a vestige of thought...
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Christy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
*WARNING* This entry is going to be emotional and negative. It is an attempt to remove The Mask. I had a bad day and I'm venting. I'm generally not this pessemistic. 
This morning I got up at 6:45 to go to work. Generally, I like working on Saturdays. I like the people I work with, and most times working with them makes the time go quickly and I have fun. Today started out pretty well. We finished opening in plenty of time and Jeanne announced that we were going to have a contest from noon to two o'clock, which is always fun. Plus, I generally win. Hehe. This time the winner had to sell the most desserts. In the contest's two hours, I sold 11 desserts, and the runner up only sold four. Honestly, I think I"m just lucky. I don't try that hard to win. People who want desserts just come to my register or something. Anyway, certain other employees started giving me a really hard time about it. I know they were just kidding, but It really started to bug me. Plus, it was really crowded and because there were so many people and I was becoming increasingly stressed, I kept mixing up customer's orders. It didn't help that we were constantly waiting on food and our overseeing manager had to leave early, so things got a little crazy.
Finally at 3:30 I got to leave. I went home and checked my email and such and then changed my clothes and got ready for my violin recital. I had planned to wear my nice black pants and a shirt, but I looked everywhere and could not find them. Mom is out of town and Dad has no idea where they may be. So I had to wear my much-too-long khaki pants instead. This was not a terribly big deal, except that I was already frustrated with stuff in general. So, I put on my khaki pants and "warmed up" (although it's so cold in my house that warming up is relative) before going with Dad to pick up Grandma and go to the church for the recital.
We got to the church pretty early and no one was there yet, so we sat in the car and waited. And waited. And waited. And soon realized that we were at the wrong place. It was the church where we had always had recitals before. I had not thought to check if it was at another place, and my teacher never mentioned the location to me, so I assumed it was the same as it had always been before. I called my teacher's house, but (obviously) no one was home, so I called a lady from my church whose daughters were in an earlier recital to find out where it was. It turned out that it was at a church in Finneytown. Go figure. So we drove back and arrived 15 minutes late to the recital. I was already hugely stressed and very humiliated to be walking into a room of elementary school kids (I was by far the oldest performer at this particular recital) and their parents after things had already started. I was last on the program. My hands were once again freezing, so I spent the time listening to "Twinkle" and the like trying to get blood circulation without bringing attention to myself. When it was finally my turn, I went up to the front and spoke briefly to Heidi (my teacher) before playing. I must have looked stressed because she said something like "just take a deep breath." I tried. However, I think the only time I played that piece worse was when I sight-read it for the first time. My fingers felt as if they had been injected with novicane and I could not get them to function properly. It was so incredibly frustrating! I believe I screwed up just about everything possible.
I think I would have been okay if I could have just quietly slipped out after that. However, we had to stand in front of all the parents while saying stupid things like "fuzzy pickles" and many varieties of "cheese" while having our picture taken. I have nearly complete inability to hide my emotions. If I find something funny, I either have to laugh until I get it out or I will start to turn red and sometimes squeak trying to supress it. If I am pleased, I can rarely not smile. If I find something upsetting, I cannot remain passive. After all that had happened earlier, I was horribly stressed and overwhelmed and humiliated, and yet I was being forced to stand surrounded by a bunch of little kids with sticks and smile. It didn't work. I know my smile looked more like a grimace, and I couldn't see a thing, and the kids wouldn't move and I coudln't get around them and ugh! It was not good. When the kids finally moved out of the way, I pretty much ran out of the room (while covering my mouth, probably looking like I was going to puke, and wimpering in an odd, supressed sort of way because I knew I was about to lose it and I refused to lose control in front of people as often as I can help it). So, I ran down whatever hallway in the church was convenient, shut myself in a room, and prepared to start sobbing only to discover that I could not cry! I have often been told that crying is healthy; it releases pent up emotion and stress and let's one get on with life. This, I have found, is true. Being refused a moment or two of unsupressed tears is nearly as tortourous as being forced to supress them in the first place. I did, however, manage to give myself the hiccups for nearly an hour.
We then went out to dinner (while waiting for Scott to get off work), which was pretty much the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. I would much rather have gone home to sulk. But I went and I ate my shrimp salad, (even though they forgot the shrimp and I had to eat it separately) and I had a Coke (my first pop in many weeks) and afterwards I felt much better. I even decided to go to Brandae's for a bit when I got home, even though I had earlier decided against it. It was good to see people for a bit. Especially cheerful people who didn't know that I'd just had a really crappy day.
So, in the end, today was bad, but it's over. Tomorrow is another day, as Scarlet O'Hara would say. To end with a very cool poem:
Every day is a fresh beginning.
