Is not a real illness.
Does not need to be talked about
Is made far too much of.
Isn’t that big a deal.
Is the domain of people who can’t find something real which is wrong with their lives.

(Continuing my spate of Valentine’s-themed posts, and throwing in a little moan about work while I’m at it.)

About four or five weeks ago now, Alex suggested we go away for Valentine’s day. I, being the smitten kitten that I am, agreed immediately, as I would to pretty much anything he suggests, and grabbed a form to request the weekend off.

A few days later I got John, the personnel manager, to sign mine, and Alex checked with his manager, Susan, that he could have the weekend, and after about a week she acquiesced, so we booked a hotel, everything was lovely and such.

Last Monday, I wandered into work to check my hours for the next week, that being the 8th to the 14th. To my horror, I saw that I was rostered in for two shifts at the weekend, an early on the Saturday and a late on the Sunday.
I protested to John, and pointed out that the roster had my requests marked in, so he said I could have the weekend off.
Upset, I wandered off home, went to band, etc. It was only later that I realised I was then left with only four hours for the entire week, so the next day I headed in to ask John for some more shifts.

Alex came with me, to check what his hours were, since they weren’t up on Monday.

What do you reckon the odds are that Susan messed up his hours and put him in for two shifts at the weekend as well?
Yep, pretty good.

I complained, he complained, everything got changed.

Seriously, like, I can understand one, but what on EARTH are the chances of us both getting shifts on a weekend booked off nearly a month in advance, like?
Grargh.

What I actually want for Valentine’s day, not that yesterday’s list wasn’t fun or anything, it was, but still, actually I just want to spend time with my boyfriend.
Personally I think V-day is all a bit something and nothing, but once I get to see him, that’s enough for me. =)

I would like a) a pink netbook
b) a giant teddy
c) a purple ipod!
d) flowers
e) chocolates
6) a car
7) infinite loff and hugs
a pink phone from o2 on billpay for which i don’t have to pay the bill with Hello Kitty on it
and
9) to go to Captain America’s for dinner
for valentine’s day.
I’m not demanding, I swear!

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Yesterday, when I was at work, it was nine o’clock and most of the staff were leaving – the store was closing so all of drapery and most of the checkout girls were going home, leaving the floor staff, EPOS, Food Safety and, for some reason, two of the checkout girls behind.

Normally if Alex finishes before me he’ll come and say goodbye before he leaves, but yesterday he didn’t.

I saw him leaving, with some of the girls from drapery, and it was a good ten minutes before I realised that, when I saw him, I was jealous.

Jealous isn’t something I do, I never have, I’m too laid back to be jealous, or else too lazy. I really dislike jealousy as a trait, I think it destroys relationships, and it was a constant bone of contention in some previous relationships of mine.

So to actually be struck by a flash of jealousy, unreasonable and ridiculous as it was, really surprised me.
I wonder what triggered it?

I know I’ve blogged about Jodi Picoult before, when I read my sister’s keeper, or else it was when I went to see it in the cinema, I’m not sure. Anyways, they were around about the same time, so it’s much for muchness.

Anyways, I read another one of her books last week, Handle with Care, which Tommy has also read – I got it for Sinéad for Christmas, and she’s read it as well. Actually, I had a look, and Lily has read it as well, as has The Daily Daydreamer

It’s not the only Picoult I’ve read, I’ve read a good few, My Sister’s Keeper, Plain Truth, Salem Falls, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, The Pact, Vanishing Acts and now Handle with Care.

While I will admit that they are enjoyable, and I quite like reading them, they have that horrendous tendency towards dramaticism which makes them just… ugh, sometimes.
Trying to describe the story to someone who hasn’t read them, most often Dave, elicits such responses, because even setting the scene is ridiculously hard to do, there are so many dramatic points in there.

It seems like not a single person can be normal in the books – if one daughter has a genetic disease, the other one then has to be parasuicidal and bulimic, because that’s just *how things work* in Picoult’s universe.

Or if it’s not enough that your first husband was killed by a drunk driver, your first daughter and second husband by a murderer, *clearly* your second daughter will then be in dire need of a heart transplant.
Because it wasn’t dramatic enough, like.

