(or, "Why I need to get married and live in a dual-income home right fucking now.")
This morning I completed my "exit counseling" on the studentloans.gov website.
Oh my, my friends, it is fucking grim.
I have $42k in student loans. I feel comfortable saying that; I don't really care who knows, to be honest with you, and with interest on the two unsubsidized ones I had to take (they got rid of the subsidized ones after 2011 for graduate students), my total is $44,816 as of right now.
My first thought: Okay, that's not *incredibly* bad.
My second thought: Maybe all of those Publisher's Clearing House forms I've meticulously filled out over the past six months will miraculously pay off.
My third thought: Daisy is going to have to plan one hell of a cheap wedding.
My fourth thought: I need a good job, and I need to get married to this woman, move in together, and start sharing expenses ASAFP.
There are a number of handy "calculators" on the student loans website, allowing you to estimate payments based on income and monthly expenses and the like. It will make you use these calculators to estimate things to prove that you're not blindly clicking "continue" over and over just to be done with the exit counseling session. As an example, I was realistic and put into the calculator that I'd probably get a $25k a year job, as most teaching positions won't pay much more than that unless you're tenure-track or a full professor. After estimated monthly expenses and student loan payments, I'm only actually keeping about $7,500 of that $25k per year. Again, estimation, but it's a sobering perspective on things. And, again, that's based on me as a single guy, unmarried, without a spouse helping to cover the household bills and other expenses. It still tells me that without a super high-paying position, I'll now never be able to make it on my own. This, of course, I already knew. However, as I'll be marrying Daisy, I won't be on my own -- and neither will she, obviously. Part of getting married is being there for one another. So, already, those estimations are a bit off. Once we're married, of course, it's not like only one of us is going to be paying every household bill individually, obviously. We've already had some preliminary discussions about how we'll split up the finances, checking accounts, and the like.
This student loan stuff is nothing new to Daisy; she has loans of her own that she makes payments on, so she knows the drill already. I, however, have never had loans before. I got through undergrad on scholarships and grants, and only took loans in graduate school so I could eat and keep the lights on, since our GTA pay was laughably low (and I do mean laughably low).
At the end of the exit counseling, they make you pick a repayment plan before you finish. The standard plan is ten years, and it splits up to a little over $500 a month or something like that. I picked that one for the moment, though I can change it later if necessary. Even with a fairly shitty job, with Daisy and I paying bills and expenses together, that should be do-able. No, we won't have the newest electronics or the most expensive car, obviously, but we should be able to live with modesty without having to worry about starving or paying bills.
My loans entered their "grace period" the weekend after graduation, when I was up in Omaha. I got an email about it while I was there. They've been in that period for a little less than a month now. They're in grace for six months before I have to start paying them back. This means that yes, I have some time to find something to do, win the lottery, win the Publisher's Clearing House prize, or fake my death and disappear.
Daisy would, of course, tell me the latter three options probably aren't the best, dependable ideas. And she would be correct. Like it or not, whatever I end up doing, the clock is ticking -- I've got about another month at most to search for/apply for teaching jobs, and if I don't find something in that time, I must immediately expand my searching for anything and everything I could do, all over this country, which would allow me to start banking some money and taking care of my expenses before that time runs out.
Daisy and I are also planning the wedding. Well, sort of. She's doing a lot of the planning and scouting for locations, trying to figure out the right flavor of cake, etc. She asked me last night to put together a draft of the guest list for my side of the invites.
Uhhhh...
This is really difficult for me, honestly. There's about forty people I want to invite to the wedding who I know will, if they can, actually show up to it -- even in Omaha. There's roughly double that who I would love to have attend the wedding, but who I know will not, under any circumstances, be there or be able to attend. So, really, I need two sets of invitations/announcements/what-have-you for my side of things, and each one will be slightly different; the ones for people who will attend will more than likely contain all of the pertinent information, scheduling, times, etc, yes. Of course, obviously. The other one, for those who won't/can't attend, will basically contain the date and location and the information for our wedding registry, making it little more than a "Save the Date!" sort of card. That may make me sound a bit petty or something similar, but just like everything else, wedding invitations cost money, not only to make but to send, and while yes, it is a formality to send them to people who won't come, it's more along the lines of the graduation announcements I sent out last month -- basically a card that says hey, this is an important event, and although I know you can't/won't attend and probably couldn't care less, at least acknowledge that it's happening.
I do have many friends and family members who do care, but it would be too much of a hassle or would be near-impossible for them to be able to do so. This includes close friends like Wayne and Jane (in Pittsburgh) and April and Damon (in Portland), as well as most of my close friends from high school/college and basically all of my family back home. I've already told Daisy that the only family members I actually expect to be at my wedding are my parents and maybe my brother and sister-in-law -- I very, very seriously doubt any of the rest of them will be there or will want to make the trip. Daisy, meanwhile, has a lot of her extended family expected to be coming, including family from Canada, but has about half the amount of friends to invite that I do.
"I want to keep the guest list to a maximum of 200," she told me earlier.
The first time I heard that, my eyes bugged out of my head for a brief moment. Then I thought about it a bit -- yeah, that's probably going to be decently accurate for a maximum. Of the forty or so people I will invite who can go and who want to go, I'm guessing only about 25-30 of them will actually show up -- most of them being friends from the department who could carpool up there together in a few vehicles. She's got a good forty or so who are locked in and will absolutely be there, so she's expecting a real attendance figure of about 150 or less. This is still huge, but knowing Daisy's flair for the extravagant, it's probably not inaccurate.
"Do you know who you're going to pick to be your best man yet?" she asked me tonight.
"...Fuuuuck no I don't," I said.
