Nicole’s Blog

I’m beginning to realize that my ex-boyfriend, Joey, is psychotic or something. We were together for almost 3 years, and we broke up about 2 years ago. Anyways, breaking up with him was one of the most liberating experiences of my life. It wasn’t until then that I realized how little I actually knew about myself, how little I was used to depending upon myself, or how skewed my perception of other people had become. My life actually started to get better after we broke up, and I started learning how to do things I’d never really done before (as weird as that sounds). So, since our break-up, we’ve gone through these phases where we randomly get in touch just to see how eachother is doing, and then we don’t talk again for months. His birthday was in September, so I sent him an e-mail to tell him Happy Birthday, which led into another one of our brief correspondences to see what we’ve both been up to. Now today, for whatever reason, I get this FLAMING e-mail from this girl he used to date before me. WTF? Talking about, “Leave him alone, if you come anywhere near him I’ll kick your ass, I don’t know why he still talks to you after what you did to him (what exactly did I do to him? I have no clue), and back the fuck off.” LOL! Okay now little girl, it’s not my fault that you feel threatened by me and him talking about what we’ve been up to in life… let alone from like 2,000 miles away. What a fucking idiot. I didn’t even respond to it. All it would do is egg her on, and she has my phone number from back when she and I used to be cool, so I don’t need her to call me either. I just don’t feel like dealing with it, and I’m not going to. Especially not just so I can do the, “Hey how’ve you been?” thing with someone who is my EX for a reason. Lame.

So, work’s been kinda interesting. We’re opening 3 more stores next month, so it’s been sorta chaotic getting people hired and trained so quickly. My Assistant Manager got promoted to Store Manager, so he’s gonna be leaving me (starting this weekend) to go work at our store in Fort Worth until his store opens next month… which will also be in Fort Worth. It kinda sucks for my store, but I’m happy for him at the same time. Speaking of my store: Holy shit! We have been SOO busy. I run the busiest store in DFW, and it’s only been open for a month. I can’t even imagine how busy it’s going to be around the end of the year. Whew! It’s been interesting though… I mean, we get some REALLY interesting characters coming in. Thankfully, I got to spend a long time doing my recruiting and selection for my store. I’ve basically been hiring for it since May, so that gave me a lot of time to be picky and make sure I was hiring the best of the best. And where did that get me? It got me with a GREAT set of employees. Yes, they piss me the fuck off pretty often, but they’re awesome. lol And I like having the employee issues because I’m developing as a manager each time I have to work through and resolve the problems. It’s cool

My biggest issue at work is the RODENTS! Oh my holy hell, there was a point in time where I didn’t sleep through the entire night without a call from our alarm company for like 2 weeks. Apparently, the pizza place next door to us has rats. We’re attached to them, and even though my store was completely gutted and rebuilt when it was under construction, there’s still a part of our fire wall where they’re coming through, and they’re setting off our motion sensors that we have up in our ceiling. Thankfully they’re ONLY in our ceiling - we don’t actually have them running around the store or anything. We had an exterminator come out, along with the maintenance man for our property, and they both set some traps and poison up in the ceiling. So now, I’m sleeping every night, but we’re having to deal with the DISGUSTING smell of the dead rats. UGGGHHH… it’s bad. When they die up there, they start stinking after a few days, and then the exterminator comes out and gets rid of the dead ones, but we still have to smell it. Oh God it’s bad. Hopefully the problem will be completely gone by the end of this month, but until it is…. *shudder* We use a lot of air freshener.

So, September is about to end. What does that mean? Well, several things! The first being that both of my brothers are now 1 year older than they were last year… and the second being that Q3 has officially ended (at work). I, personally, can’t believe that I will have been here for one year, come the end of December. Wow… SOOO much has changed! Since last year, I have both gained and lost a lot. I will say that the past year has weeded out a lot of what was apparently never “meant to be,” but has also brought a lot of good into my life. I’ve also learned a lot of lessons. I wish I could tell you all the lessons I’ve learned, but it’s best just to say that my lessons have turned me into a much colder girl. So much has happened, but I don’t want to get into all the pain and growth I’ve experienced - I want to focus on the good. After being left with NOTHING, you learn to focus on the things that bring you joy, comfort, and gratitude. I’m the type of girl that likes to learn lessons - I just wish I had learned some lessons soon enough… before it was a little too late, and I ended up with a broken heart. But whatever… I live in the NOW.

