The bi-annual B.H. Family Reunion/Torture Fest is over. This year we spent it down on the coast in North Carolina. It was ridiculous for the b.h. and I to go, since I had just started a new job and he hadn't found one yet, but it was the first time the whole family had been together, every cousin and aunt and uncle, in over ten years, and we didn't want to disappoint his mom.
We left On Sunday morning, our flight having been delayed before we even got out of bed. Much confusion and a long wait at the airport (further delays), and then we finally arrived in Virginia to find that the bag we had checked had been left behind. Great. SO we spent an entire day traveling, basically, and finally arrived at the house in the late evening. We greeted everyone and had a couple beers before retiring to our room, which had two small beds, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo style. Ours was the floor with all of the boys ages four to twelve on it, which we only discovered the next morning at 6:20 am (5:20 our time) when they all got up.

Our car had been parked in by several others, so we walked to the grocery store about half a mile down the road and picked up fruit and beer and sandwich ingredients. It was about a million degrees outside, and there was no sidewalk anywhere along the curvy and crowded road, a fact which did not seem to bother the drivers in the least as they sped past. I spent the rest of that day in the pool or the air conditioning. There was, at one point, a group photo arranged on the beach. All thirty-six of us squinted into the sun while the photographer uncle admonished us not to wear hats or sunglasses from behind the camera.Evening meals were large productions with duties shared by a few. Cleanup took a lot longer, and that's where I usually managed to hide and avoid the awkwardness that is conversation between virtual strangers trying to seem familiar. I am genuinely fond of some of them, mind you, and I do make an effort to sit and chat. But the cousin's husband who seems like he's probably got his own militia? Not so much. Mostly it was short and sweet and we got through it without too much weirdness.

Work, on the other hand, is all kinds of weird. I haven't worked for a large corporation in many years, and the familiar bullshit is already starting to wear on me. We are required to wear no-slip safety shoes, which must be ordered from a catalog. No one, no matter what their job, is allowed to work without some kind of safety shoes on. While we wait for our shoes to arrive, we are given a standard-issue pair of what I can only call galoshes. The first day i worked they did not have a pair of galoshes that were small enough for my feet. No problem, said the Orientation Guy, you just wear your own shoes until your new ones arrive. we don't have what you need and that's our fault.
Less than an hour later I was approached by a very large and intimidating woman who told me that under no circumstances was I to work without the proper footwear.
"C.Y.A.", she smirked at another employee. "Imma cover my ass."
  "But the small ones are too big for my shoes. I need an extra small pair, and there are none. She reached into a bin and pulled out a pair of used shoes.
"What size are you?"
  "I usually wear a seven."
 "Try these." She gave me a pair of Cr0cs in size six.
  "They don't fit."
"Can you wear them just for now?"
  "I guess I could try," I said, trying to be cooperative.
I walked away and started to load up wine boxes onto a cart, every step I took bringing my heel down on the back of the shoe. I went back to the office.
  "These aren't going to work. They're too small."
She rolled her eyes at me and I took the galoshes back. I put them on and there was a quarter inch of material sticking past my toes. I'm not sure how wearing shoes that are too large is safer than wearing my own perfectly good tennis shoes, but I was clearly not hired to think. Sigh.

I have since been through four other pairs of shoes, and none of them fit. There is not a store anywhere where I can go try the shoes on before I buy them, so The Company is paying for these things to get shipped back and forth. The Shoe Lady  has no ideas for which shoes I should try, but would very much like it if I would just take another employees old shoes to wear so she could stop dealing with me. After suggesting that I choose at least three different pairs of shoes to try, she then told the GM that she didn't know what to do with me since I was refusing all of the shoes. His response was that "This is not Macy's. We're not a shoe store. Just pick something and let's quit fooling around." I have started showing up in my old Dansk0 kitchen shoes from a previous job which look remarkably like many of the safety shoes. They have a bit of a heel and are terrible to wear all day on a cement floor, but at least the Shoe Lady is off my back.