This is true. I don't. It's different for me; I don't live within a ten-minute distance of my close friends. Most of my few close friends in the Wichita area either graduated with me and left, or they'll only be around town for another semester or so. Daisy has many friends and family in the Omaha area or close enough to where finding people for her bridal party isn't hard for her (she's already done so). As for my groomsmen? Well, I have some ideas, but are any of them really a lock, so to speak? Nope. Most of my closest friends are women anyhow, really. So this is going to be a bit more difficult for me...yet I have to ask these questions soon, otherwise I will have no one. I don't even know how many groomsmen I'm supposed to have, really, or if there's even a generally agreed-upon number. This is because, ahem, I've never been married before, nor have I been in a wedding since 1989. When I was seven. I haven't been to a wedding since my brother's wedding...in 1997 or so. I have absolutely no clue how any of this shit works.
Daisy is researching places for the wedding that are not only relatively inexpensive, but can serve both as the wedding location and the location for the reception. There also has to be the ability to bring outside food and outside caterers, as most of the food prep will either be done by us or by a local place in Omaha (she has three possible caterers on her list, all of them vegan or mostly vegan). The most inexpensive place she's found thus far is a VFW hall for something like $600 for the day.
"That's a really good price, babe," I said. "Book it."
She's calling tomorrow. Most places she's been looking at are not only incredibly expensive, but they've already been booked for our chosen date.
"If we can't find someplace for that day," she asked, "would you like to move it back a day?"
"Absolutely not," I replied. "That day has significance. You know that."
It does, of course, and I'll probably explain it eventually here, but right now there's no reason to go into detail until plans are set. Again, I'm letting her wedding-plan until her heart's content; I have no real desires or wishes about what it's supposed to do and/or have included as long as it's completely non-religious and isn't too expensive.
In other news, Daisy and I both applied for more jobs tonight -- she wants to get a second job, as well as wants to get away from the one she has now, which she is slowly growing to dislike for myriad reasons. As I glanced through the teaching job listings last night, there are a lot more being posted as the window for filling said positions for fall starts to draw to a close, so I've got my work cut out for me over the weekend: apply for as many as possible, and see what happens. I haven't gotten any calls or emails about the ones I've applied for as of yet, and haven't heard anything about anything going on in the English department, either.
"Keep in mind, honey," I said earlier, "that it is a very real possibility that I may not find something this summer -- and I may end up adjuncting for the fall semester."
Of course, the worst-case scenario would be that I can't find anything and I wouldn't get to adjunct, obviously.
"So? That just means that our timeframe for finding a place and other jobs will just be set back by a few months," Daisy said. "You'll find something by August, love."
Maybe. Maybe not. If I don't, even if I do adjunct in the fall, that's going to be a relatively large setback for a multitude of reasons. Again why I'm trying to find something now. Obviously.
So that's all that's really going on right now, I suppose. It's been really hot the past two days (over 100 yesterday), and I've been trying to spend the hottest hours of the day asleep downstairs with the fan blowing on me. Because of the heat being so oppressive, the spiders are coming indoors more at night to get away from it. I've killed three recluses in the house in the past 24 hours, and have caught a few more in the traps I have scattered about the house, prompting me to set out three more new ones in new places. There's not a whole lot else I can do; brown recluse are heavily resistant against poisons and sprays, and I can't really use those anyway with the cats around. Let them fill the traps so that they don't reproduce -- die, die, die, spiders.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Sweat, Baby, Sweat
It is 5:14 AM.
It is also 75 outside. And, additionally, it is 88.7 in my Man Cave. This is, at least, lower than the 93.2 that it had been in here for most of the day yesterday.
Normally, the heat makes me tired and groggy, listless, and out of sorts, and this time it's not much different, but this time around I have this sort of...well...restless component to being hot. Yes, I'm sweating. A lot. Yes, I'm sticky and needing to drink large amounts of liquids. I can't really help that. But I'm not sleepy or lethargic, really. I'm just...twitchy? I suppose? I don't know exactly how to describe it. I have little patience for things, and the little things have been setting me off. Not majorly, no, but I've been getting peeved at stupid shit.
Case in point: tonight, in the overnight hours, I went to Walmart to get the cats their litter and pick up a few things for around the house (toilet paper, tealight candles for my oil burner, a bottle of soda, etc). This also included my cigarettes, as they are generally the primary reason for going to Walmart on any given day. When I got to Walmart, I found that they were waxing the floors -- something they've been doing a lot recently for some reason -- and the entire center of the store was closed off. This included checkout aisles from 12 to 17, as well as the bathrooms. Aisle 15 is the only aisle in the store with cigarettes, and thus it is the only one open 24/7 no matter what.
Okay, I thought, so they're waxing the floors. I've been in the store numerous times while they've had certain aisles roped off, and they take care of those aisles quickly and efficiently, moving the ropes over to the next aisles afterwards. I'm used to this. So, I did my shopping. I took my time. I wandered the store a lot (or as much as I could, anyway, given the ropes).
When I was done, they still weren't finished.
When I loaded my stuff onto the checkout belt, I asked the cashier (who was someone new) if there was any way they could get to the cigarettes.
"Let me check," she replied, and then called over the night shift manager -- a woman who knows me in the store as a regular customer on the overnight shifts.
"Nope," the night shift manager replied. "This part of the store is shut down completely until the morning. We can't even get to the bathrooms."
"Wow," I said. "That sucks. I'm sorry."
"Oh, tell me about it," she replied, nodding. "When they do this it's a huge pain in the ass for all of us."
I wasn't even angry or upset about the cigarettes, as I told Daisy later upon getting home -- I can go out and get smokes anytime. It's not like I have a pressing schedule, exactly. No, what upset me more was the fact that not even the employees had access to the bathrooms on their shift, and that they were completely hindered in doing their jobs because of it.
I've worked in retail stores. Several of them, grocery stores. You know how often the floors got waxed in those stores? About once every six months. Yes, we swept and ran the floor scrubber and buffer almost every night, but for the entire store it took about two hours to do. Total. And that was only when we had the full two hours to be able to devote to it -- on nights we didn't have trucks and stock to put up. Almost every time I'm in Walmart in the night now, they're waxing the floors.
