Oh, Mondayish Tuesday!

I s'pose I can come out, since it isn't Monday!

Hiya, Friends!  You know, sometimes after the Holidays, I have trouble remembering what day it is. 

Today is one of those days. 

Because yes.  Yesterday didn't really feel like a Monday to me.  Today feels like a Monday.  Boyo boy, does today ever feel like a Monday.

I don't know what it is about it, Friends.  What makes one day feel like itself, or another day.  Mondays to me always kinda feel like when you're tryin' to shift your Little Pink Jeep into first, to get it rollin', and it just doesn't wanna. 

Boy, I miss my Little Pink Jeep.  Worst thing I ever did was outgrow that little vehicle.  Worst thing I ever did. 

Not because I regret growin' up, because I don't.  I get to do a buncha things now that I couldn't do when I was small enough to drive around in my Little Pink Jeep, but I was always under the impression that a bigger Little Pink Jeep would come take its place.  Maybe one that drives around under the power of its own motor.

At first, Mommy and Daddy told me that they don't make Little Pink Jeeps in my size, but then, I did some research and reconnaissance and found out that not only do they make Little Pink Jeeps in my size, powered by little engines, but they're readily available from dealerships such as Toys'R'Us, and they also come in a variety of different colors, not just pink. 

I could really see myself behind the wheel of a little Red Jeep, for instance.

Well, after I blew the lid of that particular lie of Mommy and Daddy's, that they don't make little Jeeps in my size, suddenly they changed their tune.  No longer was the reason I can't have a little Jeep of my own, in my current size, because they don't make them, but it became that we have too many drop-offs on our property, and they don't want me driving over a steep hill. 

Well, you know what?!  There's plenty of drop-offs and steep hills out in LIFE, and I see Mommy and Daddy can manage to keep our cars from drivin' over 'em.  I don't know why they assume that because I'm three, I'm a reckless, moronic menace to society. 

Quite the contrary, actually.  I am an enthusiastic adherent to traffic rules- red means STOP!  Yella means PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!  I'd take GOOD care of a little Jeep that's just my size.  I'd get out my little squirt-bottle of water, and my microfibre cloth and wipe down my little Jeep every time I drive it to where it's going, just like when we go to car shows and I detail the outside of one of the AMCs. 

But no matter how lucid my arguments and entreaties are for a little Jeep all my size, they're met with a whole lotta attitude from my Mommy and Daddy, and all's I can do is blame it on Tuesdays that feel like Mondays. 

Or something like that. 

Friends, I'll see ya tomorrow.  I love ya lots!  Muah!

Sugar Rush and the Truth About Jelly Beans

As it turns out, jelly beans are NOT legumes; they're candy!  How about that?!

Hiya, Friends!  How's your Monday treatin' ya?

If ya guessed I'm back at St. Laffalotatus- Mercy-Mercy Hospital, you would be correct.  I'm doin' my rounds.  Treatin' my patients.  Helpin' 'em feel better.

Boy, you know what? We're up to our ears in patients presenting with symptoms of Sugar Rush today. 

It would appear that some unscrupulous misinformed little person advised a whole buncha people that jelly beans are legumes and ought to be consumed in hearty portions, alongside Chocolate Easter Bunny Hot Chocolate with Marshmella Peep and Reddi Wip Garnish. 

What's more, that misinformed little person was listened to, and now my colleagues and I are busier than we've been since the Doldrums back in February.

Oopsie-doodles! 

I wouldn't be a doctor worth my weight in smellin' salts if I didn't make this right.  Friends, as it turns out, jelly beans aren't legumes.  I repeat, they are NOT legumes, despite the misleading inclusion of the surname 'bean.'  As it turns out, they share more of their DNA with the 'jelly' part, and jelly beans are candy, not vegetables.  Therefore, I strongly advise a moderate hand when you're doling yourself out some delicious, delicious jelly beans henceforth.

Also, apparently the black jelly beans do NOT put hair on your chest.  So if that was a concern to you like it was to me, you don't hafta be worried about that.  The worst that'll happen to ya for eatin' black jelly beans is that your mouth and teeth might turn an inky hue for a little while.  You can always rinse your mouth out with a little plain water to help with that.

You know, with the gaffes I've made recently, I could lose my confidence and turn all agoraphobic, but I'm not gonna.  They call it a medical 'practice,' not a medical 'get it right all the time, every time,' so I'll just chalk all this up to it bein' a learning experience.  It's comforting to know that even though now that I'm an attending doctor of humorous healing here at St. Laffalotatus- Mercy-Mercy Hospital, I'm still encouraged and expected to keep on learnin'.  Learnin's sort of my jam.

