So my temp job is going as well as can be expected.

I enjoy the actual work I'm doing, and all the people I've worked with are nice.  My French is serving me well enough to understand and respond to clients (though I have also perfected the "Help me!" look to shoot at my booth partner in times of need).  And I have used a cash register for the first time!  Successfully, too!  I used it twice in fact, and since we only had three sales all morning that's pretty good.

I've said elsewhere that it's a sort of municipal book fair.  It's really more of an exposition or a convention.  It's a ton of little booths and kiosks for various publishers and others in the book industry, in a huge ballroom/convention center type place at one of our city hotels.  There's a stage with performers (can't see them from where I am but I can hear the acts) and tons of people.  Some of the authors come in at scheduled times to do signings.  This morning was mostly kids and teenagers (it's the official "student day" of the fair) which is why we didn't have a lot of sales.  We saw a lot of kids that were thrilled to see some of the stuff we had, but didn't have the money to buy it.  Let's say I wouldn't have wanted to be a teacher keeping track of them all but it was fun having them come in and tell us their stories about falling off their bike, etc.  And seeing them leaf through the books and really enjoy it.  Had a couple of oddballs but nothing really difficult. Tonight - I have to leave in about 45 minutes - we'll get more adults and probably more sales.

I have a lot more observations I could tell you but I need to keep this short because I have to start thinking about getting ready soon.  And I need to explain my title before anyone gets too confused! (I will also be happy to explain the description for anyone who's interested - it's a mega-nerd reference, if that helps).

Basically, the one MAJOR problem I'm having right now is my feet.  My feet have always hurt after very short periods of standing or walking.  Even when I was a little girl, about 5 years old or so, I would have sore feet halfway through a grocery trip with my parents.  It's very hard to convice grownups that a 5-year-old has sore feet!  These days, I wear expensive motion control sneakers and that does help some - though my sneakers are getting pretty worn out by now and they're not as helpful as they used to be!  Of course I am not wearing sneakers to work.  I got some cheap but suitable-looking shoes and loaded them up with insoles and arch support equal to the value of the shoe itself!  But it still hurts like hell, because I'm not walking, I'm standing.  And standing is by far the worst.  The bones in the foot are designed to absorb the shock and motion of walking or running, not the continuous weight of your body standing still!  So my feet are SCREAMING at me, and they will keep screaming long after I get home, and even after a night of sleep and rest, I have about 30 pain-free standing minutes the next morning before it starts to set in again.  Yowie.

This has always been my biggest physical problem.  I'm not tired.  My legs aren't tired, my arms and back aren't sore.  But my feet make me want to die.  When I walk for exercise, I don't stop because I'm out of energy, I stop because my feet can't take anymore (even in my special shoes).  I could walk for much longer if my feet didn't hurt so much!

So DH and I talked about it, and in the future sometime we'll go to an orthopedic type store and buy me some shoes made specifically for standing.  Because even though I won't be working as long shifts when my "real" job starts, I will be standing for several hours at a time without much chance to sit down, and that will basically render me useless the rest of the day.  So hopefully that will give me some relief.  The problem, as always, is money...we need money to go on a trip (have to have an immigration medical exam again and only certain doctors can do that, the closest of which is a 4ish hour drive from here)...money to buy some reference books for my business, rent some office space a few hours a week for my business, and enlarge my work wardrobe and replace some of my essentials that have seen better days... ugh.  I'm only getting paid minimum wage for this job.  I'm not expecting much better for my "real" job.  Hopefully this will even out eventually and we will be able to actually put money aside for things like moving to a new apartment next year and furnishing that apartment plus getting a car that is starting to become more and more necessary...

But that's not for today, or for anytime during the rest of the fair.  That's just how my brain works.  I worry and it spirals out of control.  I have to go get ready for three more hours of hell-on-feet.  3 more days after today!