The 9 to 5 Life.

So Heather, the friend i work with at the university, recently underwent gallbladder surgery. If I was a decent friend and good listener I would be able to recite why she has to have said gallbladder removed. But at the sound of surgery and -bladders my mind sort of checked out and I felt a little queasy so I didn't really get the full story from her.

As a part time employee of the University Heather and I don't receive any benefits. No health insurance. No paid time off. We don't even get sick pay. And when I did my taxes this year i also found out that the University does not take them out of my pay, so i ended up owing a huge chunk to the government. While i love my job here, I must admit the drawbacks are starting to suck. Luckily, I'll have health care insurance at Le Sad store until 2014.

Heather unfortunately losses the Health insurance she was on (her moms or her dads, I'm really shit when it comes to paying attention to technical stuff) in June and has been freaking out about it for months. In March she baked her cousin and I a batch of cupcakes for our birthday. The next day she was hospitalized with what she thought was food possessing because she'd eaten so many of them. Turns out it wasn't food poisoning. Her gallbladder was causing all her weird stomach issues and when she went to the doctor she was told to either remove it or keep it in and because she doesn't know how severe the stomach pains would continue to be because of her gallbladder (and because she will only have health insurance until June) she decided surgery was the best option.

She has been out of work since May 14th and because I usually close at Le Sad store I was offered her shift along with mine until she returns. And boy has it been weird. The 9 to 5 life is exhausting. Work at the University is generally pretty slow but it has reached a dead stall now that the semester is over and Summer Session 1 does not start until next week. For 8 hours a day I literally am in my own office doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. The first couple of days I tried to kill the time by organizing and straightening up but I may have seriously moved and then re-placed the same stack of papers 20 times before I gave up trying to be productive.

I then decided that I could start and finish a book with all the free time on my hands in between the few printing jobs i have gotten (cause that's what i get paid the big bucks for...printing copies of legal stuff). But that didn't work out. Lately I have been unable to attach myself to a story or it's characters. I get into a book, really dig where it's going, put it down to ponder my own existence, never pick the book up again. Or in some cases, i don't want the book to end. It's so good and compelling that finishing it would leave me empty and hollow so it because a half read item on my sloppy bookshelf.

So instead I have succumb to watching youtube videos and Hulu. I've been abusing Tumblr by reblogging endless photos of cats and hot British guys. I've resorted to writing paragraph long fan fictions involving me usually engaged in some sort of sexual rendezvous with a character from a television show (currently it's Dean Winchester from Supernatural. He's  a hunter of the supernatural (hence the title of the show and my fan fiction) on a search and destroy mission of a deadly key that could open the gates of hell. He seeks help from an unlikely allie, Beckett...Amelia...Hughes, a tough and damaged girl who has her own motives for finding and destroying this key. Yadda, yadda, yadda, they have a lot of sex).

Yep, I am using my free time productively. Friday I worked from 9 to 5 at the university and then closed at Le Sad store only to do another close on Saturday and an open on Sunday. It was brutal. To top it off my friend Angie (who use to live here but moved to D.C about 3 years ago) was in town and wanted to visit. So after work Sunday we went to grab food at the local steakhouse and then camped out in my house watching episodes of the original Star Trek. I have had a very very busy, if not productive couple of days.  I must admit I am feeling a little run down by the routine and I am not sure how I am still standing.

Heather returns to work tomorrow (thank god) and today is the last of my 9 to 5 life (for now). I am looking forward to sleeping into tomorrow and I am also looking forward to my day off this Friday. I sort of need a mental health day. I am feeling sluggish and blue and disconnected because I feel a little overworked, even when i'm not doing anything.