All right, Big People.  Again.  Exercise caution around all the Easter candy today.  And if you do wind up with a mild case of Sugar Rush, you can try treating it at home by grabbing a dusting cloth and some Pledge and getting a little housework done while the extra burst of energy lasts.

I love ya lots, Friends!  I'll see ya tomorrow!  Muah!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to you, Friends!

Well, hiya, Big People!  Happy Easter to you! 

You know, where I live, the weather at Eastertime can be fairly fractious, and today's no exception.  I could get all mad about it, get all disgusted that I can't wear a frilly little lace dress and sandals for Easter, unless I wanna be a Zoecicle, but what I've decided to do instead is just roll with it.

If ya think about it the right way, Easter candy affords the very kind of versatility I need, to maintain a good attitude. 

Why, sure.  Bear with me, and I'll tell ya all about it!

In years when Easter's a warmer, sunny day that does allow for the wearin' of frilly little lace dresses and sandals, chocolate bunnies and marshmella Peeps are excellent for eatin' just the way they are.  And jelly beans?  Heck, jelly beans round out the meal by adding a much-needed colorful legume component to the festive fare.

Yes, jelly beans are legumes.  Other beans like butterbeans and kidney beans and garbanzo beans are legumes, therefore, so are jelly beans.  They say 'beans' right in their name, so they must be related, even if only by the coattails.  Try to keep up, Big People, and not interrupt so much.  It derails my entire Easter Train of Thought!

On these cold Easters, though, that same chocolate bunny is simply divine, melted down and mixed with a little milk and extra sugar, to make a wonderful hot cocoa.  Then whatchya do is float a couple-three... make that a whole four-pack of marshmella Peeps up on top- I like the white ones best for this purpose, but you can choose any color you want- and there ya have it.  Festive Eastertime hot chocolate!

If you really want your hot beverage to reflect the type of weather that's happening outside, take a can of Reddi Wip and garnish the heck outta that hot chocolate.  Make it look like a giant cuppa snow-bank.

And of course, you wanna eat your legumes, even if - nay, especially if it's cold outside.  So help yourself to your jelly beans.

How about that, Big People?  Don't delay!  Skedaddle over to your Easter basket and get cookin' your cocoa!  It isn't gettin' any warmer today!

I love ya lots!  I'll be seein' ya tomorrow!  Happy Easter, Friends!

800 Posts!

Eight-hundred posts!  That's practically a bazillion!

Hiya, Friends!  Do you know what you're lookin' at?

What's that? 

You think you're lookin' at a Little Kid with questionable fashion sense?  Very funny, and that's some big talk comin' from a Big Person in a Cheetos-stained Cardigans T-shirt.  No amount of Studio Magic is gonna make them better live singer, or get those stains out.  You might better retire that shirt and go get yourself something nice, like a Led Zeppelin Tshirt and hold the neon orange cheese.

Anyways, no.  You're lookin' at the eight-hundredth post of The Daily Zoe Blog!  Isn't that something?

I feel like there oughtta be some sort of celebration.  Maybe a cake?  Or, perhaps we oughtta get an eight-hundred number to celebrate.  Do people still use those?  800 numbers?  I feel like if I had a toll-free number, I will have really arrived.  And that's so nice of the telephone company to pay the tolls for the toll-free number.

What's that?

You're kidding me.  You mean to tell me that if someone were to call my 800 number, which is touted as toll-free, I would end up footing the bill for telephone charges? ... Then why is it called 'toll-free?' ... Because it's toll-free to the caller, not the callee.  Well then, what prevents an unscrupulous person from calling the same 800 number over and over again to visit with the operator about their bunions, just to run up an enormous telephone tab for the holder of the 800 number?  What's to prevent that sort of thing from occurring? ... Well, that's just... It isn't like you can CONTROL who calls you on the phone!

Okay.  I don't want an 800 number in celebration of my 800th blog post.  But I DO want a big purple cowboy hat to go with my big purple tutu-skirt, so I guess you could say I have some serious shopping to do, Big People!  I'll see ya tomorrow!  I love ya lots!  Muah!

Director of Donut Development!

Good-bye, TPS Reports!  Hello, Donut Development!

Well, hiya, Big People!  It's me, Zoe!

Hey, remember that big flap I was in, over April Fool's Day, and remember how I was still talkin' about it yesterday, on accounta how I was dragged into Human Resources?

Well, even though I still regretted nothing about my actions on April Fool's Day, I decided that if my company didn't have my back when I needed someone to stand up for me on April Fool's Day, I didn't need to be sittin' in a department, fillin' out TPS Reports for them.  So do you know what I did?

If you guessed that I found a vulnerability in the building's public address system and played "Take This Job and Shove It" by Johnny Paycheck and then announced "Zoe out!" over the microphone, then you'd be oddly specific and correct in your guess. 

