I'm a quitter. Happy Friday.

Today is a good day. Well for starters, it's Friday, and for enders, the heat finally let up a bit this morning with a refreshing thunderstorm. I cherished every second of what could be one of my last Friday mornings on the couch with Hoda and Kathie Lee for quite some time, I mean besides next Friday. But after that it's back on the grind. Let's see, what else makes today great? Oh yes, I quit my job. Officially done. No more parking in high school parking lots, no more rolling my cooler over high school feet, no more dressing like Iron Chef. I have retired the culinary jacket for good, it's hanging on my wall next to the old emblems symbolizing the other jobs I have quit thus far in life: newspaper delivery bag, black market candy sales (my mom had a brief stint at Nestle so naturally I sold her samples in grade school) referee whistle, lifeguard swimsuit, Verizon Wireless student rep, Pink Panther head cover sales on Ebay, Hy Vee shirt... The list is actually quite long for being as young as I am. Hy Vee hardly counts though because I only had that job for two weeks. I was fourteen and under some weird illusion that it would be "fun" to get a job at such a young age. What a fool I was. At fourteen the only jobs you are assigned at Hy Vee is to bag groceries or cart corral. Oh hells no, even at fourteen I had my standards. Luckily, Hy Vee has pop machines outside of their building so on really hot days I would just buy a soda on my way out "to get carts" but instead would go hide behind the big mom suburbans in the way back of the parking lot. I'd just sip on my soda and think about how much life sucked for a fourteen year old, again a very foolish thought for such a carefree time in life. Oddly enough, I did pretty much the same thing when I was a beer cart girl at the Norfolk Country Club, make myself a nice little Shirley Temple and suck it down while hiding down by the river between holes four and five. But by far the job I held for the shortest amount of time was when I attempted to be a bartender/cocktail at... Iquanas. I know, it's hard for me to admit. But in my defense, I thought I was working at the super posh "Voda" on the back side of Iquanas, and to a 20 year old Lincoln girl, Voda was pretty awesome. White couches and dark mood lighting? Uh yes please! But in fact I was working at Iquanas. After one hellish night of following a snatchy veteran bartender bitch around, I'd had enough, I couldn't go back for my next shift the following night. But I wasn't just going to no-show, that's completely unprofessional. Instead, I had Kim call in and act like me to tell them I quit. One afternoon in Theta, a bunch of us sorority sisters giggled around the phone as Kim called Iquanas and delivered the bad news on my behalf. It was all going good until the manager asked for her (my) phone number so I could get paid for the one night I worked. Kim got nervous and said, "uh, hold on let me get it." The plan went to shit right there. But what did I care, I didn't go back.

So of course I texted Kim last night and asked if she wouldn't mind doing me a tiny little favor. Would she quit another job for me? She thought about it, but in the end she didn't want to do it since it wasn't going to be from my actual phone, and because she said this is different because it's kind of a "real job." Whatevs, I took care of it. I called HR and delivered the news myself. And boy did I tell them off. I told them I was starting my own company, and I was taking my fish with me. And I'll be damned if Dorthy Boyd didn't stand up right then and there and say she was coming with me, Jerry Maguire, on to bigger and better things. This is the start of something good, I can feel it. Because like every good Facebook quote says, the end of one thing is the start of another. When one chapter closes, a new one begins. When God closes a door, he opens a beer. And ext and so forth with every other motivational quote someone uses when they're scared shit less about their life going down the shitter. Not that I think my life is going down the shitter because it so obviously isn't. Hello! I live in Chicago! And if you haven't learned by now living in either LA, Chicago or New York makes your life important. It just does. It's why all of us Midwesterners strive so hard to move away and then secretly get really homesick but never tell anyone except for the times we do get to come home (after we've posted like a 3 week countdown on Facebook about it) for probably a football game or something and then get drunk and cry saying how we don't want to go back but then never admit it the next day... Because why would we? We live somewhere cool.

But seriously, I haven't had this breakdown- yet. I imagine it will come about the third week into my new job, and that's thinking positively. I just get weirdly frustrated when I don't understand something and get a strong urge to stomp my feet and whine and scream like a five year old. It's just a natural reflex I think. I just have to remind myself to calm down and stick with it, because as far as I'm concerned it's just a matter of faking it. All jobs are. The only jobs that might require some thought and I think would be hard to fake would be a doctor and an electrician. Everything else is just a matter of learning the lingo and learning the hand gestures.

But enough about me. Let's talk about Friday. I refuse to quote Rebecca Black anymore since I saw she totally sold out and showed up in a Katy Perry video. No thank you. I guess you can't even count on the most talented musicians to not give in to the machine in the end. Happy Friday, you couldn't have come at a better time!