February 18, 2014

Today's Happenings

Today was a better day in the lunchroom than it was yesterday.  I had a minor mishap this morning -- I accidentally dropped one of the "fruit bowls" that I had made onto the floor (which is served in one of those clear plastic to-go type boxes), and when it hit the floor, it came open and sprinkled orange slices, grapes, and pieces of cantaloupe and honeydew all over the floor.  Thank goodness it was only one fruit bowl, and not more!  I just laughed it off and swept it up.  Oh yeah, and later that afternoon, I dropped one of those large stainless steel mixing bowls, which made a pretty good racket!  (I had just grabbed it off the shelf, so thankfully it was empty).  But everybody in the lunchroom drops stuff like that frequently enough to not be too startled by it, so it was all right.

It was a little bit of a rough serving day, in that the choices were either macaroni & cheese or meatloaf.  The mac & cheese had to be scooped into bowls using a giant ice-cream kind of scoop with the lever you press with your thumb to get the food to come out of the scoop.  We couldn't just plop the mac & cheese directly onto the tray.  Why, I don't know.  I guess so the cashier would be able to tell at a glance who got 2 servings of mac & cheese (if she saw 2 bowls of it on their tray), so she would know to charge them extra for it.  So that slowed things down a little.  It's always a whole lot easier to serve stuff like pizza or cheeseburgers, where all you have to do is grab it with your (gloved) hand and plop it on the tray (there's no serving utensil involved).  It doesn't really bother me too much; it's just a little more hectic and takes a little longer when you have to dish stuff onto the trays using spoons or scoops.

For some reason, I just can't clean the serving lines up as fast as the other ladies, and I can't figure out why.  I feel like I'm going really fast, but they can clean circles around me.  Maybe it's a mixture of 1) they've been there and done that much longer than me, so maybe they're just more used to it and are able to go faster, and 2) maybe I'm spending a little too much time trying to make sure that everything is truly clean -- in other words, maybe I'm cleaning a little more deeply than the other ladies; maybe they're just giving everything a quick swipe and running away (but then again, maybe that's what you're supposed to do; I don't know).

At any rate, the other sub that's working with us this week (who seemed to me to have a little bit of a bad attitude yesterday) and I had a lot better day today, and we at least were able to get more cleaned than we did yesterday, and go a little faster.  And we both made it a point to really try to learn things and get them down-pat, so we wouldn't feel like dummies and keep having to ask everybody everything like morons all the time.  So that's going good.  Every day, things get a little better as I learn more and more.

When it was getting close to time to leave for the day, the lunchroom manager got a phone call, and asked me if I had ever signed an Employee Packet when I was hired, and I said no.  So she explained that before they would be able to pay me, I would need to go down to the Board of Education office and sign all that stuff.  So right at quitting time, I rushed down to the Board of Education to do just that.  I had to hurry, because I have to make it home in time to meet Lilly at the school bus stop.

So I hurriedly filled out all the proper paperwork, and before I left, they asked me if I had time to get my picture made for my ID badge.  They said it would only take a couple of minutes.  So I said sure; that it would save me a trip back there.  The picture turned out HORRIBLE, and on the way home, I realized that I suppose that one of the requirements of being a lunch lady is looking like a complete hag -- at least on your ID badge.  Sheesh, I really hope I look at least a little better than that in person...!  :/

Check it out:

Aww, geez!!!  D:

Oh, well...at least nobody in the lunchroom ever has to actually wear their badges.  It's just for security purposes, so thank goodness we don't have to display them prominently.  I'll just keep mine crammed deep inside the pits of my pocketbook where all the candy wrappers, lint, and old wadded-up store receipts reside, so hopefully nobody will ever see it.  Bleh!

Anyway, since I had to fill out all those forms (including one to have my paychecks Direct Deposited into my account), and since the timesheet for the pay period (which is about a month long) has been submitted, I can only assume it means that my very first lunchroom payday must be just around the corner!  That will be cool!  :D

Changing the subject on to Maddie now, today was the day that we had to begin cleaning her wound, and we decided it would be best to put her in my bathtub and rinse it out with my hand-held shower spray nozzle.  Even though Maddie has never been in one of our bathrooms (much less our bathtubs) thankfully, it went just fine.  Lilly manned the video camera and documented the entire process.  Don't worry, we don't show a picture of the gross wound at all.  Maddie was pretty cute in the bathtub!  So I guess we'll be doing this every evening until the wound gets better.  (And don't worry, I Clorox'ed the heck out of the tub after Maddie got out, and will do so after each time she's in it!:

So while I'm sitting here waiting for that video of Maddie above to upload, I can tell you about how right now, Jamie is asleep in Lilly's bed (and Lilly's in there next to him asleep too), and I can hear Jamie's awful sleep-snore-wheezing all the way back from Lilly's bedroom, to where I am sitting on the loveseat in the living room, and it's driving me crazy.  This is why I can't share a bedroom with him.  He makes the most awful, weird rackets when he's sleeping, and many times, he never makes the same noise twice.  It's so bizarre.  So I grabbed my video camera and tried to film him wheezing for your viewing pleasure (and to try to get some sympathy from everyone).  Well, I went to turn the bedside lamp on (which is hooked up to The Clapper), but I couldn't get the ^%$# lamp to turn on without waking Jamie up, so my clumsy attempts at trying to quietly *clap clap* the lamp on ended up waking him up.  (I was flipping the headboard of the bed with my finger to try to get the lamp to turn on, which usually works).  So I was miffed.  But at least you get to hear several of the horrendous wheezes before I accidentally woke him up with all the stupid flipping.  Meh.

And here's Attempt #2 a little while later after he had fallen back to sleep.  This time, I didn't try to turn on the lamp.  I just shoved the camera in his face to record his gurgling in the darkness.  Ugh.

Anyway, at this point in time, Lilly has woken up and joined me in the living room.  So I think we'll leave noisy ol' Daddy in Lilly's bed, and me and Lilly will go crawl in my bed in just a little while.  Stupid Jamie's wheezing and gurgling!  It drives me insane!  >:{

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