itinerary

Despite being wakened by my cats somewhere in the dismal realm of 5:30 this morning, today started out pretty strong. (Although, cats? If you find yourselves listed for sale on Ebay, you know why. And don't try to pretend you don't surf the internet, I'm on to you. Ahem.) I ran through my traditional Saturday start: Tim Hortons for a Coffee As Big As My Head and some sugary thing that will eventually kill me, swing upstairs through the back hall, sit at the staff room table for a few minutes, go survey the damage and start work.

Oh, and damage there is. I was sick for a week, so my section's been down a body, and we have ten carts of shelving. Ten. Ten. I realize this may be hard to conceptualize if you don't work in a bookstore, but to put it in some terms that make sense, two carts of shelving, the way we stack 'em, is a feasible amount to get through in a day. That's a day that starts at seven o' clock in the morning and ends at ten o'clock at night. There's some give in this formula--sometimes you can whip through three or maybe even four, and some days getting through half of one is the Labours of Hercules, but--you get the picture. Roughly. Also, someone or someones have gone completely insane and thrown the merchandising rules to the wind, so things are in the wrong sections, shelved incorrectly in the right sections, shelved according to some new and exciting alphabet known only to its originator, sitting in random stacks under tables they bear no relation to. Your basic nightmare. Today, I was finding it all strangely undaunting.

What I had not accounted for, in my grand spirit of rolling up my sleeves and digging in, was the rain. My bookstore is in a mall, you see, and bad weather means we get an exponentially larger than normal number of people either shopping or milling around aimlessly in the aisles. This...happened.

Gentle readers, I am exhausted. It's six thirty and I'm thinking about when I can reasonably go to bed.

In the meantime, though, I'm watching the gray, romantic rain through my bedroom window. My semi-forgiven cat is practicing her yoga just past my knees. I'm contemplating trying my hand at fanfiction. Things are basically good in the world.