I can’t understand how my life is so eventful. I’m not necessarily complaining; I’m just so confused how things work out the way they do, and I wish I always wrote a blog when days go like they did today. I believe I tend to say, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” because I’m tired from the long day, but then the next day something happens and I get swept up in the day and then I’ll do it the next day, and then the next, and so on until it never gets written. Today will not be one of those days.
After last night’s work bowling party where I rivaled one of my supervisors followed by an LGBTQ mermaid dance party where I danced with one of my lovely local gay friends as though I was auditioning for Dancing With the Stars, I thought I might be hungover at the start of my day. Thankfully, I was not. On my way out of the building at a quarter to 10, I had to stop to ask the management office if they would leave my Blue Apron package somewhere accessible, and who was in the office but Maintenance. Gotta love my life, truly. The coincidences are remarkable. Anyway, I chatted with management and her daughter and Maintenance for almost a half an hour before I had to get to work. Work was wonderful. One of my supervisors and I destroyed a hallway in cleaning out a closet that was intended to be a “testing/assessment closet,” but ultimately had become a storage unit. Together (and with the help of bands like Mumford & Sons, Colplay, and the like), we weeded through most of what was in filing cabinets, on shelves, piled on top of things, in boxes, and strewn about the room. We filled the four giant “shredding bins” around the office with outdated or photocopied testing material. We made a giant cart full of dumpster trash, which we later transferred to the dumpster. We filled an entire giant recycling container with old journals, files, and boxes. We moved filing cabinets into and out of the room numerous times. We swept, vacuumed, remodeled (someone had to kick a few shelves out of the wall to make some room–hint: it wasn’t me), and kept ourselves entertained. It was a pretty awesome five hours at work, doing something I completely enjoy (cleaning, purging, and re/organizing).
JUST as we were finally finished and excited to get out of the building before 3, we encountered a gentleman seeking entry to our building. Words can’t describe the state that this man was in. He drove what I’ve only ever encountered as a construction vehicle–one of those large trucks that looks like a dumpster on wheels–and after both my supervisor and I attempted to contact two of our other offices to no avail, he proceeded to share much of his history…his time in a psych ward where the employees were worse than the patients, his work history, when he drove a truck for a living, not just for the sake of driving it, his history with the woman he was looking for and hadn’t yet decided if he was going to see, and his difficulties with utilizing a gps device. My supervisor and I pulled together the resources (scrap paper from his car, a pencil from mine) to write him directions obtained via Google Maps to an office we knew had 24 hour accessibility, which he then proceeded to criticize and plan differently. His inability to accurately read social cues was remarkable. We all but had to physically walk him to his truck and place him back in it. It was fantastic.
I got home in just enough time to place my Blue Apron items in the fridge, plan a small portion of my evening, and get ready to leave. My friend/neighbor and I drove to Boston for their annual Faneuil Hall Christmas Tree lighting. It took us approximately a half an hour to find a parking spot after the hour and a half drive, but we did it, and it only cost us $1.25. Success! Upon arriving in Faneuil Hall, we found that the police had created a barrier and were not allowing people to get anywhere near the stage/tree, so we inched our way towards the front/middle of the barricade. We actively practiced managing the crowd by directing through traffic behind us instead of in front of us with newfound friends. We also wound up making it through the barrier when they let some of the people through with the help of one of said new friends, Georgia boy, who did not hesitate to make Googly eyes at me. Georgia sort of glued himself to us (okay, we invited him), and agreed to come to the dive bar hosting the comedy stand-up line my friend and I had tickets to see. He stopped to purchase a carnation for me from a woman selling them on the street, which is both romantic and pathetic from my judgmental and non-romantic perspective. He put up with our walking extra far to go to a Citizens Bank so I didn’t have to spend $2.00 to take out money from a foreign ATM. He was funny at times. He pushed the line at others. Once at the bar, he drank at minimum a handful of Rolling Rocks and bought us all a round of Jim Beam Fire. Actually, he also bought all of our drinks, which wound up being ridiculously inexpensive because we were some of the bartender’s favorite customers in some time. Our bartender, Bob, also caught my friend and I (really her) “borrowing” a glass and gave us (really her) shit for it. And yet he still barely charged us for our drinks. When I dropped Georgia off back near Faneuil, he didn’t hesitate to kiss me. Drunk boys that look like dudes I slept with already don’t really do it for me, but whatever, it was a kiss, and I’m single, and I hadn’t had one of those in a while (too long, if you ask me), so I rolled with it. He told me I sucked for not staying out. I said I knew and I was leaving anyway. Boyz r dum. (Well, many of them. I’m fortunate enough to know some that don’t.)
So now I have souvenir therapy games and a t-shirt from today’s closet cleaning, a fun story shared with a supervisor, a bunch of pictures from Faneuil’s tree, a carnation dying on the dash of the Jeep to dry out and live there, and a new Facebook friend who will look me up when he’s back in the area. These days are so surreal. Sometimes I really can’t believe this is actually my real life. I LOVE IT!
Life: A work in progress. 