Ferked

 

After having a big fight last night, Daisy and I got back on good, loving terms and spent a few hours this afternoon trying to pick out wedding songs. As in, the first song that we'll slow-dance to at said wedding. I. Am not a slow-dancer. I am not really a dancer at all, unless I'm really drunk. Those of you who were at the graduation party last month know what "really drunk" constitutes for me.  

We never really came to a consensus on what to pick, though we did narrow it down a bit. We have to figure out where the hell the wedding is going to be first, for starters. Daisy has found several primo locations thus far that she's called about, and they're relatively inexpensive (read: definitely within our budget). I told her to pick whatever one she wished and to book it now, since the ones she called about today are still open on our chosen wedding date.

I, of course, am more excited at the present moment about Man of Steel.

"I wish I could go see it with you," Daisy told me a few minutes ago.

"Lieeeeeee," I replied. "You have no desire to see Man of Steel."

She has told me this in the past. I'm not making it up. Again, Daisy is not nerdy in any way. I have grown to slowly accept this, while still taking her to movies like Star Trek Into Darkness and Iron Man 3. It's really to prepare her for a life married to an unabashed nerd who will father unabashedly nerdy kids with her. Call it an initiation of sorts.

"If it's with you, then I do," she said.

"Okay, then come down here after you get off work on Tuesday morning and we'll go see it that night."

Note: I do not want to wait to see this movie, obviously. But it is quite apparent that it is important to Daisy that we see it together. Ferk. FERK FERK FERK. But okay.

"Can we make it Wednesday? I want to check out locations on Tuesday with [mutual friend] so I can reserve one of the two..."

"If you're okay with only being able to stay for about 36 hours before you have to go back home, love."

Daisy, as you may know, works a bizarre night-shift schedule of ten-hour shifts, Friday through Monday nights, 8:30PM to 7:30AM. It throws a big wrench into any sort of visiting plans either of us make, because she's only ever off for a maximum of 72 hours at any given time, and driving time here and back is 10 hours total. It also means that she sleeps really weird hours, and any time for a social life is basically nonexistent.

"I can make it, just not sure what day. But, if you want to see it this weekend, we can just hang out when I'm there. It's up to you."

Ah, the illusion of choice.

"If you want to see it with me," I said, "then I want to see it with you and can/will wait for it. But I want to see it soon."

So it looks like I'm waiting a few extra days to see the movie. Which is okay, I suppose. I didn't see Star Trek until a week after its release, and didn't see Iron Man 3 until its fourth week. It's worth waiting a few extra days to be able to see it with Daisy. That's love, baby.

In other news, I've been applying for teaching jobs like a madman tonight. Not only did I apply for one in Kentucky which I had to mail an application for via snail-mail, but I applied for at least five or six more in several different states -- Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, New Jersey, and one in my home state of West Virginia. Okay, so I guess that's five more. No, wait, there was one in San Antonio too. Six. By the time I was done filling out applications, updating my CV/tailoring it for positions, and writing cover letters, I basically exhausted today's English instructor postings.

Daisy's response to this?  

"God, I love you. I am so excited for our future. I don't care how hard we work or how poor we are, I just want to be with you."

Pretty sure I'm marrying the right woman, folks.

Especially since, y'know, we's gon' be poor.

Anyway.

If I can keep up this pace of applying for new positions posted every day, I will more than likely have a shot at getting an interview from at least a few of them. Or an email. Or even an acknowledgement of hey, your application is cool. Something like that. The position in West Virginia is about 40 minutes away from Pittsburgh. It's in the northern panhandle. I told Daisy that we wouldn't even have to live in West Virginia if we didn't want to, because we wouldn't need to. The good thing about the northern panhandle is that Pennsylvania is to the east, and Ohio is to the west. Both are superior states. Hell, Ohio still has Rax restaurants and White Castles. 

Don't think I wouldn't drive hours out of my way to go to either of those places to eat again. Because I totally would. And I would also base where to live on their proximity to my home. Again, not kidding here.

This is because I live in Kansas, and there is fucking nothing in Kansas. 

