This Is Normal, April

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

Today's blip is a screenshot of a conversation between myself and Fazzy. As you can see, I was not sympathetic and this is because I am usually on the receiving end of a Fazzy eye-roll. 

My day today started with Shenée, who had missed me. She illustrated this by doing the "sheep dog dance". I have seen it before. Basically, she mimics a sheepdog with no tail dancing about excited because her owner has returned. It goes like this:

- Little stampy foot movements
- Bum jiggling (wagging non-existent tail, you see)
- Rubbing bum up recipient's leg
- Quick, hyperventilating, panty breathing

It's kind of like a really weird twerk, if you will. So, after Shenée had rubbed her bum on me, and panted all over me and given me a big hug, it was apparent that she had missed me a lot. 

See if you can get YOUR manager to do that.

But what I wanted to talk about to today was our newest team member. 
She is called April. I have not met her yet, she works out of the Christchurch office but in my first big meeting with her yesterday we got talking about Jammie Dodgers (as you do). 

Let me rewind. Me and Corrie had been talking about dunking biscuits and I showed her the Peter Kay bit about, "Oooooh noooooo!! Me brew!" when your biscuit tragically drowns in your cuppa. And then I told Corrie that the most sublime dunking experience one can have is Jammie Dodgers* in fruity tea. And so today I bought Corrie some so she could check it out.

She was doing this and making all sorts of gestures and happy noises at me while April was talking about processes and logistics. So naturally I had to turn my laptop so she could see what was going on. April reciprocated by showing me her box of doughnuts**.

Later on, we had our team meeting and April again attended. The meeting started with Malosi (Tongan) complaining about his shoes and Shenée suggested that he - and some others - remove their shoes. 

"Ooooh, and we can have a bare feet contest and see if people calling in from online can identify us by our feet," she added. 

This line of chat went on pretty much through the meeting, until I - such an enabler - forced Sam (Fijian Indian) to guess who was wearing shoes and who was not. He was reluctant, but in the end he said, "I gotta go with my fellow islander bro - it's Malosi, isn't it?"

Shenée turned her laptop to Malosi's feet, but he had kept his painful shoes ON. It was Shenée who was barefoot. "Wrong!" said Shenée. "Also RACIST!" which caused Sam to laugh until he couldn't breathe. 

"This is normal, April," added Shenée. 

Then Sam talked at length about the state of our meeting rooms, but went off on a tangent about his cousin's goat Snowy and shared pictures of Snowy looking just adorable. Then he asked Shenée about her sick chicken. 

"Oh he died," she said sadly. "I think I may have killed him. Whoops."

Then she added, "And we had a chicken EXPLODE the other night!"

That made us all sit up.

Apparently chickens can get a "yeast infection" as she put it, which causes them to get gassy (just like fermenting alcohol) and explode. "Yeah, poor little guy exploded," she said, leaving us all in a state of shock.

"Man, I was so not expecting to talk about exploding chickens today," replied Sam.

"This is normal, April," Shenée repeated. 

Well, I suppose it is our sort of normal. And I love it. As for April, I suspect she will fit in just fine. Although hopefully she isn't exposed to Shenée's "reverse sheepdog" right away.

S.

* They don't have them here, but you can buy them in the "International Foods" section of my local supermarket.

** Not a euphemism. Don't be disgusting.