Blogger 365 Day 227 - Emotional pendulums

     I am not sure what to make of this week, it has been at best an emotional roller coaster of a ride, and while I am normally able to just roll with the punches just the almost violent way that the emotional pendulum has swung this week has left me feeling like I am just along for the ride at this point.  It has been a week of extreme high and lows and left me with a feeling of just wanting a couple days of normalcy rather than this back and forth stuff.

    It all starts on Monday, I am at work and things are going okay.  For those that have read entries other than this, yes it was the day Gillian's gifts arrived at work which was a good thing, but there was one thing that pretty much trumped that on Monday that wasn't nearly as good, which was the passing of Rolf Larsen.  For those that follow the link it will be a long read, befitting a complicated man.  What that article will not tell you is that Rolf and Ed were very close friends, Rolf was in our store pretty much every day so I had the chance to speak with him on numerous occasions,though sometimes the best thing to do would be just sit back and listen to hi and Ed banter back and forth.  The article also will not tell you that what first had Rolf admitted to the hospital was when he collapsed on the sidewalk outside our store, the very beginning of what would become a month long hospital stay that would see Rolf get progressively worse.  So yes the week did get off on a wrong note.

     But then, as I was giddy and anxious about most of last week, the gifts that I had ordered for Gillian's last day at the bank also arrived on Monday, and I was happy about that because I wanted to do something nice for her before she left.   So already you see the back and forth that is taking place, and it is only Monday. 

     As Shakespeare once wrote "parting is such sweet sorrow" and that is how Wednesday was because it was Gillian's first day not at the bank.  The bank run is one of my favorite activities of the day, not because I am carrying bundles of cash, but because I get to go out and be amongst people, as opposed to being trapped in the basement office at work, and everyone at the bank is very nice.  It really is a highlight of my day to go there and just talk and carry on with the whole staff there, but Wednesday trip was just a little less special without Gillian there.  Don't get me wrong, she had to go.  You get accepted to grad school and have an opportunity to pursue your dreams then you absolutely give up the job of bank teller and go for it.  I get that, but the selfish part of me still wonders if that is just it,  someone who comes into your life rather quickly and exits it just as quickly.  I mean, yes we are friends on Facebook for what that is worth, but it isn't like we hang out together or anything, so it does have that door closing feel to it. 

     Wednesday was also the us ride from hell, my trip home after work, a trip that normally takes 10 minutes but took an hour because there was an power outage in  my neighborhood that knocked out two consecutive traffic lights on Blvd of the Allies, bringing traffic to a near standstill.  The power would go out again later Wednesday night, but that ended up being more a blessing than a curse, as it afforded me the opportunity to take in some of the Perseid meteor shower, something that is usually a hard thing to do while dealing with city light but made much easier when the entire block has no light.

     Yet by Thursday I am back on a high again because out of the blue Debbie shows up at my place of work.  I am not even sure I have mentioned Debbie in this blog before, because as long as I have been blogging (somewhere around 10 years now), it has been even longer since the last time I had seen her.  Debbie and I met when I was in 9th or 10th grade in high school, she was dating one of my friends back then and while their relationship did really pan out (how many high school relationships do, come to think of it), my friendship with her did. Somewhere around 20 years ago, she moved to Norfolk, Virginia and we had lost touch with each other.  Lives leading us all in different directions and what not, but probably 9 months or so ago I managed to find her (again its a Facebook thing) and we had been sending messages occasionally back and forth.  She got divorced and moved back to her hometown where she met someone and now has two kids.  Apparently she was in Pittsburgh because she had to take one of the children to the dentist and decided to drop by on her way back home.  For the record, she ages much more gracefully than I do, I look like time uses me for a punching bag, she looks almost exactly the same.   Sadly our chat was cut short somewhat, she had her kids and wanted to get them home (I saw firsthand the dangers of sugar and children, lol) and I was at work after all, the Coke rep was waiting on me to place an order, but we are hopefully going to meet up next week for lunch.

     Ed made a point to tell me on Thursday that he needed the sales numbers as soon as possible, he was going to have a short day on Friday, he had a doctor's appointment that he needed to get to, so I had mentally prepared myself to get to work as early as possible.  I am making my way out the door Thursday, thinking of how I will have to juggle things so I can have everything ready for when Ed arrives, when Brian calls me to say that Friday is Ed's birthday, so now I have to rerearrange my Friday schedule, because I need to amke sure that not only are the things Ed needs done for when he gets in, but that there is a card and birthday cake in the store and hidden away before he gets there. 

     I make my way into work 2 hours early, just to handle everything.  Usually I start at 8:30, today was 6:30.  I stop by CVS and get a birthday card on the way in, my plan is to send Sammy to Prantl's in Market Square to get a cake.  I will keep an eye out to see if any deliveries come while he is getting the baked deliciousness, we have 5 deliveries that come in Friday morning (Herr's, Utz, Sledd, Pepsi, Coke), so if I am going to send him on an errand I have to be prepared to help out if need be.  7am rolls around and with it the shift change from the overnight crew to the morning crew.  Except one of the two people that should be there working register at 7am doesn't show up, no answer on their cell phone (or their roommates cell phone for that matter) so now I am short a person on the floor as well.  Next person in isn't due till 8am, but she is in the deli, next one after that is 9am, but he is going to be late because he has a dentist appointment.  So now I have to juggle my work with keeping an eye out while Sammy is away and paying attention to the floor because I am way short staffed.  Yet somehow I managed to get it all to work, we had cake for Ed, he got his numbers on time, I ended up checking in one of the orders (Herrs) and helping Sammy put away two others (Sledd, Pepsi), called in a lottery order and still had most of my work done by 2pm. 

     Of course Friday night is also my casino night, where I go over and blow the free money they give me ($45 this week) and if I am lucky I win back enough to ay for next week's bus pass.  As it turns out, I did a little better than a bus pass, winning $140, so I guess we are back on a high note.  But I also know I have a ton of work waiting for me tomorrow given the way this week has played out thus far I can easily see the pendulum swinging back the other way again.