And her penchant for the twist! There always has to be a twist, a sting in the tail, some ending that you would never in any realm of possibility see coming, although because it’s formulaic, you then begin to suspect a twist at the end. Someone was being abused, someone dies, the murderer wasn’t who you thought it was, something similar to that.
It’s expected now, you can’t help but wait for the revelation which will make its appearance on the second last page of the book, you can’t expect any sort of resolution without it, or it’ll make everything just that tad worse.

In the case of Handle with Care, it really makes you wonder why you get out of bed in the mornings, it’s like everything is perfect, and then, BAM, revelation, shock, you retreat to your bed for the rest of the week in a funk of depression.

Yet I keep reading them. It’s a bit like the twilight saga. They are extremely readable, and you kind of want to see just *how bad* they can get.

I was thinking, the other day, about what I’d write about if I had another blog.
And I figured it’d be a college blog, describing my various friends. A little like those articles which used to be in that newspaper magazine, people we know or something, and it would describe sterotypes, and there’d be something you knew about every one.

Anyways, I don’t have a second blog, but I told Dave about it, so he decided he wanted his own description, because he’s a needy whiny bitch.

Dave is that guy who speaks at the speed of light, so you need to spend six months hanging around with him before you can understand anything he says and the next six months trying to speed up your responses so that he can understand you.
Everything he says is at such a speed that most people can’t understand it and so it’s several minutes before they realise that they’ve been shredded to pieces by his acerbic tongue and razor wit, but they just smile and nod, because it’s too much to keep up with him.
You have to wonder sometimes, does he do everything as fast as he talks?

The times when he’s not speaking at the speed of light, Dave has wandered off into his own little world, and he’s oblivious to everything around him, visualising tigers snarling at him in the middle of a law exam.

Once you to get to know him (and more importantly understand him), you realise that Dave is a narcissistic, self-obsessed, attention seeking manwhore with a penchant for rating any person who walks past him with a simple yes or no. Of course it’s more often yes than no as he has an unrelenting sexdrive which isn’t helped by the fact that he spends six hours a day sitting on a bus.

Dave doesn’t need friends, he needs personal assistants to listen to his tales and rantings on random whimsy (such as the terror of Scooby Doo, and why they always run from the guy in a mask), and carry his stuff.
Most importantly, carry his stuff.

You can’t text Dave before nine in the morning or after 11 at night, because he will kill you. You must provide him with a constant supply of food, or he will start to gnaw on his own knuckles, yet he still manages to stay rake-thin.

He’s devastatingly well-dressed, but insecure as fuck, so he won’t do anything outside his comfort zone and won’t put himself out in any way. he won’t wear short sleeves and he’s as cold and icy as the arctic.

Why are we friends? I don’t know. He insults me at every turn and won’t listen to anything I say. But still, I’m stuck with him now.

((just a note, this is loooooooooooooong. I’m sorry, I was ranting. You don’t have to read it, I won’t mind, I swear. *sniff*, *pout*))

Stocktake, the big one, the end of the year, every person in the store is in til midnight, counting stuff.. Haven’t I said this before? Oh yeah, here. No point in repeating myself, so.

Anyways, my section was Dental. I thought at first it wasn’t gonna be too bad, because I had miscounted. I thought I only had three metres to do. LIES!
I had FIVE!
Except then when I went down to my aisle on Saturday and my face fell as I realised I had five metres, John, my manager, dangled salvation in front of me. Agata only had one metre to do, so when she was finished, she could help me by doing the last two metres of my section, leaving us doing three each. Right, that makes sense, lovely, thank you John, you just saved my bacon.

