Coffee Please!

It was a momentous day. It was a day of joy, a day of discovery. A day of confusion, a day of hunger, and a day of satisfaction. It was my first day of work. I made it, and now I lie naked on my bed, unable to move. No, there are no photos. You wouldn't want to see them anyway. Believe me.

I didn't really know what to expect with this job, except in general terms, but I'm here to tell you that I really think I'm going to like it.

Heck, I get to talk to people on the phone all day long! And get paid for it! You can't beat that, unless it includes boxes of bon bons, an endless dribble of mojitos slowly trickling down my throat in-between calls, Patrick Dempsey massaging my feet, and a Cirque de Soleil performance outside my window. I'm going to work on it as soon as I'm a little more established.

All in all, this job is going to be more challenging than I thought, and that's a good thing. I wanted something that wasn't borrrring and would have me drooling on my keyboard by 10 a.m., but something that had a direct, visible end result, made me think, solve problems, and offer me challenges on a daily basis. What I love is that there doesn't seem to be a dull moment, but at the end of the day, you get to leave it all behind, go home, and forget about it all until the next day.

In a nutshell, my job will be comprised of linking people with the care they need, allowing them to stay at home and remain independent as long as possible. Sounds easy, but there are all sorts of things that can throw a wrench into things: a caregiver breaks a scapula, or a client decides to go visit her long-lost second cousin twice removed and forfeit her weekly bath, or a client only speaks French, and there is absolutely no one who can fill the schedule and be understood by this client. It's a dangerous world out there, folks. And I'm going to save it, one phone call at a time.

I left the office yesterday entirely confused, more so than usual, although I have to say that by three-quarters of the way through the day, I was actually getting the hang of a couple of things. Which isn't to say that, come today, I'll be any more ahead than I was. In fact, I'll probably be behind, because I had to go in this morning for 7 a.m., which means I had to get up at 5:45 a.m., which just makes me sob writing this. Who does this? Cattle ranchers and surgeons, that's who. I just hope they don't mind me looking like a hot bag of shit today, because that will most definitely be me.

If you don't hear from me for the rest of this week, you'll know why. I'll either be at work, or at the Starbucks four minutes away from the office, my head buried in a Venti Triple Espresso Double Mocha Bean.