duck-shaped pain

The atmosphere in the office as of late has been odd. One of the oldest employees there, the only one (besides my boss) who had been there longer than I had, got fired (or, technically, since we are all in theory self-employed, decided to leave). I don't really know what it was over: probably just some small, pissy crap, like his propensity to throw fits whenever people touched his stuff (even though it wasn't technically his stuff), his tendency to stare at people like a vulture whenever he wanted them to so something for him, or the fact that he was always working on projects of his own while he was in the office, rather than our projects. So now he's gone, and the house that we work out of is now half-empty, thanks to more and more people leaving. There are now three people working at my office: The Employer, myself, and some other guy who spends more time fishing than being in the office. It's odd and empty, and even though it's a tad nicer to be there without Vulture Boy around, it just feels wrong in some way. Plus, there are no plans afoot to hire new people to replace the old people, which provides me at least a bit of job security, but also means that if there were actually things to do, more of it would be thrown my way.

I bought some pants (mine are grey, though, and were on sale for $7) yesterday at a former employer of mine, the first clothing purchase I had made there in a long time, due to the whole not-fitting-into thing and all. They're nice pants: stretchy, thick, good for exercising in, and, most importantly, not too long. Buying them would have gone a whole lot smoother without the particular salesperson I got, though. I tried a bunch of stuff on, and emerged from the fitting room with just the one pair of pants. The others were too long, too big or just not right in some other way. I proceeded to the counter to buy said pants, where the salesperson said, "Do these pants actually fit you? I'm surprised, if they do." Um, thanks. For the comment. Now watch me scowl at you while you ring up the pants, remembering that back when I worked there, it was forbidden to make any sort of remark that could be taken as a comment about a customer's size. Or, I could just be overreacting, in my mind (I didn't say anything to her about it). Now that I'm smaller, I can now fit into clothing from a bunch of stores that I haven't bought anything from, or even stepped into, in years. I still sort of feel like an impostor when I go in, and am convinced that some salesperson is going to take me aside in the back somewhere and tell me, gently, "Um, you know that you don't really belong in here, right?" It's sort of odd.

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