what's the deal with June?

This month! It has been full of aggravating things. When exposed to too many aggravating things in a row, I become hypersensitized to aggravation or maybe aggravating things sense my attention and flock to my vicinity.  

TAKE MY ORDER ALREADY

• Most annoying waiter @ trivia: UGH this guy! He wants to crouch/sit down and have a chat rather than do anything as useful as bring food and drink. Bad news for me and all others at our table: he's even worse at small talk than he is at waiting tables. BAD NEWS. I could go on (and on!), but I'm getting mad all over again and I want to go to sleep pretty soon. I dislike him so much I find myself thinking of Emma from Emma the novel (and movies!) and how she hated Mrs. Elton so much she had to throw a party for her immediately or everyone would know how much she disliked her. I feel like I would have to throw a motherflipping PARADE to disguise my dislike, which makes me feel bad because usually I can get along with people, you know? My job is getting along with people! But I can't do it with this guy -  I'm pretty easy going, but he just rubs me the wrong way in every regard. I can't even describe how he closed out our bill without having a rage blackout. I must assume we were enemies in a previous lifetime. 

PEDANT'S CORNER 

• puce is purple. People want it to be yellow-green (I assume because puce/puke are such close neighbors), but it remains purple. PURPLE!
• smirk. A blog that I enjoy has had the word 'smirk' stuck in its word hopper for a week and it's clear she's thinking of a different (more impish, less asshole) kind of smile but instead  SMIRK keeps jumping out of the paragraph bushes and assaulting me with its wrongness. 

These are no big deal, right? I don't know why they're both getting up my nose so much. Probably because June is turning me into an awful person.  

DO NOT TRY TO HUSTLE ME ON MY DOORSTEP

• I think someone tried to charity scam me last night. It was almost 9pm but still light - there was a knock on the door and when I opened it I found a lady with a clipboard. (This is not unusual in fine weather - tis the pre-election season for door to door do-goodery, which I know I've complained about before.) She was talking about healthcare, which okay! This is an important issue. She said some blah blah blah while I flipped through her signatures. I was willing to sign her thing, but she said she was collecting money and that 'at door donations' were so important. I said I wasn't going to give her any money - she grabbed her clipboard, said thanks for nothing (paraphrase) and was back on the sidewalk before I could put together what happened. What makes me think it's a scam is I can't think of a single legit organization that would leave without my signature or an email address (both of which I was willing to give). Then I realized she had no other literature, it was almost 9PM, and the thing she was talking about wasn't even really a thing, it just sounded like a thing that a lot of people (myself included) care about. So, beware the knock at 8:45.  

ranunculus, cumulonimbus, altocumulus

Ranunculus are one of my favorite spring flowers. They're so generous with their beauty and the name - can you beat the name? I love the word ranunculus: it sounds like a kind of cloud, or a nemesis. Isn't is a perfect nemesis name? Just to test it out, try shaking your fist at the sky (maybe at a ranunculus cloud) and shouting RANUNCULUUUUUUUUUUUUUUS!  See what I mean?



Despite the perfect-for-a-nemesis quality of the name, I love the reality of the situation. I mean, look at these! They look like a hybrid peony/rose/poppy/tissue paper flower.



A bunch of them together? The best! It's like a spring petal party happening right the hell now.



I took these photos at the garden center and I can't remember the name of this flower. Whatever it is, it's too pretty to leave behind, so here it is.

lies of omission to my former nemesis

See, it started off pretty simple - I used to have a work nemesis. Now I don't, mostly because I don't get enough juice out of having a nemesis (I can see how it works for some people) to justify the energy expenditure in maintaining one. (But it sounds so cool! Narrowed eyes, hissing "my nemesis," when people ask who you're narrowing your eyes at...) Once I realized that the only reason she was my nemesis was because I was jealous, I couldn't do it anymore. There should be a better reason! (I was jealous because she was hired after me and got a permanent job right away, while I still labor in the On Call salt mines.) ANYWAY. I'm over all that now.  It's not like we're best pals or anything, but she's pretty loopy and I enjoy talking to her.

Today's misunderstanding came about when she said that she was talking to a patron "about our age," which is hilarious because I've got to be at least 15 years older than she is. (10 at the very least.) I don't think it was some ham handed attempt to flatter me, because she's a very blurty thinks it/says it kind of person. (example, to patron: "why are you wearing those rubber gloves?" a question I'd never ask in 10000 years because the answer could be anything from "severe OCD, thanks for asking" or "I've been treating the chickens for mad chicken disease" or etc. etc. you get the picture.) ANYWAY. Maybe the real answer is that she's a lot older than she looks, like a vampire or a creature who sleeps for 100 years and then is awake for a year, or maybe she simply meant an age greater than 10 and less than 80, in which case we are totally the same age.

The point of the story (if it has one! I can't even tell. I've got to start these posts earlier in the day) is that I didn't correct her even though it would have been relatively easy to say "but I'm ages older than you are!" but then I think it once again becomes about me and my insecurities, so maybe it's just as well I said nothing on that particular subject.

In related news, I thought for a minute that I had a new work nemesis lined up, but it turns out that the person is fine apart from an appalling work ethic.