It's a Walmart. It's not like you've got anyone to impress, Mr. Walton.
Anyway.
Daisy told me upon my return home that she loves the fact that I care about and have compassion for other people.
"Those are good people," I told her. "They've always been really nice to me, they treat me well, and the night shift knows me because I'm a regular customer there during those times. And I think it's fucking stupid that they don't even have access to the bathroom for an entire shift."
"There's probably another bathroom in the back, or by their break room," Daisy replied.
While this may be true, it's the principle of the matter that bothers me the most. Again, I worked in retail a long time -- off and on for about five years. I wrote my first book about my experiences working in retail. I know that it's not a pleasant job, and there's a lot of shitty things retail workers have to put up with in order to make a living. It's also why I feel a great deal of compassion for people in those situations.
So, I came home, talked to Daisy for a while (who was swamped at work, so I told her I'd talk to her later and not bother her), and tried to go to bed. However, much like last night, I found myself completely unable to sleep. Again, restless. Agitated. Hot and sweaty. I played a game for a while, I made some food, and I ordered a few small things on Amazon (like my cats' food, which is cheaper on there than it is in the store).
Since starting this post, I have also taken a cool shower in an attempt to rinse all of the sweat off me and make myself feel a bit better. I am still not tired enough to sleep. I may or may not venture back out to Walmart to get my smokes before I go to bed -- I haven't decided yet. I have a full pack left, so there's no real rush, but I'm debating on whether or not I want to go out this morning again, or this evening when I get up. I suppose I could also go over to the smoke shop next to the post office as well, if I wanted to, but I have no clue when they open. The driving distance is roughly the same.
Nah, screw it. I'll wait until I get up this afternoon to go back out. I don't care if it's hot. It's going to be hot regardless; temperatures are expected to hit 100 today. No, that's not a typo. Again, I'll remind you that a month ago it was fucking snowing. I was able to avoid a lot of the heat yesterday by going to bed in the early morning and sleeping with the fan turned on me the entire time I was asleep, which made things much better.
I got to see something fairly quizzical and/or interesting in the overnight hours; from about 9PM onward, I saw the same car making its rounds around the neighborhood as if it was looking for something or someone -- it wasn't the cops or anything, just a car. It drove slowly up and down streets, with the driver holding a high-powered flashlight out the window, looking up and down driveways and between houses. It came down my street twice and turned around in my driveway twice, and then on my way home from Walmart at around 12:30, I passed it going the opposite direction as I took the back way home...the driver still had the flashlight out the window looking for whatever it was they were looking for. Strange. I did see, as I was coming back down my street, a beautiful cat that I'd never seen before sitting at the edge of the road, so maybe that's what they were looking for. And it just sat there and watched me pass, so who knows. If the car kept driving around the neighborhood afterwards, I didn't pay attention; I was back here in my Man Cave and not out front in the living room.
It's apparently been somewhat finalized that Daisy and I will be spending the 4th of July in Omaha together. She should be off that day, and wants to come down the day before (or something like that) to get me. She'll have to work that weekend afterwards, and then I'll come back home.
"It's whatever you want to do, babe," I said. "I'm happy to do whatever you wish."
This is true; while I'm not exactly thrilled about being there for several days while she will be working overnights (which leaves me with little to do), spending the 4th together is important to both of us, and it'll at least give me some time to keep looking for work and to be able to sleep in a house with good air conditioning. Plus, I'll get to see and spend time with Daisy's parents again, which is always a delight. Mama has been wanting me to dye fabric with her at some point -- now that school is no longer in session, this may be a good time to do that. We didn't get the chance to do it when I was up there after my graduation. I won't have any real cash to spare this time, but it doesn't look like I'll need it anyhow with the way Daisy's work schedule is going to be during my visit this time around.
On that note, folks, I'm going back to bed. I have more to write about, yes, but it can and will wait.
It is also 75 outside. And, additionally, it is 88.7 in my Man Cave. This is, at least, lower than the 93.2 that it had been in here for most of the day yesterday.
Normally, the heat makes me tired and groggy, listless, and out of sorts, and this time it's not much different, but this time around I have this sort of...well...restless component to being hot. Yes, I'm sweating. A lot. Yes, I'm sticky and needing to drink large amounts of liquids. I can't really help that. But I'm not sleepy or lethargic, really. I'm just...twitchy? I suppose? I don't know exactly how to describe it. I have little patience for things, and the little things have been setting me off. Not majorly, no, but I've been getting peeved at stupid shit.
Case in point: tonight, in the overnight hours, I went to Walmart to get the cats their litter and pick up a few things for around the house (toilet paper, tealight candles for my oil burner, a bottle of soda, etc). This also included my cigarettes, as they are generally the primary reason for going to Walmart on any given day. When I got to Walmart, I found that they were waxing the floors -- something they've been doing a lot recently for some reason -- and the entire center of the store was closed off. This included checkout aisles from 12 to 17, as well as the bathrooms. Aisle 15 is the only aisle in the store with cigarettes, and thus it is the only one open 24/7 no matter what.
Okay, I thought, so they're waxing the floors. I've been in the store numerous times while they've had certain aisles roped off, and they take care of those aisles quickly and efficiently, moving the ropes over to the next aisles afterwards. I'm used to this. So, I did my shopping. I took my time. I wandered the store a lot (or as much as I could, anyway, given the ropes).
When I was done, they still weren't finished.
When I loaded my stuff onto the checkout belt, I asked the cashier (who was someone new) if there was any way they could get to the cigarettes.
"Let me check," she replied, and then called over the night shift manager -- a woman who knows me in the store as a regular customer on the overnight shifts.
"Nope," the night shift manager replied. "This part of the store is shut down completely until the morning. We can't even get to the bathrooms."
