She woke up from a dream. She was standing in the alley behind her childhood home with her mother; her car was gone. This had been a good car and it had seemed to work unlike most of the cars she usually had in dreams. There were always car cars and more cars and they never seemed to work so there was always a need for more because there was always someplace she needed to get to. Sometimes the cars were abandoned completely for pedestrian freeway systems of mass human migration that still never really seemed to go anywhere. You just don't understand, her mother was telling her, it is beyond their capacity to fix this car.
She got up. She walked to the bathroom with the cat looking at her disapprovingly. It was the cat's belief that his morning feeding should be prioritized. This would involve her walking down the stairs and then back up again which was what she considered double work. Plus, it always seemed to make everything take longer. They were currently agreeing to disagree.
Liberte egalite fraternite the toothbrush glass motto cried out to her as she brushed her teeth and toweled herself dry. Now the cat would be fed. He ran halfway down the stairs then stopped. I'm king of the stairs he glared up at her. Working at cross purposes again I see, she said, now please try not to kill mommy or how will you ever get breakfasses, and obviously seeing the sense in that he moved on to the kitchen for first breakfast. There would, of course, be second breakfast before she left. This had been negotiated by kitty, which is what she called him although it was not his name. When she first brought him home from the rescue in spring of 2016 a fully grown cat jaded by the system, aggressive and taciturn-- nicknamed she later discovered in a phone conversation with his foster mom the donald for both his aggression and his orangeness-- they had had differing opinions about his role. She wanted affection, companionship and was dismayed when he did not greet her at the door when she came home from work. She had explained to him that she would feed him when she came home, entering through the kitchen, and that she was willing to call him a minimal number of times, but that she expected him to greet her. He had complied, he wanted the food afterall, but over time it had become the ritual she had noticed to be enjoyable between herself and her previous companions of the cat persuasion. Kitty, however, had later reasoned that going away was categorically equivalent and hence was owing if celebrated. She could not argue, and what is more she did not wish to argue, she was happy to comply, and so had begun what would later be formally named the living document.
She got in her car, let it warm up, and drove to the exit gate. She hopped out and entered the code in the pad. She hopped back in, closed the door, drove up enough to engage the sensor, then put on her safety belt before pulling down into the decline where she could see the oncoming traffic. This had become more of a dance recently and the word hopped is used ironically. This used to be a process in which the only conscious process was to be close enough to the key pad to avoid getting out until the window motor ceased functioning. She had taken it to the shop. They could not find a part for the 1995 window. She had found the exact part on eBay and returned to the shop triumphant only to have the installed and totally functional part do the same thing less than six months later. However, this time the window stuck in the full upright position and so was only extremely annoying. Drive-thru was largely more trouble than it was worth. Every time there she didn't use a drive-thru she had a small flashback to her lost voice months.
She had been very ill in 1997, or maybe 1998. She couldn't remember the exact sequence. She had had the flu. An especially bad flu. She remembered the coughing that made her hurt so bad she couldn't sleep. She had gone to the Clinica and they had given her a prescription for codeine cough syrup which gave her nightmares but calmed the cough sure enough. She must have taken off work, difficult as that was to believe, and she had been in bed with the vaporizer going in a room with real wood paneling on the walls which created the best possible sauna-like environment. One evening she had been laying in bed, next to her the man she had lived with for several years, watching Conspiracy Theory, when he noticed that she wasn't making any sense. He had checked her temperature and it was so high he had somehow gotten her into an ice bath. The whole experience had frightened him so much she had heard a lot of stories about it, but she only had fragmentary memories of either the bath or Conspiracy Theory. Anyway, one thing and another, there had been complications and she had ended up losing her voice for about six months to the extent that she couldn't be heard over the speaker at a drive-thru. The phone had been difficult too. This was much less inconvenient than that.
Work had become a shorthand of itself for her. Monday: less than an hour to walk the department pulling signage from the weekend sales, tidying things up, making note of what needed to be ordered, reading email, reviewing upcoming sales and promotions, placing large vendor orders, and making note of anything else she needed to do catch as catch can the rest of the day. Tuesday: walk the department straightening things and making room for the incoming order stock, read email, receive orders, put away orders, place small vendor orders, catch up on items from Monday. Wednesday: usually off. Thursday: read email, place large vendor orders if necessary. Friday: read email, print signage for weekend sales, walk the department putting out signage, tidying, making room, adjusting placement for sales, receive large vendor orders, receive small vendor orders, put orders away. Saturday: read email, restock department, prep for customer interaction event, cycle count activity, host interaction event, clean up, restock key items. Sunday: usually off.
