Dead Blog

So I figured it's probably safe at this point to post this.  I don't think my mother still has the link (or I hope not), so I feel it's safe enough to point anyone who sees this in the direction of the new blog.  I created a new blog and abandoned this one to escape my mother in every aspect of my life that I could possibly manage.  I got tired of being verbally abused on every social media site I used.  (I also completely deleted my old Facebook and sent her the sim card to my old cell phone and never gave her my new address when I moved.)

Anyway, that's why this blog stopped being updated.  And life got ridiculously busy over the course of the last couple years.  And I suck and don't write as much as I'd like.  Here's the link to the new blog:

http://thecrochetingmeteorologist.blogspot.com/

Bizzaro Land

The other day, I was sleeping. I often do this. I was, however, having a dream. About my work. Here it is.

First of all, I was swimming in the snow. No, I don't know why, but I was trying to get somewhere or do something, and one of my CSMs, we'll call him Cornrows Guy because of his hairdo (those of you reading this who work with me know exactly who this is), was about 7 feet tall and yelling at me to hurry. There was also some sort of wooden platform structure thing, but I'm not sure what was up with that. I was seriously trying to maneouver in like five feet of snow. It was ridiculous. Then suddenly, as dreams do, I was in some store (NOT my work, it was more like TJ Maxx or Ross), and I was walking behind my sister (who happened to be Christina Aguilera) and we were arguing about something involving my wedding and her stealing the show, and we started pelting each other with beauty products, which was when the area we were in turned into the express registers on the north side of my store, and it was covered in tiny travel deodorants and things like that and Christina Aguilera had really kinky blond hair cut short like Renee Zellweger's was in Chicago, and we were really mad and there was more pelting, and then I started to wake up a little, and the dream turned into a lucid dream and I started freaking out because we had made all this mess at my work and I was trying to clean it up and then I realized that I should tell a CSM about it and then I realized that it wouldn't matter because of the security cameras and then I went to go tell a CSM that is no longer a CSM (Buzzcut Guy!), and as I was about to cry at him with handfuls of deodorant in my hands, I woke up.

I am crazy.

This is Probably Not the Update You Were Looking For

I can't talk to anyone about how I am feeling, because that would signify weakness, and I can't be weak. I have to be strong, for myself and everyone around me. I can't tell anyone that I'm the saddest person in the world. I don't even have anything to be sad about. I'm pathetic. I'm nothing. I'm useless. Every day, I get closer and closer to that moment. And then, will I be too much of a coward to actually...?

I don't want to die.

I can't be in my own head anymore. No one can hear me. No one can see me. I am not me. I don't feel like a person.

I have no reason to be in this much pain.

Nerdy Book-Loving Girl

It's been awhile.  I'm completely exhausted.  I'm moving again at the end of May.  I have a job, I don't remember if I've mentioned that.

Honestly, I kind of don't care about playing catch-up right now.  Probably because I've had 3 hours of sleep and I work 1-10 tonight.

I'm alive, I gave up on The Scarlet Letter and Mrs. Dalloway and whatever the hell else I was trying to read.  I'm currently reading Lord of the Rings, and it's actually really good.  There's a few parts that you really have to be awake for or they sort of slip by you and you have no idea what you just read because you mostly stared at it and turned the page, but other than that, it's excellent.  I keep running across words I don't know that Tolkein didn't make up, and I don't have a dictionary and I'm usually at work when this happens, so I may never expand my vocabulary at this rate.  In any case, I'm almost done with Two Towers and am making my way steadily to The Return of the King.  It's a one-volume book I got out of the library, since I was having issues finding Two Towers when I started getting close to being done with Fellowship, and so I switched to the one-volume set, and hope I didn't miss anything.

So, I'm supposed to go with MB to her friend's house today to do laundry while she dog-sits, and we're supposed to leave in about 5 minutes and she hasn't even taken a shower yet, so we might not be going.  Hopefully the dogs don't poop inside or anything if she's late.

Edit approximately 30 seconds after I clicked publish: MB is now in the shower, hahaha, so apparently my thoughts were a catalyst or something for her.  Heeh.

Anyway, my birthday was yesterday and now I'm 25.  I'm going to go get coffee and hope that I get to take a nap before work.

Gay Does Not Mean Second-Class

I stumbled across a news article today that I felt the need to address.  It was in Rolling Stone, about a town in Minnesota that has seen a sharp increase in teenagers committing suicide ever since the school district implemented a policy demanding staff remain completely neutral on topics involving homosexuality.  This policy was so vague that teachers and other members of staff became afraid for their jobs, and as such, they completely stopped acknowledging the existence of any sexual orientation that was not the accepted norm.  This in turn led to the administrators and staff members of the schools in this district to ignore bullying related to homosexuality and tell students who complained about bullying to just ignore it.

They failed thousands of kids.

Not only did they fail the many kids who were bullied for their sexual orientation, but they failed the kids doing the bullying.  These kids were taught that it was okay to treat people that identify as gay as second-class citizens.  I am afraid of what their future holds, as well.

According to the article, over 700 kids in this school district were evaluated for serious mental health issues in the 2010-2011 school year alone.  These kids were having suicidal thoughts, cutting, and showing symptoms of depression.  Some of them were even hospitalized.  The policy was put into place in 2009.

---

Some of the kids who died were as young as 13.  I cannot describe the horror I feel at knowing that someone so young is now gone simply because they did not have the support system available to them to be able to cope.  I want to do something.  I want to help.  And I know I can't really do anything - I haven't the money, or the time, or the transportation to do anything that would have any effect.  I don't know how to be a mentor.  I don't know how to change laws, or fix things.