"Wow," I said. "That sucks. I'm sorry."
"Oh, tell me about it," she replied, nodding. "When they do this it's a huge pain in the ass for all of us."
I wasn't even angry or upset about the cigarettes, as I told Daisy later upon getting home -- I can go out and get smokes anytime. It's not like I have a pressing schedule, exactly. No, what upset me more was the fact that not even the employees had access to the bathrooms on their shift, and that they were completely hindered in doing their jobs because of it.
I've worked in retail stores. Several of them, grocery stores. You know how often the floors got waxed in those stores? About once every six months. Yes, we swept and ran the floor scrubber and buffer almost every night, but for the entire store it took about two hours to do. Total. And that was only when we had the full two hours to be able to devote to it -- on nights we didn't have trucks and stock to put up. Almost every time I'm in Walmart in the night now, they're waxing the floors.
It's a Walmart. It's not like you've got anyone to impress, Mr. Walton.
Anyway.
Daisy told me upon my return home that she loves the fact that I care about and have compassion for other people.
"Those are good people," I told her. "They've always been really nice to me, they treat me well, and the night shift knows me because I'm a regular customer there during those times. And I think it's fucking stupid that they don't even have access to the bathroom for an entire shift."
"There's probably another bathroom in the back, or by their break room," Daisy replied.
While this may be true, it's the principle of the matter that bothers me the most. Again, I worked in retail a long time -- off and on for about five years. I wrote my first book about my experiences working in retail. I know that it's not a pleasant job, and there's a lot of shitty things retail workers have to put up with in order to make a living. It's also why I feel a great deal of compassion for people in those situations.
So, I came home, talked to Daisy for a while (who was swamped at work, so I told her I'd talk to her later and not bother her), and tried to go to bed. However, much like last night, I found myself completely unable to sleep. Again, restless. Agitated. Hot and sweaty. I played a game for a while, I made some food, and I ordered a few small things on Amazon (like my cats' food, which is cheaper on there than it is in the store).
Since starting this post, I have also taken a cool shower in an attempt to rinse all of the sweat off me and make myself feel a bit better. I am still not tired enough to sleep. I may or may not venture back out to Walmart to get my smokes before I go to bed -- I haven't decided yet. I have a full pack left, so there's no real rush, but I'm debating on whether or not I want to go out this morning again, or this evening when I get up. I suppose I could also go over to the smoke shop next to the post office as well, if I wanted to, but I have no clue when they open. The driving distance is roughly the same.
Nah, screw it. I'll wait until I get up this afternoon to go back out. I don't care if it's hot. It's going to be hot regardless; temperatures are expected to hit 100 today. No, that's not a typo. Again, I'll remind you that a month ago it was fucking snowing. I was able to avoid a lot of the heat yesterday by going to bed in the early morning and sleeping with the fan turned on me the entire time I was asleep, which made things much better.
I got to see something fairly quizzical and/or interesting in the overnight hours; from about 9PM onward, I saw the same car making its rounds around the neighborhood as if it was looking for something or someone -- it wasn't the cops or anything, just a car. It drove slowly up and down streets, with the driver holding a high-powered flashlight out the window, looking up and down driveways and between houses. It came down my street twice and turned around in my driveway twice, and then on my way home from Walmart at around 12:30, I passed it going the opposite direction as I took the back way home...the driver still had the flashlight out the window looking for whatever it was they were looking for. Strange. I did see, as I was coming back down my street, a beautiful cat that I'd never seen before sitting at the edge of the road, so maybe that's what they were looking for. And it just sat there and watched me pass, so who knows. If the car kept driving around the neighborhood afterwards, I didn't pay attention; I was back here in my Man Cave and not out front in the living room.
It's apparently been somewhat finalized that Daisy and I will be spending the 4th of July in Omaha together. She should be off that day, and wants to come down the day before (or something like that) to get me. She'll have to work that weekend afterwards, and then I'll come back home.
"It's whatever you want to do, babe," I said. "I'm happy to do whatever you wish."
This is true; while I'm not exactly thrilled about being there for several days while she will be working overnights (which leaves me with little to do), spending the 4th together is important to both of us, and it'll at least give me some time to keep looking for work and to be able to sleep in a house with good air conditioning. Plus, I'll get to see and spend time with Daisy's parents again, which is always a delight. Mama has been wanting me to dye fabric with her at some point -- now that school is no longer in session, this may be a good time to do that. We didn't get the chance to do it when I was up there after my graduation. I won't have any real cash to spare this time, but it doesn't look like I'll need it anyhow with the way Daisy's work schedule is going to be during my visit this time around.
On that note, folks, I'm going back to bed. I have more to write about, yes, but it can and will wait.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Link It, Yo
My feelings of general illness subsided this afternoon (finally), only to be replaced with hotness and sweatiness. It reached 88 here today. It's currently 64 (at 4AM), but it's still 84.2 in my Man Cave upstairs. I ran the house fan for a while to circulate a bit of air, but it's still pretty stuffy and muggy.
I was awake, however, after getting some coffee in me, and decided to make the most of that opportunity -- I reopened and overhauled my Monster.com profile, and I set up (at my friend April's urging) a LinkedIn profile. Whatever that is. It looks like a Facebook for professionals, or something. I haven't messed with it a lot yet.
What I can tell you is that I applied for several new teaching positions this afternoon -- two in Florida and a third in California.
Do I want to live in Florida or California? Not really. But there's no teaching jobs listed within two hundred miles of the Omaha area, where Daisy is. None. Not a one. That in itself is really fucking discouraging, but whatever. I have to apply places where there are jobs available and where I would be able to survive on a teaching salary. The best I can do to keep looking would be to keep revising my search parameters, and to possibly dive in a little deeper. I also have to keep in mind that none of these places I've applied for will probably call me back or want an interview with me anyhow, so it's not like I can say "well, I applied for like seven teaching jobs, let's just sit back and watch the job offers come in." No, that's not how it works. If it were, life would be much simpler.
