Time Flies When You're Planning

So, work is okay. I miss sleeping until noon and going to work. I miss having plenty of time, and laying around before work. I am ready to get into summer with more staff though. This whole bare minimum on staff is wearing me out!

So I have a dress!! I actually have it! It's hanging on my door and I love it. I have bridesmaid dresses picked out and my aunt is going to pay for the church as a wedding gift. I am saving money for my cake. This is actually happening. I don't know how. I was so scared that I wouldn't have money for any of it and I'd just be going to a JoP in jeans, but slowly yet surely it's coming together. I can't express how excited I am. I think I'm dreaming sometimes.

My nephew, Carter Thomas Key, is coming hopefully at the very beginning of June. I think we're all getting more and more excited. Kayla is doing pretty well. Logan is hanging in there too. He's having a rough time with pregnancy moodiness, but mom and I try to smooth the feathers when we can. I just hope we get to see him. It seems like we're not really involved because she doesn't live here. He does, but he's just the dad. I hope that's not how it'll be. I'm super excited about having a baby in the family.

Is it just me or is time whizzing by this year. I'm going to be 22 in 15 days and I'm still quite unsure how that happened to sneak up on me like it did. Yesterday it was January, and then all of a sudden, it's Easter. Holy Cow!

Daniel moves down here in one month. I think I'm going to come out of my skin I am SO freakin' excited. No more long distance. No more daily phone calls without seeing him for a month or longer. No more "Gee, I wish I could be there but..." Oh, man. I don't know if we'll know how to act around each other!

Hmmm, I think that's it. My life is soooooooo boring. Sorry :(

Do You Hear the Wedding Bells?

Mom and I have officially overloaded ourselves this weekend. We bought my half my dress on Friday. We put it on layaway and paid half. It's not cheap. It is gorgeous, let me tell you! I can't put pictures up here because Daniel reads this and he doesn't even wanna know anything about it.

On Sunday, we went to the Bridal Show hosted by the Knot at Marketplace Center in Dallas. We weren't sure what we were getting ourselves into, but oh my! It was like a bridal expo! We tasted so much cake I think I gained about 30 pounds just from the buttercream and fudge. There were thousands of people and so many booths! Photography, caterers, limo services, carriage rides, registries, DJs, videography, invitations, gowns, chocolate fountains, banks, real estate agencies, they were ALL there!!! We went at two, and stumbled out in a bridal daze at 5:30. I have a huge bag full of business cards, flyers, price guides, menues, pens, and miscellaneous other items. I was so tired, I just plain knocked out at a family friends' house that we always go to for Sunday dinner.

Why so tired? Oh, because I now have two, count 'em Two, jobs. On top of my Barnes and Noble gig, I am also doing morning receptionist duties at a CPA firm in Dallas Monday through Friday. I wake up at 6, go to work, come home for two hours (during which I usually nap), and head back out to Barnes and Noble until midnight or later. That puts me with 5 hours of sleep once I get home, settled, and bedded. So yeah, Emma is a tired girl these days. But you do what you must to survive. The extra money is hopefully gonna help subsidize this dang wedding.

And my nephew is firmly on his way into the world. Miss Kayla is approaching 22 weeks. They're taking it all in stride, while mom and I kinda hyperventilate about how this whole two home, one kid thing is gonna work. Not to mention the added financial strain of a dad not working and an aunt and gra... (still up in the air about the name) funding the kid here. But little Carter Thomas (for now) will be loved, and that's what counts, right? Right!

Oh! And one last thing- please keep Daniel and his family in his prayers. His grandfather is going home to be with Jesus soon, at least that's what the doctors are saying.

My Blog

MMkay, I've officially made the executive decision that I don't have enough time or motivation to write about only pop culture stuff. Yes, it's true. So, from now on, I'm going to write about whatever pops into this little brain of mine and you can read it, deal? Deal.

Soooo, Thanksgiving! Yay! Daniel and I spent this one with my family and he survived the onslaught of crazy family members. Go him! And go me for not worrying about it a lot. All went fairly well. We ate, we watched so much football it was bordering on obsessive, and we went to see Twilight the next day. Loved the Twilight part, hated the way they made it. It looked so amateur. Pah-lease try harder to at least let me delude myself into thinking you tried on this one, okay? Jeez, it made so much money, but not on it's cinematic effects. I mean really.

So Logan's officially 13 weeks into potential daddyhood. I know, frightening thought of frightening thoughts. My baby brother is going to be a DADDY. He and Kayla (the mom) seem to be handling all this in stride. Mom and I are freakin' out a little. She's in her second trimester. At the beginning of June, I'm gonna be Auntie Em. I'm just not ready for these things yet!!

Work is starting to really hop. But of course, it's retail so I saw that happening. Unfortunately, it's not hopping quite as much this year due to financial difficulties of the populus. Come buy books people! We've got some sweet ones. And while you're there, pick up a coffee and a cookie, maybe a few cds. DVDs wouldn't kill you either. :) Just sayin'.

Christmas. Blech. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas. But working in retail, and seeing the "true" Christmas spirit in shoppers can put you right off the holiday happy train. People are getting meaner and more impatient. I swear, it's like they forget that we're human beings with feelings too. They want what they want and they want it NOW!!! God forbid we're sold out, because they need it tomorrow morning at 7 am and it's 10:30 pm now. That's totally our fault. -Cue eye roll.

I've decided I'm going to put book recommendations on here because who better than me, really.

Read "The Shack" by William Young, if you haven't already. It's a brilliant book that will liberate you if you go in with an open mind. It's religious fiction, but man are there some whopper morals built into that book! Buy it, read it, love it, share it!

Retail Rants

There's a book at Barnes and Noble called "Waiter Rant" and it is all about being a waiter and the kind of crap you put up with. So, recently I saw this and decided that there should also be a book called "Retail Rant: The pay sucks and so do the people" or something similar to that.

There are things I've noticed in my stint as a retail employee. These are things I would like to bring to your attention so that you are wiser. One- we don't get paid nearly enough to deal with the kind of crap many people make us deal with. Being paid under eight dollars and hour is already degrading enough without pissy people coming and making our days worse. Look at it this way if you will: Work in general puts people in bad moods. We're already on edge. If people keep treating us as though we are subserviant, at some point we will explode. If you frequently do this, there's a better chance that it could be you.

Another point I'd like to make is this: we may be paid next to nothing and work in a position that very intelligent monkeys could fill, but we are not stupid. Okay, I'll cede that some retail workers (read teenagers) could use a few brain cells sometimes, and there are some people who just aren't up to 75 on the IQ scale. However, there are those of us who fall into two other categories. The first category is that we were desperate for income, okay? The economy blows and no one wants to hire and almost college grad. So we took what we could get. This does not mean we sold our intelligence once we went on the payroll. The other category is comprised of people with good paying jobs who still need more money to live well, or make ends meet. I personally know several people who fall into this category. They are smarter than most people combined, but for some reason, need the extra cash. Take one of my good friends for example. He is an executive at an insurance company but his daughter just entered Princeton and I can tell you first hand, college is not, I repeat NOT, cheap.

The last thing I'd like to point out is: we do everything so please try not to make our jobs harder. I understand you don't realize some things you do wrong. However, we do not like cleaning up your trash, picking up after your children, or jumping through hoops for your aproval. It's a job. Most of us don't do it because we always dreamed of being in retail. We go, we work, we get paid. Sure, we'll be nice if you are. We are people after all. But the next time you come in with a bad attitude, snapping at us and acting as though we're incompitent, just remember: we don't mind wasting your time and walking you around the store five times before taking you to what you want. Actually, we often enjoy it.