Well, it's damn cold today and there's about 3 inches of snow on the ground...which is good, after last year I'dve been just as happy if it didn't snow AT ALL!! Usually, all I want for my birthday is snow...not this year. Ergh...But it must be nice for the kids where they got all the snow!
Up in Fostoria, Christmas was a great time to work...as long as I could get there, with the winter snow & ice! No, truthfully, I think I only had to call off because the roads were too bad once or twice over the two years I worked there. I always heard to call the state highway patrol office to check on road conditions before you went out to drive, so I did. Fat lot of good that did...no matter what it was, whether it was snowing, had snowed the night before, had all been plowed, anything! I still remember, every time I called & wanted to check road conditions on 23N, they told me "snow covered and slippery." One of the first days they told me that, I just thought "but I won't get paid if I stay home...and I HAD told them when I got the job that the one hour drive was fine with me...", so I decided to go, and dropped Tif at her babysitter's, and got out on 23N, and it was perfectly clear & dry with snow blowing across it. So bah, take that! I did have to stop & call the store one time, when I was at the little town/village halfway there. It really was 'snow covered and slippery'. It had taken me an hour already to get halfway to work! I stopped at a pay phone, & called the store to tell them I was in C**** & I'd be there in an hour. The cashier exclamed, "Libby! What in the world are you doing?? You should go home!" And I explained that it was just as close now to come to work, so I'd be there in an hour. Geez...does anybody else remember the days before everybody had a cell phone?
At the store, we went crazy with Christmas decorating....a few of us even wore elf suits & hats all day! What a bunch of dorks we must've looked like! But we were always happy and smiling! Now that I think back, we always said hi & Merry Christmas. And all the customers just nodded & smiled & kept their distances, I think they all thought we were on drugs between Thanksgiving & Christmas! But, whatever, they tolerated us!
The first Christmas, I made Christmas baskets. My first tries were rather 'mundane', out of the pictures in the book from my produce supplier, but as it went along, I got a lot more creative & inventive, and it got to be one of the most fun parts of my job! My friend, Chester, wanted me to make her a big basket for a friend, with dog biscuits, and a couple of bags of carrots, and apples, her friend lived out by her in the country, and had horses and dogs! The baskets started being such a big part of Christmas, I actually had to hire my cousin, Boo, to make them! She only lived about a half hour from the store, so it wasn't a big deal for her to get there.
The second year I was there, I decided to load up some friends in my car one day, and we took off to the town about a half hour away, where our store's main office was, & we burst in there and demanded to go upstairs to find some more decorations for our store...because this was a chain of about 15 stores, so we knew they had some old decorations! They did, and we took all my little Honda Civic would hold (which was less than we had thought, since there were three of us in there). We did find a great big full-size sleigh upstairs, but were told we could NOT take it...the owner of the company was goiing to put it in his front yard! Damn...
BoUnCeS!! LibbY!
