5/4/10 – Tuesday

Paula’s walking in honor of Jane‘s Jugs on Mother’s Day to raise money for breast cancer services. Get your butt over yonder and sponsor her!

 

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While you’re gettin’, get thee over to Ms. Darkstar’s and enter her giveaway!

 

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So, remember how last week I mentioned that I used to work at a bank, and so should have known that the dye packs they use with the decoy pack of money are red dye and not purple?

I’m sure I’ve never told y’all the story of how one morning we were all required to come in extra early. Actually, now that I think about it, I wasn’t even scheduled to work that day, because I brought the spud (who was about 2 1/2 years old) with me. The plan was that we were going to go through a fake robbery step by step. One of the other non-teller employees was going to pretend to pass one of the tellers a note, the teller would obediently pass the “robber” the money from her drawer, then she’d “alert” the rest of us, and we’d each do the job assigned to us.

For instance, my job was to call the police, alert them that a robbery had taken place, and then there was a list of things I needed to tell the police dispatcher, and luckily said list was stored right by the phone.

So we were all at our stations, counting our drawers as though we were just about to open for real. We were all on high alert, waiting for the “robber” to come in and go through the motions of “robbing” the bank. Then all of a sudden, the “robber” appeared from out of nowhere, and I’ll be goddamned if she didn’t have a GUN, and she was waving it around while she passed her “Give me all your money or die” note to the teller. I did what I always do in an emergency: I froze in terror.

Thankfully, it was another teller, NOT ME, who was responsible for emptying her drawer into the pillow case, because if she’d waved that gun at me, I would have shit, gone blind, and then passed out in one smooth motion. As it was, all I could do was sit there and gape in horror. The robber turned and tossed the bag of cash into the vestibule between the front door and the lobby door, and then went to her desk to observe how the rest of us did at our jobs.

I went to the phone, pretended to dial 911, and then went down the list of stuff I was supposed to tell the dispatcher. As I did, the bank assistant manager (maybe she was the loan officer, I don’t actually remember at the moment) came along and gave me a look like I was an idiot.

“YOU DIDN’T REALLY CALL THE POLICE, DID YOU?” she said.

“NO, I’m not an idiot,” I said.

“Okay, then,” she said, and kept going.

I don’t for the life of me remember what jobs the other tellers were assigned, but they were diligently performing their tasks. A minute later, as I stood there talking to a dial tone, the assistant manager/ loan officer said in a horrified voice to the teller who’d been “robbed”, “YOU DIDN’T PUT THE DYE PACK IN WITH THE MONEY, DID YOU?!”

Well, she did. Because we were supposed to act like this was a real robbery, see? And if you’re a bank teller and you’re being robbed, you put the damn decoy stack in along with the rest of the money. And no one had explicitly said to her, “Don’t put the dye pack in with the rest of the money. Just PRETEND to.”

Guess where the sensor that set off the timer in the dye pack was located?

In the doorway between the vestibule and the lobby.

Guess what happened?

That fucking dye pack WENT OFF, and not only is there dye in that pack, there’s also tear gas. We kept going, trying to finish up the whole post-robbery “process”, coughing and rubbing our eyes as the gas filled the lobby, but it wasn’t long before the bank manager told us to lock our cash drawers and vacate the bank.

Did I mention that I had the spud with me?

So we stood out in the parking lot, and finally the bank manager told me I could put my cash drawer in the vault and vamoose, and I did.

I don’t remember what kind of trouble the bank manager got into for the whole thing, but I’m sure there was SOME kind of trouble because in retrospect I’m thinking we could have gone through the fake-bank robbery thing without actually involving (1) real cash, and (2) A FUCKING GUN.

The best part is that the spud was there in the lobby watching the whole thing, and she SAW the fucking gun. The gun-waving employee’s name was Mickey. The spud, being 2 1/2 years old, immediately started calling her “Mickey Mouse,” and for the next two weeks the spud would say at random times, “Mick’ Mouse had a gun!”

 

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Over the weekend, poor Maura developed diarrhea. Ten seconds after the vet’s office opened, I was calling to make an appointment for her. And since I was going anyway, I piggybacked the Bookworms onto the vet visit so that they could be Combo tested. I was completely certain that they’d come up negative and could be neutered and ready to go to the adoption center by the end of the week.

Maura’s on medication for her diarrhea… and the Bookworms came up positive for FIV.

AGGGH.

I was so sure that they’d test negative that I was already missing them! But they’ll be around for another couple of months at the very least. I’ll take them back at the beginning of July for retesting, and hopefully they’ll be negative.

(For those of you who weren’t reading back then, the Bookworms’ siblings, the Wonkas, initially tested FIV positive and then were negative on the retest two months later.)

On the ride to the vet, Maura settled down and napped – she did not make one single peep of complaint, I swear she’s the most laid-back cat on earth – and the Bookworms howled and yelled and did their best to dig their way out of their carriers. I was about two minutes from the vet’s office when I thought “Huh. I swear I smell food. Maybe it was that restaurant I just passed…” Only, the smell of food didn’t go away, and I found out when I reached the vet’s office that there was vomit in BOTH of the carriers containing Bookworms. And Reacher had apparently gone swimming through it.

Of course, this was the ONE TIME I left the house without my bag of cleaning rags in case of emergency. Luckily, they deal with that stuff all the time at the vet’s (probably after all the nasty stuff they have to deal with on a daily basis, kitten vomit is like roses to them), and got ’em cleaned up and tested.

So anyway, yeah. They’re positive. But I don’t believe they’re truly positive, I’m sure they’ll come up negative on the retest. And Maura is sequestered back in the foster room, being medicated twice a day, and lolling around like she just don’t care.

Reacher, flopped across Jake like he’s a great big body pillow.

Reacher and Corbett, curled up sound asleep in the recycling bin.

Please note Jake’s foot on the back of Corbett’s neck.

Corbett’s feet on Reacher’s face. Cracks me UP.

Rhyme, flopped across Reacher and Corbett.

 

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“What? WHAT YOU WANT?!” A Tommy and Sugarbutt confab in the back yard.

 

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Previously
2009: We walked in, and I looked at the menu and decided what I wanted, and do you know what Douchey McDoucherton did, as I stepped forward to place my order?
2008: No entry.
2007: Do you see what I see?
2006: And I mean that “woohoo!” in a completely sincere and non-ironic way, which is a little sad, but whatEVERRRR.
2005: Did I really write a chapter about my sex life? Eek! What was I thinking?
2004: “YES! Yes, she’s sick! No, she’s not sleeping, she’s SICK, and SHE’S ABOUT TO DIE, NOW WOULD YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP?!”
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: It wasn’t until I said “I think she’s messed up in the head” that something clicked for her.