ontology | Entries tagged with why my job is marvellous

Work adventures of yesterday: a girl and her mother bought a great pile of books, on top of which was an Eva Ibbotson (The Morning Gift)! I was delighted and told them so; the girl confessed that she also adores Ms Ibbotson. Dear me, I feel like starting all over again -- I have five Ibbotsons in matching editions lined up in the book closet now -- although I've read the books to figurative bits in the last six months. I can't tell you how incredibly cosy and happy-making her novels are; the clichés are mostly of the comfortable, well-worn-quilt sort, and her prose is so delicious that I can feel it in my mouth. Also it is something of a relief that I finally have comfort reading that actually resembles comfort reading to the outside world -- Sunshine and I Capture the Castle and Baby were beginning to be a little worrying. (Of course there's also L.M. Montgomery -- whom, actually, Eva Ibbotson considerably resembles, except she writes in great loving tender detail about England and Vienna rather than Canada: but they have similar approaches to characters major and minor, and similar hard-won optimism, and delightful prose, and the ability to make me read romance-plot books and adore them.)

I am working again tonight -- hurrah paycheck! also hurrah for working Saturdays, when it is exactly my favourite kind of busy: viz. a lot of working with customers and selling books, rather than endless shelving and organising and packing returns into boxes and not having anything to do so bouncing sparkly light-up rubber balls behind the counter instead. (This is okay because it occasionally causes small children to beg their mothers for such a ball, and then we sell some. Yes, the problem with corporate chains is that we sell all sorts of entirely non-book-related nonsense.) And, I must say, I am quite pleased with my outfit today: sophisticated black skinny jeans; my white Lip Service blouse with black lace round the collar and puffed sleeves with little black bows on the ends; a brown plaid vest that criss-crosses in the back; a Mona Lisa brooch pendant; darling checked flats; and the most charming and job-appropriate earrings ever, made for me by the marvellous

lexiedoh. Yes, they are indeed wee books. ♥

And this morning my wake-up call consisted of being pounced upon by a small fluffy beast who seems to believe that it is my Sacred Duty to pet and cuddle her. And by this morning, I mean not so very long ago: there is little of the day to report, as it is nine thirty in the morning, and I am sitting up in bed (dressed and awake and the bed is made, really! -- I had to make it around the laptop, though, which was a bit ridiculous) listening to NPR.

(note: I am almost certain that Mr Arnalds wrote the song I am playing after watching Pan's Labyrinth: note the title, not to mention that it sounds like a riff off the main theme. Gorgeous.)

♥ relaxed
♫ "faun", ólafur arnalds

Nicked from

wanderlight (whose birthday it was yesterday: happy birthday, Rita!), as I am eager to write more entries that do not fall into the categories of Angst! Angst! Angst! and Stuff That I Did Today. Reading habits meme! Rita told her f-list all to do it, and I extend the same eager curiousity towards you lot as well! I love hearing about how other people interact with books.

( erm, this somehow became spectacularly long. )

...And now to bed! :/

♥ geeky
♫ "i should have kept going", linford detweiler

I find that I am rather enjoying the mentally energised feeling that comes with one's fever breaking; although I am not entirely certain that it makes up for being in bed all day and missing five good hours of work, much less the first vomiting I have done in three years. And it was a Friday afternoon shift, too! Very busy! I love being busy with customers! Harrumph.

So yes: yesterday everyone was sick but me, until suddenly around ten at night I began to feel the first curls of nausea, which steadily got worse; I took Pepto-Bismol and went to bed, and promptly woke up an hour later to vomit. This I wasn't expecting, because I can remember the last time I vomited, and it was, as mentioned, a very long time ago. It was not pleasant. I really wished I hadn't eaten all of that rice for dinner, now that it was coming up in maggoty litttle lumps. Then I took more Pepto-Bismol and went back to bed, until about four in the morning, when I woke up to vomit again, thus terrifying the cat. And I missed the bathroom by a foot or so, which was awkward. And then I went back to bed (after soundly brushing my teeth), and the cat eventually rejoined me, which was very cosy of him.

This morning much of the nausea had abated, and I was stubborn enough to want to try to go to work. This involved me trying several times to get out of bed and failing. Half an hour before I had to be at work, I finally stood up, went over to the closet, and blacked out. I came to on the other side of the room, sitting, with a sharp pain in my thigh. It was very strange -- I had this -- sensation? hallucination? vision? -- in which I was crashing down something, very loudly, and it hurt, which imaginings don't usually do. In retrospect, both the imagery and the physical sensation afterwards heavily resembled Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. (Brain, I don't even know.) And I know I must have crashed into a few things if I -- stumbled backwards across the room? Whatever it was I did when I blacked out that got me to the other side of the room. I may have hit my music stand and a bowl on the way, but they certainly didn't make all of the noise that I heard in my -- hallucination? And I asked if anyone had heard a crashing noise, and they hadn't. It was very strange, and sort of fascinating. I kind of want to know if it fits into a specific psychological something-or-other, and why I envisioned so much falling and crashing, or amplified the little that might have really happened...

