Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Winter here in westside SF is always a crapshoot -- either it's unseasonably warm and sunny, extremely humid and rainy, or a mix of both with the weather border firmly holding at Presidio Avenue. It might be a thick fog in my neighborhood and sunny at the Embarcadero. Today? Overcast, misting but not raining, 99% humidity, and the chance of rain over the next several days.

Mind you, the weather does affect the customer volume I get at the store, depending on how extreme it is. When there was a torrential downpour a few weeks back, the store was dead quiet with only a few regulars and a stressed out last-minute shopper or two. On warm and sunny days we get hit with a LOT of volume (partly because we're surrounded by parks and people want to hang out and enjoy the day). It being the last week before Christmas, however, I'm thinking it might be a little busier than usual but not overly so. Our numbers might be down from last year, but that'll happen anywhere these days. We still have our regulars, several locals and the occasional visitor or tourist. 

Me, I've been doing a lot of dairy upstock days lately, which on the plus side keeps me from the stress of front end ringing but on the minus side keeps me forever interrupted by needing to unlock cabinets and guide people unsure where items are. It all balances out, though.

But yeah... I think I've pretty much accepted that I'm in a good Zen space in my head now, and that's been a long time in coming. Being in charge of my emotions instead of letting them get the best of me. Having the ability to plan out ahead of time and adjust on the fly. I thought of that the other day when I saw someone posting the meme of 'post a gif of where your mind's at'. I saw a lot of fiery 'this is fine' level gifs, Homer screams, cartoon explosions and other chaotic nonsense, but it dawned on me that for the first time in ages, that's not where my head's at. Sure, I still hate conservatives with a burning passion and get upset over stupid (and non-stupid) things, but they no longer completely ruin my day. They only fuel it to make it right, or better. 

Not bad, considering how my year started, come to think of it.

4. Being trapped in a confined environment can turn an ordinary experience into a powder keg. Write about a thing that happened to you while you were using transportation; anything from your first school bus ride, to a train or plane, to being in the backseat of the car on a family road trip.

One of the things I DO NOT MISS being out here in California is driving in the snow. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy certain aspects of winter...a good night on one of those long red plastic sleds, a silly snowball fight, the eerie muted ambient sound during a snowfall, even coming in and having a tasty hot chocolate after a long morning shoveling outside. But I think it was around 2000 or 2001 when driving on snowy roads started making me nervous and twitchy. It wasn't so much that I couldn't drive in snow--thanks to my ridiculously early hours at Yankee Candle, I knew how to navigate roads that hadn't been plowed yet. It was more that I started getting more nervous the others around me who might not be as proficient at it. I didn't want to slide into them, and I certainly didn't want them sliding into me, either.

I can think of two instances where I found myself attempting to get somewhere on snowy roads that shook my nerves. The first one was when I was driving home from HMV during a particularly snowy night. Most of the roads were passable, if not exactly clear at that time, and I was lucky enough not to get stuck or start sliding when I had to make it up an unsanded and partially plowed hill. I'd made it all the way past the Leominster/Fitchburg stretch of Route 2, only to get stuck in an absurdly long line of cars attempting to make it up a slow, curving hill. Many were spinning their tires and doing their damnedest and not getting too far. As luck would have it, I was right near the start of the outer climbing lane, usually reserved for lumbering trucks. To my surprise, no one was in that lane, all the way up the hill. Probably bending a few traffic laws in the process, I said to hell with it, zipped into that lane...and proceeded to climb all the way up that hill at my own speed, with absolutely no problem at all! All told, it took me two hours to get home (it usually took me one on a clear day), but that one moment made it worth it.

The second instance was on one of those stupidly early days at Yankee during fourth quarter, when I had to be there by 4AM--which meant I had to leave my house by 2:30 the latest, so I'd give myself enough time to get there (and time to spare and hang out with my friends). Like the HMV ride, there were a lot of unsanded and somewhat plowed roads, but for the most part I managed it quite well. It wasn't until I was on one of the back roads heading through Montague where it was a long straightaway near the airport, that I had a problem, in the size of an adult male deer. So picture this--I'm driving down a sparsely lit road that's relatively clear but wet with a few snowy patches, and I have one hand on the wheel because I'm about to take a sip of my still-full coffee...when this BIG HONKIN' DEER comes out of nowhere and runs in front of me. I screamed out an "ooooh shiiiiiiIII---", wrenched the wheel to the left and went into the oncoming lane, and managed to speed by the deer without hitting it. As I regained my senses and went back into my own lane...I realized I hadn't spilled one drop of coffee. Suffice it to say, I kept a vigilant eye out on that stretch for the rest of the winter, just to make sure THAT didn't happen again. ;)