Disgruntled Employee of the Year

So, it was her third year at this black hole of a job. Most people think of their work places as some sort of place they don't want to be. For Steffanie however, she considered a black hole, not because of the long hours that she spent here, the fact that she hadn't had a raise in a long time, and the monotonous work she was required to do. No, these things she could deal with, to an extent, they were a little like Chinese water torture at times, but she was a strong woman. The reason she thought of this place a black hole was because of it's soul sucking properties. Sort of like those dark creepy flying creatures from the Harry Potter movies, this place just seemed to drain all the good and happy qualities out of a person. She had seen it time and again from her perch at the front desk of the company. They would come in bright eyed and expectant, newly graduated from the local university and ready to start their first real job. As a few weeks went by though, slowly the glow would leave their eyes, the smiles would become more forced, and the tension in their shoulders would increase to the point that some of them, without even realizing were slouching more, walking funny, rubbing aching shoulders. These were just the affects upon a person in the first few weeks or months of employment, depending on the willpower and strength a person possessed upon arrival. After a year or so, the cynisism and skeptisism would set in. Not trusting anybody around them, thinking everybody was after them, these of course were either proceeded or preceeded by the rumor mills and the power hungry race for more power in the company. They reminded Steffanie of ravenous creatures that were kept in a hole and only fed once a month. Feeding off of each other misfortunes or each others remains so to speak, if one of them did not "make it" in the climb up the corporate ladder. In any case, they were so entangled and entranced by their greed and their minor accomplishments that they had lost sight of the fact that they were working in an industry that not only did not have any higher oportunites to offer them, but would likely be obsolete in the coming years. Steffanie did not care about all this. She did care that her co-workers had once been friends, and just all around good people with happy lives and fulfilling relationships before they had sold their souls to this place. Since only shells of them remained however, she was hard pressed at this juncture to conjure up a scrap of sympathy for their stupidity. They had thought they had wanted this, and even when it had become something different from what they had hoped for, they had continued along the dark road anyways. They had chosen their path. Steffanie was really the only one among them who was different. She had not come from the same back ground seeking the same thing as the others, she had not been starry-eyed when she had walking in through that front door. She had gotten here through trickery and deceit, she had stolen this job right out from under her own cousin. She had not even wanted this job, but she needed a job and it was available. She secretly laughed at her fellow workers as they struggled against one another for something she didn't even want. She watched as they tried to pay off school bills for the degree they had wasted so much time getting to have the exact same job that she had. They didn't pay a whole lot of attention to Steffanie. She had been here longer than most of them, but had not seemed to move up much in the company in the years she had been here. They did not see her as a threat to them. She did not have a degree, she wasn't clamboring for their positions, she wasn't kissing anybody's ass to get to the top. What they didn't know however, was that she was already exactly where she wanted to be. She was already at the hub of activity. She was not immersed in all of the petty projects and undercurrents of the company, but instead at a vantage point where she could see the big picture. This was perfect, as she was not only an employee of Lush Valley Vineyards, but a smuggler and an assassin as well. When she had first been approached at her job, shortly after she had started working here, she thought the idea of operating a smuggling ring from a winery was probably a good idea, as they ship all over the world, but what could an assassin possibly do hidden away at a little vineyard in California?

