Suzanne Calling

I had a three day weekend. In my previous life in retail, they were as rare as gold to come by. Yes, I did get six holidays a year, but frequently that involved working the Sunday or Monday of the weekend, sometimes all three days. I'd get the extra days off while Ed was working and kids were in school. Such is the world of management. So I greatly anticipated this past weekend. Three glorious days off-friends down from NY, others from New Jersey, possibly activities to do. We did see the friends from NY on Saturday, but the rest of the weekend? Totally and utterly wasted. I did get a call from the NJ friends, however, I knew that inflicting my pissy mood that inspired the previous post on them would *not* be a good idea. We stayed home. Donna was in the same boat. We'd invited her down, she had a friend talk of coming up there, so we took a raincheck. They had dinner together Saturday night, and that was the extent of her companionship for the three day weekend. ...

In life, friendships seem to change and evolve. Some people grow closer as events happen, some drift apart. I've been fortunate to have a core group of friends for around twenty years now. A few of these friends have been around since my gawky, gangly teenage days, some from college and some were assimilated from work. As we've gotten older, life events have changed the relationships. Ed and I were the first to have kids, so we weren't as 'pick up and go'. Other friends have caught up on the child front, my sister as well, and those relationships seemed to grow stronger because we'd already walked a mile in those shoes. Some friends call more, some call less. One right now has a chaotic work and test schedule, so I make the effort to call her, knowing full well that times will change and she'll pick up the phone more often when life allows. In some cases, I get the lightbulb moment that I never get phone calls-I'm the one doing all the calling a...

Friends are at WDW this week, and we went over to property again for dinner last night. During the dinner conversation, we discovered that there was news this week that Ikea is coming to Orlando. Woohoo! Easy access to I4, too. Okay, one down. Do you think maybe Wegmans can be convinced that Florida stores would go over well? :)

I admit it, I am a People magazine addict. It's my guilty pleasure-junk food for the brain. Now that I've perused most of it (it's probably good for an hour's reading time), I ask: Where is the picture of Tom and Katie's baby? I don't think she really exists-and why did they name her after a Lemur in Disney's Dinosaur? Do they still produce celebrity Death Match? It'd be kinda funny to see Denise Richards get clobbered by Heather Locklear! Is Chris Knight marrying the girl who was swooning for him on "The Surreal Life"? Is Star Jones whatsherface off the View or not? I've only seen this show in doctor's office waiting rooms and found the woman to be unbelievably annoying and full of herself. I thought she was kicked out because Rosie was joining, but People says she *may* be out. LOL You all know how little tv I actually choose to watch, so I find it weird that this stuff is so fascinating. That said, I'm glad the guy fr...

So, the sidebar thingies? The quiz results? I added them a WEEK ago and they did not show up. Now, I have blogged three times and they finally appear. Weird.

It's very cool having every Sunday off. We get to actually DO stuff, instead of trying to figure out "well, it's *supposed* to be my weekend off, but we've got a floor move, so whatever we do has to be finished by 5pm" type garbage. Sometimes, this mean we will do positively jack, but at least I was off for it. Yesterday was good. Bagels, then a Costco run. We needed detergent and minced garlic. This house would cease to function without the minced garlic and the 32 oz jar? It probably lasts two months. The 4 oz jars from the supermarket wouldn't make it a week with the way we use it, lol. Then we headed over to the inlaws and Ed installed a video card. It was nice to veg for a while. Finally, friends drove down to WDW from NY and we went over and met with them. We had a nice evening together, and made plans to go back over before they leave on Sunday. Poor Ed was not thinking and had a couple of bowls of chili at dinner. I'm sure he's havi...

We bought a table last year that I went gaga over. Ed will be the first to tell you, I do not go nuts over furniture. I've got my likes, my dislikes (half the time, they're the polar opposite of my other half) and the "eew, you want THAT in your house". Last winter, we'd gone to several furniture stores. The saleslady at Haverty's, Jean, led us through the entire store. She listened to what we wanted and showed us this great Arts and Crafts inspired dining room suite (sweet, not suit-grrr Hagerstown flashback there). Then she took us clear across the store to another set they'd just received. She was never pushy and was great at finding what we said we wanted. I went gaga. I started GUSHING about a piece of furniture. It's counter height and has a parquet style inlay, Arts and Crafts feel to it. I had to have it. We subsequently joined Direct Buy and I said I was still buying that table. I wanted one that would seat 8, because the possibili...