So from two til five, the first three hours of my shift, I tidied.
I had never realised just how complex toothpaste was.
You know the boxes aren’t square? Yeah, so when you have them all pushed back and stacked up nicely, and you think then you can just count and multiply out at six?
LIES.
One box was invariably tilted on its side instead of on its bottom, or worse, two, meaning that you then have to turn them the right way around or your multiplication will be WRONG, forcing you to count every single box individually.
*sigh*

Okay, also, toothpaste doesn’t stack very well. You’d think it would, being boxes, but no. Invariably, again, one has dropped to the ground, so the corner is bent, meaning it won’t sit straight, meaning nothing on top of it will sit straight, meaning every time you brush against it the entire pile tumbles to the ground. Not helpful when you’re tidying the fifth shelf, and have to climb off your ladder to retrieve them, climb back up, stack them, face them off (knocking the next lot off in the process) and then gingerly remove your hand, crossing your fingers and hoping they’ll stay this time.
No such luck, they also tumbled, meaning you had to start the entire process again, but twice.

Also, Aqua Fresh Fresh and Minty is quite possibly my least favourite toothpaste EVER.
I mean seriously.
When it’s called Aqua Fresh, why then call the variation Fresh and Minty? Do you really need to call it Fresh Fresh? I think we get that it’s Fresh.
Anyways, that’s not what annoyed me about it.
There are roughly six billion of these toothpastes in Dunnes.
I was tidying them for at least ten minutes, because they were in bits, all facing different ways and mixed up with Mild and Minty, which I wouldn’t have minded, except they’re a different price, so I had to separate them out.
And then after I’ve tidied them, I notice more of them two shelves down.
And two shelves below that.

John walked past as I complained, and then looked at the sheer numbers of toothpaste, exclaiming that they should be on an end. They were on a ladder rack as well, but thankfully I didn’t have to count them.

Anyways, we moved on, continued tidying. Why are there so many different types of toothpaste anyways? And why are they all different prices? I wouldn’t mind if they were all the *same* price, but noooo…

Incidentally, the word Colgate no longer holds any meaning for me, because I saw it so many times.

Finally, after an hour and a half, toothpaste was tidy, sorted, validated, pushed back, ready to be counted.
Now, the biggie. Toothbrushes.
Huh.

Now that was fun.

Kids toothbrushes? They come in three sizes, right, for different stages? They’re all different prices, so they had to be separated and tidied.
Then as soon as I’d done them, SOME WOMAN came along BUYING TOOTHBRUSHES!
IN A SHOP?
Madness. Seriously, I could barely believe it. She first complained about the fact that they were pushed to the back of the shelf (easier to count there), and then spent fifteen minutes MESSING THEM UP!
Size three? Yes, that’s the size I want. So she pulled out a tray of them (a full tray, mind, not the tray at the front, which wasn’t full) and took one of the brushes, then decided she didn’t want that and put it back, but in a SIZE FOUR tray, instead of size three, pulled out ANOTHER tray, picked one of those, decided she didn’t want that, but in FACT wanted a size TWO toothbrush, so she pulled out one of THOSE trays (again, full, not the one which had or two missing), and took one of those brushes, and left the second size three toothbrush… on a different shelf?
I nearly hit her.

But I was busy with the Colgate toothbrushes.
So Colgate do lots of toothbrushes, but the ones they do most of are the 360 range. They do 360 Deep Clean, 340 Whole Mouth Clean and 360 Sensitive. Those are the manual ones. Then they ALSO do ones which are battery powered.
They’re Sonic.
However, I have yet to discover what the difference between Colgate 360 Sonic and Colgate 360 MICROSonic is.
They were the same price so I didn’t bother investigate further.

Oh, and you know what else Colgate do? SCENTED toothbrushes! SERIOUSLY! Who needs SCENTED toothbrushes? Doesn’t the toothpaste smell? And the floss? And the mouthwash? Why would you need the brush to smell as well??

Geh.

Then I moved on to Oral B. Shane says we have to buy stuff made by Proctor and Gamble, so that his dad, who works for them, won’t be out of a job. They make Oral B stuff.
That’s why he keeps coming into our house with billions of toothbrushes.