There was a web comic that covered this topic in November of 2010.  I want to have giant posters made of this comic and hang one up in every middle and high school in this country.  I want these kids to know that it does get better, that high school is most assuredly not the peak of your life, because if it is, that's just sad.  There is so much more they can be, there is so much more they can do, if only they give themselves the chance to achieve it, to see it.  I want them to see that they will be stronger, more interesting people after high school than their bullies, and they will go on to soar if they stick it out.

I want them to know it gets better.

The Slob Who Reads a Lot

I am alive.  (Obviously.)  I am in Emporia.  I am about to go to bed.  Apparently, the best I can do is declarative statements at the moment.  I have a library card, a job (which I haven't attended orientation for, which makes me nervous), and I have other big news that I hope I'll remember to post about later.  It deserves its own post, both so I can shit my pants over it and squee incessantly.  I am currently reading (or rereading): Angels & Demons by Dan Brown, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve, and The Stand (expanded edition) by Stephen King.  I've already read Angels & Demons, but I haven't seen the movie yet, so I wanted a refresher on how disappointed I'm going to be.  I read 9 pages of Pride & Prejudice before I gave up a few days ago, further cementing my need to just own the book so I can read it like I read 1984 - pick it up every few months and read a chapter or two.  Of course, I haven't touched 1984 since 2006, but it worked for The Hobbit - it took 6 months to read, but damned if I didn't do it.

Things are looking up.  I'm terrified.  I'm on the edge of some (more) huge changes.  I don't know how I feel about this and how many I'm ready to accept, but I'm working toward something different.  I don't know if it's better, but it's different.

I miss everyone like crazy. 

My belongings are everywhere because I never pick anything up.  I have two binders, a blanket, two canvas bags, a bathrobe, various purse innards, a newspaper, a notepad, a sweater, and mail on the floor near my feet right now.  Oh, and four library books, and that doesn't even count the books I seem to have misplaced.  (I was attempting to read Mrs. Dalloway again.  I got as far as I did last time.  I just can't seem to follow it.  It's somewhere around here.)

Things I seem to be good at accumulating, now that all my stuff is in one place:

• Pens with varying levels of ink.
• Odd batteries.
• Shoes.
• Books.
• Purses.

I am odd.  I am tired.  Good night.

The Cluster-You-Know-What

It's been forever since I posted here.  I suck like that.  Honestly, I haven't felt like dealing with it on top of everything else.

I wound up moving to Joplin, Missouri to stay with a friend.  She told me almost nothing about the true living situation in this house, so I walked in totally unprepared to discover the state of it.  The bedroom I sleep in with her daughter and her roommate's daughter always smells like cat pee because one of her cats won't stop peeing in there, and there are now 7 people living in this tiny house, which isn't much bigger than J and S's house.

The worst part was that she didn't tell me exactly what kind of bug problem she had.  She told me they only came over when people moved out of a duplex down the street, because she was ashamed of it and so she lied to me about it.  If I'd known the extent, I would never have come here.  I am basically phobic of roaches, so for the first 3 days I was here I did nothing but cry and have anxiety attacks.  My skin has been crawling for days, and I'm terrified I will find them in my hair.  I almost want to shave my head and start over, but I know a lot of the itch on my head is psychological.

So I'm moving to Emporia in two days to live with H, which was the original plan, before I changed my mind because this place was made to sound so much more stable.  Unfortunately, it's very, very not stable (more on that after I get to Emporia), and I can barely function in this house.  The only thing I want to do is not be here.  I can't even shower without being afraid I'll find one in the shower with me.  I'm only eating in the evenings because I hate going into the kitchen and I'm afraid to touch any of the food or dishes, so I'm only eating enough to get by until I can get the HELL out of here.  And oh god, one just appeared on the couch next to me.  *shudder*  If things continue the way they have been today, I may have to go to a homeless shelter or something with my stuff until then, or I put myself at risk for a huge backslide on the self-harming.  Upside, I've completely stopped biting my nails because I want no part of this house in my mouth.

H is being wonderful about this.  I have to abandon my dresser here because I don't want to accidentally bring the roaches with me, and she's offered to buy me a new plastic one to keep my clothes in, and she's going to take anything that might be hard to decontaminate to a dry cleaner to get that fixed.  I've already applied at 4 different places, or maybe 5, I forget, and hopefully someone calls me very soon.  Definitely looking forward to that.

I miss everyone at the house so much.  I even made a collage desktop background for myself, which I'm going to completely overhaul when I get to H's and have some free time after we determine if my computer is contaminated or not.  Woo.

Anyway, maybe I'll write another post later, but right now I have to go.

Adventures in Packing

Moving is hard.

You start off with the best intentions. "Everything is going to be packed properly! The kitchen stuff will all be together, the bathroom stuff, the bedroom stuff, the clothes, and the books will all be packed separately from each other," you say. Then you try to pack. First, you have a tote (or box, but in my case it's a tote) with all "memory box" type stuff. Then you have another tote with only books. But there's a little bit of extra room in the top and you don't want your books sliding around all over the place.

So you put a random dish towel on top to shore things up a little.

