New Post, Unangsty!

Well venting felt good. I mean looking back I probably took it all too personally and totally overreacted, but it's better to do it here than at a person's face I suppose.

Anyways.

So I took a mental health day yesterday. I don't do that too often at all, it's probably been my 2nd of 3 1/2 years here. Never took one with my other jobs (I liked them too much, dork that I am)....though I took them at school all the time. High school once or twice and college, but NOT grad school, strangely, where I actually needed them. I think I only ever missed one grad school class!! Anyways, so I took this mental health day which was actually more of a sick day because I did feel pretty gross in the morning, sore as health throat (which still hurts and feel like it legitimizes the sick day) stuffy nose, dry and yucky eyes, sore ears, and freakin' body aches - where did they even come from?! I felt well enough to trek to work but run down and sick and tired and thought "f*ck it, I'm calling in." SO there.

The day was restful. I slept, watched something ridiculous on The Tyra Banks show, watched Recount thanks to Amy's Netflix account, slept some more, knit, listened to an eBook, then watched hours of Animal Planet. There were two sort of marathons on yesterday, Animal Cops Houston and It's Me or the Dog. Fantastic. I love how Victoria Stilwell does not f*ck around. Anywho, last night on Animal Cops, the Houston SPCA was given the task of rescuing some emus. Apparently the owner died and when his relatives went to empty out his jungle-esque estate, those were the only two animals they did not and could not take. The things were wild and totally unapproachable, but living in very bad conditions and clearly needed to be rescued. Now if you've never seen an emu in person you might think "how bad could they be?" but after being in charge of mosquito collection on an emu farm (ok why out of all my coworkers did I land that particular task) I have a healthy fear of them (oh and we collected there because emus appear to be particularly sensitive to Easter Equine Encephalitis and not only do you want to test to see if the mosquitoes in the area are carrying it for the sake of the human population, the guy on this farm wanted to protect his meat-producing flock). It may come from being in Africa and being told "don't approach an ostrich EVER because they may run, they may do something really stupid like try to swallow your whole hand, but their tiny brain may tell them to kick and their kick can behead a lion, their toenails eviscerate a human." Now I'm not sure how much of that is true, but it seemed reasonable. Emus, on the other hand, are much smaller than ostrich - the emu pretty much maxes out size-wise at 6-6.5 feet and a lot of the birds on the emu farm were about my height (5'6'') while the ostrich can reach up to 9 ft. Emus' lets are a bit less intimidating too, but like the ostrich they have those prehistoric looking feet with nails that say "do not f*ck with me. EVER." When I would collect mosquitoes, it was always a wee bit tense. Of course the emus were contained in pens, but could I rely on the electric fence if they got angry? What if the flock turned on me? Laughable perhaps, but when you are walking amidst literally hundreds of emus, the thought crosses your mind. They make this horrifying crackling and drumming noise when they're ticked too, which doesn't exactly put your mind at ease.

Anyways, I watched eagerly as the brave souls with the SPCA tried to wrangle them, because they're frickin difficult, as most birds are when they're being "wrangled." I mean, you should see Lily when I try and cut his little toenails. Sure enough, one of the birds wriggled free and sliced the the Assistant Chief Cruelty Investigator right in the bicep - even knocked off his cowboy hat, which seemed to be the most egregious, as in all the many hours invested in watching Animal Cops Houston I have never seen him without it. It was sort of the same feeling I had when my friend Anne and I saw our track coach take off his baseball cap to reveal an entirely bald head, particulary shocking as a mass of shaggy hair and unruly beard framed his face when the cap was one. Anyways, the investigator got patched up - it required a night in the ER, though upon seeing the injury I'm surprised the bird didn't tear any muscle that had to be repaired surgically, and used his mad animal corralling skill to later move the emus to a sanctuary where they'd be safe forever - ha ha probably never to be moved again. I guess it sort of just drove the point home for me - never mess with an emu.

Finally, Jamaal thinks that I should share my morning email (we write to each other daily, and if I start the day I usually make him read about my morning commute). Know that I try to be charitable and respect people's spaziness but today it was just THAT extraordinary:

Allison to Jamaal

show details 9:02 AM (1 hour ago)

morning love

how are you today? I am well but sleepy (must've been all the talking last night lol).
So have you ever wondered why people act so incredibly spazzy? I had two encounters with spazzes today. OK THREE.
1. Guy I sat next to on the commuter rail. As I sat I tapped his hand with my ass. Fine, whatever. Then he proceeded to shake his hand around like I had the plague, to the point where I wanted to offer him purell. Then he proceeded to bite his nails and rub his hand all over his face for the rest of the ride. Thank goodness I got off at JFK/UMASS. meh!
2. A lady opened the back doors on the bus (they're manual and dumb) and did not wait for me to get out the way. They hit me square in the back and tossed me across the aisle (because I was one of the few people standing - not that that's a big deal it was fine, but don't knock me over)
3. THE STARBUCKS WOMAN. omg. so she's reading a Kohl's circular in line. She keeps looking at me all shifty. Then she darts to the trash to throw it away, maintaining her watch on me the whole time, like I'm going to cut her or something. Then when she finally gets to the front of the line she asks for a venti latte, triple blended, three splendas and 140 degrees. What the f*ck. WTF??? 140 f*cking degrees? like can she tell? does she take a sip and send it back if it's not 140 degrees? I wanted to ask her "why" and if she realized that she was actually in a Starbucks and not a gourmet coffee cafe. I mean props to Starbucks and all but it is a f*cking chain and other people are waiting for their normal coffees. WHy you gotta be so spazzy?!

sigh. oh well. made it to my office safely after that. the throat clearer is the only one here, but I'll take her over the one next to me, who is annoying as hell. I am going to put on my headphones soon anyways. ALSO lunch theme today is "Old World Delicatessen" which would normally freak me out but the special of the day is pastrami. Oh JOY!!! PASTRAMIIIIIII!
ok that's sad. but still. it's ok to be excited about the simple things in life.
Also, I feel guilty because I think my other coworker might legit be at jury duty!!! (I suggested she had made that up - due to my boss's lax demeanor and "I don't care attitude" one could essentially lie about JD....)

Hope you have a good day dearie.

That's all for me. Have a Happy Thursday peeps - though how could you not, with Ugly Betty, Grey's and The Office on tonight. Yes I am one of those lame people who lives for TV on Thursdays. Deal with it.