Baby Boom and I Thought I took a Left on I-80...

So this week was the week of baby showers. And snow showers but I'll get to that. I spent the week in Tanasbourne, one of the branches we are consolidating. I was supposed to have a "cake" week, taking direction from the branch manager while I covered for her ghost closer, but unfortunately for the branch manager AND me, she got this horrific flu and was out all week. Well thank God there was already a float in the branch! Judy's desk can be described as busy even in the midst of this slow down, and when you are SICK, as opposed to on a PLANNED VACATION, you don't like write little notes for the float so she knows what the fuck is going on. Instead, you get the float scrambling 9 hours a day for 5 full days trying to make your customers feel like nothing is wrong. Yay! It's a good God damned thing I'm flexible.

Thursday was the pinnacle, though. I had signing in Lake Oswego at 8:15 so I went there directly in the morning - Lake Oswego is about 20 miles give or take from the Tanasbourne branch and maybe 12 from my apartment. Turns out the customer was the mother (with a different last name so I didn't realize it til we hit the AKA statement) of a guy I went on maybe 2 "dates" with in high school, and I put that in quotes because I suppose you can't really call rolling around someone's dining room floor making out for 5 hours one New Year's Eve a date. I can't remember what we did on the other date, except I remember him picking me up, then driving back to his home so he could take his dip out and run inside and brush his teeth so we could make out again. Aahh youth!

After that I had to run to Lincoln Tower to take a meeting with some suits from Corporate (Lincoln Tower is about, I don't know, 4 or 5 miles from the LO branch?), and then after THAT I had to get back to Tanasbourne for a 1pm signing. I had a 3 as well, but it cancelled, which was kind of good because I had a lot of crap to do, having been away from Judy's desk for 5 hours. It's not a desk you can just leave by itself. Then at 4:25 I raced BACK over to Lincoln Tower (no small feat in the traffic) to attend Brianna's baby shower. I think I put like 50 something miles on my car.

Anyway, our little Bri is pregnant with her little Bunchie, and she got quite a little haul from the First Am gals. There were nice little snacks and a very fun cake and some people won prizes (which sort of irritates me - if I KNEW it was a game when I grabbed the little party favor I would have chosen wisely - I ALWAYS win those shower games), and seeing all the fabulous loot Bri pulled in inspired me for my next shower...

Heather's shower was Saturday at noon at her sister's house in Beaverton, so I shopped for it Friday after work (don't be bitter Bri, you are far more practical so I figured the gift cards would be better use for you to fill in any blanks) but wrapped it out of the trunk of my car in the Bales Thriftway parking lot at 11:45 on Saturday morning. The place was PACKED. It was her formal shower as she is due in May, and seriously, it was packed. SRO, baby. There were games and stuff but you couldn't really play them because there were so many flipping people. Tracy didn't have to work for once and was able to attend, and she and I hung out and chatted most of the time. I lasted until 3 and she still wasn't through half of the presents, but even still she got a butt load of stuff and I think there has got to be something to this "shower" thing, because I want free stuff.

Meanwhile, the weather turned cold and yesterday it snowed. It was supposedly sticking in some places in the morning, but any way you slice it it is NOT supposed to snow in Portland in the middle of April. Portland MAINE, maybe, but I am pretty sure when I left Cleveland I was driving WEST. I think what I really just want is to be warm for longer than 2 days in a row.

So in the end, I'm thinking I will invent some sort of shower for people like me: something like a Spinster Shower, where people give you skeins of yarn and needlepoint patterns and big mugs for your cocoa and slippers and ornate cat food bowls and cookbooks specializing in meals-for-one and lots of Tupperware. I wonder if that would take off. I'm sick of buying my own shit.