"Sounds like you've had a really productive day, baby," Daisy told me earlier.
"Well, yeah, I suppose," I replied. "For me, anyway."
Daisy works full time, night shifts, and when she's not working she has a moderately active social life with her friends and family. While I do have a Master's degree now (something which she does not), I am basically unemployed, I don't shower for three days at a time, and I think applying for several jobs and updating my Monster.com profile is "productive." It's not. Not compared to what she does on a daily basis. I don't even dress myself or leave the house if I can avoid it -- my fiancee, on the other hand, is a professional businesswoman with a job that's important to her company and to her company's clients. I've never been in this sort of relationship dynamic before. But, suffice to say, she's a lot more productive on a daily basis than I am.
After she went to work this evening, I got back to work again myself. I did more searching, and applied for two more positions -- one around the Boston area and the other around the Pittsburgh area. The latter took more than half an hour to fill out, and it was very in-depth, asking me for references who weren't related to me and who weren't my employers (well, that narrows it down to friends, really, since I don't really have any professional connections); I listed Parker, Suri, and my friend Brian -- it's not like any of them will get called anyhow. In all of the jobs I've applied for over the years, not one of my references has ever been called. And, similarly, when friends have listed me as a reference, nobody has ever called me. Ever. Never ever, not once, never. And I have applied for a lot of jobs over the years, as have my friends. I think listing "references" these days is little more than a formality. Even if I get no callbacks, interviews, or even emails about these positions I've been applying for, at least it feels like I'm moving forward and am trying to find something, because I am. There's just not a lot out there, unfortunately. I mentioned above that there's nothing (nothing listed, anyhow) within two hundred miles of the Omaha area, which is a huge base of operations for many schools and other educational avenues, and that's the truth. Not only are there no teaching jobs open, but there's nothing listed in educational fields period, and nothing listed in writing/editing/etc either. It appears that if I want to find a position in the Omaha area, I may have to start making personal inquiries of colleges and universities there, as well as possibly branch out into other fields that aren't in the little bubble of writing and teaching.
I'm not necessarily worried, though. Really, I'm not. If I find something up there tomorrow, it would take me a maximum of three weeks to have everything packed up, cleaned up, and moved out of this house -- with help from Daisy on her days off and a large, rented moving truck, of course. It wouldn't be fun, but it would be manageable and do-able. Daisy has already done some preliminary research on houses for us in the Omaha area, and she knows the area better than I do -- I trust her on these sorts of things.
Then again, I keep reminding myself that there's only a "rush" of sorts in finding a teaching position for the fall -- anything/everything else doesn't really have a time limit on it, and I can search for those jobs at a more leisurely pace. This is why I've been focused primarily on teaching positions right now. That time limit will basically run out around this time next month, if not beforehand, as not only will teaching positions be filled by then, but there will be no time for relocation/training/etc for wherever I may have applied by then. And, of course, I'm still waiting to hear what the university says about the budget issues for the Engineering English program as well as whether or not I'll be adjuncting in the fall. Though it is possible (read: probable) that all of this stuff may "fall through," for the moment I have to focus on finding teaching positions while I still have the time to do so. Which is what I've been doing, and I think I'm slowly making progress. I may be wrong, but time will tell.
Daisy told me tonight that she appreciates what I'm doing, and that it's a lot of work.
"It's really not," I told her a short while ago. "I only applied for two more jobs."
"That's still a lot," she said. "Job searching is a bitch, but, you're doing it."
She knows this firsthand -- when she was laid off of her last job, she was unemployed for about four months, as you may recall.
"I have to," I said. "I'm doing it for us. You need me to be a provider as well; I just can't mooch off you my whole life."
Successfully or otherwise, I must keep pressing forward. If I can find five or six positions a day to apply for, that's me doing something good, that's me doing something productive. I need to keep feeling productive in the sense that when I wake up for the day -- whenever that may be -- I have a job to do, and that job is finding another set of positions to apply for. That's always my number one priority, and it has to be at least until that "teaching jobs" window closes. After that? Who knows.
Again, there are other things I must do in that time as well -- I still have to do my student loans "exit interview" thing (which I'll probably do today once I get up again) and I do still have to make a short shopping trip to Walmart (which I'll probably do tonight during the overnight hours). I've got my car insurance to pay sometime soon as well -- it expires on the 30th. The temperatures are supposed to be sweltering this week, as I've mentioned in previous posts here. Today's high is supposed to be 94; tomorrow, 97. This is going to make a lot of work in the upstairs of the house fairly difficult. I'm still trying to see how long I can go without turning on the air conditioner, as well, but if it gets terrible this afternoon/evening when I get back up, I'm guessing I'll run it for at least a little while to see if it makes a difference.
That's all for now, though; it's time for me to go to bed, and try to get some sleep while it's still cool enough to do so.
I was awake, however, after getting some coffee in me, and decided to make the most of that opportunity -- I reopened and overhauled my Monster.com profile, and I set up (at my friend April's urging) a LinkedIn profile. Whatever that is. It looks like a Facebook for professionals, or something. I haven't messed with it a lot yet.
What I can tell you is that I applied for several new teaching positions this afternoon -- two in Florida and a third in California.
Do I want to live in Florida or California? Not really. But there's no teaching jobs listed within two hundred miles of the Omaha area, where Daisy is. None. Not a one. That in itself is really fucking discouraging, but whatever. I have to apply places where there are jobs available and where I would be able to survive on a teaching salary. The best I can do to keep looking would be to keep revising my search parameters, and to possibly dive in a little deeper. I also have to keep in mind that none of these places I've applied for will probably call me back or want an interview with me anyhow, so it's not like I can say "well, I applied for like seven teaching jobs, let's just sit back and watch the job offers come in." No, that's not how it works. If it were, life would be much simpler.