It all goes downhill from there. You start putting dinosaur tater tot toys in water pitchers and filling pasta pots with cosmetics, putting art supplies in the tote with the hangers, a single hanger in the tote with all the towels and breakable kitchen stuff. The purses and shoes are together, but they have a blanket in with them. At first, it still makes sense. Most everything is still organized. Then you start finding things around the house that you meant to pack but forgot about in your frenzy, and by the time you get to the last tote, this is what you have left to pack:

• A wedding planning binder (from 2 years ago that your best friend gave you after her wedding so you could plan yours that never materialized)
• A giant CD book
• A snake pen
• A wall night light
• A Christmas garland
• A plastic brandy glass the size of your head
• A pretty basket you keep bathroom stuff in
• Two hot pink file trays
• An accordian file
• Two photo albums
• A yearbook
• A catalog
• A half-done painting
• Various other artwork on paper
• A metal recipe box
• An enormous bathrobe
• A throw pillow inside piece for a pillow you never made

And of course, it doesn't all fit. You stuff things inside of each other, rearrange, take stuff out and put it back. You seriously consider attempting to concuss yourself with the brandy glass. Your back hurts and you just want this to be over with already. Finally, you give up, ditch the CD book, the pen, the metal box, the bathrobe, a photo album, and the wedding planning book, shove the garland in the brandy glass, and suddenly the tote closes. Then you dump all the extra into a laundry basket and put it on top of the giant stack of totes so you don't have to look at it anymore and run away.

This is why moving is hard.

Oh, Look! It's The Bottom!

As previously demonstrated, I suck at an actual posting schedule.  Or even posting anything semi-regularly.

Everything is changing.  S and J asked me to leave, so I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to live.  I have until February 1st, which is when I have to move out.  So far, I have no idea.  I don't know where I'm going to end up.  I have a couple of friends who are willing to keep me from ending up on the streets, but no real hope of finding something on my own.

I'm currently working on fixing my resume so it doesn't suck because I'm trying to apply for a job that requires a resume and a cover letter.  The cover letter is done, but I'm getting stuck on the resume.

I was going to look into going to school for a pharmacy technician certificate, but FAFSA doesn't pay for non-credit classes, so I am rethinking what I want to do and if I can do this.  I'm thinking about getting an associate's in business administration so I can try to find something I can do for a living while I look into going to college for real, or maybe the business admin degree will be enough.  I don't know.

Since I never unpacked all of my stuff when I moved in here, I don't have a ton of stuff to pack - most of what I'm waiting to pack right now is towels that are in Girl Child's room that S has promised to locate (I think she's doing that in a few minutes, actually), and what little kitchen stuff I came with.  I think.  I keep remembering stuff that I forgot I owned.  Like my purple ice cube trays.  I have no idea what happened to those.

I found out recently that my job with a certain clothing store was a seasonal position.  So I no longer have that job or the income.  I get my last check tomorrow, and I'll be checking then to see what is going on with this situation.

So, to summarize, I am pretty sure I have no job, and in 3 weeks, I will no longer be living here.  I don't know where I'll be.  Yep, looks like that bottom is rushing up to meet me.

So.  I've put a donation button for my PayPal account on this blog.  Totally optional.  I don't require anybody to actually give me money unless they want to.  But it's there.  Because I am at that point.  I hate that it's come to this.

In fact, I hate basically everything right now.

Brief Explanation

Depression is a funny thing.  It can lurk in the shadows, unnoticed, for months, occasionally springing out to throw you into a despair so deep that you suddenly lose all ability to function.  It can just drop you into a pit of apathy.  ...Or maybe it makes you stop caring about that blog you were so excited about starting, or ever actually baking those cookies, or doing anything more than grumpily sitting in a corner.

Depression is weird.  I don't feel depressed... most of the time.  In fact, most of the time I feel pretty okay.  Maybe it's how lonely I am, because I feel like I have an impenetrable invisible wall surrounding me, and I feel overwhelmingly alone even when I'm surrounded by people.  Sometimes.  Other times, all I want is to be alone for awhile.

What I'd really like to know is why I only feel this way sometimes.  Today is just particularly bad, but I have days where I'm fine (or at least apathetic, which I guess I better than feeling mildly suicidal), so I'm really confused.  I always thought of depression as something that never changed, that you sunk into and didn't come out of, or bob to the top occasionally to get a look around before sinking again.  It's very frustrating.  I'll feel better one day, and then a couple days later, I don't want to do anything except sit here.  I can't do anything.

So... basically this is my explanation for why I haven't been posting.  Because I just don't give a shit about anything right now, and I can't find the energy to write and be entertaining.  Besides, it's not like I ever write about anything remotely interesting.

Anyway, if SOPA is passed tonight, there won't be a point in maintaining a blog anyway.

Blargh

Life has been happening.

I quit the job at the survey place in favor of working for an actual corporation within my comfort level.  So I'm finally back in retail.  I've had two hours of training in the fitting room, three hours of training on the register, and my next time working is on black Friday.  Hopefully as a cashier, since I'm not trained on the floor and I would rather die than be in the fitting room.

I can't remember if anything else has happened lately.  Lots of things have happened, I suppose.  I don't really know where to start.  I never really know where to start.

I think some good things will be happening soon, though.  So, yay.  Also, I only have two more Christmas presents left to buy, one for M and one for my mother.  Everything else is done.  I'm so excited.  I still don't know if I'm going to do Yule or Christmas this year, but we'll figure something out.  I'll honestly probably have to work on Yule, and the store is closed on Christmas, so there's a pretty good chance that we'll have to do Christmas with me regardless.  Maybe.  I don't know.

My fingernails are finally growing back.  I'm still sort of trying to quit smoking.  I really should just quit.  Seriously.  I don't want to end up on oxygen when I'm older.

If I ever stop always being tired, I'll start posting more regularly.

