Hoop Dreams

My coworker, Ol' Mean Ass Cynthia is REALLY mean.

Her cubicle is on the opposite side of mine, but every morning, she likes to walk around to my side, and say "Good Morning".

This scares the heck out of me most of the time because she is TERRIBLY quiet when she moves. She doesn't walk, but she glides. It is VERY vampire or ghostlike, the way she moves around. She seems to get a sick kick out of walking up and scaring me.

That is so mean.

Well, we had an interesting convo before Christmas. We were discussing some paperwork, I believe, when she busts out with...

"Give me them earrings out of your ear. My baby needs some earrings."

*crickets*

It took a minute for all of that to register. Her baby is one of my House of LadyLee mascots, Chayse, who has been the subject of many a post over in these parts.

"No," I yelled.

What seemed like a slight argument started up. And I have to be careful about Ol' Mean Ass Cynthia. She's the type of broad who would knock me down and snatch the earrings out of my ears.

And I wanted NO parts of that.

"She can't have my earrings. I need to buy some more, so I will just buy Chayse a pair."

She gave me the blank stare. This meant that she was satisfied with that answer.

Now, I wear simple small gold hoop earrings. I will slit my throat if I have to match earrings with outfits. I wear sweats to work everyday- no need for anything fancy.

I'm a tomboy, and simple gold hoops gives me just a touch of feminity.

Chayse is a girly-girl, and wears big earrings. But her Grandma Christine said "She looks like a gypsy."

LOL!!

Poor child needed some earrings.

So I headed to the bootleg Discou.nt Mall on Old National Highway to pick up some earrings.

One thing I hate is dealing with surly Asian folk who sell jewelry. Yeah, we know you've been looking at negroes ALL day, and you don't like us. But doggonit, that's no reason to try to dupe me.

So they tried to sell me hoops that were not the same size. They tried to sell me hoops that had differing designs on them. Just weird stuff.

I FINALLY negotiated with one chick for some decent hoops that would fit Chayse's ears.

They had the NERVE to try and charge me 30 bucks for these, but I negotiated down to 18 bucks (which was still too much, but I got tired of arguing). I wanted a bigger set of hoops for myself, but they were REALLY tripping.So I will get those some other time.

So, I gave Ol' Mean Ass Cynthia the hoops. She actually said "thank you". Hmm... the woman has a somewhat nice side.

I got a call last night. "My baby wants to talk to you."

Chayse got on the phone. "Thank you, Miss LadyLee."

"You're welcome, baby," I said.

She then went on to talk and talk about some other stuff. (I have no idea what she was talking about. You know how kids can be.)

She even took a photo.

Those look good, Chayse.

Now, you don't look like a gypsy.

I told her she could just leave them in.

I told her to be sure not to lose them.

And Ol' Mean Ass Cynthia... don't run back up on me demanding my earrings if she does lose them.