"Sounds like you've had a really productive day, baby," Daisy told me earlier.
"Well, yeah, I suppose," I replied. "For me, anyway."
Daisy works full time, night shifts, and when she's not working she has a moderately active social life with her friends and family. While I do have a Master's degree now (something which she does not), I am basically unemployed, I don't shower for three days at a time, and I think applying for several jobs and updating my Monster.com profile is "productive." It's not. Not compared to what she does on a daily basis. I don't even dress myself or leave the house if I can avoid it -- my fiancee, on the other hand, is a professional businesswoman with a job that's important to her company and to her company's clients. I've never been in this sort of relationship dynamic before. But, suffice to say, she's a lot more productive on a daily basis than I am.
After she went to work this evening, I got back to work again myself. I did more searching, and applied for two more positions -- one around the Boston area and the other around the Pittsburgh area. The latter took more than half an hour to fill out, and it was very in-depth, asking me for references who weren't related to me and who weren't my employers (well, that narrows it down to friends, really, since I don't really have any professional connections); I listed Parker, Suri, and my friend Brian -- it's not like any of them will get called anyhow. In all of the jobs I've applied for over the years, not one of my references has ever been called. And, similarly, when friends have listed me as a reference, nobody has ever called me. Ever. Never ever, not once, never. And I have applied for a lot of jobs over the years, as have my friends. I think listing "references" these days is little more than a formality. Even if I get no callbacks, interviews, or even emails about these positions I've been applying for, at least it feels like I'm moving forward and am trying to find something, because I am. There's just not a lot out there, unfortunately. I mentioned above that there's nothing (nothing listed, anyhow) within two hundred miles of the Omaha area, which is a huge base of operations for many schools and other educational avenues, and that's the truth. Not only are there no teaching jobs open, but there's nothing listed in educational fields period, and nothing listed in writing/editing/etc either. It appears that if I want to find a position in the Omaha area, I may have to start making personal inquiries of colleges and universities there, as well as possibly branch out into other fields that aren't in the little bubble of writing and teaching.
I'm not necessarily worried, though. Really, I'm not. If I find something up there tomorrow, it would take me a maximum of three weeks to have everything packed up, cleaned up, and moved out of this house -- with help from Daisy on her days off and a large, rented moving truck, of course. It wouldn't be fun, but it would be manageable and do-able. Daisy has already done some preliminary research on houses for us in the Omaha area, and she knows the area better than I do -- I trust her on these sorts of things.
Then again, I keep reminding myself that there's only a "rush" of sorts in finding a teaching position for the fall -- anything/everything else doesn't really have a time limit on it, and I can search for those jobs at a more leisurely pace. This is why I've been focused primarily on teaching positions right now. That time limit will basically run out around this time next month, if not beforehand, as not only will teaching positions be filled by then, but there will be no time for relocation/training/etc for wherever I may have applied by then. And, of course, I'm still waiting to hear what the university says about the budget issues for the Engineering English program as well as whether or not I'll be adjuncting in the fall. Though it is possible (read: probable) that all of this stuff may "fall through," for the moment I have to focus on finding teaching positions while I still have the time to do so. Which is what I've been doing, and I think I'm slowly making progress. I may be wrong, but time will tell.
Daisy told me tonight that she appreciates what I'm doing, and that it's a lot of work.
"It's really not," I told her a short while ago. "I only applied for two more jobs."
"That's still a lot," she said. "Job searching is a bitch, but, you're doing it."
She knows this firsthand -- when she was laid off of her last job, she was unemployed for about four months, as you may recall.
"I have to," I said. "I'm doing it for us. You need me to be a provider as well; I just can't mooch off you my whole life."
Successfully or otherwise, I must keep pressing forward. If I can find five or six positions a day to apply for, that's me doing something good, that's me doing something productive. I need to keep feeling productive in the sense that when I wake up for the day -- whenever that may be -- I have a job to do, and that job is finding another set of positions to apply for. That's always my number one priority, and it has to be at least until that "teaching jobs" window closes. After that? Who knows.
Again, there are other things I must do in that time as well -- I still have to do my student loans "exit interview" thing (which I'll probably do today once I get up again) and I do still have to make a short shopping trip to Walmart (which I'll probably do tonight during the overnight hours). I've got my car insurance to pay sometime soon as well -- it expires on the 30th. The temperatures are supposed to be sweltering this week, as I've mentioned in previous posts here. Today's high is supposed to be 94; tomorrow, 97. This is going to make a lot of work in the upstairs of the house fairly difficult. I'm still trying to see how long I can go without turning on the air conditioner, as well, but if it gets terrible this afternoon/evening when I get back up, I'm guessing I'll run it for at least a little while to see if it makes a difference.
That's all for now, though; it's time for me to go to bed, and try to get some sleep while it's still cool enough to do so.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Peace and Quiet
(NOTE: Most of this post was written around 2AM Saturday night, and you'll realize why once you keep reading.)
I find the title of this post highly ironic, as whenever I want peace and quiet, it never happens...and yet when I don't, everything is silent.
Case in point: this morning.
It was 63 degrees outside and cloudy/windy. It felt wonderful. I know this because at 6AM, I walked down to the mailbox to mail out my Amazon credit card bill. It was a Saturday morning, there wasn't a soul out and about in the neighborhood, and it was really, really beautiful. I appreciate this kind of weather -- it's good sleeping weather. Not as good as say, ten degrees cooler with misting rain, but it's good. I liked it.
I talked to Daisy a bit after she got off work this morning, around 8AM, before getting ready to go back to bed myself. Again, my sleeping schedule is weird during the summer. Both of the past two days I've been awake before 7AM, and that hasn't happened since I was still in school. A month ago. It's because I've been going to bed at weird hours, but whatever. This morning it was nice, it was cool, and I wanted to go back to sleep because I was tired.