Ballszilla!

I went to work two hours late (sanctioned) because I didn't get hardly any sleep last night, and today still managed to be tedious and long.  Woo!  I stood out there for an hour and a half this evening before I went home and absolutely no one would take a survey.  And the ones that agreed didn't qualify for a survey.  Goody!

While I was at work today, S had an equally long day rearranging the entire living room by herself.  Crazy woman.  It's pretty great, actually.  I'm now on the other end of the couch and in the corner by the windows, and I really dig it.  It feels sort of fort-ish.  Ha. Anyway, she did an incredible amount of work, and between that and digging out a bunch of clothes that were by the bed in the bedroom, she definitely kicked ass today.  Go S!!  Also, she found my other ballet flat I've been missing for four months that I swore up and down was under the couch.  It was under the couch.  And she found a shirt I've been missing for almost a year, so I'm really excited to get to wear it again.

I'm attempting to catch up on the laundry, since now that I'm working, it's not really getting done and everyone is out of clothes.  Joy.  Sometime in the next few days I am going to have to go through and sort all the laundry so we can have J take it downstairs and we can start getting it all washed again.  It's Mount Laundry in the hallway for now, though.  Oh god.

I'm taking Girl Child trick or treating on Halloween, and I'm all excited because I get to wear my glow in the dark Toy Story shirt and have it actually GLOW.  Yesssss.

While I was sorting the laundry out into what we need immediately tomorrow and what we can wait on for later this weekend, I got confused about some shirts, because S and I trade shirts around a lot.  (We both wear huge shirts when we're just hanging out at home.)  So I was trying to ask S about it, and I said her name, and she said, "Ballszilla!"  Because unlike a normal person, she greets people like this sometimes.  The hilarity was too much for me though, as it made me collapse laughing.  And then she yelled things like, "Floor!  Lamp!  Wall!  Dog!" and got great amusement from me laughing at this stuff.  I laughed so hard and for so long that I cramped my abdominal muscles and made my entire face hurt.  It was great.  She and Girl Child were sitting there laughing at me laugh silently, clapping like a retarded seal.  I love being here.

So today hasn't exactly been exciting or anything, but all in all a good day.  I'm too tired to write anything of substance, sorry.  If I could, I'd get all Link Round Up or ranty or some shit, but I'm just too exhausted to put a coherent sentence together.  I may do a picture update sometime soon, though, because I need to perform a camera dump very, very soon.  It's completely full.  I've got pictures dating back to April on that thing.

I'm obsessed with playing Solitaire on my iPod lately.  I don't know what to make of this.

And now, laundry!

I Am Bitchy Tonight

Well, I finally got to the point where I'm about to start mentioning even more new people, and I had to create a spreadsheet (Okay, a table in OpenOffice!) to keep everyone straight, since I don't use identifying information on this blog.

Today was kind of a busy day.  I'm really starting to not like RP very much - I liked her okay when I first started working at CAR (pseudonym!), but I'm seeing more and more that she's not a very nice person.  She sucks up to Boss a lot, and is his pipeline of information on what happens when he isn't there.  I don't like this very much (I can see why my coworkers at the fast food restaurant didn't like me very much), especially because she stole 3 different people out from under me today because she was being a competitive bitch.  CRN gave one of the surveys back to me, since I was the one who originally talked to them, and they decided to come back while I was bringing in someone else and talked to RP, who wrote her name on the screening sheet when she knew full well that it should have been mine.  So CRN gave it to me.  Woo.

Anyway, my other problems with her are that she's only 20 years old and has a baby that she isn't a very good mother to - she told me a story about how her son is so bad that when he was 9 months old, he said "bitch" and got spanked for it.  NINE MONTHS OLD.  What is this person doing with a baby, and why don't I have one?  I'd be a better mother than her.  And it's not like he said bitch, anyway.  He made a sound that sounded like it, while babbling, which is a thing that infants DO.  Christ on a stick, people.

One redeeming quality of RP is that she's stupid, so she agrees with everything I say, even bullshit.  Also, she thinks I'm a great singer, so it's nice to have the ego stroked a little bit, even if I know it's because she's an idiot with no life experience.

Anyway.  I'm starting to look for a better job, because I kind of hate this one sometimes, especially since Boss drinks on the job.  Actually, if he hadn't offered me the job on the spot, I'd have probably gotten a job with Old Navy, because they called for an interview on my first day at CAR.  Figures.

I think that's enough bitching about work.  Of course, I don't really have much to write about.  I had an idea for a story earlier, it just popped into my head, and I wrote down the one line that was in there, but I'm letting the rest float in my head for a bit before I put it down, because if it's actually good, it should stick.  (At least according to Stephen King.)  Maybe there's still a chance of me getting to write that novel I've wanted to write since I was a kid.  I would love that.

Anyway, I need to go and do stuff before I go to bed.  I have the house to myself tonight because J and S went to visit a friend of S's and they took the children.  Also, M is at work, so it's just me and the puppies.  Who are passed out on the floor.  I don't know how they are able to do that, since I've been really loud.  (I really love singing.)

Why is Coheed and Cambria so awesome?

Lunch Break Post

I made an error in my last post - the Toddler's birthday is not, in fact, tomorrow, but is coming up.  I should probably not write stuff when I'm tired.  Ha.

I'm at work on my lunch break right now.  I just found out what my first paycheck will be, and I'm so excited about it.  Part of me is a little terrified to spend any of it, in case this job doesn't work out, but I think it might for the short-term, at least.  I still haven't figured out who is going to be called what on here, and I don't have very much time at the moment to deal with it.  I'll work on it today, though.  Heh.

