I'm Too Nice

So, ya'll're gonna get a run down of my day. Be patient, it has bearing.

I'm house/zoo sitting at a friends, which happens to be about 5 minutes away from my work. For those of you playing the home game, I do legal advertising (I run all those notices required by law - foreclosures, divorces, etc.) for a newspaper. We have to keep our records for three years. A year of legal notices is a *lot* of paperwork, by the way. But, we don't typically every actually need to look anything up past the last couple of months. Still, keep the stuff we must. So it gets boxed up and stored in the Closet Under the Stairs which is the place where stuff we have to keep, but rarely need to get to lives. Thus, at the end of every year, we have to haul the oldest boxes out, mark them 'Recycle' (because placing them next to the giant blue recycle bin isn't clue enough for the cleaning crew) and put the latest year in. It's a lot of shifting, in a small, cramped space. (My job is *such* fun!) See, the Closet Under the Stairs, by necessity, follows the *shape* of the stairs, so it starts out tall and gets short. (We actually had one lady knock herself out in there years ago, she forgot the ceiling was so low, stood up, and *wham*. She was okay though.) So. This is nothing I want to do during the work week, when I'm dressed nicely for my lovely desk job. :)

My friend goes away every year, for Christmas. Her kids and grand kids all live out of state. So this is the great 'Tour'. Since I'm here, every year, every year, I go in one day on the weekend and do all the shifting. So now, all we have to do is pack up the last box from the last week of December and put that away. *Much* easier. So that's what I did today. I was in there about six, and said 'hi' to H2, who is part of the weekend customer service crew. She looked ill, so we chatted a few minutes, and she said her stomach had been upset since yesterday. I made sympathetic noises, and told her where I'd be if she needed me (the Closet Under the Stairs is around a corner in our big, open office, so I could hear her if she called, but we couldn't see each other) and went about my business. A little later, MK, the other half of the weekend crew showed up, we said 'hi' on her way to the time clock, and I proceeded to shift heavy things around in a small space. (Fun!)

It took me a little less than an hour, I went and clocked out (I clocked in just in case I hurt myself. HR'd *kill* me if I was working and not clocked in and happened to trip or something. Kill.), then I decided to take a minute and clean up the Drawer of Sharpies. (I like Sharpies. I need a whole drawer in my desk for my collection. There's nothing wrong with that. But it needed cleaned, since I'd been tossing other stuff in there all year.)

I sat down, and MK asked me how long I could stay, because H2 had apparently had to run to the bathroom 12 times in the 45 minutes since I'd seen her, and MK wanted to send her home. I made more sympathetic noises and said that, assuming Boss okay'd it (overtime...) I could stay H2's whole shift. H2 called Boss & got the okay, so I clocked back in, logged into my computer and was there until noon. (I also did more of my work in the mean time, I need to get ahead for New Years, and my 'in pile' is about four inches high at this point...) H2 still had to come back, because she also does the obits on the weekends, but that takes a lot less time, and she got to go home and lay down. When H2 got back, she still looked off, so I told her that I was still going to be in town tomorrow, and, assuming Boss said it was okay, if she was still feeling sick tomorrow, I'd come in and work her shift again.

I left at noon to run over to *another* friends house. She lives just down the road, and had a snake problem. *sigh* So, about two weeks ago, she calls me to tell me about the pygmy rattler that she'd found in her living room. She'd sprayed it in the face with roach spray and dropped a pot over it. Then piled bricks and cement pieces on the pot so it couldn't escape. I wanted her to call animal control, but some idiot at her job told her that animal control would get her for animal cruelty for the roach spray (I wouldn't have *told* them about it if that was really a concern, which *I* don't think it was...), so she refused. Her plan was to leave the snake under the pot in the middle of her living room until next winter. *headdesk* So....I told her Thursday that I would be showing up today and we would get the snake out of her house. I went over, we cleared the throw rug that it was sitting on of all other things (chairs, etc, etc) and dragged it out of the house, still under the pot, with a brick sitting on it. Just in case.

We got it outside, got a shovel (I had the shovel. She went for more roach spray...) and flipped the rug, gently, so that the pot and the snake tumbled down her front steps. That way, should he still be alive (so very unlikely I can't even describe it...) he'd be down there, she could spray him *again*, and I could cut his head off. Snake fell out, very, very, very dead. I cut his head off, to make her feel better, and we threw away the evidence corpse.

In the mean time, H2 had called my cell and said that Boss said it was okay, if she was still sick tomorrow, for me to cover. So H2's supposed to call me later tonight, or tomorrow morning, early, if I need to go in.

So...I may or may not be going to the Orthodox church tomorrow. I *want* to go, so I'm praying that H2 feels better, but I couldn't *not* volunteer. Most of the time I'm too far away to come in to cover, so H1 gets called in, which is great, because she has two kids and needs the extra money, but she and her fiancee have *his* son over this Christmas, which they never get, and if I can, I'd like to let them have the whole weekend to just be together. So. I'm going to go to the 5pm Mass, just in case.

And look, I feel bad for H2 if she's really sick, but there's a pattern here. She *knew* I was going to be in today, because I said I'd see her Saturday when I saw her on Tuesday. And somehow, magically, whenever she *knows* that someone is going to be in the office for some reason on a weekend that can do customer service, she *somehow* just *happens* to get 'sick'. God forbid, she really is sick this time, and I'm suspicious of her, but I can't help it. You can only cry wolf so many times, people. So I'm fairly certain she'll be calling me to go in, because that gives her most of the weekend off. *sigh* But then, I couldn't *not* volunteer, because again, H1's family needs time together, and H2 could really be sick. So.

I'll let ya'll know tomorrow, of course. And even if I don't make it tomorrow, my next 'day off' from class I will definitely be attending. I *want* to go, but I also can't not try and be helpful for H1, who I like.

Isn't there some quote about giving people the benefit of the doubt? Offering help even when you suspect you're being take advantage of? I suspect there is, but I can't think of it.