Just as I was getting ready to go back downstairs around 9AM or so, I heard a rumbling. Well, really, it was a droning noise more than anything else. I turned off my fans and it was a very clear drone of an engine idling. Really close to my back window, as if someone had landed a plane in my back yard or pulled a Mack truck up to my back porch.
I looked out and my landlord is out there, on a full-size tractor with a full scoop of soil in it, and he is driving around the back yard on my neighbors' side.
...what the fuck, man?
It was 9AM on a Saturday morning.
9AM on a Saturday morning is similar, to me, as to 8AM on a Sunday morning -- nobody in their right mind is awake at 9AM on a Saturday morning. Not since the late 80s/early 90s has there been a reason to be awake on a Saturday morning, and even then it was only for the cartoons.
So there I was, eyes bloodshot and awake, with my landlord doing something loudly involving a tractor and dirt to the back patio of my neighbors on the other side of my duplex.
I should probably mention here that over the past year or so, my neighbors -- a man, his wife, and his teenage son, who all work at Walmart -- have asked me when they occasionally see me if there are any cracks in the walls or foundation of the house on my side, since their side is developing a lot of those issues. My side is fine; aside from the normal hairline crack or two in the cement of the foundation at the back of the garage (which is normal, to be expected, and isn't new -- I've been living here for four years now), nothing's happening on my side. My house isn't settling, my house isn't cracking or creaking, nothing. I'm here almost 24/7, and there's literally nothing like that going on in my place.
Looking for something to do to kill some time, because I couldn't fall asleep with the landlord back there being loud with the tractor, I went downstairs and brought up all of my folded laundry and put it away. While I was doing so, I heard the two men talking on the back patio; my landlord was saying something about how that should fix the problem, and that he'd come back at some point later to trim the tree in the backyard that was hanging waaaay far over the fence line into our grass. He loaded the tractor onto a trailer attached to his truck (which was parked outside, directly in front of my mailbox) and then...disappeared.
Okay. I don't know where he went or what he was doing, but the truck/tractor were still parked outside, which meant he was still working on the neighbors' place somewhere. Mind you, my landlord and his wife both adore me; I've been praised numerous times for always paying my rent early and always contacting them ASAP if there's something that needed to be done, and aside from those aforementioned neighbors on the other side of me, I'm probably the quietest, most mild-mannered person he rents to, one who is very rarely seen outside of the house. Yet I always get apprehensive when the landlord is around. He's a good guy, but after one incident where I woke up in my bed and he was standing five feet behind me working on the air conditioner in my basement (he didn't think anyone was home), I'm always a bit apprehensive that I'm going to wake up and find him in my house working on something.
Granted, that wasn't his fault, really, but still. This was like three years ago, when my ex had gone to visit her parents for the weekend, and before I had my own car, so it appeared that the house was empty at the time. Still traumatized me a bit, though.
Anyway. His truck sat outside for another hour. I didn't want to go to sleep in case he came knocking on my door for something as soon as I actually drifted off, so I got dressed and planned my trip over to the discount grocery store. It was Saturday morning, it was early, so I figured if I was going to be awake, I might as well get that out of the way. When I left, he was back behind the house again for something involving the dirt he'd dumped/shoveled in to fill, and in the beautiful morning weather, I took the car over to the discount grocery store.
I ended up spending a whopping $15 there. They didn't have a lot I was interested in this time around; that place is usually pretty hit or miss. When they have a lot, I've been known to spend about $100 there. I got some snack-like stuff, including some beef sticks (5 for $1, and they gave me some awful heartburn), some cherry Kool-Aid, and some tempura batter mix, amongst a few other small things, and to kill a little more time, I smoked a cigarette in the car in the parking lot when I left. While I was out, I could've gotten gas in the car, but I forgot to take the mower's gas can with me, which meant I would have to make another explicit trip for that eventually as well -- so I chose against it, even though I have the money to do so. The card I use to get gas with is the one I paid off this morning. I drove back home, narrowly missing getting held up in traffic waiting for a train to pass through town, and pulled back into my driveway. The landlord's truck was still there. I pulled up as close as I could to the garage door because of the storms predicted to hit this evening and in the overnight hours, and did it incredibly precisely -- I left about an inch of space between my bumper and the garage door. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it that close without actually bumping up against the garage door (something I've done on more than one occasion). I took the groceries inside and put them away, and ten minutes later glanced out the window to see that my landlord had left. I didn't see him come back for the rest of the day.
Finally, I thought, I can sleep.
I went downstairs to sleep, where it was cool and quiet. By this time it was after noon, and it took me a bit to fall asleep, but I finally did around 2 or so.
Whatever happened throughout the rest of the day, I didn't know about it; I was dead to the world from then until nightfall, when I was oh-so-rudely awakened by an incredibly loud rolling boom of thunder, one that was so sudden and so loud that it scared the cats off the bed. It was 8:30PM, though it may as well have been 2AM due to how dark it was. I looked out the front window when I got up to pee, and it was pouring rain. Good, I thought. Hopefully that will keep the weather cool. I went back to bed, but the thunder and lightning was loud and frequent -- I could not fall back asleep. Pete kept headbutting me in the face, as if he was trying to get me to get up and make the noise stop. Finally, after drifting in and out of half-sleep for another hour or so, I got up and came upstairs....and the storm promptly stopped when I did.
Seriously?
It was as if the storm had fired up to wake me up and for no other purpose whatsoever. As soon as I was awake, it was gone. I looked at the radar and all of it had moved off to the east. Wow, so that's what that big "severe storms" threat was? A normal, fairly weak thunderstorm that lasted an hour? Hoo boy. There would be a little more thunder and lightning a bit later, but nothing that would last for more than another five minutes or so.
Flash forward to Sunday afternoon, and I can now tell the rest of the story.