There really isn't much going on and my attention span is not the best at the moment because my blood sugar crashed right before lunch and I almost fainted.  Whee!  Also, my lunch is now over, so I shall be going.  I'm going to try to start posting more frequently again.

Update Fail

Okay, so I've been really busy lately.  I don't even want to touch this right now - in fact, I'm about to go to bed.  Here's a quick bullet-point update, which I may or may not fill out sometime over the next couple of days.

• I quit my job at the dry cleaner after four days because there were roaches around the clothes, the owner was dicking me around with getting my I-9 and W-4 filled out, and it was just generally horrible.
• The owner of the dry cleaner tried to refuse to pay me.
• Three days later, I got hired on the spot at a data collection place at my local mall, and I'm now a recruiter for bringing in people to do surveys.
• Life has been okay, except maybe a little sleep-deprived.
• I went swimming last night.
• I recently read Under the Dome by Stephen King and it was fantastic.
• We did an iPod switch again in the house not too long ago - I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, because I acquired this iPod when I was still posting regularly.  I have J's old Classic, Girl Child has my purple Nano (and my old pink Nano), J has S's old black Nano, and S has a Touch that she won in a drawing from her bank.
• With the Classic, I have enough room to finally get all my music on it at the same time, and I can even put movies on it.  I have Tangled on it, which is probably my favorite animated movie of all time, even better than Toy Story.
• It took 3 days to convert the Tangled file to iPod format.  I was sure my poor computer would explode.  It is inexplicably awesome to be able to watch a movie on an iPod.  No one else gets it, except Girl Child.
• Girl Child's birthday is on Thursday, and I have no idea what to get her.  So is the Toddler's, but he's easy.
• Christmas is coming, and I'm already panicking about present shopping.  Whee!

I may post at some point to give better details about work, once I get around to assigning pseudonyms for all the people I work with, because there's a buttload.  Woo!

There, I updated, is everyone happy now?

Obscure Doesn't Mean Hipster

I like obscure music.

I don't mean that in the hipster sense - it's not liking bands before they were mainstream thing.  I mean music that is literally not mainstream, that is literally obscure.  I'm talking about music that is usually categorized in New Age, Ambient, Noise, Space Music (which is actually a sub-genre of ambient), Ethnic Fusion, and World.  I used to listen to Night Tides on KCUR, my favorite local NPR affiliate, until I didn't have a radio that worked well enough to tune the station.  I wish I still had my stereo.

When I say my musical tastes are eclectic and kind of weird, I'm not kidding.  I like as much weird stuff as I like (ADD moment - oh!  Bjork!) mainstream music.  Apparently I'm currently on a .. I don't even know how to classify this group of music.  But I'm on a kick of it, whatever it is.

Anyway,  I just woke up, haven't even had coffee yet, so am a bit incoherent.  I wanted to sleep for longer, but I woke up when the Toddler did and then I started thinking, and that was the end of sleeping.

So basically, I've got nearly every musical genre represented on my iTunes playlist, and this tickles me.  Now I need to sort it all and delete the stuff I don't actually want, of which there probably won't be much.

I'll probably write another post later to explain what has been going on in my life outside of my music, because yesterday was rather eventful.  Also, I haven't taken my allergy pills in like two days, and I'm very sad, because all I can do today is sneeze and itch.

I May Just Die Now

Okay, so I don't know how the people with jobs have the time or energy to write anything worth reading.  I barely had the energy to make myself dinner.  Or the ability to get up and walk, for that matter.  I'm not kidding.  I spent four hours on my feet at work today, for the first time since I lost my job in December 2009 (when I'd regularly stand for 9-10 hours and be mostly fine), walking and shifting and reaching over my head and lifting heavy groups of hangers to bag orders, and that plus my decision to walk home (I was at the location within my perceived walking distance today) caused me to be unable to move around until about six hours after I got home.  I am not pleased with this development, and I really hope that my resistance to that kind of thing returns quickly, or I'm just going to die.  Maybe now.  Maybe I'll just fall over sideways onto the couch right now and just die.  Blah!

Anyway.. today I learned the Spanish word for stapler (es grapadora, apparently) and that you can get cramps in your knuckles.  I also learned that I need more pants than I currently have.  This whole owning only two pairs is not going to cut it for work.  Anyway, I worked for four hours today, and I've started helping customers for real.  As long as I stop forgetting that starch exists and remember to double-check the cash register when I close it, I think I'll be fine.  (My cash register training took less than a minute - I don't know how exactly to use the credit card machine, but I imagine I could puzzle that out myself if I really needed to.  I guess I'll find out on Monday.)  I actually really prefer the main store, where all the action is - it just feels friendlier, and I can walk there and back.  Please, scary boss man, let me have that location!

Today was also an excellent day at home - when I got home, S and the Toddler were outside because S was having a smoke, and you pretty much can't leave the Toddler in the house these days if you're going outside, because he will have paroxysms of grief over it.  It's kind of hilarious to watch (hey, the kid regularly gives me injuries, I'm laughing at him when he's ridiculous!), but it's really annoying to cope with, so he gets to go outside a bazillion times a day right now, and that works out well for everyone, pretty much.  Anyway, they saw me coming and he met me in the yard with a knee hug.  It was really, really cute.  After I went inside, I ate what was in my lunch box (I really don't need to pack a lunch for work - I never end up eating it, so I'm going to get grazing food instead) and watched Children of a Lesser God, which made me miss using ASL.  It also made me cry.  And I learned how to say "fuck you!" in sign language, which I'm sure will come in handy.  Haha.