Except then I was still saying I was going to go to work, because I am stupid. Only I couldn't stand up for more than a minute at a time without feeling horrible. Or sit up comfortably. ...Look, I really like my job. I finally decided in favour of actual sense (and also in favour of not infecting my poor co-workers) and called in sick, and spent the rest of the day lying in bed, occasionally listening to music or NPR, and falling asleep rather frequently. Oddly, some of my senses seemed amplified, which was sort of enjoyable, where music was concerned -- I felt sound very intensely, and listening to Ashtar Command's "In Dust" and Conjure One's "Center of the Sun" was very fascinating.

Leandra, age two, came charging in around sevenish to give me my wallet: she found my iPod on the bed, put the earbuds on, and demanded, "Lai-lai, please?", referring to this song by Rupa and the April Fishes, which for some reason is her very favourite song ever. Her whole face lights up whenever she hears it playing, and she starts dancing round in little circles, which is adorable. After Lai-lai, we listened and danced to Benny Goodman, the Beatles, Abigail Washburn, and Crooked Still. Hee.

And then I dressed in my softest, cosiest cotton dress, just in time for sunset. I think I can go to work tomorrow evening -- and I'll need my strength tomorrow, because Heidi's having a birthday party, which means there will be a horde of little girls from about seven to twelve shrieking through my house, oh help.

♥ sick
♫ "starbound", lisa hannigan

I really love my job.

Now, not every day is the giddy glory that the eight hours last Saturday were, but going to work and doing my work continuously makes me happy. Borders may not get a ringing endorsement from me as companies go, and certainly I have to wade through a lot of bureaucratic nonsense, and sell a lot of rubbish books (and even rubbisher things which are not books and sometimes not even remotely book-related), but the real part of my job, the centre of it, is taking care of books and interacting with customers and I love it.

I've had some really lovely customers lately. On Wednesday this dignified woman in, I think, her sixties, in a long coat and an elegant scarf and glasses and possessing an accent somewhat suggestive of upper class New England came in looking for a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which she said was an old, old favourite that she hadn't read in years. We had a very companionable conversation and I think I will have to put her in a story someday. Today an attractive bearded young bloke (in a Death Note t-shirt with 'L' on the back, n'aww) bought a copy of the sole Dresden Files graphic novel, and we enthused about the series together. (I am currently on book six -- begun this very evening -- and am utterly addicted; it is marvellous.)

And although I have to reschedule my library-and-Hockman's day, I really love working Saturdays, because the bookstore is very, very busy and full of book-loving people (in varying degrees) looking for something to fall in love with, and I have the best interactions and am happily occupied all day. We didn't have anything to shelve or repair today, so I was told to concentrate mainly on customer service -- hurrah!

Now, a question for the f-list. What books would you suggest for a) reluctant readers (of both sexes), and b) girls who like Twilight and are primed for introduction to better things (or the friends and relations of girls who like Twilight, trying to find them new things to read)? I can suggest plenty of books for women and older teens who enjoyed Twilight (or hated it!) -- Robin McKinley's Sunshine, of course, for proper vampires and a heroine who is not a dishcloth, and Emma Bull's War for the Oaks for a much better supernatural romance (inside a plot that is actually awesome, and more importantly, there!) -- but younger girls? I am at a loss. There are plenty of other rubbish teen vampire pop romances (they litter the YA section lately), but I feel the need to somehow instil a love for actual literature. As for reluctant readers, I was in no way one and find their minds difficult to comprehend. ;) What sorts of books would hook a boy or girl without the ravenous lust for literature I seem to have been born with? I want to recommend favourites of my own, but I don't know which of them would be the most apt (though I imagine Gail Carson Levine is a good place to begin with girls), especially since I was reading things like Dickens and Alcott and L'Engle at the age of nine, and Tolkien by twelve, and T.S. Eliot by fourteen (not counting the Practical Cats, which I think I must have been in love with all of my life, because I have no memory of being introduced to them but every memory of being familiar with them). A lot of people come in with, especially, ten- to fourteen-year-olds looking for something, anything that they'll read, usually because their schools require them to read some fiction, and I try my best to help them, but am floundering rather a lot.

I made brownies to bring to work, because... look, I'm not a suck-up, really! Uhhh. Heh. Anyway, this time I didn't forget to bring them, as I forgot the cookies I made a week and a half ago (and then I forgot them again when I meant to bring them to Jonathan's...). I also bought a baguette on the way to work and brought cheese from home for a lunch of bread and cheese; very old-fashioned and delightful.

And I'm bicycling again! I've missed being Bicycle Girl! The weather today is marvellous -- rainy and warm and windy and alive, and there is little like strenuous excercise in pleasing weather to lift one's spirits. Of course on the way to work it was very wet, and while the rain was mostly drizzle and not much trouble, the streets were full of puddles and I had to sponge mud from my entire person upon arriving at work. Siiiigh. But the way home was dry and absolutely perfect, and there was wind in my hair, and I may have sung a lot.

