Friday, June 01, 2007

Ho-oowl

Full moon and it really has pressed in today, hasn't it?

Things that should have been relatively stress-free seemed laden...

Friday is generally a good morning - no lunch to cut as I am Tuckshop Jeanie every second Friday... except today had a kink in its smooth flow...

Today is the start of the month which means one LARGE amount of money generally disappears from my account near the start of the month and the problem was that today that money was not going to be in there to disappear until I put it in there, as YESTERDAY was the Local Show Holiday - which means that every business in town was shut.

So today I would have to fit in a visit to the bank - and with the Tuckshop Jeanie Sash comes the pricetag of a large chunk of child-free time in which to do Tuckshop duty and a very small sliver to devote to Jeanie oriented duties.

I explained my dilemna to Tuckshop Tish (the Lady High Chieftress of Kingdom Tuckshop) and she was benign in her offer of a pardon once orders were sorted - ahh, relief.

Unfortunately Tuckshop Tish's extensive family compound had a medical emergency, and as she is Lady High Chieftress there too, I was benign in my offer to take on the mantle in Kingdom Tuckshop - and my window of opportunity to do the mercy dash to the bank was tightened.

After feeding all the little blighters refuelling the bottomless gullets of the sweet children of 'Salina's school, I cleaned and ran my fingers through the gold and silver, threw the money at the office and drove the 15km to "town" - it took 15 minutes. The queue at the bank wandered to the entrance and every transaction was taking each of the 3 attendants a long, l-o-n-g time indeed.

I can't say I panicked, but I watched the 50 minutes allocated for the whole job s-l-o-w-l-y diminish as I did high level physics and mathematical equations in my head over the probability of me arriving home before my daughter was dropped off by the school bus (very low) VS the chance of a message actually reaching her at the school to not take the school bus. It was very convoluted and would possibly need diagrams to explain adequately.

That didn't really move the line along, so I let the coin lie on the latter and rang the school.

The guy in front of me in the line had two broken fingers - his little and ring - and they were intricately bound. His phone rang (interesting porn music crossed with rock beat) and his conversation ran thus. "Hello... That's right... Yep, I can... Mm-hmm... Okay... Uh-huh... Yeah, bye." I think he was a drug dealer.

There was two women getting hundreds of dollars - paid in 20s, 10s and 5s. I couldn't work it out. Do people still get paid in cash, or did they have huge broods of children somewhere getting show or pocket money?

I know you are not meant to eavesdrop in banks, but what else can you do? The rotating ads about how wonderful the bank and the banks products are can be repetitious - and the walls are covered with posters about wonderful the bank and the banks products are. Anyone know any good bank games?

An old man was taking his time transferring thousands of dollars from one account to another and querying the fee structures on the various bank products his portfolio was involved in.

A mother with 2 kids was unable to do something because some card or signature that was meant to be there wasn't there and the junior teller had nothing to offer her in the way of solutions - that needed a conference of one of the other working tellers and someone slightly higher up the food chain. Luckily the older kid was really switched on in entertaining the toddler, because otherwise there may have been some real theatrics.

I looked back and was somewhat enthused that, although my place in the line had not advanced very far, my position in regards to the end of the queue had improved markedly.

A Lady in the uniform of a major hardware chain started fidgeting and complaining to the guy in front of her how she had just ducked out to do the bank crawl and she could only imagine how the queue was where she was meant to be at her place of work.

Another phone rang, and two guys in line started the phone search - check the bag, the pockets - the guy closer to me got to his phone first, but I think it was the farther back guy's call. Closer guy started to pretend to text someone.

Finally it was my turn to front the tellers, and I thrust the wads of cash at the teller who processed it in record time - I think we were both relieved at the brevity of our relationship - and I hit the bitumen back.

Thankfully my gamble paid off, as 15 minutes after the bus would have deposited my child at the empty house I collected 'Salina from school.

I only had to stop at the shops, collect the mail, send a fax to some people I worked for this week so they can put some more money into my account in the near future, make a call to my old friends. Remember, the ones who forgot to pay me for an April invoice by the start of May? Well, I guess the subject keeps on slipping their minds, because it is now officially June and part of the reason for the need to deposit money into my account is because no other beggars (such as this company) is doing it for me. I am starting to think they don't want to talk to me given the voicemails I have had to access and lack of returned calls... I am thinking that I shall have to, I don't know, beg or threaten - and I am NOT THAT SORT OF GIRL.

Anyhow - why am I still wound up - and over what? Enough money is in the bank, the day is over and I have had a wonderful dinner with my darling V and beautiful 'Salina and, although the Broncos just lost I live in Paradise.

I feel I just have to blame the moon.

Tomorrow is an early start as we are going to the Abercorn Goodwill Games and the Abercorn State School 80th Birthday celebrations. 'Salina, myself and a friend's son will be travelling 175km to watch lots of kids running around and having a ball, and then travel back 175km in the afternoon - I might tell you about it some time soon.

I was going to give you a link to the info on the above, but I just checked it, and had to laugh:
To celevreate the school's 80th Anniversary, special commemorative bottles and postcarrds will be available on the day.

Hmm - spellcheck. I think I might get some "postcarrds"

Well, I might go and slide in next to V and say goodnight to the moon - I hope that tomorrow is less affected by its orb.

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