A Friend in the Dark

As soon as the danger had passed, the young man grabbed Samantha's hand and started walking down the alleys to what looked to be a storage shed at the end of a narrow alley. He led her inside and let go of her hand. There was a small lantern lit in the corner that gave off a little light. A few mounds of blankets moved on the floor as they entered, and Samantha realised that there were others in the small room. "I'm Josiah." He said, turning and handing her a blanket. "You can sleep here for the night." "Thanks." she said, timidly taking the blanket from his hand. "Got a name?" he said grinning at her with that mischevious grin she had seen earlier. "Oh, sorry, my name is Secret." she said smiling back. The name had just fallen over her lips before she had thought about it. "That's an odd name." He said, shrugging his shoulders and turning to find another blanket for himself. She didn't comment, there wasn't much to say since she agreed with him. She hadn't even known she had decided to use it until it popped out, but it was too late now. "Well, sleep tight." He said, making a spot for himself and curling up under his blanket next to somebody. There wasn't much room on the floor not to be next to somebody, so she did the same. The next morning she awoke to find herself alone in the shed. The others were gone, as well as their blankets. They had left her with her blanket. As she went outside she could tell by the sun that it was well into mid morning. How had she slept so late in such a strange place? Where had the other's gone? Well, it did not matter, she wasn't planning on living there in that shed or anything, she needed to get on with finding how to make some money so that she could eat. If she needed to she could always come back here for the night. She rolled up the blanket and stashed it behind a loose board in the shed. She did not want to walk about with it all day, it would just add to her ragtag appearance. She wandered around London again as she had the day before, with no sense of a direction to go in, or an idea of what to do. She hoped if she paid attention and kept moving that an idea or something would occur to her. Her stomach growled and started gnawing at itself. Late in the afternoon, when she could hardly take the hunger anymore, she finally got up the courage to snag a loaf of bread from a cart and took off running. She cradled the bread close to her as she dipped under horses, and ducked and swerved around people. Finally she thought she had lost them in the crowd, so she turned quickly down an alley and sank down behind a barrel to eat. Panting from the running, her heart pounding, she ripped off a piece the bread. It had been baked fresh this morning and was still soft, she eagerly popped a big fluffy white piece into her mouth and hardly chewed before she swallowed and popped in another. Just as her heart was starting to calm she heard a rustle from further down the alley. Her head jerked quickly to the left to see what imminent danger faced her now. Her eyes widened as she saw 3 men with clubs and knives in hand coming her direction. They were grungy and dressed in non-descript moth eaten clothing. They looked hungry as they eyed her bread and the one nearest her had a sinister gap-toothed grin. She turned to run back out of the alley, better to risk her chances with the city guard than these men, but suddenly her head was jerked back as one grabbed her hair. They ripped the loaf of bread from her hands which she would gladly have given them to let her go, but then they threw her halfway down the alley and started to beat her and kick her. Ripping at her clothing and tearing at her hair. She struggled to cry out between blows to her stomach that knocked the wind out of her, but she could do nothing but gasp for breath. What little she had managed to eat came back up onto the dirt alley floor to mix with her blood and tears. Blackness threated to creep in on her consciousness and she wavered in and out. Finally, the men stopped and ran off laughing with each other. Clearly they had only beaten her for sport. When she thought of what else they could have done she shuddered. Laying there, she was too warn out to move.

Do your friends own you?