(Also I may have kind of wandered into Rue21? And they were maybe sort of full of their usual clearance racks of awesome and win? And I may have purchased one (1) grey and black striped shirt with a bow, two (2) elegant waistcoats in different styles, and one (1) very lovely summer dress consisting of a white ruffled blouse and polka-dotted skirt -- for two dollars apiece. However, dear readers, it is highly unlikely, for I only ever spend my money on extremely important and serious things.)

Tomorrow, Dad and I are going to see Slumdog Millionaire (which has somehow made its way, very late, into our cinema, probably on sole virtue of having won many Academy Awards, because indie films are about as common in my cinema as capital letters in an e.e. cummings poem). I'm kind of enjoying my life right now; and that feels good.

♥ content
♫ "crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes", kristen andreassen

This morning, watching the steam from my father's coffee unravel into the sharp bright morning light, I thought, how does anyone hurry through life without noticing the small beautiful details of everything?

That is what a lot of today has been like. I woke promptly at seven by, it seems, sheer force of will, and lay in bed for a while, because bed is very cosy and it wants to be lain in, especially on a thinly blue Saturday morning with the radio telling stories on the bedside table. And then I wandered downstairs, which was strange and quiet because no-one else was up, and that was a strange thing indeed -- not that no-one would be up at seven, but that I would be up in the morning before anyone else! The world of the morning: when small sounds are louder in the hush and silver, and everything is stiller and slower and means more.

Dad drove me. I knocked on the plastic enclosure around the shop, and was greeted by... the manager. Eep. I was a little intimidated about working with Jim all day, because even though he seems to really like me, and lobbied to add me to the payroll after the kiosk closed, he's still The Manager, and my co-workers talk about him as though he's rather difficult to work with (and occasionally making offhand warnings to me -- "Jim will probably yell at you about this", or "Jim is really, really fussy about that"). And I am new and make so many mistakes! But he actually turned out to be the best person I've worked with so far -- making certain to think of things I might need to learn or know about and showing me how things work and explaining to me some of the weird details about shelving and organising that people never remember to tell me until I've done something horrible to disrupt them. He explained everything so well, and was so kind and helpful and comfortable about it that I almost never felt self-conscious, as I usually do. And I worked much better today even than Wednesday -- I felt confident and a little more sure about what to tell people and how to help them and where to send them for things, and I managed to order a book for someone with hardly any help. (There are a lot of steps, and Things Upon Which I Must Never Click.)

Also, I sold so many copies of Twilight & sequels, it was postively obscene. (Jim said, so, you've never seen Twilight? I told him that I had read the book several years ago, and was so infuriated by it that I would have defaced it had it not been a library copy. He laughed, and said that his wife had said much the same thing.)

I felt so very happy all day, even if I was missing my library trip and Hockman's. Books books lovely books everywhere (and lots of horrible disgraces to the name of book certainly, but that, alas, is consumerism), and people looking for books, and taking them home, and me getting to give them to people! And put them on shelves! And find interesting ones, and note down the titles in case I want to borrow them later! And, er, buy them myself, on my lunch break, which I spent a) at Jim's desk in the back room (everyone eats there), swinging in the swivel chair, reading Sunshine and eating cold last-night's-dinner, and b) scouring the bookstore for something to borrow, and ended up taking advantage of a 40% off coupon to buy myself A Countess Below Stairs, and then borrowing another Eva Ibbotson and the third Dresden Files book.

Oddest moment of the day: an elderly woman showed up to buy fifty dollars' worth of bookmarks. The mind, it boggles.

Once, overwhelmed with the sheer splendour of working in a bookstore, I forgot myself and twirled a tiny little twirl of glee behind the counter. Only... there was a customer. Oh dear. I righted myself and processed her things. She said, "Dancing, are you?" I leaned forward, as if to tell her a secret. "I really, really love my job," I said. She smiled.

(I'm not entirely certain this is allowed, to love one's job. This much, especially. I love it even though it is full of capitalism and sometimes my co-workers are cross and often I am floundering about like a large dog coming in from the rain, trying to understand what I am doing and how to do it, and the company has so many silly rules and legislations that I must follow. But I am a book diplomat, and get to climb ladders and make small children happy and recommend Neil Gaiman. It is wonderful.)

Mum picked me up, and spring is close, because it was still light for a long time after I came home. I have spent the remainder of my evening curled up on my bed or on the living room sofa reading Eva Ibbotsen and listening to music and to people, and later, after dinner, reading Eva Ibbotsen to candlelight and lamplight and fairy-lights on my bed, with the last slice of Dad's spectacular pie and a cold glass of milk and music lulling softly from the bedside table.

♥ content
♫ "the last snowfall", vienna teng

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it's a blue bright blue saturday, hey hey
a book questionnaire!
in which copious rest is not as pleasant as it sounds
spending all our money on brand new novels
in which i am barely discernable from a female giles

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my heart is a glorious machine;

Entries tagged with why my job is marvellous

it's a blue bright blue saturday, hey hey

a book questionnaire!

in which copious rest is not as pleasant as it sounds

spending all our money on brand new novels

in which i am barely discernable from a female giles