Why I LOVE My Job

I work in the heart of downtown Portland, OR.

I get to dress up for work, everyday.

These guys. They give me free food, and most importantly free lovin'.
(known in previous posts and Fashionably Harrison as "the coffee shop boys")

I love my job because even though someone brought donuts in the day I had school, they saved me one. (Yeah, it fell on the floor, but they knew I'd still eat it, and that says everything.)

A job just doesn't get better than this:
During a staff meeting, my boss left for a short period of time. I announced, "quick! everyone! pretend you're all asleep!"
And every single person did.

The Inevitable

Lounging languidly on my couch, I had been falling in and out of sleep for the last two hours, partly because I just didn't want to do anything, and mostly because I would feel bad getting up and and taking away the support Javi's back needed, or else he would be in for a rude (and disorienting) awakening.
As I settled myself back around my kitten, flashing blue and red lights caught my eye and attention from outside my window. I stretched and sat up, and discovered a cop on a motorcycle on the street below. After the initial panic attack that always accompanies the sighting of the police passed, I focused in on the situation. There was a cop blocking the roadway, and a whole passel of cops at the top of my streets, blue and red lights ablaze.
I quickly texted my neighbor, who's house was conveniently placed right in front of the melee, and got the dish: some guy who had been running from the cops had just been tackled on my street!

But the real point is, as I was staring into the constant drizzle (and at this moment in time, slightly less than a downpour) that is my city, I noticed something amiss.
My car. Sunroof wide open.

..only in Puddletown

It was relatively early in the morning, I was heading to the workplace, standing at the bus stop waiting for #12.
As I crossed my arms for warmth against the wind and drizzle, (I had skipped the coat, foolishly holding hope in Portland's spring) a bum, riding a bike, passed behind me on the sidewalk. He stopped just past me and called out, "hey, do you have a spare quarter or two?"
I answered with the usual, "oh, I'm sorry, I don't carry cash."
His first question, although abated, was quickly followed by a second: "do you have a cigarette by chance?"
Again, I answered in the negative, "nah, sorry I don't smoke."
He smiled a gaped-smile at me, and I tentatively smiled back.
This was the moment he pulled out all stops:
"You don't date, do you?"

The Event

School tires me. I am there from:
8:00a.m. until 9:00p.m. Mondays,
5:00p.m. until 9:30p.m. Tuesdays, and
8:00a.m. until 7:00p.m. Wednesdays.
As this doesn't leave me with any short of social life, I make do by staying up until all hours of the night. (The latest I ever allow myself to go to bed is midnight, so until half hours of the night).
This schedule makes the next morning at school somewhat, oh, droopy-eyed and yawny.
I have a little break inbetween my morning classes, and on this particular morning, I stretched out on a complimentary couch in a Cramer hallway, and consequently fell alseep. Pretty much instantly.
I awoke to this scene one hour later:
Bleary eyed, I pushed myself away from the leather my face was pressed against into a sitting position. As I rose I felt my face separate, in a wet manner, from the furnitrue, and I felt an actual rivulet of moisture bead itself down my face and drip back into the puddle of drool where it had originally rested. I had drooled, quite the amount of drool onto this couch. It covered my face, and now my hands as I tried unsuccessfully to wipe it away. It covered the couch in a circle of wet. Even my eyelashes were dripping with the stuff. I looked around me, and wasn't alone. As I stumbled away from the scene of the accident and into a nearby bathroom, a fellow student was exiting as I was trying to enter. We were less than six inches from each other's faces, when she said, "Oh My Go...." and pushed past me. I lblundered into the restroom, and lurched towards the mirror.
I was a soppy wreck.

Waashing. Gone Wrong.

Well, it caught up to me. I waashed (word mashed) one too many times for it not to have some adverse affect on me.
I was at work, as usual, dressed to the nines, as usual, joking, as usual.
My coworker trotted towards me and the back area with the breathless words, "something amazing has happened." he led me up front where he pointed out, the indeed amazing matter. It was the corn plant that inhabits the office, in bloom, right out of the highest bunch of leaves. The plant is aptly named, because it's blooms actually look a small corn stalk.
we both raced back to the others, to spread the joy and amazement. I, especially, was excited about the affair, and these high-spirited emotions coursing through me incited the words, "if it really does grow corn can we eat it as an office..?!"
The others looked at me not in surprise, (these tiny phrases of fun pop out of my mouth quite often), but in hesitation, "what if it is poisonous corn, Brooke?"
"What, you mean porn?" was the immediate answer.
porn.
porn.
porn.
I was so embarrassed I can't even put it into blog-post. I could barely speak, I just sat down at my computer, and cried silent and nonexistent tears of shame.

Stop the Hunger

It was late morning, and I was on the fourth floor of the Congress Center working, as usual. As I clicked through the file room, past the printing station and onto my work area, my hands mindlessly found themselves buried deep in the pockets of my slightly over-sized, taupe cardigan. As the flesh of the fisted fingers pushed into the wool, something somewhat hard and somewhat grainy pushed back against my right hand. The same hand fished it out of the pocket and it was laid on the palm for display. This is what I found:

It is cat food. A single kibble, of holistic cat food. The only plausible and possible explanation of this seeming phenomenon is that Javier held it like a prize between his two front paws, and by standing up on his back feet alone, slipped it into my pocket, with the altruistic thought of, "Yo no quiero que mi madre a pasar hambre". (I don't want my mama to go hungry)
Now, Javier es mi gordito. He's a big boy. Thus the explanation of the single piece. He was looking out for the both of us.

The Long Ride Home

In this story you can find me on my way home from work, maxing it as usual, engrossed in my smart phone. So engrossed, in fact, that when I did happen to look up and notice where I was, I had only one more stop to go, my own.
The small screen read "Lloyd Center" and I settled back comfortably into a haze of technology.
When I glanced up again, the screen had changed. It now read, "Hollywood Transit Center" and I could hear the compelling electronic voice of a woman commenting, "the doors are closing." I bolted up and squeezed past the woman beside me, running pell-mell to the doors and zipping out, just in time to look up at the stops' sign: Lloyd Center. I had raced out to found myself at the wrong stop.
Did I, like a normal person, turn around to force my way back on the Max, as I clearly had one more stop to go? No. No, I acted as though that were my stop all along, walking along the tracks until the sounds of the light-rail faded away, and I could safely turn around and wait for the next train, almost ten minutes away, not having to worry about the judgmental glances and laughs of the STRANGERS surrounding me.