You love your friends, and you want to be there for them when they are having a rough time, and you of course want to be there when times are good, that's just human nature. Do you ever get the feeling that your friends own you though? Everybody, even if they don't think they do, needs time for themselves. I'm not just talking about time that they can do what they want, I'm talking about time where they can be completely alone. It's good for us, it gives us a chance to think and examine ourselves, and learn more about ourselves and how we operate. It is difficult to get any time to yourself in this age of technology however. Even when you are alone, half the time we are either on Facebook, where we are still communicating with each other, or our phone keeps buzzing with incoming text messages. You may not feel like your friends own you, or you may. Some friends just text once in a while when they want you to come hang out and do stuff. Some friends text you when they are bored and they need your imagination and your presence to help ward off the boredom. It's nice to be needed and wanted, and its a good feeling when people always want to hang out with you and talk to you and get your opinions and advice on stuff. This isn't exactly what I'm talking about when I say that your friends may think they own you though. I'm talking about those friends, maybe you have one of these, or maybe you have a couple, or maybe you are lucky enough not to have one, but I'm talking about the ones the dangerous ones. The friends that need you the most, or constantly, the ones that say they are always there for you, but disregard your feelings, and can't see how you feel about them because they are so wrapped up in how they feel about you. If you have a friend that gets upset with you when you hang out with other people, whether they are present or not, that is a dangerous friend to have. If you have a friend that gets upset with you every time you don't answer a text message, everytime you aren't there for them when they need you, that is a dangerous friend to have. Some of these people are harmless, but some of them may come from emotionally unstable backgrounds, and they do in actuality need you, or at least somebody, and they have temporarily latched onto you. They can be great friends to have as long as things are good and they are getting what they need and want from you. Which may be all of your time and attention and leave you with none left for yourself. Watch out as soon as you try to put a little distance between you and this friend though. You will feel guilty at first, because you don't want to turn your back on them. Then you will reach a point where you may get so exasperated that you just want to be away from them and don't know how to get away. So, now we come to the part where you save yourself. Unless you are a professional psychiatrist, or a counselor of some sort, you probably aren't going to be able to help this person. In fact, your continued presence int their life may even be hurting them, depending on how much they are relying on you, because eventually you will keep letting them down and it will damage them even further since they are already emotionally off balance. So, back to how to get rid of them. Ignoring them is not going to work. It's going to hurt them, and they will find some way to get back at you for it since, the reason they have latched onto you probably either stems from previous abandonment issues or emotional abuse and that is just furthering it. So, this is unproven, but my theory is that people who act like this, and are depressed and emotionally damaged like this generally have remained so because of a lack of God in their lives. Everybody goes through things in this life, that's part of our fallen world, but it really does boil down to how you react to it, and those who have God in their lives are time and again proven to be able to rise out of the ashes of their broken lives because they know in their hearts that this is just a trial and their true life is yet to come, when they will not have to deal with anything unpleasant ever again. If you start to talk to your "friend" about finding a counselor or a church and having God in their lives, one of two things will most likely happen. 1: they will start listening to what you have to say, and they will in turn, change into a person that is emotionally stable, with hope and strength in themselves and will be transformed into a person that is trustworthy, and cabable of carrying out a healthy relationship with themselves, you, and others. 2: They will eventually stop talking to you because people don't like to be preached at and hopefully they will find God on their own, or through somebody down the road when their hearts are more receptive to listening. Either way, you avoid the danger that these people can bring to you and themselves. Now, i'm off to prove my theory...

Cold Night

Samantha made her way down the street. She wasn't sure exactly where she was going, but she decided if the orphanage was going to simply cut ties with her so directly and so difinitively, she might as well put some distance between it and herself and try to get a fresh start on her "adult" life. Maybe she would go by the name her mother had originally given her, it seemed fitting if she was to have a new life it might be the best way. Not that anyone in this outside world would know her anyways. Maybe going by a new name would help her not to think of her old life, not to become homesick for what she once had, or not to think of the horrors of being an orphan, and to concentrate on becoming something other than what she had been born into. Late afternoon came quickly, as she made her way through winding streets, some were dirt and walled on each side by dark colored buildings of brick and painted wood, some dilapidated and nearly crumbling from their foundations, others sturdy and castle-like. Other streets were covered in cobblestones and busy with wagons, carts, carriages, people on horseback, and donkey, and of course most afoot. There were shops with colorful signs and beautiful displays, and there were carts with flowers and trinkets and fruits and vegetables of all kinds. She didn't think she had ever seen so much food in all her life. Her stomach growled as she looked at the shiny apples, but the way the shopkeepers and cart owners eyed her as she walked by she dare not try to grab any. She eyed them just as warily, furtively looking for one that was not paying her any attention. Finally, she happened upon a cart that was piled high with fruits of various size and shape, some of which she was not even sure what it was. It wasn't as if the orphanage had had the best variety of such fresh produce, even though it seemed to be in abundance in this side of town. She quickly snatched up something oblong in shape and greenish yellow in color and slipped into the crowd that was milling around the cart. The owner, a harried looking fat little balding man seemed too busy with bartering house servants to notice her anyways. She smiled as she slowed her pace so as not to attract attention. As she looked up though, she saw a young man watching her from where he was leaning against against a wall at the top of some stone steps. Her eyes widened for a moment with fear as she prepared to run into the crowd and attempt to disappear, but just when she was about to turn tail, a sideways grin split his face, and she saw his head bob as he gave a short chuckle. She looked at him quizzically for a moment and then looked quickly away and continued walking. At least she had acquired something to keep the hunger pains at bay for a bit. Now she needed to find someplace to bunk down for the night.
Night fell quickly and the streets seemed to empty almost as if on cue. There were a few people still out, and some constables of course. She avoided them at all cost lest they think she was a runaway and try to throw her in jail. Though that would solve her problem of where to sleep for the night. London's jails were not a place one wanted to be though, even lacking a bed. She knew from stories from Miss Higgins that they were full of scary people who wanted to harm you, not to mention the rats and lice, and human excrement. The orphanage had had mice, no rats though, and Miss Higgins made the girls do laundry so often that their hands were all cracked and red, so Samantha was fairly certain they didn't have lice. She walked down the street, looking carefully around her trying to see in the darkness, the street lamps let out little light in the moist night air. Suddenly a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shadows. She was about to let out a scream when a hand went over her mouth and she was pulled into somebody. "Shhhh. You don't want them to catch you." A voice said, spinning her around to face him. it was the young man from earlier.