Listen my soul to the glad refrain
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted,
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.
~Susan Coolidge
This morning I got up at 6:45 to go to work. Generally, I like working on Saturdays. I like the people I work with, and most times working with them makes the time go quickly and I have fun. Today started out pretty well. We finished opening in plenty of time and Jeanne announced that we were going to have a contest from noon to two o'clock, which is always fun. Plus, I generally win. Hehe. This time the winner had to sell the most desserts. In the contest's two hours, I sold 11 desserts, and the runner up only sold four. Honestly, I think I"m just lucky. I don't try that hard to win. People who want desserts just come to my register or something. Anyway, certain other employees started giving me a really hard time about it. I know they were just kidding, but It really started to bug me. Plus, it was really crowded and because there were so many people and I was becoming increasingly stressed, I kept mixing up customer's orders. It didn't help that we were constantly waiting on food and our overseeing manager had to leave early, so things got a little crazy.
Finally at 3:30 I got to leave. I went home and checked my email and such and then changed my clothes and got ready for my violin recital. I had planned to wear my nice black pants and a shirt, but I looked everywhere and could not find them. Mom is out of town and Dad has no idea where they may be. So I had to wear my much-too-long khaki pants instead. This was not a terribly big deal, except that I was already frustrated with stuff in general. So, I put on my khaki pants and "warmed up" (although it's so cold in my house that warming up is relative) before going with Dad to pick up Grandma and go to the church for the recital.
We got to the church pretty early and no one was there yet, so we sat in the car and waited. And waited. And waited. And soon realized that we were at the wrong place. It was the church where we had always had recitals before. I had not thought to check if it was at another place, and my teacher never mentioned the location to me, so I assumed it was the same as it had always been before. I called my teacher's house, but (obviously) no one was home, so I called a lady from my church whose daughters were in an earlier recital to find out where it was. It turned out that it was at a church in Finneytown. Go figure. So we drove back and arrived 15 minutes late to the recital. I was already hugely stressed and very humiliated to be walking into a room of elementary school kids (I was by far the oldest performer at this particular recital) and their parents after things had already started. I was last on the program. My hands were once again freezing, so I spent the time listening to "Twinkle" and the like trying to get blood circulation without bringing attention to myself. When it was finally my turn, I went up to the front and spoke briefly to Heidi (my teacher) before playing. I must have looked stressed because she said something like "just take a deep breath." I tried. However, I think the only time I played that piece worse was when I sight-read it for the first time. My fingers felt as if they had been injected with novicane and I could not get them to function properly. It was so incredibly frustrating! I believe I screwed up just about everything possible.
I think I would have been okay if I could have just quietly slipped out after that. However, we had to stand in front of all the parents while saying stupid things like "fuzzy pickles" and many varieties of "cheese" while having our picture taken. I have nearly complete inability to hide my emotions. If I find something funny, I either have to laugh until I get it out or I will start to turn red and sometimes squeak trying to supress it. If I am pleased, I can rarely not smile. If I find something upsetting, I cannot remain passive. After all that had happened earlier, I was horribly stressed and overwhelmed and humiliated, and yet I was being forced to stand surrounded by a bunch of little kids with sticks and smile. It didn't work. I know my smile looked more like a grimace, and I couldn't see a thing, and the kids wouldn't move and I coudln't get around them and ugh! It was not good. When the kids finally moved out of the way, I pretty much ran out of the room (while covering my mouth, probably looking like I was going to puke, and wimpering in an odd, supressed sort of way because I knew I was about to lose it and I refused to lose control in front of people as often as I can help it). So, I ran down whatever hallway in the church was convenient, shut myself in a room, and prepared to start sobbing only to discover that I could not cry! I have often been told that crying is healthy; it releases pent up emotion and stress and let's one get on with life. This, I have found, is true. Being refused a moment or two of unsupressed tears is nearly as tortourous as being forced to supress them in the first place. I did, however, manage to give myself the hiccups for nearly an hour.
We then went out to dinner (while waiting for Scott to get off work), which was pretty much the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. I would much rather have gone home to sulk. But I went and I ate my shrimp salad, (even though they forgot the shrimp and I had to eat it separately) and I had a Coke (my first pop in many weeks) and afterwards I felt much better. I even decided to go to Brandae's for a bit when I got home, even though I had earlier decided against it. It was good to see people for a bit. Especially cheerful people who didn't know that I'd just had a really crappy day.
So, in the end, today was bad, but it's over. Tomorrow is another day, as Scarlet O'Hara would say. To end with a very cool poem:
Every day is a fresh beginning.
Listen my soul to the glad refrain
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted,
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.
~Susan Coolidge
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home