Friday morning, after having roused enough to shower with belovedest and see them off to work, I was awakened by the phone. It was the temp agency, wondering if I could get myself to the Kent area, today. Several people had flaked on an assignment, and it wasn't office work, but ... ???

It seemed that some geniuses in a factory somewhere had carelessly failed to include a screw in ... about 96 ... pallets of floor squeegies. 20 boxes per pallet. 6 squeegies per box.

Thanks to Stray Puppy Girl not having anything more important at that hour, I was able to get there for five-ish hours of opening up the boxes, packing-taping a baggie with a screw to the handles, and re-boxing them.

The job site's address of record is on a street that does not have direct access to the warehouse. This is, succinctly put, bullshit. It was a problem for Stray Puppy Girl dropping me off, and partner picking me up.

We were set up on a table made of pallets and industrial cling-wrap, in sort of an assembly line. There weren't quite enough box cutters or tape guns to go around. The company was good, at least, even though my hands got banged up a little and my feet were very sore.

Belovedest picked me up after they got out of work, since that made the most sense. (That did cut into their date night with Leopard Girl, which was unfortunate, but these things do happen.)

By the time I got home, I was simultaneously ravenous and out of the energy it would have taken to make a meal by myself (partner did offer to help start it, but since they couldn't guarantee that they'd also be present to finish it, that wouldn't help very much). So it was a takeout burger for me. On the way, I burst into tears about the fact that there is a societal expectation that a functional person should be able to do eight hours of manual labor and then cook from scratch. And here I was, nonfunctional after a mere five hours.

The Dr. Pepper did a deal to improve my state of mind.

There was more on Monday. This time, belovedest dropped me off. It was a late night for them at work, so I needed to find my own way home at the end of the day.

The seven person crew powered our way through a hell of a lot of pallets, and finished the job (it could have continued to Tuesday if we hadn't finished). We let out at 3:20.

Some of the same people from the previous day were present. There was one guy who decided he was done with getting older around age 25. Somehow, "18 in the 80s" became "18 in the 1880s", and then I asked if he'd got turned to a vampire at age 25. He'd worked some fascinating jobs, including at a sex toy shop.

I asked if anyone could give me a lift to the nearest bus stop, but nobody was up for that. I debated calling for a ride, and decided that I could walk a mile or so.

Walking the better part of a mile up a hill is certainly a thing. Then there was the downhill and flat part of it. All in all, in my state after working the nearly eight hour day, it took me an hour and a half to get to the bus stop. My bus left as I was waiting to cross the street. (And I'll shortly be emailing the contact person for the city's transportation engineering department, because I had to rely on the common sense of drivers to stop while I was in the crosswalk with a favorable signal. Something should be done.)

Naturally, the following bus was late because of traffic. I squeezed a sensible route out of google maps, and only had one bus transfer. I'd packed for the weather, and had the two extra jackets and the hat to put on while waiting for the local bus after the express dropped me off.

I picked the sensible stop to get off the bus on the local route, having caught up with Dawn on the phone in the meantime. There's this great gnarly hill right by the closest inbound bus stop, so it makes sense to under- or overshoot the stop, and take a more gentle hill. I think the one near park #2 is best.

All that, and I was still late for feeding the cat. She yelled at me. But the automatic feeder had gone off at the appropriate time, so she was merely annoyed and not frantic.

Partner had to help get food into me again, but this time we were expecting it a little more. I was that kind of not-hungry that can sometimes happen after exertion, where the body hasn't quite caught up with the idea that it should start gathering nutrients again just yet. I got myself rinsed off and then snuggled up into bed, where I conked out quite promptly with my partner's arm draped over me.