Now Hiring! Please, only people with visible tattoos

So, the guy I am dating wanted to surprise me one day and decided that he would surprise me with us getting tattoos together. Now as we are not crazy people who get hammered off our asses and run out to a tattoo parlor and pick some random picture off a clip-art poster flip board, it's kind of hard to spring that kind of an idea. So he did end up making an appointment, with a tattoo artist we both know and trust, and who had already done my first tattoo, and of course, he ended up telling me about the idea, before just driving me to the tattoo shop. Thank goodness, because I might have freaked out. Luckily, I already knew what my next tattoo idea was going to be, I just hadn't firmly resolved myself to the idea of getting it. However, as I am a person who appreciates spontaneity and am constantly trying to find such a thing in my friends and love interests, I appreciated this show of it on his part, so I went ahead and got a tattoo! My first tattoo was on my back, so I didn't have a whole lot of time looking at it and thinking it over and trying to decide if I had done the right thing after it was all said and done, because aside from the fact that obviously I will always know in the back of my head that it is there, I rarely ever see it unless I am half naked and there are mirrors present. This also means that others don't see usually see it either haha. This new one however, it right on my wrist, in a very visible spot to myself as well as others. I got it 3 days ago, and I have already gone through a few stages of shock, joy, regret, resolve, pride, and a few other undiscernable emotions. Boiling down to my firm love of anything piratey though, I am proud of it, and I don't care what anybody else thinks. I think the only regrets I had anyways were from thinking of what other people might think of it, but that is not how a true pirate girl myself has every operated, so why start now? Someday all the disapproving old business people who look down upon us youngsters who are covered in tattoos will be gone and the world will be ruled by tattooed freaks. Then the ones that will be getting the dirty looks will be the ones without tattoos! haha, the world really is subjective to the norms of its time. Women who wore pants were once looked down upon, and now look where we are.

