I just felt awful and so tired. Also it was 100+ degrees and we all know that my uniform includes pants and 2 shirts.

Basically, I decided that closing is not worth the extra hours.

I went to bed at 9:00 pm last night, and slept for 11 1/2 hours. I also took an hour long nap this afternoon. I guess a blown out tire and bronchitis followed by an all day shift can really take it out of you.