Anyways, I’m decidedly not happy with Oral B. I mean, like, I thought the Colgate stuff was bad? Oral B was ten times worse.
Their main toothbrush range is Cross Action.
I thought I was sorted when I had them sorted into Cross Action Plus and Cross Action Complete, they were easy to spot ’cause Plus is white with coloured-y bits, whereas Complete is coloured with white bits.
See how I worked that out? I’m a genius, me.
But that’s not quite it. I had missed Cross Action Massage. Foolish of me, alright.
Ah, but Cross Action Complete, see, this is where it gets fun. They have to be separated into Soft and Medium. I think you can get firm, too, but apparently we don’t stock them (thankfully, or I might have killed someone).
Then, thinking I was done, I started putting them back on the shelves.
Ah, no, not finished yet.
Within both soft and medium, the toothbrushes are further differentiated into 35 and 40.
I don’t know what the numbers mean, and to be honest, at that point I couldn’t have cared less. I had been tidying for two hours and fifty five minutes and I had to finish within the next five or I wouldn’t be done in time to start counting. I nearly threw all the toothbrushes in a bin I was so frustrated.
But! Thankfully! I sorted them, too, and Agata had tidied the last two metres of my section, so I got off for lunch at only five past. And God, did I need it, ’cause at that point, I was thinking of never brushing my teeth again.

((if you’ve made it this far, congratulations!! Not long to go now!))
I mean seriously. Who REALLY cares that much about their toothbrush? What do the numbers mean? Why are there the same numbers for both Soft AND Medium?

Anyways, after lunch, which was re-heally good, we came back and started counting.
After the stress of tidying it so thoroughly, the counting itself was a doddle. Except the stupid Fresh and Minty and Mild and Minty. Yeah. Them again.
I think next time I’ll bring a calculator – so if there are nine stacks across and they’re each four tall and there’s fifteen of them back, that’s HOW MANY tubes of toothpaste?? My head hurt after that one. (540, by the way. That’s a lot of toothpaste!)

About two metres in, I was still doggedly counting away, while Agata was finished her one metre, Amy had done, I think, six? Kellie was three in, Bridget was tearing her hair out because people kept buying Panadol while she was trying to count them, Mairead had obviously thought ahead and brought a calculator, and John was floating around being managerial, he decided I was “tearing through” my section and sent Agata to count moisturiser instead of dental floss. Damn him, that means two more metres for me to count!

But still, I got it done, and I spot checked mens’ toiletries, vitamins, medicinal and shampoo. Spot checking. What a waste of time? I mean what kind of crazy person can’t count a pile of Panadol?
Actually, I’ll admit I didn’t check them, ’cause I knew loads of them had been bought. I counted some other stuff instead. Lazy? Me? Never.

((If you’ve made it this far, WELL DONE! Look! The end is near! Come find me and I’ll give you a cookie for reading all this way!!))
Anyways, eventually, we got to the end, everything in the store had been counted, checked, double checked, faced off and we all swanned off into the night to go drinking!
And! It was only ten o’clock. Stocktake done in only four hours. Well done us!

Been thinking lately about what it’s like to be spoiled.
While I’ve never wanted for anything in life, I wouldn’t say that I’m spoiled, although my parents are very good to me.

Still, I do suffer from that horrific syndrome known by many… Forgotten Middle Child Syndrome!
*sniff*

And the worst of it is, I’m not even the only bloody middle child. There are two of us. But Aoife has the added distinction of being the eldest daughter, whereas I am, well, the other one.

Anyways, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.
Boyfriends spoiling you, that’s what I was thinking.

See, Alex is really, really good to me. He’d do pretty much anything I asked him, within reason, because he’s a genuinely nice guy, and I know he cares about me.
And that’s probably why I won’t let him spoil me.

‘Cause if I wanted, he’d buy me stuff, and take me places, and pay all the time, and I’d be incredibly spoiled, and I’d love it, no question.

But there are three dangers to that.
a) I run the risk of becoming an obnoxious, spoiled bitch. Like BF Jennifer. And God knows I definitely don’t want that.
b) Considering we have the same job, it’s incredibly unfair to expect him to spoil me, and he knows that as well as I do.

and this is the one I’d be most worried about, see, ’cause it’ll happen eventually.

c) What happens when he gets bored and dumps me? What do I do then? Clearly, I’ve already become an obnoxious, spoiled bitch, and so I’m insufferable, and I have unrealistic expectations of a potential boyfriend.
And God, would the next one have a lot to live up to.

So, no, not gonna let myself be spoiled, for fear of, well, spoiling myself.