The day of the hump. It was a good day. Last night, I changed up my sleep routine and had 2 gummies instead of the usual 1. It seemed to worked just fine. I slept soundly, just one visit to empty a 63 year old bladder. It takes about 2 minutes to complete and I am not complaining. I do wake up before the alarm clock, sometimes 30 minutes before and I attempt to sleep soundly though the tick tick tick of the clock plays softly in my head.

I was up and out of the apartment before my usual time. Yancy was expected at the office as it is his schedule to sit in my area every other week, just like every other week, I go to the main fruit stand and work there. And Yancy and I got along fine.

He expressed his continued support for me following last week’s debacle regarding interviewers and the people that they interview. I certainly appreciate it. Marcus added his support with regards to the incident yesterday and the moving of equipment in passenger elevators.

It was stated a few times that it is not my responsibility to tell the visiting artists and their crew how to move their equipment. I knew that but I expressed a willingness to do just that. Yancy headed out before noon allowing us at the fruit stand to breathe a little bit easier though we did not have any difficulty doing that while he was there.

I know what kind of music Yancy likes and thought of the playlist to play as he sat next to my spot at the fruit stand. I decided on a Cole Porter playlist. I knew some of the songs way back when. In 1990 the Red Hot organization released the first in a series of charitable releases for AIDS research, Red Hot & Blue, contemporary artists covering Cole Porter songs.

I was working at a bourgeois bookstore in Soho and one of the store CD’s was Night & Day, a collection of yesteryear artists singing Cole Porter songs. I was not that thrilled to have to play those songs but they eventually wound their way into the jukebox of my mind and I bought both volumes of the Cole Porter collections on Verve.

Now it is a favorite of mine, so much so that I played it this morning to Yancy’s delight. It wasn’t all about Cole Porter today though. I had my usual playlist called White Mice which contains various songs that floated through my head over the years, that I heard in various places or just echoing in this skull of mine.

Of course there were the Beatles/ The other day I played Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety. Today it was A Hard Day’s Night, which held memories of driving back from the shore with Annemarie and Earl, singing along to the songs 2 of us knew inside out. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

An end result I reckon. At work, I had a problem with a fruit stand tablet. I noticed it yesterday and tried to do something about it without having to contact Yancy. But as things go, Yancy was in the mix and it did not make anything easier. In fact, it muddled the process.

I can hear his disdain over the phone. Everything he suggested I did, and he would ask if it worked to which I invariably replied, ‘No sir’. Not that it was a way to show respect, it was merely a perfunctory manner of speaking with one’s supervisor.

I did send him a message about it yesterday around 4:25PM and he replied around 8:25 AM this morning, moments before our staph meeting. Dealing with Yancy is exasperating for the both of us though my exasperation is of little or no consequence, the scully wearing supervisor dictates the rules of play, it’s his house and the house always wins.

So it was to no avail with Yancy. An hour or so later, I am in the loo and when I return to my desk, Marcus is on the phone with Yancy discussing what to do about the fruit stand tablet and Marcus and Yancy seemed to have figured it out and got things working nicely. Of course, it went nicely, I wasn’t involved and unavailable to hear Yancy’s eyes rolling back into his head.

Lunch is a few minutes away. I am not hungry having been eating most of the morning. Mike fell asleep on the couch last night. I slept OK for an hour or two, then woke up thinking it was time for me to wake up. It was not of course, I had about 4 or 5 hours to sleep and getting there did not prove to be too easy.

Bill is driving some Dominican women’s lacrosse team around an island off the coast of America. Depending on how they play, he might be back tomorrow if they do not do so well, or Saturday if they succeed in whatever they were trying to do.

I smoked a little cigar at lunch. I had been eating all morning, a bagel, a donut, some cookies and for some reason I simply was not hungry at lunchtime. I knew what I was doing somehow. My self doubts have reared their heads once more.

Marcus & Yancy fixing the problem that I could not get around set things off on that desolate path of self awareness. I decided at lunch to write down all of the requests that I fill. Not that anyone asked me to, just to satisfy my troubled mind. Within a half hour, I filled 5 requests.

I did not plow through them, I took my time, meticulous almost. And checked and double checked and even triple checked. One instance was someone requesting on behalf of their supervisor. A permanent pass was requested, but a photo was required.

I sent the template stating just that and a while later, the person that requested circumvented what I had told them. All the while my green flag was perched upon the emailed request. The circumvention had a smaller photo attached and feeling it was not my place to question their action, I processed the request.

Then going back to the request I found my green flag replaced by Janis’ blue flag. My mind reeled, questioning if I had actually placed my flag on it initially. I called Janis who spoke in hushed tones, that she was in a meeting and noticed the small photo that was attached and forwarded would be considered too small and more than likely returned to us saying just that.

She did change the flag from green to blue, from mine to hers. And now with Janis and her hushed tones, Marcus and Yancy doing what I could not, I feel that my time is running out. They’re tired of me, whatever it is, no matter, each week something happens and they have had just about enough of my work load.

I mentioned this to Mike who stepped up and reassured me that things would be OK, I would at least get a warning. But I think I have gotten a warning a few times, to pay more attention and be careful fulfilling these requests. I thought I was doing that and perhaps they might be thinking otherwise.

The Dominican womens lacross team lost and so Bill will be heading home tonight.