For the first time in my life, I am suffering from what I can only presume are allergies. A couple of weeks ago, I caught a cold, and when the stuffy nose and sore throat went away, the red, weepy eyes and sneezing fits did not. Laaame. Apparently my body feels that I need to solidify my position in the social hierarchy–making other people look like ‘The Pretty Friend’ by comparison. You’re welcome, jackholes.

I am now on week three of the Elegant Swan Shoe Hunt, which is quickly becoming the Desperate to Find Anything That Doesn’t Suck Shoe Hunt. Not kidding, guys. I’ve taken tomorrow and Friday off of work so that I can hopefully wrap ALL of this bridesmaid shit up (shoes, tailor, fancy undergarments, humiliating party favors, etc etc) and not think about it anymore.

The hunt would be over if I could justify spending three hundred dollars on a pair, but since I don’t live in Sex in the City New York, but rather Meth in the City Kent, I instead went to the SuperMall in Auburn to see what the Nordstrom Rack had in terms of shoes.

Whatever is causing my allergies was particularly unkind to me last night, and while I stood there, picking up various hideous shoes (god, when did clear acrylic heels come back into fashion? Is this ‘Hooker Chic’?), with Billy Ocean’s ‘Get out of my dreams, get into my car’ playing on the overhead speaker system, my eyes started gushing tears. Gushing. People started backing away, evidently believing that I either (a)was crazy or (b)had some sort of traumatic childhood abduction experience when a wild and crazy pedophile pulled his van over to the side of the road, blocking my bike, leaning out the window, pointing at me and singing “Get out of my dreams (get in the backseat baby!), get into my car!” and some backup singers dressed in sequins and tied with rope popped their heads out of the truck and echoed the refrain. Or something.

Either way, I learned that weeping-allergy eyes in public = instant leper. This may be useful knowledge the next time I go to a theme park. Don’t stand next to me in line, or I’ll weep all over you while a cartoon rabbit does a jig to the Venga Bus song.

No luck in the shoe department last night. However, I did locate an essential item for the bachelorette party. When I stepped up to the counter to purchase it, the clerk remarked “Ah, so you’re going to be in a wedding, too, huh?” I informed her that this was my small, petty revenge on the bride for asking me to do this in the first place. The clerk told me that in a week, she is the maid of honor in two weddings on the same day–one at eleven in the morning and one at 6pm. And since the brides have gone with radically different color schemes, she can’t re-use her dress. That’s pretty impressive, to wear two dresses she’ll never wear again over the course of one day. The clerk must have thought I was emotionally moved by her plight, considering the way I kept weeping at the counter.

Verdict: Allergies suck and so does the SuperMall.

In my first 45 minutes in the workplace today, I have unloaded (according to the shipping documents) three thousand two hundred and thirty one POUNDS of slot machines. Not with a pallet jack, oh no. The pallets were too small. I performed this feat with a hand truck. The truck driver helped by watching me and offering such encouragements as “Girl, you got it goin’ ON” and “DAAAAMN!”

I feel noodly and ready to die. And there is a terrifyingly large swelling on my right bicep now–WTF?

That is all.

Wait, I also just got this email from President Wonka, who is on vacation with his wife in New Orleans:

You’d be proud, both my wife and I had Tarot Card readings in a Voodoo shop tonight. So unlike us, who knows maybe tomorrow we get our nipples pierced-and chained together.

Should I be concerned that this is what my boss thinks I’m into, because I personally don’t think voodoo-nipple-people get promotions in a corporate-style environment, or should I be suggesting gauge size?

I wasn’t able to leave work yesterday to visit a close friend who had been hospitalized for meningitis; immediately after I told The Troll I wanted to leave early, she got a phone call and rushed out for a ‘family emergency’, effectively trapping me at work since at least once of us has to be here.

The woman has more family emergencies than anyone I’ve ever met–but with a mother who could take a lead role in a remake of ‘what’s eating gilbert grape’*, three obnoxious high-school-dropout kids, and scads of close relatives with major drug problems**, one would expect that she’d have a higher-than-average number.

What was the emergency this time? Her 17 year old daughter is pregnant. Not like she wouldn’t still be pregnant if Mom rushed home, but whatever.

The part that made me crack my spleen attempting to stifle my laughter is when she told someone in the office, and his reaction was “No way! How did it happen?”

…I’m pretty sure it was sometime around when a penis came in contact with a vagina.

*That emergency involved mom putting a leg through the stairs. **One of these emergencies involved her sister having some sort of gengrenous vaginal emergency after shooting heroin up in her hoo-hah.