Its 5:00 and I haven't posted yet

my word the sky is a fabulous orangey-pink right now...

Its been one of those days when I look up from my desk and realize the day is gone. Poof.

I didn't get a ride in today, and I was frustrated and cranky. I decided I HAD to get out of this office for a few moments. And go shopping at Trader Joe's.

TJ's just opened up around the corner from my work and I couldn't be happier about it. No more driving up to San Jose, which I hate (the city not the driving) or driving to Santa Cruz, which I hate too (the driving not the city). Just a quick hop around the corner and I am in the land of my favorite things: Cheap but yummy wine, cheese and chocolate.


So I decide to take today's crankiness to TJs. Maybe a little freeze dried mango, or a free sample of no pudge fudge would make me feel better.

I walk around the aisles, just in case I see something new that I haven't seen the hundred times before. Some fun music is playing on the store stereo, the little cash register bell is clanging (why do they clang that?), employees are laughing. The employees all wear those little aloha shirts with their names on them. They look really happy to be there. Some have flair on, some don't. So I bet flair is optional. It seems like a busy but laid back place to work.

I start to think about my stresses at work and how maybe it would be fun to just work at a place like TJ's. A place where I could be all busy but giggly, with no stress but to make certain that the mochi is all facing the same way in the freezer. A place where as soon as you walk out the door...the work stays behind.



I gather up my purchases (some freeze dried Rambutan and some Lemon Crystal Geyser in case you care) and do that thing you do when you try to figure out which register line you want to go to. Sort of calculating, based on a complicated formula of number of people in line times the size of the baskets, times the speediness of the clerk. So I am doing that when a clerk comes running up to me and offering to help at her register, which is otherwise closed.

I look guiltily at the other folks waiting in line, but figure, screw em. I assume the gal wants to help me because I am an easy customer to ring up. She's young, late teens or early twenties. She's got the cute little spiky bangs to the side hair do and cute shoes and other stuff thats all hip (I think so anyway because actually what would I know?).

As she's ringing me up, she points to my hoody and asks if I work at Fox. I tell her I do and she gets all excited. With a dreamy look on her face she explains how she would LOVE (she scrunches all up when she says LOVE) to work at Fox. She goes on to say that she is getting her degree in design and her whole family rides motox and she loves fox and she doesn't get to use her brain at Trader Joes and she wishes she had a more flexible schedule and a longer lunch break and that she didn't have to wear the aloha shirt.

Then she tells me I am sooo lucky (she scrunches when she says sooooo).

And closes her line.