I hadn't been feeling well all day, really; I wasn't sure what it could've been, though I chalked it up to my allergies (which have been somewhat nightmarish over the past several days) as well as my sleep schedule getting thrown off again even worse than before -- I'd only slept a few hours before I got back up, and only stayed awake all day because I wanted to make sure she'd gotten home safely. I always worry about her making that drive, whether it's to here or there.
Part of why I'd stayed awake so late is because I was working on a project; Father's Day is coming up, and while I'd ordered something for my dad on Amazon (it arrived home in West Virginia last night, actually, though I don't know if my parents have checked the mailbox yet), I hadn't yet done anything for Daisy's father. I, of course, went with my old standby -- tie-dye. Daisy's parents love tie-dyed stuff, as I've mentioned here before, and most of the time I'm pretty good at making it (there have been a few failures in color combinations every once in a while). So, when Daisy and I went to Walmart a few nights ago, I got a 5-pack of white shirts and a pack of dyes -- navy, sky blue, and green -- and went to work. I still had about half a bottle of purple dye left over from Christmas, as well, so I used that too.
While Daisy drifted in and out of sleep on the couch (and later went downstairs to bed), I twisted, folded, and rubber-banded the shirts into patterns and dyed them one by one, coordinating by color. I let the dyes set overnight, as is customary, and then rinsed them out in the morning. I did it quickly, yes, but they still turned out okay, from what I could see. I tried a new pattern I'd not done before, a double-spiral (which, as you may have guessed, is two spirals that sort of work into one another, like gears) and it looked pretty good. However, in the shirts with the bit of purple on them, the purple spread/bled into the whiter areas of the shirts, washing them out into a bit of a pinkish, white-man-fleshtone color for the white, and the folded design I tried to do didn't come out as well as I thought it would (too much color on one side of the shirt, not enough on the other). They still looked fine, though, and I sent four of the five shirts home with Daisy, telling her to tell her parents to split them up/wear them however they wanted or due to color preferences, but they were mostly for Dad for Father's Day. I didn't get pictures of them before I sent them home with her, but I'll take a picture of the normal spiral one I kept, as a representative. I'll do that later, once I bring it upstairs. It's with the rest of my normal laundry right now. If Mama wants to bleach and re-dye the folded design shirt that came out a little weird, she can, etc. I would've done it myself if I'd had more time (or, well, bleach).
It's been really quiet, as per the usual, since Daisy left. I didn't do much yesterday, despite the fact that since I went to bed very early on Thursday night, I got up at 6:30 AM; I emptied the dishwasher, refilled it, and ran it again, and I filled my water bottles with new filtered water. I sent out two more thank-you notes for late cards/graduation gifts (my aunt and uncle, as well as my dad's parents, sent me stuff this week) and took a shower. That's about it. When Daisy awoke, I talked to her for a bit, then she went back to bed to take a nap before work tonight, and I did the same -- after making dinner and watching most of a movie downstairs. I awoke shortly after 2AM.
In the mail today, I got a letter from the university containing information about doing a required student loans "exit interview" thing online, as well as a statement telling me how in debt I really am (read: a fair amount, but not as much as I thought, which is good). I'll have to do that exit interview thing sometime over this weekend to get it out of the way (otherwise, I'll just put it off forever and eventually forget about it), but it's not like I enjoy being reminded that my simple survival over the past three years cost me a shitload of money in debt.
Still, it's not a huge amount; most mid-range new cars cost more these days than the amount of debt I'm in. But, again, it's not like I need to be reminded constantly that "hey, you eventually have to pay this back, you know." Yeah, I know. I plan to, when I get a good job and can afford to. But maybe I won't be able to. Do I care either way? No, not really. I have three credit cards already -- put my credit score in the shitter, I don't care. I have a car, a home, and my bills are paid. There's no such thing as debtor's prison anymore. The student loans will get paid off when they're paid off, and when I'm able to pay them off. No sooner, no later. Until then, I don't care. Mainly because I'm pretty sure there are millions of students much worse off than I am when it comes to loans.
I told Daisy this is also part of why I'd like to change my name, purchase a RV, and just drive the countryside so nobody can ever find us. Three cats can live in an RV, and when we need internet we'll pull into a Starbucks parking lot with our laptops.
