I’ve spent the last five days trying to move back into Dracula-ette mode. The campground found me bailing out of the sack/tent every a.m. at close to 6 a.m. Build a campfire, create coffee deli-cio-so, mainly for me but for everyone else that was up and ready. Vickie…Baileys & Coffee – I transport Baileys every year to the campground because it’s so much cheaper in Vegas than it is up North. This year, for some unknown reason other than my taste buds kept telling me I needed more body fat, I spent a few mornings loading up on a second cup of Baileys & Coffee. Whew! Glad that’s over for another year.

Along about Monday when I woke up at noon, (finally – the latest I’d slept any day in three weeks), I thought I might make it through work that night even though my normal hours are wake up at 3 p.m. and go to sleep around 7 a.m. The closer I got to shower time, the more I was wishing I could take a nap. I ran errands in the afternoon and between the temperature outside and my frame of mind, the last thing I wanted to do was head for the poker room. But…

Color me in ‘dealer garb’, walking into the casino, trudging past the machines and people that are married to them, into Poker Land USA. Some hellos were exchanged, welcome backs, and smiles and nods as I hit the office. Jason S. was our supervisor for the night. He said, “Linda’s on LOA.”

He was doing the line-up. I didn’t get the gist of what he meant by the statement but of course I knew I’d been on LOA. I went out and signed the E/O, the room was fairly quiet and I was positive I might be out by 1 a.m. That would really be sweet! I could go home and try to refill the Dracula-ette unwritten prescription.

I went back to the office, tried to clock in, the time clock showed me as being LOA and read ‘Supervisor approval needed’. I asked Jason for his card. No go! He wasn’t authorized to do that but I could sign in on the sheet. I did. I sat down and started to watch the line-up draw. For the first time, I looked at the Dealer’s Line-up in the book. It showed me as on LOA all week. I was flabbergasted.

I asked Jason if I could just go home. He said if he ran out of ‘spots’ before he ran out of cards, yes. He did. And I did.

Yup! I knew I was supposed to be back to work on the 22nd but don’t count on me unless it’s written in stone. I had a Dr.’s appt. on Tuesday late in the afternoon and this would make it so much simpler, not working the night before. I planned on calling in on Wednesday and straightening out the LOA with Karen (office person extraordinaire).

While I was at the Dr.’s appt., I got a voice message from Karen. BUSTED!!! Her message told me I was supposed to process back in and be at work that night. I returned the call. “Help! I can’t make it in tonight. Can I come in tomorrow?”

Whew! She checked everything out and said she’d process me in for Wednesday. So be it! Why is that once you’ve been away from work and had the opportunity to have all that free time, you can’t stand the thought of going back to ‘time prison’? That’s what a job is, a Time Prison. You are confined to that time block for the majority of your life and that’s how I exactly how I feel about it. But don’t think for one second that I’m not appreciative of my job, I am.

So…Wednesday night, color me in ‘dealer garb’ – repeat – repeat – repeat. The Book still showed me as LOA, I still could not clock in. But this time I was at the mercy of Kamell and even though I didn’t have a spot in the line-up, he made one for me. I did sign the E/O and managed to escape at 11 p.m. Perhaps, now that I’ve gotten my feet wet, I can waltz in tonight and be comfortable with eight hours. Maybe????