Work is for people who can't garden.

So I'm sitting here by myself for the first time in days, enjoying the fact that I don't have to answer to another living soul. I may even watch the news later. Buy a six and put on some Howlin' Wolf, even. A sybarite; simply an unabashed, decadent kicks-vixen. Thats me.
When I get like this even the telephone is a rude intrusion so you're going to have to leave a message. Should I begin to feel lonely I'll go to the store or the library, or maybe garage sale-ing. Thats about the level of socializing I need to keep me happy. We went out to dinner last night with friends, and four people, even friendly people I like, was too much.
People in general are a complete mystery to me.I have no clue what goes on in other peoples minds. Making it not one whit better is the fact that, while I do very well on the phone, in person I have little tolerance for dipping around, and most people dip around. Thats standing in doorways as you're leaving and suddenly breaking into a huge conversation with the door hanging open and the cold getting in, or feigning a kind of conversational indecision that just drives me up the fucking WALL ('Do you want the salad?' 'No,.....well, I dont know...what are you having? I'll have whatever you're having.' ' I'm having the shrimp.' 'Well...I dont know. Maybe. Why don't you have the salad too? Or maybe I will have the shrimp. How much is the salad?')
GAAAH! DIE! NOW!
Obviously this makes me the worlds worst employee. I do NOT work well in groups. Period. I do NOT learn quickly, unless it's just me and you and things aren't busy. I am NO GOOD WHATSOEVER in a panicked situation. Deer in the headlights. I do NOT tolerate the public and they are not always right.
Understandably, then, I do not work in restaurants. My vision of hell is the kitchen of a struggling one-star dinner house on Saturday night. But since I already had this job once, no matter what I've done in life from then 'til death, I can still hold my head up to St. Peter and say' Sweetheart, I worked for NENDELS', and he'll apologize and make me a cocktail while I wait for my limo. The one Brad Pitt is driving. Naked.
By the way, in this day and age there is absolutely no excuse for the kind of fitlhy, unsafe, abusive working conditions you find in most kitchens, but sadly the staff will collude with management to keep it from changing because they think they're this special breed, see, they can take it, they're tough and cool and all hard and shit. No, they're most often skag losers who couldnt find work any where else because theyre vile, and don't think management isn't taking full advantage of that fact...and don't think the health inspectors aren't taking full advantage of THAT. We used to shift the inspector cases of booze for our 'A' card. Left them outside the delivery door; he never set foot inside the place. Fucking disgusting.
I had my own business for awhile cleaning rental properties, and I'd probably still have it if my health had held out. When I work on my own I have to live up to my own expections, and they're really high ones. You would have been proud to live in a property after I'd gotten done with it. Theres places I drive past to this day with happy families living in them that make me think "Geeze, if you only knew what I took outta there...." I would be driving down the road with a full load of garbage, going to the dump, and I would pass some real estate babe in her Nissan with her hair all done and her dress and I'l feel so fortunate!
I had a deal going with the guys who ran the dump-they could scavenge my load before I took it up top, and once I was up top I could scavenge without getting shot at. Doesn't that sound skeezy? And Joad? Maybe it is. But I've helped furnish lots of college kids houses with what I found up there and I earned a nice piece of change doing it, too. Remember, this is the 21st century. People in America toss things because theres a new model out. For example, I cannnot tell you the number of times I picked up brand new bridal shower gifts that the newlyweds hadn't seen fit to donate for some reason...probably because charity resale is for icky poor people. So they put it (new cuisinarts, full sets of towels.....etc.) in the garbage bag with all the wrapping paper and ribbons and took it to the landfill, so that nobody icky and poor could ever get their hands on their unwanted stuff EVER. Or something. Who knows?
I sure didn't end up icky or poor out of it. Cha-ching! I had a set of muscles on me like a swimmer, too. But since I have asthma I also had a neverending case of crud which finally blossomed into bronchitis and from there, finally, pneumonia; which feels like getting better from bronchitis, so I was walking around there dying for awhile and had no idea.
Went back to college, got a two-year in admin. ABSOLUTELY HATED IT. I'm good at the skills, just not at the lunchroom aspects of it. Office culture, is the term. The most bland, safe, beige, television watching bunch of people I have ever met. You cannot go outdoors; you cannot wear anything comfortable (if you're female) and you are not allowed to be anything other than a paper cutout. I think I was a pleasant person to work with, on the main, but it ate away at me from the inside to where I'd drive home and just cry, feeling like an empty shell. I slept11 hours a night; just exhausted, although all I really did was make copies and tot up numbers.
So I don't do that any more.
You oughtta SEE my garden.

p.s...
Did you happen to see in the news where they've genetically engineered pigs that glow in the dark? This is no shit; luminous pigs. Just regular pig-type piggies that glow green. You know what I want? A Luminous Wrinkle Dog. Or a bunch of them. I would take them for a run at night through the field behind our house, and it would look like I was being chased by a Blob family. Or I'd make a little howdah and put the Gooneybird on one's back and let them waddle around. Oh my God, the Blobs have taken my grandson! They've made him their King!
Going on a beer run now. Do ya latah.