J ended up waking up really early (about 4:30), and he wanted to get food, so S went to McDonald's for him, and the Toddler went along, and he almost climbed into his car seat on his own.  (I often put him in the car, so I've occasionally been asking him to try climbing in on his own.)  When they came back, I took him out of the car (S's hands were full), and I asked him if he could say my name yet, sounding it out for him very slowly.  And he said it.  Then he said it again.  And then he demonstrated for everyone else in the living room (Girl Child completely lit up), and then I used it as a form of bribery later when I was about to give him a bath - I told him if he said my name, I'd put him in the tub right then, and he immediately said it.  I'm pretty sure he knows that he's saying my name, S is really the smart one in that department, being his mother and all.  But oh god, what a rush!  Every time he says it, I just want to grab him and kiss his face off.  Totally made my day.  (Seriously, this is the absolute best part of my day today, and I mean that.  I would be more excited about him finally saying my name than if someone gave me $1000 right now.  Not that I would pass up $1000.)

Anyway, I played some FFX later in the evening, worked on my iTunes playlists some more (because I'm just never going to be done with the tweaking, I think), and then I had the idea to look up speech pathology, which I've been thinking about on and off for about 10 years now.  I think I'd like to become a licensed ASL interpreter and also get a speech pathology (or assistant) degree and work with deaf children and adults to help them learn to read lips and speak.  Maybe.  I've had a look at what you have to go through just for the interpreter certifications, and it's going to take me like four years just to get that, and usually a speech pathologist has a master's degree, so it's going to be a very, very long time before I get that, if I manage to do it at all.

Right now, it all kind of hinges on having a car.  Doing the math in my head, if I spend absolutely no extra money for about four months, I should have enough saved to get a car that runs.  Of course, Christmas is coming up, so I'll tack on an extra month for Christmas.  But in any case, I should be able to buy a car by this spring, and hopefully I'll have my permit issues sorted out so I can start driving.  (Though if I get the car and can't drive it yet, I'll just figure out how to make it be so S can drive it until I can drive it myself.  If she's agreeable - I haven't talked about this with her yet because I haven't had any prospects for getting money until this week.)

I can't think of anything else to say.  My brain isn't working very well - I'm really tired and I took two naproxen and a Zyrtec about half an hour ago, so now my brain is extra not working.  See?  I can't even make words be sentences.  But I'm off tomorrow, so I'm going to sleep a lot.

New Chapter in My Story

I don't have time to do that links round-up, so it's going to have to wait until probably Sunday.  In fact, a lot of things are probably going to have to wait until Sunday.

I'm going to begin at the beginning, though, just to be a horrid bitch.  Bwahaha!  Today, I slept in really late because I passed the hell out around midnight in the bedroom and slept through everything until I woke up in the middle of a seriously strange dream involving a mansion and a guy with thousands of ladies' socks stacked up in a gradient, so they made the entire color spectrum.  There was also a room with a ton of antique furniture and things and lots of old lamps and an old guy restoring them or something.  I don't know.  It was weird.  Anyway, between that and the company that was over bringing me further out of sleep, I was up for the day.  Woo!

The day was basically the exact same day as the last several, until my phone rang at about 2:30.  There was a man on the other end, the guy who owns the dry cleaner I applied at last Friday.  He wanted me to come in for an interview this afternoon, so after much frantic running about (since I was still in pjs and all), I was dressed and S drove me to the interview, which was very short - if S had known how short it was going to be, she would have just waited until it was done and dropped Girl Child at her friend's house after.

The interview was okay.  The guy was foreign, so I had difficulty understanding him sometimes, but he seemed really nice.  He really liked my typing speed (80-90 wpm on keyboards that actually work), and he didn't like that I don't have a car right now (I decided to avoid mentioning the lack of driver's license), but I'm smart and willing to work, so apparently he's willing to overlook the slight transportation snag, since...

HE HIRED ME!!!!!!!!

(If I could, I would make that part sparkly and dance-y.)

Anyway, so he told me initially that he would call me by the end of the week and let me know if I was going to be starting training or not (I've heard this before, that's usually a sign that they're not going to hire you at all), and we thanked each other, and I went outside to wait for S.  A few minutes later, I was on the phone with J, trying to figure out how long it would be before S came back, when he stepped outside and called me back over to tell me he had changed his mind and that I start training tomorrow morning at 10:00.  Holy crap. I have to ask for a certain woman at the location near the house when I get there and I will learn things and it will be awesome.

When S picked me up, she decided we needed to go to Long John Silver's and have some food, and there was much excitement (I talk ridiculously fast when I'm excited, too!), and we ate and the Toddler displayed a love of tartar sauce the likes of which has never been seen - it got him to eat his chicken, which normally doesn't happen.  When we got home, J was already in bed (he's been on vacation because his birthday was Tuesday), so after I got off the phone with C, I came outside and hung out with S and the Toddler for a bit, and we invented a new sport of walnut throwing.  Ha.

After we came inside, I waited until I was sure M was awake, then I went downstairs and unstacked all my totes in the basement so I could get at the clothes I keep down there that I don't wear very often - most of them don't fit right now or are things I don't really need to wear at the moment, like my heavy sweaters and my bathrobes, which are all shorty robes and make me overheat anyway.  Of course, I recently just switched my clothes around, moving the stuff that I only have for when I'm working downstairs and keeping all the fun clothes upstairs and also bringing up all my winter stuff so that I wouldn't have to worry about that later when it's actually cold.  Then, of course, I end up needing my work shirts.  Figures.

