kites and keys

life has been coming at me like an ominous storm.  i sit on my comfortable deck, see clouds that look darker and bigger than anything I've ever seen and think to myself, "oh shit."  I think to myself, I live here, I knew this storm was coming and I am the one who brought it.  For some reason I have felt very sharp and certain growing pains lately like flashes of lightning.  Not physical growing pains, but the pains you feel when tearing yourself away from something to attach yourself to something else.  I think it is good sometimes to tear yourself away from being childish or immature to attach yourself to adulthood, but my erroneous fear is always that i will destroy part of who I am in the process.  

I work at a gourmet/boutique grocer called Olives.  The store I work at is only the second.  It just recently opened on the Long Beach yuppie-boardwalk, Belmont Shores.  It is a pretty sweet job.  The owners, Erin and Laurie, are two beastly lesbians who met when they were both working high up on the chain for Whole Foods.  I am assuming that Olives was born of a rendezvous inspired by their new found sexuality.   They love specialty food and they run their business with an iron fist.  Olives is their castle and they are the kings of the castle.  If you so much as step a toe out of line, rather than spend the time and money to use a guillotine, they will just eat your head themselves.  Their professionalism is portentous to an un-human degree.   The bigger of the two, Erin, was a linebacker on her high school football team.  Have I explained enough to help you understand why they intimidate the shit out of me?  

Well I interviewed with them yesterday to be the store supervisor.  It was a gut wrenching affair to say the least.  They sat me down in an office that should have been the bathroom.  I do love our bathroom though, it is so spacious!  The whole time I am thinking to myself, "wait a second, didn't they already interview me when i first applied for the job?"  Not aware of the barrage of sharp and sticky questions and scenarios they were about to throw at me, I sat with what I was hoping looked like a confident and professional smile.  I think that my expression probably looked more like a combination of the face you make when you are crying and when you are going to the bathroom.  Over the course of the interview I actually told them that they intimidated me, I told them that I thought they had been a lot more grumpy lately with the stress of opening a new store and I actually had to ask them to repeat one of the questions mid answer because I completely blacked out and forgot what it was and what I was saying.  I am pretty sure I will get the promotion.  I find out today and will potentially start training on monday.  

While it is exciting and will mean a pretty decent raise,  it will be a big responsibility.  I've done a lot of back and forthing about wether or not I really want to take on this kind of load right now.  No longer will I get to goof around with my deli buddies behind our comfortable little sandwich station.  I will have forty year olds who have kids in college and high school coming up to me and asking me if they can take their ten-minute break.  I will have to start caring about cutting corners on the order because it is payroll week.  

So the whole storm metaphor thing comes into play when you consider that on monday i will also be starting school.  I am taking 13 units of online courses; english, political science, philosophy and early colonial history.  If anything, this means that I will be reading more than I ever have in my life.  

Understand that I am not complaining about any of this.  I just know that it will be a drastic change for me, but change is something I know that I desperately need right now.  I am excited about changing and being challenged and, in turn, growing because of it.