When I returned from lunch yesterday afternoon, my phone was ringing. I answered it, only to discover one of my least favorite customers was on the other end of the line.

“Crystal,” she says with that stereotypical Rhode Island accent that sounds like a cross between South Boston and Mike Myers’s “Coffee Talk” SNL sketches, “this is Helene*. Tell me, does this phone have voicemail.”

Cringing at the sound of her voice I tell her that all of our lines automatically come with voicemail at no charge. “How do I use it?” she inevitably asks before I can give her my voicemail-for-the-lootomized directions. I explain how all she needs to do is hold down the 1-button and follow the prompts when it’s connected. “Thank you Crystal, you’re a dear,” she says and hangs up.

She calls back less than 2 minutes later. “It says I’m connected, but it’s not showing anything, no prompts like you told me to look for.”

Firmly believing that this woman’s blonde dye has been leeching her braincells since birth and picking up on her use of the word “look”, I ask her “Did you listen to what the prompts said?”

“No, do I have to listen to the phone? It doesn’t just come up on the screen?”

*facepalm*

I spent the day working, and managed to sell 1 phone and do an upgrade. That’s a whopping $10 in commission for today. The store was packed; there were more people in there today than in the week before Christmas. It was insane. People everywhere, kids screaming, at least 5 pages for little kids who had lost their parents and wandered up to the front desk.

On the Casa McBride front: We’re hopefully getting a bed this weekend. It’s a queensize platform with the memory foam stuff. It’s my birthday present, since I asked for a bed for Christmas. We were/are looking into getting something like this for a house. We don’t need anything huge for a house, and hell, we could fit the largest of those into my Mom’s backyard. Eddie cleaned up the kitchen. And my desk. And his desk. I’m going to finish up the dishes and stuff tomorrow, since my new schedule goes into effect and I’ve got the next two days off. We’ve been really, really slacking with the housework. In the process of cleaning we ended up accumulating $66 in change between stuff picked up or found in clothes or in my purse, so that went towards picking up some stuff for dinner tonight and tomorrow, along with some fruit for me to munch and chicken strips for lunches.

After nearly 4 years one of my nipple piercings has decided to migrate out and is especially painful when I’m, um, perky. Given that this is midwinter in Rhode Island, this means that unless I’m in the shower and very, very warm, it’s painful all the time. Unfortunately, I can’t get a grip on the balls and therefore can’t touch my right nipple, so Eddie’s going to buy me some rubber gloves tomorrow. Bras are uncomfy, and forget about handling the ta-tas (the right one anyway). Not fun. So this means that I’ll have 1 piercing intact out of all of the ones I’ve had done, since last month I took my slowly rejecting industrial out and replaced it with 2 considerably smaller rings, and the hood piercing failed dismally after 4 months.