After I brought up all my work shirts, I did a quick fashion show for S so we could determine how many work shirts I have available to me, and as I was trying to get things moved around so they'd all fit (tiny dresser + a bazillion shirts = sad), I grew very frustrated with my complete lack of space - I have a small four-drawer dresser with a wide storage drawer thing sitting on top of it, which doesn't even begin to sufficiently hold all my clothes.  So I went back downstairs and got the other storage drawers, which is the exact same size as the first one, took all my crocheting stuff out of it (all 58274 projects) and dumped it all in a piece of luggage, hauled the drawers upstairs and perched them upon the first one.  I now have drawers reaching almost to the ceiling.  It's a little ridiculous.  I actually can't reach much above the top drawer in the first tote, so I will regularly need a step stool now if I need anything out of the other ones.  Woo.  I don't even care, actually, I'm just so damn happy to finally have room for all my shit.

Of course, this running around like a headless chicken (which is what S said about me on G+ earlier) caused me back pain, knee pain, ankle pain, shoulder pain, and foot pain.  And I've got a headache and I'm starving.  And I have to work tomorrow.  God, that feels weird.  I haven't worked in almost two years.  TWO YEARS.  That is a long time.  I'm really nervous and excited about tomorrow.  I hope like hell that I can sleep tonight, or tomorrow is also going to suck horribly.

Anyway, I'm really really excited.  And stuff.  Oh god.

Goodbye, Facebook

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything worthwhile - my allergies and my sleep schedule nonexistence of late have made it hard to do anything that requires actual thought.  So I've been spending quite a bit of time tweaking my iTunes playlist, reading news articles (so many links to share!), discovering new music, watching movies, playing video games, and crocheting.  Also, playing with Twitter.

Things haven't exactly resembled anything exciting here lately - same old, same old for the most part.  I don't remember if I've mentioned this previously, but I applied for a job with a dry cleaner in my neighborhood, and am still waiting to hear back from them.  I don't know if this means they found someone else, or if they lost my application among the many they probably received, as everyone and their mother is desperate for work right now, or if they're just taking their time deciding who to call.  I've been on tenterhooks for days, though, and am starting to feel pretty confident that they're not going to call, just like everyone else.  I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.

J installed the dishwasher the day before yesterday.  It's wonderful.  Everyone is so damn excited.  We had to have the power off for about four hours, though, so that was kind of a fiasco, but it's a fair trade for a successful installation.  Also, because S needed to help J with the install, I had the Toddler for a large chunk of the day, and took him to the park.  Of course this was the one hot day this week, and of course I got a sunburn and 12 mosquito bites, and a horrendous allergy flare-up.  I'm mostly fine now, though, except I get new mosquito bites every single time I leave the house right now, which is really lame.  I am so itchy!

This morning, I woke up to discover that Facebook made some major changes to the entire site.  I was already angry with them to begin with after their last "tweak" of the privacy settings, making it more difficult to set them the way I want them because I can no longer tell what some things are set as at all.  This makes me pissy.  Anyway.  I'm completely sick of the way Facebook is run, I hate everything about it, and I've decided to quit using it.  I'm in the process of getting a copy of all my data downloaded from Facebook, and then I shall be deleting my account.  I don't give a shit who's going to miss me.  That's what Google+, e-mail, and fucking telephones are for!  Not to mention that I actively use both MSN and Yahoo messenger clients (well, I use Yahoo for E's benefit only, actually), and the fact that I'm not hard to get in touch with at all.  So fuck off, Facebook.  (I believe S decided the same thing this morning, as did several other people on my Facebook friends list, so I imagine I'll be seeing them all on Google+ shortly.)  I've even found a way to make up for the stuff that I was following on Facebook that it is now impossible to follow with the new News Feed - Twitter!  So I'm using Twitter to follow Huffington Post and NPR and all the other stuff that I use to find the news articles I read, and will probably use Google+ to keep up with the people I care about.

Anyway, that's really all.  As stated previously, nothing exciting has been happening lately.  I'm listening to a really beautiful song by M right now, which is pretty awesome. 

Speaking of M, he saved my butt on Sunday.  I was already having kind of a bad day, and then my iPod got frozen while I was trying to force my computer to recognize its existence.  Like really frozen.  I couldn't reset it, turn it off, skip the song, hear anything, lock it, or adjust the volume.  I could literally do nothing with it.  M offered to take it with him to work, and I don't know exactly what he did (something fancy, apparently), but he fixed it within half an hour.  Of course, I didn't have access to it until Monday morning, but I was just so happy to have it functioning again that it really didn't matter to me when I got it.

Also, S and I discovered raspberry ginger ale.  It's a very happy, pretty shade of fizzy pink.  I will be having some with vodka later to see if that's tasty together.  I will be having some alone in a minute to see if it's tasty at all.

I hope that I get back to regular postings soon - I'm planning on finally writing that post about growing up Catholic and how I've always sort of known that I was an atheist, but I'm lazy, so here's hoping it actually materializes.  Also, I have an idea for a new story bouncing around in my head, but I think I'm going to let it marinate for a little while before I try writing anything down, since about half my stories are poop.  Not that I've ever finished one, except for this story that was six pages long that was about a little girl and a pond that I wrote when I was 19.  I've been thinking about revisiting that a little bit and seeing if I can tweak it a little bit, and see if I can revisit the same family after a few years have gone by.  Maybe.