She thought this was a bad idea. Some people...
Anyway.
The next several days are likely to be pretty quiet. Daisy's at work, and I'm spending my hours looking for and applying for jobs. I turned on my phone tonight for the first time since I was in Omaha, and I had no missed calls, texts, or voicemails. No news is good news, I suppose. Well, maybe. I don't know, exactly. I told Daisy this, and she said "I'm sorry," so apparently she thinks that nobody calling me thus far is a bad thing.
"I'll either get a call from ITT or Vatterott, or I won't," I said. "Regardless, I'm still going to be looking for, and applying for, other jobs."
"You'll find something eventually," she said, smiling.
That's all I really have that's pressing, anyway; my shopping was done while Daisy was here, I've paid all of my bills but one (my credit card bill came today) and aside from a little laundry and cleaning the toilet, I have no chores to do. The grass isn't even high enough to mow again yet -- I probably won't need to do that for another week or so. I've been wanting to order pizza so that I don't have to cook (especially because it's supposed to get really hot over the course of next week), but I haven't yet done it because I don't really want it yet, and have no room in the freezer to put the leftovers. I could, of course, clean out the freezer and get rid of all the old stuff in there I'll never eat or use, but eh. Maybe I'll do that this week anyway.
It's not that I'm looking for stuff to do to kill time; there's plenty of stuff I could be doing in all sorts of arenas. If I wanted to kill time, there's a stack of movies and games I haven't watched or played yet, for example, and I could always clean out the garage or the old storage room. That's not the problem. The problem is the motivation and necessity of the stuff that I do need to take care of, and the sometimes-excessive heat of the summer months. It's been nice over the past few days, yes, but when it gets up in the 90s and 100s every day, it drains my energy and ability to get a lot of the more strenuous tasks done if I don't want to die of heatstroke.
Adding to this (and wrapping around to the title of these past two posts) is that it's supposed to storm here tonight again. Not badly, at least not from what I've heard, but enough to where it'll make things muggy and oppressive throughout the upstairs of the house if there's moisture in the air afterwards when the temperature spikes over the next several days. This is also another reason I'm waiting to mow the grass for a while, aside from the fact that it doesn't yet need it again. I was planning to take the car over to the car wash and scrub it down when I fill it with gas and get gas for the mower, but there's no reason to do that if it's going to storm over the next day or two.
Here's the brief to-do list over the course of the next week or so:
- Mow the grass when it needs it
- Wash the car
- Get gas in the car and in the tank for the mower
- Put fuel system cleaner/marvel mystery oil in the car
- Go see Man of Steel when it opens
- Make a quick trip to the discount grocery store
- Make a quick trip through Dollar General (since I haven't done so in months)
- Continue searching for/applying for teaching positions
- Do a quick vacuum of the house sometime this week
- Order another bag of cat food from Amazon (it's cheaper from there)
- Clean out the freezer
- Pay bills as they come in
- Mail out checks for deposit to my mother
- Possibly order pizza
- Run a load or two of laundry
- Clean the toilet again
- Do that required loan exit interview thing
- Write, including on here
- Put car in garage if storms get bad
- Set up new keyboard for this PC
- Pay my car insurance with my Citi card
...et cetera.
On the plus side, my hemorrhoid is basically gone. They don't usually last more than two or three days. I've also been up moving around a lot, too, so that probably helped.
I dread the oncoming heat wave more than I dread a lot of things; it will more than likely require me to turn on the air conditioner for the first time this year, which will, in turn, make my electric bill skyrocket for this month. It's either that or silently broil myself inside this house. Last summer, it was 101 in my Man Cave at night with the windows open and the fans running. That's not a joke; I took a picture of it:
See?
Yes, I'd like to avoid that again if at all possible, but it's not like I can control the weather. Right now it's 63 outside, yet it is 79.7 in my Man Cave. It's the hottest room in the house regardless of season, outside temperature, or how much air flows through the room. I don't exactly know why. It's always been like that. Believe me, I've lived in this house for four years. I know.
Anyway, that's about all I've got right now. I'll update you folks again when something happens.
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