As most of you know, I’m something of a homebody and I work an odd schedule, so I tend to be home more often than not.
However, the people who live in my apartment complex must be even bigger homebodies and work even odder schedules, as they never seem to go anywhere.
This is evidenced by the fact that at any given time, on any given day, the parking lot is almost always full. There are only very limited windows of opportunity during which I can manage to snag a parking space in front of, or even anywhere near, my building.
As I drove home on Christmas Eve, I had hoped that the holidays would prove an exception, and that my neighbors would actually have someplace else to go for a change.
I soon discovered that this wasn’t the case, as there were, as per usual, no spaces available in front of my building.
There was, however, a spot near my building, and so I parked there.
Because I was paying attention only to the fact that it was relatively near my building, I didn’t notice that this space was the one where excess water always seems to gather, and that said water had frozen solid, which is undoubtedly why the space was actually available.
So in the entire parking space I had managed to park on the only patch of ice.
As I slid forward to the point that my front tires were stopped only by hitting the curb, I knew that this was going to be bad.
Still, as I so often do, I resolved to deal with it in the morning.
Lying in bed that night I envisioned just how much of a pain in the ass it was going to be to get out of that space in the morning, but eventually I drifted off to sleep that was filled with neither visions of sugar plums, nor, in fact, of strippers.
At 4:15 my alarm announced that Christmas had arrived. Hooray! Maybe as a present Santa had moved my car for me.
He hadn’t, but at least he hadn’t put a lump of coal (or something worse) in my stocking, though that probably was only because I hadn’t hung a stocking. If I had, I’m sure I would have found a “gift” from Rudolf or one of the other reindeer in it.
I had considered not getting up to work out and “sleeping in” until 5 as something of a Christmas present to myself, but ultimately decided against it, and so I was up, as on most Saturdays, way too friggin’ early in the morning.
Out I went into the cold Christmas morning and started up my car, which, when put into reverse, moved back about two feet before the tires began simply spinning.
It was pretty much exactly how I’d envisioned it while lying in bed (Who says that dreams don’t come true?).
I admitted defeat early, and avoided spending too much time spinning my wheels.
Then I considered my options.
I could either try to find some way to get my car moving on my own, or forego the workout, take a shower, get dressed, and then call Brian and Kathleen. As they would be leaving work early, I wouldn’t be able to just catch a ride with them, so I would have basically just needed them to give me a push.
As I considered that option, I realized that the car really didn’t need to be moved far in order to be off of the ice, and my car is fairly small…
So I threw it into neutral and tried to push it off the ice on my own.
It’s worth noting at this point that this was, literally, an uphill battle, as there is quite a slant there (which is why water builds up that area in the first place).
I managed to successfully move my car back about five feet, which wasn’t quite enough to get it off of the ice. I might have been able to push it farther, but I essentially ran out of solid ground, as the ice waited in front of me if I stepped forward any further.
So I eased the car back to its original position and once again considered my options.
If I weren’t the cold-hearted, animal-hating, nihilistic, mean, doo-doo-headed bastard that I am who is probably only allergic to pet dander because he’s a cold-hearted etc., I would own a cat, and therefore have access to cat litter which I could put on the ice to provide my tires with some traction.
However, I am a cold-hearted etc., and so I had no cat litter to speak of.
What I did have, though, was the soil and mulch that the various decorative shrubs around my apartment complex are planted in. I managed to dig up enough to successfully free my car, and thus I was on my way, with enough time to spare to get in a workout in addition to the one I’d gotten from attempting to move my car without the benefit of an internal combustion engine.
In the spirit of the day, I did actually listen to a Christmas song on my mp3 player while I was on the treadmill.
Well, it’s kind of a Christmas song. It has “Christmas” in the title, at any rate, there are some “jingle bells” in it (Type O Negative – “Red Water (Christmas Mourning)” Lyrics).
After I finished my workout I headed for the locker room to shower and get dressed.
On occasion, even though I’m there well before most of the world is awake, I do encounter other employees making use of the showers in the locker room, though most mornings it’s typically the same person.
On this particular occasion I encountered someone who, and I’m not kidding, looked like Santa Claus.
He didn’t have a beard, though he did have a mustache, and he had clearly just finished showering and getting dressed (and possibly shaving), and was gathering up his sack (again, I’m not kidding, though I guess it was really more of a backpack), and was on his way out.
If he was an employee, he’s one I’ve never seen before.