About a year ago or so, a very good friend (who reads this, btw) started in with "I want another one", as in she wanted to have her third child. Me, with my thoughts that kids should not outnumber the parental units, did all that I could to talk her out of it. Then someone came up with a philosophical question about the issue of "should we have another?" that I thought was pretty astute. Look around the dinner table at your brood and ask yourself if someone is missing. So, I passed this nugget of wisdom on. For me, the table seems fine. Apparently that question may have helped them in their decision-she's expecting number three! I'm very happy that they made their decision, very happy I'm done (lol) and looking forward to seeing another cute kid. Her son is adorable and contributed to the baby lust by being so cute. The auto dealerships are going to start salivating when they see them coming-two kids in tow and an obviously pregnant woman! Prepare...

I miss my Mom a lot. It's not something I talk about, but she's there in my head, every day. In honor of Mother's day, I'm going to do what Mom would. Celebrate the positive, instead of dwelling on the sad. Thanks, Mom: -for fueling my Nancy Drew addiction -for keeping the Newsday subscription when I was the only one reading the paper every day (4th grade news junkie) -for being an example of grace under pressure -for keeping a smile on your face and a song in your heart when others would have been reduced to curling up in a ball and crying. -for celebrating the little things and the big things -for making holidays important -for Monday night dinners (everything in our house was celebrated on Monday) -for waking us up at 5am on July 3, 1976 to take us down to Jones Beach to see the ships sailing in for Operation Sail -for all the trips to "Row Row" (Nunleys) -for the evenings down at the pool and the Carvel runs on the way home -for laughing with us at the ...

Week three of the new job has concluded and I'm still enjoying it. There's still lots to learn, but quite a bit of it has become second nature. Last night was the first time I did the nightly settle-and it sure is weird to have so few steps to complete. I got to visit a competitor to do a reduced session the other day, and I'm going to another competitor to do a complete session this week. Rather than have a freezer full of stuff on top of having the products of my employer, I asked my coworkers what they wanted of the competitor's offerings. This way, I don't have to test all the items myself-they can each provide feedback, too. Shopping the competitors won't happen for too long, as they'll eventually know that I work in the business. So I'll try to do as many as I can early on. At least I can share the finished results with others!

So, I'm getting ready for work and decide to wear my sneakers (for the second day) instead of the terribly fugly but oh so comfortable Crocs . This means socks. This means finding socks that match. Uh oh... I have a scary amount of Disney socks. Probably about 20 to 25 pairs of mickey emblazoned socks, purchased the first day of any hard mark sales event at my old store. How can you resist 1.50 a pair socks, post discount? Good, thick, won't get holes in them anytime soon socks, too. Well, my friends, you would think that with that many pairs of Mickey socks you'd find two that have Mickey on the same side. I even followed Ray's Law*. This means there are several pairs with a crew top, several more pairs with a plain top, about 8 pairs with a frou frou red top and even 6 pairs of black socks with mickey icons. This doesn't even begin to cover the Tink, Tigger and Pooh socks. (The Pooh socks were 65 cents, post discount, because they're the itchy, swea...

I want to go out for breakfast. Two reasons: first and foremost, I'm hungry. The second reason is to potentially scope out servers to come work for me. However, Ed can't leave the house until probably 9am-the carriers got a lecture yesterday about not answering the phone when the post office calls them to cover. They could get *fired* for not answering the phone. Even if the call comes in at 2pm. The work front has been going well. I'm into the third week now, and will be closing every night this week. Added to that is the plan to stay past closing with the cleaning lady. My store won't have a cleaning lady. I figured if I stay and see exactly what the lady does, I can possibly hire someone to do the same tasks in the middle of the day. Knocking around ideas on that front, but I'm not going to stay in local motels to recruit their cleaning people, lol. I can't believe it's May already. The kids finish up school in three weeks. Yep, three weeks...