I am tired of living in a sauna, for one thing-- I try and keep the room nice and tropical for him, but it's damn uncomfortable for those of us without feathers. And I hate, hate, hate giving him his medicine. When I open his medicine bottle he starts freaking out-- who ever said he wasn't smart? And then I have to stick my hand in his cage and chase him down and grab him as hard as I dare. He struggles, but never bites me too hard. Mostly he just squeaks in protest ("Why, for the love of god!? Why!?!?") and it is so traumatic and horrible because he hates it so much. I bet the medicine tastes nasty too, because he doesn't seem thrilled about drinking it.

For the first few days, he didn't seem to be getting better at all. I was afraid I'd have to go back to the vet ($$$) and I was really starting to be afraid that he wasn't going to get better no matter what I did. But he seems to be doing a little better today and yesterday.

I know nobody cares about this stuff, especially on September 10, but what can I say? It's not that important in the grand scheme of things, but I love my bird.

I am also, personally, me, sick. I have a cold that's lingering annoyingly. Part of the problem is that I haven't been able to have a good night's sleep for a while. (My cousin Lucy worked 89 hours last week finishing up her work on the new Terminator movie-- she probably didn't sleep at all. She doesn't feel sorry for me.)

Sunday was the worst day, the day I had been dreading. I had to wake up at seven thirty in the morning to drive to some random place in the Oakland hills (and there's a big sign on the winding hilltop road that says "Ridgeville" or something, because all the rich people who live there are pretending that their mail doesn't go to Oakland).

Anyway the tutoring was interesting-- the first time I've tutored two kids at once. You have to make one of them feel good about getting the answers right without making the other one feel bad about getting them wrong. I think it went well, though.

(I always have this moment of dread before tutoring, like stage fright, like I really don't want to do it. But I have fun with the kids, and I think I'm good at tutoring. I always leave feeling that the time went by fast and I had a good time. I hope the apprehension part goes away soon. I don't know what it's about, really. Maybe I'm just shy.)

After the tutoring, I drove into Berkeley for a Journalcon committee meeting. That part of the day was good-- the only thing that made it stressful was that as a result of the meeting, I had to schedule tutoring very early in the morning and I only had half an hour to make it there on time. But the meeting itself was good, it was fun to see everyone, and afterwards we had lunch, so I felt fortified and ready for the real horror to come.

You see, I was working a closing shift at work. Normally that would be okay, but it was the one day of the year where they shut down the street and have a huge street festival with booths and stuff. Our store gets insanely busy on these festival days: everyone and their mother (and their mother's mother and their mother's gardener's cousin) wants a Frappuccino. We sold over 500 Frappuccinos that day.

This year's theme was "Journey of 1000 Cranes" and all the posters had folded cranes on them. I got to walk around the festival for five minutes on my break, and they were shutting down the table where (I surmised) someone was showing people how to fold cranes. I grabbed a couple of the cranes lying around, thinking of Jessamyn. I think they might have gotten too squished to send her, though. Too bad I'm too inept to fold replacements.

Almost everyone was working, and the store looked like the seventh circle of hell, and it was so hot and packed with people. The first thing I had to do was go change, and I walked past the huge line of people who had been waiting half an hour to pee, and I unlocked the door to the employee restroom and got the dirtiest looks from the people in line. "There's a TOILET in that room and you're not letting us USE IT?" I felt bad for them for a second. (Later on, when I realized they were a bunch of meanies, I went in there on purpose just to torment them.)

I thought it might be kind of fun to be so overstaffed and busy, but it wasn't fun at all, because all our customers were assholes. I mean, seriously, it was a parade of assholes with one or two cool people. One lady who was like, "Wow, you guys are really doing a good job back there" and thirty five people who were like, "Where's my fucking Frappuccino, peasant?"

They complained about everything-- the wait, the line for the bathroom, the amount of whipped cream they got on their drinks, the heat, waah waah waah. One woman asked for a free drink coupon since she had to wait twenty minutes for her-- of course-- Frappuccino. A free drink coupon! Lady, haven't you noticed that there are seven thousand people in this store right now? Shove that Frappuccino up your ass and leave me alone.

To add to the suckage, even though we had so many customers and did so much sales, nobody tipped. Our tips were lower than they would be on any other day, but we all did so much more work. So we dealt with a bunch of belligerent people who didn't tip, and went on the Journey of 1000 Frappuccinos. And the closing crew was left with the mess at the end of the night.

You should have seen it. We mopped the floor three times and it did no good. There were spills everywhere, garbage cans were overflowing, and someone set a bunch of Rice Krispie treats on fire. (Um, that was me.) It was a disaster. But at least the festival was over and the assholes went home, and one or two of our regulars came in and gave us sympathy and tips and love.

I also have a poem to post, but I'll do that tonight when I get home from tutoring. (This is being written during the window of time between Starbucks work and tutoring work.) It's not a particularly good poem, but at least it's more "September 11 appropriate" than this entry. And self-indulgent artistic garbage or not-- it's the only thing I can even think of to say.

[Except that I lied. I am not going to post self-indulgent artistic garbage after all. It's more about the first amendment than about 9/11, and that impulse has passed. It just doesn't feel right. Neither does some big melodramatic gesture. I'd try for classy, but I've never quite been able to achieve classy. So maybe I'll think of something to say tomorrow. In the meantime, plenty of people are saying plenty of things. The cacophony won't miss me.]