Working Girl

Yesterday was my first day back to work in almsot 2 years! I'm only going back to work as an on-call floral designer....which works out okay because Tyler can be home with Quincy the couple days I have to work, and they're not even full days. It was fun to get out of the house and do something I enjoy. I started working for Carpenter's Custom Floral... although they are in the process of changing the name, due to the fact that the previous owners (The Carpenters) have left the business. It was sort of a chaotic day.... but that's always nice because the day goes by faster when you have more to do. I did a lot of funeral arrangements for a 19 boy who comitted suicide, pretty tragic. They were beautiful pieces though and I'm kind of kicking myself for leaving the camera at home. I figured making something beautiful for something ugly that happened is the least I could do. I did a lot of other large arrangements. It was nice to be around flowers again. Which reminds me... I need to get more serious about doing more work on the side. I will be updating my business blog: http://www.bella--design.blogspot.com/ more frequently since I'll have new things to post.

The day was almsot over when we discovered that two of the large arrangements for the funeral weren't taken out on the delivery van. Carol, the manager, and I had to take them out. There were two huge flower arrangements, one that I made earlier and another that was in a large glass vase. Then we had to take a big pot planted with flowers and another heavy terrecotta pot with succulent plants which probably weighed 100 lbs easily. So off we went-- little Carol and I-- driving to this house where we weren't quite sure was. We finally found the house after missing a few streets and having to double back a few times. When we arrived we knocked on the door to see if anyone was home, but no one answered the door. We usually don't leave things at the door, since it gets too hot, but luckily her porch was shaded and secluded away from the street. We lugged the huge flower planted pot together up to the door step-- which took great effort on both of our parts. Then we each carried a huge flower arrangment, I was stuck with the heavy glass one. It was nearly as big as me, which made it difficult to see where I was going while trying to balance it in my arms. I was being extra careful so I wouldn't drop it. I was extra slow in going up her two cement steps and even in kneeling down to put in on her porch.

Just as I had one side of the bottom propped on the ground my foot slipped and I lost my balance. Down I went, crashing the glass vase into the hard cement porch and slicing my hand open quite nicely. It hurt so bad and there was blood gushing out everywhere-- thank goodness I don't faint at the side of blood, otherwise I'd have been passed out in one glance. Carol wasn't mad at all, she was just concerned that I wasn't hurt too badly. I reassured her I was okay, though I don't think I was really convinced myself. After we managed to scrape up all the rock that was in the bottom of the glass vase and pick up the scattered pieces of glass, we realized that the large terracotta pot--which we had lugged slowly to the porch we delivered all the other arrangements and planted pot to-- was supposed to be delivered to another house. We had to lug it back to the van..... I'm sure we were a sight to see.....me with a gaping wound in my left hand which was wrapped with a dirty napkin from the van, and Carol who's about 110lbs, 50 years old and 5' nothing.....as we were waddling clumsily to the van to get that stupid pot back in.

We finally found the address it was supposed to go to and once again, dragged it out of the van and up a huge walkway full of stairs, which was all uphill. I apologized a couple of times on our way back for breaking the vase, and Carol reassured me she was sort of glad. She said she felt bad since the flowers weren't as fresh as she wanted and felt bad about the lady's son who killed himself and was wishing she could've sent something better. Tuesday we'll re-deliver since we'll have fresh tropicals.

All in all I'd say it was a pretty great first day back to work... with a little bit of a disaster of an ending. Oh well what can you do? I took some pictures today of it, but it doesn't even do it justice to what it looked like yesterday!