I have to say, though, that he didn’t appear especially jolly, but if he had just completed the task of traveling around the world and dispensing gifts to all the good little children, one can hardly blame him.
After all, even though he only really works one day a year, it has to be pretty grueling. I can relate; cramming a full work-week into three days can be brutal, so it has to be that much worse to cram an entire year into one day.
Plus he has to spend that work day with nothing to look at but reindeer assholes and trying to squeeze down chimneys and avoid being seen by nosy little brats the world over.
And you just know that Mrs. Claus is waiting for him when he gets home to bitch him out because she figures he’s probably got girlfriends all over the planet waiting to get their stocking stuffed and for him to come down their chimneys, especially since he has that whole voyeurism problem, and besides that he has to deal with those gay little elves singing their fruity songs all year long, and every year there are more and more rabble-rousers stirring up talk about unionizing…
So I don’t think I’d be especially jolly either.
Then again, I also don’t think I’d stop to shower and shave in Northern Virginia, either. Come on Santa; think tropical!
In any case, the rest of the day proceeded very slowly. We were down to three people on Friday and Saturday: myself and Brian and Kathleen.
Not too long ago a full complement on our shift consisted of six people (not counting Scott, since, as the boss, he never does any actual work).
But with the layoffs, a resignation, and people off for the holidays, we were down to three.
Until three o’clock, when Brian and Kathleen took off early to head to Kathleen’s dad’s, bringing us down to one.
Eventually, though he arrived late, someone from another shift who had volunteered to fill in for the remainder of the day came in and there were two of us.
The day itself was filled with some work-specific headaches that I won’t get into here, and overall it didn’t feel much like Christmas so much as it felt like a really irritating day at work, where, incidentally, in Scott’s absence I was in charge, which only added to the fun.
For their part, Brian and Kathleen found that their flight to Ohio had been cancelled shortly before they were set to leave for the airport, and eventually they had to resort to driving to her dad's.
So that was their Christmas present.
On the topic of presents, the only actual gift I got, apart from the gifts from Scott and Stacy, was a new wallet from my sister Kristy. Apparently it was some sort of gift set, as it arrived in this odd little wooden box. It’s a nice wallet, though, and I was actually thinking about getting a new one, so that worked out.
Beyond that, I got Wal-Mart gift cards from my mom and dad and from my brother Brad, and I will undoubtedly be getting another gift card in the mail from my sister Kim, as she had nearly forgotten to get me anything, and so hadn’t mailed it until Thursday.
“Flame Chick” had made an appearance at work on Christmas day, apparently filling in for someone else, as that's not her usual shift.
Throughout the course of the day I came to discover, from her exchanges with other people there, that she is a rabid sports fan.
This, of course, means that, if such a thing is possible, there’s even less chance of anything developing between us. I say “if such a thing is possible,” since there was already no chance.
(As I type this, the unmistakable sound of tires spinning on ice alerts me to the fact that someone else is presently engaged in a struggle with the icy patch.)
So that was kind of a letdown. The Vegetarian thing had seemed like kind of an obstacle, but since she doesn’t seem to be preachy about it, I figured it wasn’t too big of a deal.
Fanatical interest in sports, though, is utterly unacceptable (There will be a Threshold entry on this particular topic at some point in the future).
Still, even though I had come to know that there could never be anything between us due to the vast schism that my discovery of her interest in sports had created, I couldn’t help but notice that the back of her long, graceful neck, revealed by the fact that she was wearing her beautiful auburn hair up, seemed to have been designed for being kissed and…*sigh*
Why did it have to be sports?
(By the way, I went out and gave the poor bastard a push and got him off the ice.)
But in any case, that was my Christmas.
Still, the little ways that the Universe tried to mess with me were absolutely nothing compared to what it pulled with the earthquake and tsunamis.
Nice timing, too. What a wonderful way to say Merry Christmas to the world...
On Sunday I was the only original member of my shift, working with the assistance of two people from other shifts (including the guy who’d come in on Saturday) who had volunteered to fill in for my shift’s missing members.
I usually only see the two of them during our shift overlap on Friday mornings, so I don’t know them very well. Having to work with people I don’t know, and who do things very differently than we do them on my shift, made it a very long day.
But it’s over now, and soon life will be back to normal.
Not that “normal” is really all that much better, but hey, you take what you can get.
In any case, the holidays are nearly over with, thankfully, and soon we’ll be starting a new year.
I can’t imagine it will be much different from the last few, but hey, anything’s possible I guess…
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