2004-08-22
New Job, Liger, Wifey, and Tim and Brian
Right now, my life fucking rules. I'm drinking Bailey's on the rocks to celebrate the new job I have, and have the sweetest, cutest puppy ever sleeping at me feet.
This past week has been awesome, if you don't count last Monday. Last Monday was definitely one of the worst days on my life, but I won't go into it. On Monday night I called a coffeehouse that's about to open and left a message about employment. Tuesday morning they called me as I was preparing to go home to see my family for a few days, and the manager wanted me to come in for an interview pronto. Apparently he was very happy to hear I had coffeehouse experience. I went in, everything went very smoothly, and I met the manager and his partner, both who were extremely friendly and awesome. And black. It's such a relief to finally have some diversity. While I was in Alabama, I jumped online, and saw that Josh (roomate) was online, and so we chatted a bit. During our converstion, he told me that Javaology had called me, and wanted me to come by as soon as I got back in town because he was "interested in employing" me. I called him last night to tell him I was back in town, and he told me he'd call me back. Called me today, and wanted me to come by. I did, and. . . I HAVE THE JOB!!!. I knew when he offered to make me a drink and showed me the machines and everything. At Dakota, everything was done manually. You loaded the coffee, hit a button, steamed the milk, etc, etc. The machines they have at Javaology do everything for you. All you have to do is hit a button for the espresso, then put the milk under the steamer wand and hit AutoSteam, and it automatically steams the milk for you. It's pretty awesome. On one hand, I miss the actual art of tamping the coffee, pulling the espresso shots, and then steaming the milk myself. On the other, those machines are going to be awesome during busy times, plus it will always make the perfect espresso shot. Sooo I'm pretty damn excited. I also got to meet some of the other employees, all of which were extremely nice, and one woman even lives in the same apartment complex we do.
Tuesday James and I took a trip home. It was even better than expected. I put a short summary on my livejournal. I went to church with my parents the other night, too. After praise and worship, we were all instructed to go introduce ourselves to someone we didn't know. I was just going to bypass that and go say hey to SXE Allison, but Sharon Saltee (my favorite female minister) was visiting, and stopped me to introduce herself, which I thought was pretty neat. Then Kelly (wife of the recently deceased preacher) stopped me and told me how much she loved my hair, and how she was really excited to see me and has missed me. After service I went over to chat with her a bit and got even more compliments on my hair from various church ladies ("I love your hair! It's so sophisticated yet crazy and wild, and it fits you so well!"). Kelly asked me if I was just visiting, or back for good, and I told her I was just visiting family and friends. She asked where I was living (Atlanta, duh), and asked if I was living alone, or had a roomate. I looked her straight in the face and told her I was living with my boyfriend. She was like, "Well at least you're honest. That's cool with me. Wait, that's not cool, but the fact that you're honest is. As long as you're honest, you'll always be cool with me, no matter what." It was funny, because I knew exactly what she meant. It was also neat that she was so excited to see me and so interested in talking to me, because Kelly's always been awesome, but she was so much more personable this past time I saw her. Apparently she's been really quiet and withdrawn since Pastor David's (her husband's) death, which is completely understandable, so since she was so talkative and excited to see me, it meant even more to me. I love her. It was neat how people from church were so excited to see me, and kind of heart warming (yes, I'm sappy). Maybe they didn't all think I was evil after all.
Things with my parents were great, too. They didn't get weird at all. We saw part of a Sister, Sister rerun (family-oriented sitcom on Disney) in which the adopted parents of the twins get married, after they've been living together (not romantically) for a while. My sister was like, "WOW! They lived together and then got married?!" Mom was like, "Yeah, like someone else we know, living together and not married," but she said it in a joking, poking fun manner, not a judgmental one. I didn't get it at first, and then was like, "Oh, fuck you!" and we all laughed. So I don't have to type as much, do us both a favor and click on my LiveJournal link and read the latest entry. It's not long, but explains something rather nicely. Mom was even nice enough to give me some sushi stuff we had at the house (sushi rice, seaweed, etc.), since I haven't found any here yet. I'm telling you, they were super kickass. And of course, the whole family told me how much they missed me, and how much they loved my hair and new shoes. I love compliments on major changes. (Note: I refuse to wear anything but flip flops, if I can help it. However, I recently found a pair of shoes that are made like ballet flats, but look like sneakers. Hence, my change in footwear as well.)
James's parents were awesome as well. James's mom has always been a little standoffish, but she definitely let me know how much she likes me this past weekend. I spent Friday night at their house, since I was invited to go to go James's dad's company picnic/party the next morning, and from there we would go home to Atlanta. James's mom was just incredibly sweet the entire time I was there, and either called me "sweetie" or "baby" the whole time. (Remember, she's incredibly anti-social and hates most people, so it's even that much more impressive that she likes me so much.) Also, she bought us about three bags of groceries (so much we could barely fit it all into our kitchen when we got home), as well as pots and a crockpot, and pretty much anything else we wanted that she had. Groceries in the house make me happy, especially when they were gifts. I'm really excited about having more pots now, and having a crockpot, too. I can make REAL food now!!