However, the one thing that is missing from all of these applications I've been sending out should, sadly, be quite evident -- none of them are in, or even close to, the Omaha area. None. Not a one. That's because there are no teaching positions whatsoever in and around the Omaha area (because, believe me, I check three different sites every single day for them). 

This is disheartening. Really, really disheartening. There's just nothing there, and I can't change that. And, again, until my reasonable window for applying to teaching jobs is closed, I have to focus on that. Can I do basically anything I want in Omaha? Yes, I can. But do I want to teach? Yes. And it doesn't appear -- unless something is posted for the area soon -- that I'll be able to teach in Omaha.

It certainly won't stop me from applying at places like Google and PayPal -- both of which have big hub offices in Omaha. It won't stop me for applying for high-end positions in any number of fields in that area. But will I be teaching in Omaha in the fall? That is, at this point, quite doubtful.

After trying to go to bed and finding myself unable to sleep in the heat of the house, even in the bedroom downstairs (where it's substantially cooler) I came back upstairs and attempted to be productive, and when failing at that, played Xbox for two hours for the first time since...March? Something like that. When I was finally tired enough to sleep, I returned to the bedroom and slept until nearly 9PM, and woke up to see that Pete had hacked up a monstrous black hairball on the sheet next to my pillow. I also awoke to Sadie finishing off a battle with a gravely wounded brown recluse on the floor in the laundry room, and standing above it proudly in triumph.

Cats, I swear.

I have been, for the past several days, an incredible spider slayer in my home. Over the past week, I have killed more brown recluse in this house than I've killed in the past year, both upstairs and downstairs, at an average of 4-5 spiders per night. This is primarily because, while it had been nice, cool and mild for the past several weeks, this week it spiked into the high 90s and 100s, and whenever this happens fairly suddenly, they all come in through the cracks and crevices to get out of the heat and to stay cool. Similarly, when it cools down at night and gets dark, they come out in search of food (or for whatever else bastard spiders do). My house is old; I can set up all the spider traps I want (there are about ten or so traps scattered about the house right now), but they're not going to catch them all. The cats will chase them down and kill them as well -- Pete once killed three of them in one night and left them all outside my bedroom door as trophies/presents a few years back -- but I know their habits, and I now have been proactive and have a plan of attack. 

Here's how it works. The recluse "wake up" and come out from around 10PM to 2AM, roughly. During that time, with the cats in tow, I will make several "patrols" of the house, examining walls, corners, and floors, especially downstairs. Any I see, or any the cats see, get killed. With extreme prejudice. If there's one on a wall or near the ceiling that I can't reach, no worries there -- I have a spray bottle, filled with hot water, with a focused squirt stream that will fire at least fifteen feet, if not more. Aim, fire. Most of the time the water itself, or the force of it, will kill them. If it doesn't, and they try to limp away once they fall to the floor? Squish. 

I kill 2-3 spiders on each one of these patrols, roughly. Sometimes I won't see any at all. But, in the past few days, each night I seem to kill less and less. Last night it was five, total. Tonight it was three. This tells me that I am, slowly, winning this war and eliminating these eight-legged fucks from my house. 

I will also remind you that in Kansas, you can't really do anything about brown recluse. They are, and will be, everywhere. No matter what. Despite this, they are called recluse for a reason, and in my four years living in this house (almost seven years living in the midwest total), I've never been bitten by one, and I've lived in some pretty shitty apartments over my years of independence. Apparently they're not dangerous to the cats, either, since the cats tend to kill them pretty easily and have done so for years. But I hate having them in the house. The traps help, though. The traps help a lot, and catch a ton of them.

There is one spider I let live, however; he's a little wolf spider who lives under the carpet in the stairwell. I see him pop out from time to time, and always leave him be/shoo the cats away from him. Why? Because wolf spiders eat recluse. He can live. Let him hunt and all that...until the cats eventually catch him or he gets caught in one of the traps. I'm setting up more traps in the morning; another two new ones will go into the garage, and at least two more in the basement areas. I'm a pro at this by now; I know what stops them from becoming a true nuisance. 

On that note, there's not much else to say. I'll be waiting for replies or calls from the jobs I've applied for, and will continue to search. In the meantime, it's thundering here, which means (hopefully) we'll finally get some rain and I'll be able to cool down a bit.