Because that's just what I did.

I quit.

Who says this kid doesn't have a great sense of humor and maybe a bit of a criminal streak.  I prefer to think of it as an opportunistic side- I mean, if the Company didn't want its security vulnerabilities exploited, they hadn't ought to have such vulnerabilities- amIright?

Anyway, this is not a sad end to my tale, Friends.  I'm still gonna be here, every day.  I'm still gonna be doing my picture show over on the Facebook.  The only different thing is that I've filled out my last TPS Report for the Company.  In fact, my whole entire department has filled out their last TPS Reports.

After I quit, I went down to Donut Dude's and sat there at his counter, tellin' him what I did, and I was tryin' to keep myself all psyched up, because by the time I got to Donut Dude's, I kinda thought what I'd done was pretty darned crazy. 

Well, it was, when you really think about it, isn't it?  That whole thing with the PA system?  My haters might have a point about the whole criminal mastermind component to my personality...

But my friend Donut Dude listened to me, and brought me donuts, and offered me a job at his place.  At first I said I didn't wanna run the drive-thru window again, because that was really crazy-busy the day I helped him out, and I was really stressed out!  As it turns out, though, Donut Dude is a much bigger deal than I thought he was.  He has lotsa Donut Dude stores.  There's his DonutMobile donut trucks.  Donuts on Demand service for events.

And to think I thought Donut Dude lived under a bridge, or maybe in the backa his store on the corner. 

Anyways, Donut Dude said what he had in mind for me was far beyond the drive-thru window, and that was really terrifying, BUT.  I am now the Director of Donut Development at Donut Dude's, and he let me go hire a buncha my friends from my old department at the Company to come work in my Donut Development Department!  How about that?!  So I went and poached hired all my friends.  I didn't wanna be greedy, so I left Mitch from Accounting and Gretchen from Receivables. 

Take that, Company!

So in a way, I've come kinda full-circle while I've come a long ways from when I got my start, fetching donuts for my department, three years ago.  Donut Dude has come a long ways, too.  He'd run out of donuts that day, but he has never run out of donuts since.

I'm excited about my Future, Friends.  I'm excited to get to go to work at a place that's fun.  I really respect and like Donut Dude.  He said my criminal mastermind tendencies are really a manifestation of my under-used and under-appreciated creativity, and it's mis-firing.  But working with him, I'll be able to channel that creativity and that energy, and not waste a minute filling out reports that nobody knows what they're for.

Well, that's my day.  I'd better skedaddle.  I have a meeting with my new department.  Donut Dude has set us up with a brand new giant Post-It pad and an easel, so we can brain-storm.  We're all so excited.  I know this is a really good move. 

Plus, since Donut Dude's headquarters is in the building right across the street from the Company, Sabretooth has already gone to the windows facing our old work and given 'em the moon.  Who the heck even knew Donut Dude had a headquarters building?!  This is sucha crazy day!

I'll be seein' ya tomorrow, Friends!  I love ya lots!  Muah!

I Regret Nothing!

I am no fool, April or otherwise!

Well, hiya, Friends!  Happy Thursday to you!  Did you survive all the April Fools Day madness?  I sure did.  I got called back into Human Resources again today, for a scolding for how I made the building cold and dry yesterday, but I regret nothing. 

I regret nothing!

I got kinda tired of bein' everybody's fool yesterday.  I was feelin' ganged-up on.  I couldn't help but notice that nobody else had rubber pencils on their desk insteadda regular pencils.  I saw that everyone else's computer screen was right-side up while mine was upside-down.  Nobody else was called to a meeting beside the pool on the roof that doesn't exist, and there was no meeting, besides.  Nobody else got told that the mail room had been turned into a Donut Distribution Center.

I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, on accounta by the time they sent me down to the mail room with the promise that I'd get some donuts, I really needed a donut.  Or a good friend.  And I didn't get either one.  And they picked on me when I bawled.

I tried to tell the People In Charge, and they didn't listen.  They said I needed a better sense of humor.  Big People, you've met me.  I have a GREAT sense of humor!  I just don't like to be everybody's April Fool.

Well, today the co-workers that were making me such an April Fool yesterday are calling me a 'Criminal Mastermind' today.  That isn't what I'm all about at all!  Criminal mastermind, indeed.

Listen.  Nobody got hurt when I turned the temperature and humidity way down in the building, Friends.  People got plenty uncomfortable, but nobody got hurt.  I don't play that way, hurting people.  Hurting their feelings.  I just needed to get their attention.  Hey.  I'm a human being with feelings.  Just because I'm a little human being, that doesn't mean my feelings are any less than Big People's feelings. 

I regret nothing, Big People. 

I'm glad we're still friends, Friends.  I love ya lots.  I'll see ya tomorrow.  Muah!

