ALIVE AND WELL (AND "STILL THINKIN' ")

Here I am, alive and well... about to embark on a health kick! Again. I've gained a lot of weight over the last month or so, but I know I can lose it, if I exercise and watch what I eat. Also, there's so much I want to do around the house, but there's just never enough money. It seems, sometimes, like MY life doesn't matter - at least that's the way they make me feel at work. I'm supposed to be "Mr. Team Spirit", so that other people can be lazy and get all the stuff they want. The hypocrisy of it all is starting to piss me off and I just want to kick everybody's ass in the whole place! My review stated that I was the "ideal" customer service representative and I got "exceeds expectations" for everything I do out on the book floor. They knew they couldn't get me there. Now I'm supposed to run the inventory department single-handedly, too? I guess I'll have to help all the customers, take all the back-up calls, do all the meaningless paperwork to keep the corporate zombies happy, and make sure the new books hit the shelves and the old and unwanted books get returned. I'm starting to feel pretty frustrated, and I don't like being criticized. What really irks me is that some of the areas where they say I needed work are for real. I tend to be a little scatter-brained and forgetful. For instance, I lost my store key on Harry Potter night (among all the insanity) which meant we had to change out all the locks in the store and get new keys for all the supervisors and managers. Things like this can ruin a person's reputation! I also hate rudeness and I tend to get combative when someone is crappy to me ... which is actually a pretty self-righteous way to be. If I was truly a humble person, I would recognize that the other person was having issues, and simply let them have them. Which is also a form of cold sadism disguised as humility and patience. But, trust me, cold sadism is what some customers richly deserve!
Speaking of sadists, Brent from the Barnes and Noble days came into the store. Just like he always has, he became agitated and paranoid about some random guy in the store who gave him a "bad vibe". Weird, weird, weird. Then he made his usual negative remarks about some of our mutual friends (well they're MY friends, anyway), talking them down in a competetive keeping-up-with-the-Joneses kind of way. Then he told me how much he was making at his new job and asked me what I was making. I lied and told him less than I actually do. He told me he'd get me a job where he works, but "it's very high pressure," he said. "I'm not sure you could handle it." Then he wrote down his phone number and email for me, and he left. I lost the paper with his info on it.
But on a more pleasant note...
What I really want right now is about a week off and about $5000 extra money to do the things that I want to do around the house. I want to plant a garden. I'm thinking I'll start with catnip so that Rerun will have something to play around in... I also want to go to England. Don't know if I ever will, though, because I rarely end up doing the things I dream about, and what most people consider routine life tasks (work, travel, relationships, buying houses and cars, having a real career) are, for me, sort of like bench pressing Mount Rushmore.
Incidentally, I went over to see Brian last night and listen to him and his brother play jazz and funk. Groove music. They're good, but their snobbery towards any kind of conventional song form only reinforced in in me that, even after all these years, I'm still a Rocker. Thank GOD! And all I wanted to do, for some reason, was come home and listen to old T-Rex:
"Meanwhile, I'm still thinkin' ... "
And, for anyone to whom this matters, I'll be working from 8am to 4pm on Thursday ...