2001-11-15    |    4:32 a.m.

ok. i've had three full days of work and i already feel like i need a month's vacation. it's really too bad that the past five or so months of unemployment haven't been much of one. i wish i hadn't been quite as guilt-ridden and instead done something productive. writing. setting off on foot and bus, exploring the city. doing yoga. making music. something. as it is, i think i got my life's fill of moping and wallowing.

public transportation really is a godsend. you barely even consider it if you live in miami, because naturally you come with car. like a natal attachment. cars seemingly materialize for people in this city, although they haven't yet for me. and it took me all these years to discover the bus. and now i'm thinking of all the possibilities: i get paid on friday, and then i can hop on the L and cash my check at the bank and then go see a movie by myself (the best way) as a payday treat. small things i wouldn't have been able to accomplish just weeks ago. huh. such is the scope of my rinky-dink horizons.

work is exhausting. it's a near-daily eight-hour-throbbing of the nerves. i don't like cashiering. i don't like handling money. i don't like taking some guy's $5 bill and sticking it in the cash drawer and closing the cash drawer and forgetting his change, then having to ring the guy up two more times as he and the next person in line get more and more upset, and calling one of the managers over, and having her fix it, and then realizing she's forgotten to void the extra ringups, and ending up $5.33 short at the end of my shift. i don't like the girl who boasted about keeping customers' lost items for herself as she showed me her newest acquisition, and who absolutely feigned innocence when its owner showed up all distressed looking for it. i don't like the retail's-in-my-blood looks, the raised eyebrows and barely-masked condescension when i forget how to do a stupid return. you're contemptuous of the fact that i haven't been born with a cash register strapped to my ass? SO sorry. it's only been three days!

ugh.

but there are moments that almost make up for all the grouchy customers and self-important coworkers. there's manager-david, jazzboy, who called my extension incognito to point out some goofy dude in an american flag teeshirt sporting an overgrown mullet, and when the lines got too long on sunday he took several demanding old ladies off my hands and to the children's department to help them find books.

there's the woman i helped find a gorgeous vellum-trimmed rothko book, and who stood and talked to me about books for a while, and then agreed to buy herself a readers advantage subscription. (so far so good -- i've scored one r.a. each day i've worked. i hope these count towards not getting fired after the holidays are over.)

there are the english men who come in every day to get a copy of the daily mail. i just try to keep them talking.

there's the old lady i recommended goodnight moon and dr seuss to when she told me she wanted to start a collection for her six-year-old granddaughter. and the high school girl who grudgingly came to buy a copy of the red badge of courage and brightened completely when i told her it was one of the most interesting and surprising books i'd ever read, civil war notwithstanding.

and there is department-manager-mark who is very cute, and saw me looking lost as i was shelving the slush this afternoon, and took all the business books off my hands and showed me how to use the Crazy Scanning Machine to identify books.

so tomorrow i work from four p.m. till closing. then i have friday off, and then i think i work the next three days in a row. my poor nerves, my poor feet (i've had to go out and buy therapeutic bath salts and dr scholl's insoles for the latter -- i couldn't even walk after getting home sunday).

and i just realized it's five in the morning. and i can barely keep my eyes open. should've gone to bed hours ago, but was plowing through mr michener (STILL), and then realized i hadn't read diarylands in a while, and then got all caught up in and inspired by her writing, and just had to come in here and excise all this mind junk.