Dear Regional Manager,

Today was some fucking bullshit. I understand that you let our Houston market fall apart because you were too blind to see that you put a moron in charge of it, but the DFW market is doing great and doesn’t need you. Why the FUCK do you feel the need to tell ALL of our other employees how much they can learn from me, and then come to my store to challenge me and start a pissing contest with me in front of my staff? Why do you come to your most successful market and make everyone second-guess themselves? Because you’re a douchebag - that’s why. I wish I hadn’t gotten everyone pumped up about your visit, because all you ended up being was a miserable let-down and disappointment. How sad.

-Nicole

Yes, I waited all day for it to all end so me and my friends could all go get trashed and talk shit. Too bad I had to drink while watching USC lose to Oregon State. What the fuck was THAT?? This day can burn in hell. And I’m calling my regional manager tomorrow to tell him I think he handled things the wrong way today. Today was absolutely unacceptable.

And I’m not EVEN gonna start about the warm-blooded, mammalian issue we’re having at my store. Oh no - I’ll save that for another time… when I’m less nauseated/grossed out/pissed off/(ad infinitum) by it. *shudder*

The saying is that when one door closes, another one opens. I have always been a firm believer in this. I’ve also always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.

Christal is moving tomorrow, and I’ve been pretty bummed about it. Unfortunately, she expedited her move because she’s really sick. Like, the kind of sick where she’s going to need somebody to help take care of her. Things between us have been a little bit weird as of late, but she spent like half of last week sleeping at my apartment after she got out of the hospital. So anyways, she is leaving tomorrow… and all of a sudden, I get a message tonight from this girl I used to be friends with. Really, “friends” is an understatement. She was THE friend - my best friend when we were in junior high. Yes, we smoked, drank, and got high together. Yes, we ditched school together, got suspended together, etc etc etc. She was “that” friend to me - the best friend I ever had growing up. Then, during the summer between junior high and high school, she moved. And I was devastated. After that, we only spoke and/or saw eachother a very small handful of times. When I was 18 or 19, she made several attempts to get ahold of me, and I blew her off because I was trying to reconstruct my life, and I really needed to be away from everything and everyone that I used to know in order to start over. To be honest, I’ve regretted doing that to her ever since then, because I never heard from her again. Until tonight

I’m really so, so, so excited right now, and I wish soooo much that I could be in California right now to see her and hang out with her and catch up with her and everything else. I’m so happy about this!

All in all, I’ve had a fantastic last 3 days. Seriously, I feel like a new person. I’ve had some great fucking times this weekend, and they were all exactly what I needed

Why am I thinking about you so much today?

I had been doing really good.

I wish my memories would just disappear. I don’t want them anymore.

Ugghhh I don’t really know what to write about, but I’m in a writing mood… so I figured I’d give it a shot anyways. Today was utterly chaotic for me. At work, I had to do 2 interviews, while simultaneously training 3 new employees, stressing about the evacuation that my mom’s town is under (read more about that here), and then came all the texts about the fucking earthquake. I stepped out to take a breather, and had texts from 4 people about the earthquake. The first one I read was from my ex, and for some reason I thought he was joking until I started scrolling through and saw the same thing from Sally, Michael, etc. lol Really, I’m not sure why I was so into the whole earthquake thing today, seeing as how I don’t live in California anymore… but the initial reports were of a 5.8 which is pretty fucking big. Granted, it got downgraded, but it was still epicentered where I grew up. Literally, the little suburb where I grew up was being named on CNN. Weird. Anyways, I’m just glad that my brother and my friends weren’t hurt, and that my hometown is still in one piece.

Work has been awkward because one of the girls I work with is causing problems. Like, the kind where she’s trying to get other people fired, and everybody knows, so nobody wants to talk to her anymore. I don’t really get it, but I don’t really care either. She can’t take me down with her, and I’m not getting in the middle of any bullshit. All I’m gonna say about that is that she’d better be glad she isn’t my employee, because I’d have put her ass in check with the quickness. Whatevers.

