Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Second Nature

                Today, one of my favorite cupcakes tipped over. When I tried to pick it up, the cupcake broke in two. So, instead of wasting it, I declared it my free cupcake of the day and set it on a shelf next to the plastic baggies, aprons, and whatnot. I’d munch on it occasionally throughout the day since I have this habit of not stopping for a bathroom break, much less an actual lunch break. I didn’t think much of it until the guy that drops off the towels stopped by and, for some reason or another, one of my coworkers felt she needed to be with this guy as he dropped off the towels and picked up the week’s laundry. She went into the area where my cupcake was and starts going on about this cupcake. I’m not really sure why she even thought it was worth a comment but, nonetheless, there she was prattling on about a cupcake “next to the cleaning supplies.” Well, I certainly don’t think food I’m consuming ought to be next to food I’m preparing and, technically, my cupcake was above the cleaning supplies so this line of comments is completely beyond me and, frankly, a waste of my time. So, I playfully told her to shut up- no anger or annoyance or venom. Just a playful little “shut up.” I guess, in retrospect, I could I have told her to politely refrain from her harping or just ignored her going on and on once again on how she thinks the place ought to be run. But, no, I chose a slightly self-depreciating tone and said “shut up” more akin to what you’d say if you were caught by one of your friends doing something you knew was stupid.

She threatened to hit me.

Can I get a “What the fuck??” from the audience????

 I can’t remember the exact term whether it was punching or knocking me out but it was something to the effect that if I told her to shut up again, she would kick my ass. Okay. Let’s pause for a second here, people, and take a look at this:

Saying shut up is not the most polite thing in the world, I’ll admit, but the tone goes a long way towards how it needs to be taken. If I barked “shut up” at a judge, I’d expect a night in jail. If I yelled it at a drunken biker chick, I’d expect a bar fight. But I jokingly said it to a person who doesn’t tend to listen to anything unless it comes with a deal of groveling and ass-kiss. I didn’t mean it as a sign of disrespect; it was more of “okay, I’ve heard enough.”

So I called her on it. I asked her if she really thought it was appropriate to respond to a joke with a threat of physical violence, because, you know, to me that’s a much greater transgression, especially while on the clock. Oh, that’s just part of her nature. Well, “shut up” is just part of my speech pattern.
She went up front to help the laundry guy with something and when she came back she was friendly but I’m still pissed. Really, I should have told the boss. I should have spat a profanity-laced spray of all the bile and venom that rose inside me when she threatened me while clobbering her with the rolling pin to show her exactly why we don’t threaten people but, honestly, I need the job. Instead, I’ll just imagine getting all cave girl on her ass, take a deep breath, and move on.

Inhale. Pause. Exhale. And moving on…

In much happier news, I got the official, notarized copies of the parenting plan and custody orders from the county clerk the other day. Thankfully, everything is in order exactly as I left it. I thought I’d blogged about getting the divorce papers that had the box that said we didn’t have children checked but it seems I didn’t so here’s a little background:

My divorce hearing was on November 19th. In an act of foolishness, I didn’t ask anyone to go on my behalf so I spent the week leading up to it wringing my hands and wondering exactly how I could swing going back just for the hearing. I have a voucher for $300 on Delta but I’m saving that for my birthday trip to Chicago and I wasn’t too keen on cancelling that. As it was, the ex reported that the deed was done and nothing happened to give me any worry. He would immediately get the papers in the mail to save me from having to get copies from the clerk. Two weeks after the fact, I finally get the papers in the mail and the box that says we don’t have kids is marked. So, obviously, I freak out. What does this mean? Is this a typo? Did Paul do something stupid and foolish? Where do I go from here?

I figured I should call the county clerk to see what they say. The first thing I need to do is get copies of the case paperwork to try to figure out what’s happened. They told me how to look up my case online. Of course, their website isn’t compatible with Google Chrome so every time I punch in my number, I get an error message. My tension is running pretty high at this point so my Dad, bless him, offers to take over. After an hour of going back and forth between the pages I pulled up on Google and the ones he pulled up on Explorer, Dad was able to order notarized copies of the important parts of the case file. Like I said, they arrived this week and everything is in order which leads to my next project: collecting the overdue child support. I think I’ll wait until after the holidays for that one. It just seems rude to start that now.

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