Busy Sunday

I was still in bed when I heard the phone ringing. I couldn't bring myself to pick it up, because I knew who it was. Yes, it was the Acme. Could I come in at 11:30? Two people had already called out, and it was really busy. No. I'd just opened my eyes at 9:30! I didn't feel like rushing on a Sunday.

Got dressed and switched on Brunch With the Beatles after I got out of bed. The theme today was "Just Good Ol' Rock and Roll," i.e, purely rock Beatles music. This covered a much broader spectrum than you might think. We heard everything from "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (and the original versions that inspired them) to one of my favorite Beatles songs, "Revolution."

Had Cranberry-Sunflower Seed-Oat Pancakes with home-made Cranberry Syrup, then chatted with Mom for a while. Poor Mom wasn't feeling well at all. She's apparently allergic to some of the natural oils on the plants at Michael's, accidentally touched them, and got a very nasty rash. Good thing Keefe was babysitting for my sister, Dad's out fishing, and she'd had no plans for the day anyway besides working on baby blankets for my sister Rose and her close friend Sheila, both of whom are pregnant and due within days of each other in May. (That seems to happen a lot in this family. Anny and her best friend Jenny got pregnant around the same time when they had their first children, too.)

Good thing all I planned on having for dinner was stock-pot chicken stew. I tossed cut-up chicken pieces, water, the last of the white cooking wine, canned low-salt, low-fat chicken broth, celery, carrots, and onion in the stock pot, grabbed my coat and my lunch, and headed to work around 12:30.

Work was a mob scene all day long, with lines going out the door. I can't figure out why for the life of me. Nothing's going on right now. It's too early for March Madness to really heat up. Baseball doesn't officially start until next month. The Olympics ended last week. The only major holidays in March are St. Patrick's Day and Passover. Not only are they not celebrated by everyone, but they're not until later in the month. We're not even supposed to have bad weather. Today was utterly gorgeous, in the lower 50s and sunny as can be. Even if we did get precipitation, it's too warm for it to be anything but rain or very slushy snow.

It wasn't helped by the fact that yes, we were very low on help. Two more people called out over the course of the day, in addition to the two who'd called out in the morning. I heard some managers complaining that no one wanted to come in or stay late, either. I guess everyone would rather enjoy the weather.

I didn't have that pleasure. I did stay a half-hour late. It was still busy at my original ending time of 5:30, but by 6, it was starting to slow down. I was able to shut down with no relief, grab a can of chicken broth to replace the one I just used on my dinner, and headed home.

I arrived to the delicious smell of chicken stew. I watched It Happened One Night for a while, then listened to The Dress Circle. "The Shows of March" was the theme tonight, and there were some good ones. My favorites were "The Sweetest Sounds," performed by Dianne Carroll and Richard Kiley in the original cast of the 1962 hit No Strings, the very funny "Suppertime" from the original Off-Broadway cast of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and the creative bilingual version of "A Boy Like That" from the currently-on-Broadway revival of West Side Story. (And what on did the hosts have against the gorgeous ballad "A Step Too Far," from the 2000 Elton John version of Aida?)