As for friends, I’m happy to say that I’ve made a few new ones. Go me

Wow, I turn into a whiny little emo bitch when I’m drunk. So not appealing. I’ll be sure to keep the computer out of reach next time.

Drunken post.

So this post might not make a ton of sense to everyone, but I’m tryin. I sorta had a fight today with my mom because I, unfortunately, told her too much about my love life when I actually had one (or so I thought). P:articularly, I told her that there was someone in my life, and ever since then she’s been nagging me to know how everything’s been. Today I told her that I don’t hjave a love life, and to drop it. This of course got her wheels turnong and she needed to know “omg what happened, tell me everything” which I didnt’ feel like doing. Instad I started crying and told her i needed to take a shower. since then, ive spent the night drunking and paintintg my nails. Next I’ll be taking a bath that will include a potion of scnets and oils, whiuch should feel good. yes i’m drunk, but i need to vent, and i need to try to get past this plateau in my life. MY heart hurts and all I want is to feel good ahgain. My best friend is going to be moving back home, asnd i don;t know what that will leave me, as far as friends go. ilove her to death and i need her HERE. I’m not going to have anybody at all

Yeah… so I’m not really sure why I was so set on the comma thing yesterday that I felt the need to write a long-winded post about it, but I’m sure it has something to do with how mad I was yesterday at the person who argued with me about it in the first place. He felt the need to make a pissing contest out of it because he’s an egotistical ass who has always done a bad job at hiding how much I intimidate him intellectually. Like seriously. Anyways

When I got home from work yesterday, I accidentally fell asleep at around 8pm, and woke back up around 9pm. Then, of course, I couldn’t fall back asleep until almost 2am, and I had to be up at 5:30am. Oops. I ended up oversleeping, and couldn’t stop for coffee on my way to work as a result. So what did I do? I spent 30 minutes sleeping against the copy machine, and then an hour asleep at the lunch table. Yes, I know I’m so productive At least my co-worker saw the can opener that I left out for our coffee we hadn’t been able to open, so when I woke up there was a fresh pot of it brewed. Seriously though, working mornings is rough on me. I’m usually so tired from it that I feel sick to my stomach… which I know is actually a vision problem… lol Yeahhh I still need to go get my eyes looked at.

All I can say is that I’m glad I get to sleep as late as I want tomorrow.

So, the comma.

Yes, I have my own very strong opinion in regards to comma usage, and I believe my opinion is right because I was taught by my German grandmother. Europeans who take English as a second language… they speak and write English that is more proper and correct than Americans do (thank God). My grandmother taught me about comma placement when I was in 3rd grade, and because she taught me the right way, I was able to outsmart my Language Arts teacher a couple of days later when I went back to school. After I basically pwned her ass, she admitted that I was not only right, but that she learned something from me that day. Ever since then, I’ve been adamant about my proper use of commas. That being said! My sick English skills were challenged yet again recently, and I will prove victorious. I was always told that, while listing, you separate the last two items by a comma even though there’s an “and” being used (correct). Somebody at work tried to be all cool and said that the last two items don’t have to be separated by a comma due to the use of “and.” Oh hells no.

Check out this website:
http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/grammar/comma.htm

Ex: He brought coffee, sandwiches, cheese and soda.

To me, that’s just not right! There should be a comma after “cheese”! This person who argued this with me then told me that the punctuation rule went away, and that the extra comma doesn’t go in anymore. I looked at him like he was out of his fucking mind. Even this website says that the use of an additional comma is optional… so therefore, there will be commas, dammit! Just because it’s not the way everybody writes, it’s still technically proper (probably more so), and I will continue punctuation like so, as well as spelling “grey” with an “e”. Sorry ya’ll… that’s just how I roll.

English nit-picking aside, everything’s awesome. My super comfy sofa is in sight, and I believe I will have it in September. Happyyyy

The issue with my car did end up being a busted windshield washer fluid reservoir. An appraiser already came out to look at it, and I’m waiting to hear back from my insurance about getting it fixed. Hmph. Aside from that, my car is running great, everything at work is fantastic, and I’ve got some great friends. What more could I ask for?