April Fools!

FYI: They didn't turn the mailroom into a donut distribution center.

Well, hiya, Big People!

Hey.  Didja know today's April Fool's Day?  Well, it is, and I haven't been this annoyed since Joe Camel started coming around on Wednesdays, asking everybody what day it was. 

Remember how I didn't usedta like Joe Camel back when he first started coming around?  Remember how he'd annoy me, and I'd go hide in the Ladies' Room so I wouldn't hafta talk to him, and then I got to know him, and he's really cool, but he's gone to work on one of Donut Dude's Mobile Donut Units, so he doesn't have time to go around asking all of us what day it is.

What was I talking about?

Oh, yeah!  That's right! 

It's April Fools Day, and I am more annoyed than I'd get when Joe Camel would wear out his jokes. 

I've gotten had so many times today on stupid April Fools Day stuff that I can't even count the times I've been had.  It's crazy.

First, when I just got in to the office today, I was told there was a meeting beside the pool on the roof, continental breakfast provided, so I went on up.  Guess what.  Not only was there no meeting up on the roof, and no continental breakfast, there's also not a pool up there. 

So I was struck with a triple-whammy, right off the bat.  Yeah, yeah.  Zoe's an April Fool!  Hahahahahahahahahaha... ugh.

Then somebody switched all my pencils on my desk to fake rubber pencils.  I went to write with one, and it was all wobbly and it didn't write.  Hahahaha!  April Fool!  They sure got me good.

The next thing that happened to me today was that I was told that I had to go talk to Human Resources, because somebody filed a complaint against me.  I wasn't sure what I could possibly have done or said to make somebody file a complaint about me to Human Resources, but when you're told you've gotta go to Human Resources, you go.  So I went, and by the time I got there, I was pretty whipped up and worried, so when they jumped out and said "April Fool!  Hahahahahaha!  We got you good!"

I ended up tellin' them all where they could stick their rubber pencils, and it wasn't up their noses.

Well, I guess everybody could tell that I'd had Enough of all this, so they attempted to make amends with me by giving me a gift certificate to the new Donut Distribution Center in the newly converted old mail room.

Granted, I was dubious, on accounta when I came into the building today, I walked in with some friends who work in the mail room, and none of them mentioned that the mail room had been converted to a Donut Distribution Center.  Also, I was just there yesterday, and it was still a mail room.  But a gift certificate for donuts is a gift certificate for donuts, so down to the mail room I went, and I'll tell ya, I really was kind of excited about havin' a donut and a Bambinoccino after the way my day today has been going. 

And do you know what I saw when I got there?  Envelopes and envelopes and mail carts and mail bags, but no donuts.  I thought maybe it was in a corner and I just wasn't seein' it, so I asked the mail room manager, and showed my gift certificate, and as it turns out, there is no Donut Distribution Center in the mail room, and I also got all bawled out for botherin' the mail room manager with a prank. 

It wasn't even my prank!

So guess what I did.  I humped up and bawled, right there in the mail room.  Right the heck in front of everybody.  I didn't want to.  I told myself I wouldn't.  And then when it started happening, I told myself 'Don't you dare cry in front of these people, Zoe!' 

As it turns out, I listen to myself about as well as I listen to Mommy, and now that I see how bad it is when I don't listen, I have a lot more sympathy for the old broad when I'm doing my own thing.  But that's off-topic.

I bawled and left the mail room.  The mail room manager just doesn't have time for that kinda drama, he said, and my friends who work in the mail room had mail to sort.  So I went up to Human Resources and asked them to put a stop to the April Fools tomfoolery, since I appear to be singled out for such hijinxery.  I was told I need a better sense of humor. 

So anyways, after all that, I may or may not have given the fellas in Maintenance actual cash-money to go buy themselves something nice at Donut Dude's and sit down for a spell, because those fellas work too darn hard anyways, and after they left, I might or might not have sat down at the Mainframe and set all the climate control units in the building from "Really Cold and Dry April First" settings to "Exceedingly Hot and Humid Middle of August" settings, and the settings are set to last until tomorrow at four AM, so the building can get warmed back up in time for work to start tomorrow. 

So now I'm at Donut Dudes.  I'm gonna spend the day here with the fellas from the Maintenance Department.  We're still havin' April Fools Day pranks here, but it's the kind where somebody says 'Hey, look at that man with a deer-head who just walked in!' and then when ya look, they say 'April Fools!'  They aren't mean to anybody when they pull their April Fools Day pranks. 

So that's that, Friends.  Sometimes, you've gotta just stand up for yourself.  That's what this kid did today.  I'll be seein' ya tomorrow.  I love ya lots!  Be nice, if you're pulling pranks today!  Muah!