James has wanted a puppy for a while, and while we were in Alabama, we saw an ad for German Shepard puppies (James's favorite breed) for $275. James contacted the owners, and we are now the proud parents of an 8 week old all black male German Shepard puppy. James named him Liger (after his dogs Lucky and Tiger), and he's got to be the most laid back puppy I've ever met. I'm not usually a dog person, but I am absolutely in love with this puppy. He's ridiculously cute. We visited Kim in her new trailer she shares with her boyfriend Dusty (yayyy on us both getting out of our parents' houses!), and she told us to bring our puppy so he could play with their puppy. We did, and afterwards James and I went to my parents' for dinner. It was raining and since he'd just had a bath, we took him inside, where he was extremely well-behaved. He and Nicholas had a showdown, though. Liger walked into my parents' room, and Nicholas (who is usually very skittish) came out to see what was up. They both stood very still examining each other, and Nicholas was walking towards him very carefully, looking to me every few seconds for reassurance when James walked in, scaring the crap out of both of them. Liger started crying for James (he's an attention/affection hound, though he doesn't jump or anything, just whines), and Nicholas backed up, and all the fur on his back and neck shot straight up and his tail puffed out like a raccoon's. Thankfully, he didn't hiss or anything, but he sure was shaken. He let me come near him afterwards and looked at me for a long time like, "I can't believe you brought a dog here. How could you?! I trusted you!" It broke my heart.
Liger was great on the way here yesterday. As soon as he's in a car and feels the motion, he falls asleep adorably. He gets here, and he's really good. Robley comes up to see the puppy, and wants to take him downstairs to meet his dogs, who are older and bigger. Everything's going great, and then Liger goes over to give Louis (the older dog who is usually great) a kiss or to sniff his butt or something, and everything went wrong. Louis flips over and tears a hunk of skin out of Liger's face, under his eye. Of course Liger started crying and barking like crazy (he hadn't barked the entire time we'd had him until then, except once), and Robley beat the fuck out of Louis like he was a man and not a dog. I fucking hate Louis now. At any rate, it was such a large piece of flesh that was ripped out that his skin wouldn't close, and we ended up having to krazy glue his skin together (like a liquid bandage) after we cleaned it out. Poor baby. I seriously thought I was going to start bawling when it happened, I was so upset. Thankfully it's doing better today. James is worried about it scarring, because since Liger's a pureblooded all black German Sheperd, he wants to breed him. Hopefully it will heal beautifully.
Liger's a super smart dog. We started paper training him yesterday, and he's only made two messes since. Thankfully they were easy to clean up. He's such a great dog, though.
Now for the really big news (haha) . . . (drumroll). . . Last night I was playing with the puppy and James was watching. He looked at me and said, "Now we're a family!" I stopped, and looked at him and said, "Uh, I thought you didn't want a family. You might want to be careful with your wording." He said, "No, I just don't want kids. We're a family." I asked him if that meant he wanted a serious relationship with me, and he said yes. He said, "You're my wifey." When we went over to Kim's, he kept calling Liger his baby. I pretended to pout, and told him that I thought that I was his baby, since that's what he always called me. He looked at me and said, "No, he's my baby. You're my wifey." I didn't want to make him change his mind or anything, so I just said nothing and went on. When he said that again last night, I looked at him and said, "You better be careful, you've already said that once to me recently. I might just take it seriously." He told me that he wanted me to take it seriously, because he meant it. I was astonished, but didn't say anything. He was incredible while we were gone this past week, but I wasn't sure if it would last when he got back to Atlanta around everyone. We'll see how this holds up.
Other awesome news: When we got home, I saw that Adam had brought my green rocking chair with the white polka dots over (he's never home, so it's hard getting it from him). I loooove it.
This morning Mary Ann called me and woke me up, asking if I could drive her to get Robley's car to take to work, since she had a flat. That was a little before 9:30 (8:30 a.m. Alabama time, impressive). When I got back, I took a nap and was woken up by a wrong number. I gave up on sleep and prepared to go to Kroger and get some carpet cleaner, coffee filters, milk, and cream. I went down to see if Robley wanted to come with me, and my cousin Tim called me. He and Brian (his life partner) wanted to take James and I out to lunch. James and I left Liger in the bathroom (look, we just can't be with him 24/7; it's a fact), and met them at a hotel they were working at. Tim and Brian have a business that decorates for events (today's event was a christening for this evening); they do linen tablecloths, cover chairs and wrap satin ribbons around them, do huge, beautiful balloon arrangements, etc. On the phone Brian had told me he wanted us to meet them there, so he could show me what all they do, and that he wanted to talk to me about something. We met them, and after showing me everything they do, told me that if I was interested, they'd love to have me on part-time to help out set up for events and stuff. It's a pretty fun business, so of course I'm interested, and it made me happy they asked. I also met their business partner and sometime roomate, Arla, who was incredibly nice, and then they took us out to lunch to this really great place, Einstein's.
We got to Einstein's around 1, maybe 2:00 p.m. By that time, I was absolutely starving, as all I'd had today was a piece of Hawaiian bread Mom had made for me. When we got to the restuarant I was so hungry that I felt like I was about to vomit . . . and ended up doing so. It was weird, because all that came out was just stomach acid and some mucuous, and I rarely to never throw up anyway, so it was just a little odd. Afterwards, I felt great, though. The restaurant was beautifully modern and very eclectic, and they had delicious food too. The company was great; I don't recall there once being a lull or uncomfortable moment during the conversation. Brian gave me a ton of compliments on my hair, which of course I loved. Tim told me how my grandmother (on my mother's side) was totally cool with me and James moving in together, as was his mom, my aunt Marga. It was so nice to hear that instead of people lecturing me, and rather refreshing. Tim, Brian, and I talked about our shared Harry Potter obsessions, and then we all got geeky and started talking about Star Wars and Star Trek and things like that. It was a lot of fun. James really liked Tim and Brian, which made me happy. I believe they really liked him, too. It's so nice to have liberal family members, especially when they have great senses of humor and take you under their wings. Harry Potter obsessions don't hurt, either, hehe.
I guess you could say I had a pretty awesome day. It sure makes up for the panic attacks and everything that happened last week, that's for sure.
aigre-douce at 6:06 p.m.