Lightning Strikes

Samantha slipped into Miss Higgin's office and stood waiting for the Mistress to look up from her desk. After a moment went by, Miss Higgins looked up, pulling her spectacles down her nose and looking over them up at Samantha. "Well, it's about that time I would say, here you go." She said, handing a small box to Samantha. "What's this?" Samantha asked, taking the box cautiously. "Why, it's your birthday present." Samantha's eyebrows rose, she had had 15 birthdays here and this was the first time she had been given anything. She opened it carefully and looked inside. All that was there was a note, a sketch of a man and a woman, and a small necklace with a cross on it. "That's all that was left with you when you were dropped off at my doorstep." Miss Higgins said. "Why are you giving it to me now?" Samantha wanted to know. "Well, you're 16 now. Today was your last day here. You still have plenty of daylight left. You're a smart girl, i'm sure you'll be just fine." She had risen from her desk and had put her arm around Samantha's shoulder and somehow Samantha had not noticed that they were standing at the front door to the Orphanage. She was so shocked she did not know what to say. "But..." was all that came out. "You can't be a child forever my dear, it's time to grow up and join the real world." Miss Higgins said as she opened the door and made a gesture as if the world was full of great things and opportunities to be explored. It was a little hard for Samantha to see that at this junction though, all she could see were the filthy streets, the dirty, hungry people, and the fear of leaving the only home she had ever known and joining them threated to make her lose her lunch. "Well, off you go, the world is waiting for you." Miss Higgins said. Then she actually hugged Samantha, who returned it unconsciously, her mouth still hanging open in surprise. "You're one of the ones I will actually miss I think." Miss Higgins muttered half to herself as she patted Samantha on the back and slipped back into the orphanage, shutting the door behind her. Samantha half thought to pound on the door and beg and plead or demand or whatever it took to be let back in. She knew it would do no good though, she had seen this happen to other girls, and many of them had knocked at the door until their hands bled, all to no avail. Rules were rules here, and they would not be broken for anyone. She did stare at the door for a long moment as she pondered these things though, and then she turned to face the street. She hadn't a penny in her pocket, Miss Higgins wouldn't have had a spare one to give her. The necklace she had just received was worthless as far as money was concerned. It was the only thing left from her parents though, so she wasn't sure if she would have parted with it anyways. The sketch must have been some poor street artist's rendition of them, she could barely make it out for how old and wrinkled it was though. The note was a simple, "please take care of my dear baby girl, I am too poor and my husband is dead. Her name is Secret." Wait, what? Samantha's eyes were so teared up that she could scarcely see the page through the water in them. She brushed away the tears with the back of her hand and blinked until she could see and then read the note again. "My name is Secret?" She muttered to herself. Does that mean that it's a secret, or that it is Secret?" She shook her head, looking around suddenly to see if anybody was watching her talk to herself. She read it about 3 more times until she came to the distinct conclusion that her name was actually Secret. Why had she been called Samantha all these years? Maybe Miss Higgins had been confused to, and had decided to name her herself. In any case, it was a lot to think about, and she needed to find some place to sleep for the night.

Fasting Sucks

So, it's the beginning of the year and I thought I would start this year out with the most ridiculous healthy nut fitness training crap ever. Everybody does it right? Just like everybody goes out and gets hammered on New Year's Eve and starts the year out with a nice hangover. Well, 2012 seems to be a little off. I don't know if it's because people think that a meteor is going to destroy the earth and this is their last year or what, but everybody seemed to stay home and being boring on NYE, maybe that is just a product of the fact that I am getting older. I was totally in the mood to go out and do something that night though, just couldn't find anybody to do it with. I had already spent an hour on my hair and had picked out an outfit, and I was trying to get off work as quickly as possible, all my effort for nothing...Anyways, back to my crazy hair-brained health nut thing. So, Christmas was the last day I drank, and I decided to go for 2 months with no alcohol (20 days is the longest I have ever calculated going), and work out every single day (in preparation for the last hair-brained idea I had, which was to do Tough Mudder...again.) Then I decided to do all these cleanses and detoxes and eat crazy healthy food at the same time that I am refraining from drinking the wine that I work with every day, and the awesome local beers that I have to pour for people at my other job, and of course, my beloved rum. After all, what is a good little pirate wench without her rum? I'll tell you what she is, she's hyper-spastic (that's what I like to call the symptoms of my ADHD which are at full throttle these days), over talkative, bored, hungry, way to smart, (see I drink alcohol to kill off the extra brain cells so everybody else can keep up. :-P ), and sober...and did I mention really hungry? I'm coming to the end of a 3 day fast, which I have to say, did help with taking away some of the energy, especially in the evenings. Anyways, there's the drunken, er, sober ramblings of a starving pirate chick.