All I need do is a thousand more words tonight, and I will be satisfied. I'm at 45k right now, I want to get to 46k before going to bed. That way if I need to I can just collapse after my 12-hour day tomorrow, and when I get home at 3 or 4 Friday, I can crank out the rest. I've been doing 3k a day, 2k a day will feel so nice; or, I can pull off 4k within 8 hours.

X________________X

One of the new girls (I'm still calling them that, though they've been there since summer..) saw frazzled-Melissa for the first time today. The holiday season is coming, and this afternoon we got the first drops of the flood to come. It was just *busy*, I barely worked on a thing all afternoon, just ran around taking care of customers and things. By the time the four o'clock crew came in I was exhausted - and at the same time so ridiculously edgy, I was all half-frantic trying to get the three things done I was doing at once and make sure everyone else was taken care of and aaaahhhhhhhh.

Plus worrying about tomorrow.

So this Penny Saver thing. A woman who'd been there 12 years recently quit, and barely trained people, and they only had like three people there anyway. Trained someone new, they quit after a few weeks, and someone else quit. Plus the parents are in the process of turning the whole operation over to the son.

So they're in a bit of chaos just now, and desperately in need of help - preferably competent with computer sorts of help. Tom W., the father, is in our store like every freaking day. He was talking with Bruce, and Bruce offered to loan me to him part-part time, if I was interested. Being that doing newspaper ad layouts is something vaguely related to what I do, and it would be a good experience sort of thing, I said sure let's see.

Three-ish weeks of phone tag and people not knowing I was to come into the office and messages not given and skirting around every bush on the planet.

I went in for a few hours one day, for what I thought was an interview, but what wound up being me watching them get shredded by like six people for ads not showing up that were supposed to be in the Penny Saver (most apparently not their fault, they had them all good to go, it was somewhere else they got lost along the way), and then eventually sitting down at a computer and being told to go ahead and poke at the program. And then getting an ad request thrown at me, "here see what you can do with this, we put borders on everything, and get images from this site, have at it."

I put something together, called over the graphics guy (who's been there, oh, a month) to ask how it looked, he said yeah sure looks great here's how we print it, then toss it in this pile.

I go in tomorrow to help out on what is apparently the busiest day of their year, for a twelve-hour shift. They are supposed to be handling my transportation for me (this is out in Silver Creek, 20-30min from here), but I have had no confirmation of this since I met with them Monday, whihc, by the way, was my first time meeting Mark, the son, who is supposedly in charge. I mentioned it to Tom when he was in the store, he said "sure, we'll work something out, just let us know when you need a ride!" - uh, told you already dude, that's pretty much always. (Though myTom's off work tomorrow, it is NOT his job to cart me around, and these people told me they would do it. But also one of my coworkers has offered to give me a ride whenever I might need it, so I have back-ups in place anyway.) I called Mark's cell when I got out of work, left a voice mail. 7:30pm, still hadn't heard back, so I called his home number (which he gave me), and got an answering machine - he has kids, I'm not calling again any later.

He did make sure he knew where I lived when we met on Monday, but, seriously, WTFH. This is just the littlest sample of how chaotic this whole thing is. I am NOT going to let myself get chained to it, and start feeling responsible for keeping things going smoothly at the paper. I am there to help out, and I will as best I can, but I am NOT staying late I am NOT going to discard the rest of my life for these people. The pay is better, it's good experience, but it's not worth my steady job and, y'know, my SANITY (what little is left). So we'll see.

So far they'll need me 12 hours every Thursday, and then 9-2 or 9-3 or 9-4 on either Wednesdays or Fridays, they're not sure which they'd need me more yet. Ann and Bruce have kindly worked around this - really, Bruce has gotten more of this information from them than I have.

If it gets past 9:30 and there's no fuck sign or sound of them I swear I'll drag Tom out of bed and have him get me over to the Paper Factory, where I'm technically scheduled though Ann said she's got it covered. They love me at least. :)

So, yes, all this, and then a novel to finish. This is why I flipped out and nearly broke something when some tupperware slipped and fell earlier in the kitchen.

So after dinner (which Tom made, the dear thing), I went and soaked in a nice hot tub for nearly an hour. And worked on the novel a bit, but, mostly just soaked, because I've been so tired and achy and AAAAAAARRRRRGHJGDSLJKGP(*DFTGA*PODGHS:AIOHBD:SJKAL all week so far.

*deep breath*

Survive tomorrow, the day after won't be so bad, novel like hell, pass out, survive a Saturday at work, then when I get home at 5 I'll let it sink in that I HAVE WRITTEN A NOVEL!!! and, as I'm off work Sunday, I am going to celebrate as much as I damn well please. >:D There's all sorts of wine and things left over from Tom's parents being here for Thanksgiving, and the white wine at least I know is quite good. Really, what would be more fitting at the end of a Phisto novel? Release of inhibition, enjoyment of the moment and the ecstasy of release from responsibilities, colored over with a bottle of fine wine...


Now, back to Luce and Cerise, who I left in the middle of a street at night, when I need to get them to this mysterious meeting where crazy shit is going to go down. :D