Getting Settled

Starting a new job with a real company with rules, the day after arriving home from the other side of the world, is not something I would recommend to young graduates or other quarter-aged people trying to make a living in the world. Day one as a floral designer consisted of many many yawns and even more blank stares as they taught me to use the computer’s Floral Software. They were very kind to me. Several times throughout my first week my boss asked if I’d like to go home and take a nap and come back if I felt up to it. “Are you kidding? There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” I slurred to her with my eyes closed. In reality I had been imagining my bed since I'd gotten there that morning and there was nowhere I'd have rather been less but there wasn't a chance I was taking that out. If there's one thing I am, it's a darn good employee. Things have gotten much less exhausting since then and I have learned my way around he hotel and the floral studio. The studio has lime green walls, a giant cooler full of flowers, and a creepy picture of a little girl in a flower crown. The little girl watches me all day and I hate it. You'll see her in the background of some of these pictures.
The front of the shop has our display cooler, the creepy girl, and all of our vases. We do most of our work in the back half of the shop so we constantly try to herd people up by the front door so that they won't see the huge mess in the back. The floor is always littered with petals, there's water everywhere, buckets, and sticks and stumps. It's much less picturesque than you would imagine. Lots of safety hazards.

For the hotel, there are about 48 arrangements to make between Tuesday and Thursday. All of them have different requirements in height, cost, color, whether or not I can use scented flowers, and also there are specifics on the degree of vase transparency. It’s like having 50 children who are all allergic to something different. We must also provide 180 roses (processed and trimmed) for various hotel restaurants, bars, and club level guests. In addition to these things we keep about 8 arrangements ready-made for any walk-in customers and we are also at the mercy of the hotel concierge who will call and order everything from a single red rose to $100 arrangements for guests that he really wants to wow. And have I mentioned we do weddings on the weekend?

There are three of us. Elizabeth takes orders, emails brides and vendors, orders flowers, and takes care of all the paper work while Sheila and I make our way down the list of arrangements, highlighting the ones we’ve finished and just checking to make sure were not working on the same thing.

Somehow we get this done on time every week and it’s actually not a stressful process. The challenge of this job is making everything look different from all the others and also different from last week. There is a set stash of flowers (lilies, roses, and orchids) that we use every week because they have proven to still look good seven days later. We have other filler flowers that change each week but somewhere around arrangement number 32, you think you may have made one like this already.

What I like best is that the gals trust me. They don’t watch me work and the boss lady might look at every 15^th arrangement I send out. “Looks good.” she’ll say and then sit at her desk and crack open a granola bar. She is a slender, pretty woman and truly she eats all day long. Fruit, salads, granola bars, carrots, pumpkin seeds, yogurt, cucumbers. It’s constant and it’s amazing.

Ellen has started and written off her new career as a high-school teacher. Them kids ain’t real nice. What she tells us of high-school kid behavior is enough to make you want to stomp up in there and give those kids an old-fashioned talking to. I’m appalled by their behavior. Appalled. You’ll have to hear her tell it. I think it will all get better in time and Ellie Bells will be a good warden in the end. It’s just that she and her students have little patience with each other. 

Chris continues running the show over there at Duvall and coming home to Princess Black Cloud sitting up in bed scowling with a bowl of ice cream. Even calm, blasé Chris has had to give Ellen a few Dad-like lectures.

Dad continues living most of his weeks up in Lynchburg. Things are going well he says and he magically comes home and falls right back into place here on the weekends. He tends to the yard and the house and the cars. Lately I’ve had lots of projects for him and he happily bounds from one thing to the next and then packs up and leaves again on Monday. Though I don’t usually see my folks during the week, something about knowing he’s not here makes me sad and I can’t wait for the whole Lynchburg project to be over. I’m sure Mom feels the same way.

Mom nearly threw her back out last week and so sat up very straight for several days. She hemmed and hawed when reaching for her water glass and opening mail and everyday gave me an update about how things were healing. Sometimes I think Mom’s gentle ladylikeness is pushing her into premature aging of the spirit. Like sometimes I think she thinks she too old to lift things or walk fast. And she’s taken too much of an interest in what goes on in the neighbor’s yard. Get it together Moppy! You’ve still got a ways to go and I have no interest in doing this life without you.

In other news, we had a very brief Jared visit. He came to town for a few days to say hello. We had a beach day, a few meals out, and he told us all about his potential move to Los Angeles. He just might move to California.

Ari is doing sensationally over in Athens and has made friends and adopted her first cat. She was struggling for a name for the new gal so as an intermediate name I began referring to her as Mable Simmons. It accidentally stuck and now Ari has a cat named Mable. Watching Ari experience kitty parenthood for the first time has gotten me all excited about cats and now I really want one. Fortunately I’m far too poor to afford a vet bill and far too cheap to spend good plane ticket money on a litter box I have no space for. Fortunately I’m still selfish, is what I’m saying so I won’t be getting a cat just yet.

I just now feel like I've gotten things in order again. It was a real frenzy to come home and start a new gig and have a friend come to town while you're trying to unpack and pay bills and just catch up in general. I just hung up my trip laundry yesterday, if that gives you any idea. It's been almost a month. 

It's amazing how things can just pop up and steal all your time from you.