Anyway, I don't have anything interesting to say.

Procrastination is Bad, But Links are Good!

I've been procrastinating lately about writing anything because I'm, well, lazy.  However, I'm almost done completely redoing my entire iTunes library, which includes correcting files and deleting bad ones and removing the ones that I only deleted out of the library and not off the hard drive.  (I had almost 10gb of extra material and am now down to probably less than a gig of stuff I don't want.)

This post is going to be primarily a links post - I'll write a real post about life in a little bit, and post some photos, because yay photos.  But now, here are links I've been gathering since September 5th.

Links Round-Up

I complained about Pepperberry earlier this week in this post, but while I was writing that post (and looking at all the links that I used when I wrote it), I came across an article that pointed out that when Pepperberry was launched, they sized all of their stuff down just enough that the Super Curvy size now fits like a Really Curvy, which presumably means that no one above an F or G cup will be able to shop at Pepperberry now unless they want to buy overpriced clothes that are in a size that is too large everywhere else.  If I'm going to be forced to buy something that doesn't fit me well, I may as well just get it from Wal-Mart for five bucks instead of thirty at Pepperberry.  So disappointed - I was really looking forward to buying some clothes from them after I get a job and lose about 10 inches.

Square Enix is doing a remake of Final Fantasy X, which is only my most favorite video game ever.  I'm hoping and praying that the battle system goes unchanged, since I'll probably be unable to play it if it does change.  (I'm hilariously bad at real-time battle and most other turn-based systems are too quick for me to keep up with because I'm a rather methodical player.)  But oh god oh god the graphicsgasm I shall have!  Can't wait, can't wait!  (I think they're just making it prettier for the PS3 so it can be in HD, but maybe there'll be new content, too.)

Vladimir Putin is pretty much the coolest leader of a country ever.  Dude.  Seriously, go look at these photos.

For the last several years, I've noticed that teachers are getting blamed more and more for things that are actually the fault of the parents and students.  It's definitely not a profession I intend to go into anymore (I used to want to be a teacher when I was a kid), mostly because there's too much stress and bullshit for the low pay teachers receive.  Until teachers are valued for the vital keystone to our world's future that they are, we are going to have nothing but the people who chose teaching because it was easier to become a teacher than it would have been to go into the profession they really wanted.  I found an article written by a teacher that tells parents what teachers really would like to say, if they weren't terrified of going to jail, being sued, or otherwise losing their livelihood.

Scientists studied a group of 60 four year olds taking mental function tests, and found that watching nine minutes of Spongebob Squarepants right before taking the test caused them to do measurably worse than the children who watched nine minutes of Caillou or drew pictures for nine minutes.  All right then.

Well, now I don't want to live in England anymore.  What the hell kind of country rations tests designed to detect cancer early?!

In the rainforests in the Indian state of Meghalaya, there are living bridges.  Made of tree roots.  And they are pretty.

Cool!

I really like Obama, and I think most of the country is being a little impatient with him - how is he supposed to fix everything George Bush broke in just four years, when Bush had eight to break it all?  (Not that it was just Bush, since it was also the entire Congress being rich, pampered assholes.)  Anyway, I really liked seeing him be angry with Congress, and I hope that this does something, whether it lights a fire under Congress's collective ass or just gets Obama elected for a second term so that he can finish what he started.  I feel proud of him, and I really hope that jobs bill gets passed, because maybe that will finally help me find a job.  (Of course, then everyone reading this will probably never hear from me again... :P)

This is just horrifying.

NPR made a chart that shows where the Republican contenders stand on climate change and evolution.  This is like a week old, but still relevant if you haven't seen it.

I have made it no secret in the past that I at best look upon Michele Bachmann with disdain, and at worst make fun of her mercilessly. And, of course, there's the recent bit about her in the news that, unless you live under a rock, you know about - the Republican debate where Michele Bachmann yelled at Rick Perry for trying to push through legislation forcing girls to get the HPV vaccination as the Governor of Texas.  I think it's hilarious that the American Academy of Pediatrics debunked everything she said about how the HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation.  It's even funnier that she tried to defend this, saying that she's not a doctor.  Because when you're a public figure, it's totally okay to make completely fallacious statements about something just because you don't agree with its use.

I decided after the whole Toyota fiasco a few years ago that I was never going to buy a Toyota that was made after the 1990s, and after seeing what their idea of an ad campaign is, I don't ever want to own a Toyota ever.  Ever ever ever.  What the fucking fuckety fuck, Toyota?!

I found this video hilarious.  Beware, you may find it mentally raping.  S did.  (This is all C's fault, he sent it to me!)  Also, I really want to find the song that plays during the video, because it's really, really catchy.  And I want it.

I was sent this recently, because apparently this is what I should be giving to my boyfriends.  Ha.

I read Crazy Things Parents Say a lot, and I saw this the other day and thought it was really cute.

A murder suspect was called for jury duty... in his own trial.

Can't tell if trolling or legitimate...  Seriously, I can't tell if this is a joke or if it's an article that was really written in the 90's by some old curmudgeon who didn't trust that new-fangled World Wide Web thing.

This morning, J was reading some statistics to S and me about Fox News viewers.  Since we're a household of people who think people who legitimately go to Fox News for their news and political information are stupid, this was just more evidence of the kind of shit this country is going to.  I asked him for the link, intending to post it here and freak out about how the whole country is just going to implode, and noticed that he hadn't really paid attention to the website, which is actually a satire website, like The Onion.  Yep, that's right, it was a huge joke, and more hilarious for that.