I was still not feeling that well (fucking beef sticks), so I told Daisy, who was at work, that I was going to try to play a game for a bit and then see if I could go back to sleep and get some more rest. I'd only slept for a few hours before the storms rolled in. I did this, of course, and was still not feeling well. I talked to Daisy off and on for a bit before starting this post, abandoning it about halfway through, and tried to go back to bed -- which, finally, I was successfully able to do. I didn't wake up until 2PM, and then felt much worse than I did before.
I don't know exactly what's wrong with me; I thought it was the heartburn caused by the beef sticks I ate, but I'm not sure that's what it is. I just feel all weak and ill, and my allergies are killing me (it's 85 outside and somewhat muggy, and there's barely a breeze going, which makes my allergies awful after it's stormed the night before). I know it's a stomach thing, because the thought of eating anything makes me feel queasy. Couple that with the heat and allergies, and it's a recipe for feeling awful.
I had stressful dreams while I slept; they're generally the closest things I have to nightmares that aren't actual nightmares. I had stressful dreams about finding jobs, about being forced to pay back my student loans, about the car breaking down, etc. All of these things linger in my subconscious, apparently, until I go to sleep -- yet while I am awake it is incredibly hard to force myself to deal with them...any of them. I can't do anything about them anyway, of course -- if the car breaks down, it breaks down, and I don't have the money to repair it. I have to live on the money I have now, and there's no "extra funds" in that for car repairs. I also can't force a company to hire me, and I can't magically win the lottery and pay back all of the student loans at once. All I can do is to keep getting up every day and keep trying to move forward and be productive, or at least do something that seems to be somewhat productive. Some days I'm successful at this, other days I'm not. Really, it heavily depends on the day and how I'm feeling. Some days it's an accomplishment just to eat something and take a shower.
Of course, in saying this, I will acknowledge that I haven't showered since Friday.
The neighbors had a new air conditioner installed a few weeks ago. I know this because the one they have now is different than the one they had before (logic, nurrrr) and they've been running it nearly nonstop for the past month. They're not smokers, and they rarely have their windows open. I have yet to turn mine on, and dread doing so. I've mentioned before that the summer is expensive, and a lot of that expense comes from two things: my car insurance bill and the need to run the air conditioner if I don't want to cook. It's supposed to be 95 tomorrow and 97 on Tuesday. Could I seal up the house tomorrow morning and run the air conditioner for a few hours to cool it down in here? Yes, yes I could, if I wanted to immediately add $15 or so to my electric bill for little real coolness (it would maybe take the house temperature down ten degrees at most, and only for a short time). I've ran the air conditioner for 12 hours straight before, and it was still 90 upstairs in the living room (I have a wall thermometer). Most of the time it's really not worth it.
It has gone up in temperature by four degrees in my room over the past three hours.
It figures that a month ago it was snowing and I was wearing layers shortly before finals week because otherwise I would freeze. Again, proof that there's no such thing as "spring" in Kansas -- it goes directly from nut-numbing winter to "everything's on fire" summer.
I got an email from my dad this morning, thanking me for his early Father's Day gift, which was this. I'm glad he liked it. Being a nerd myself, I definitely know how to shop for fellow nerds. This is partially why, at times, it is so frustrating to shop for Daisy; she is not nerdy at all. But it is also why I know it will be extremely easy to shop for our children, because they will be. Our anniversary is coming up, as well as her birthday, and I really have no clue what to get or do for her. She mentioned before that she may go to Kansas City for her birthday with her best friend (whom I know, of course).
"Have fun with that trip," I said, before she could invite me. "I have no desire to set foot in the state of Missouri ever again."
This is true; I have nothing but horrible, bitter memories of that state and of living there for three years. I'm not a fan of Kansas, either, but I have many more reasons for my hate of Missouri, reasons that will likely persist until I die.
So, I don't know if we'll have any plans or not. I know that she wants us to be together on July 4th, and has told me as much (I'd wanted us to be together on the 4th anyhow), but we don't yet know what that will entail. I told her if possible, that would be a good few days to go to Omaha again, so that I can avoid the redneck deluge of illegal fireworks every white-trash neighbor and their brother lights off in my neighborhood for six to eight hours straight, despite city ordinances forbidding them to do so. If I'm stuck here at the house over the 4th and have to deal with that again, I might call the police to do a drive-through of the neighborhood to shut it down. I'm so not kidding about that, especially when these people tend to light off the big, booming professional fireworks that rain down sparks and fire, and their kids shoot roman candles at cars. Fuck those people, seriously. Actually, I almost want to be able to be home on the 4th so that I can do that.
Again, I'm not a crotchety old man. I like living here because of the peace and quiet I had until all of these white-trash neighbors moved in all around me, each of them with at least two loud, uncontrollable screaming kids. Granted, one group of them has since moved out, but that's totally not enough. It was always so quiet before. I hate commotion, I hate noise, but more than that I hate people. Especially uncultured, loud people.
I wanted to order pizza, as mentioned before, and got the incentive to do so yesterday -- Papa John's sent out an emailed code that will give you 50% off your order. Okay, I thought, combined with what I usually get, that should cut the cost of a massive order of pizza about $40 or so down to $20. That's a good deal. So I applied the code and found that it doesn't work with any of their "special offers," like their 3 medium 3-toppings for $21. It only applies to stuff purchased at full price, and even if you're getting other stuff at full price, it won't cut the cost of those in half. Yeah, sorry, the code is worthless to me then. Your large pizzas are $15 or more, Papa John's. Screw that. I could get three large pizzas at Little Caesar's for $15, and I don't have to wait on delivery people or tip those guys. So, once more, I decided against getting any pizza.
I have to go out either tonight or tomorrow night anyway; the cats are (again) almost out of litter, and while I have food, coffee, and cigarettes for the time being, they do need their litter -- that's not something I can put off unless I want the entire downstairs of the house to smell like cat pee, since once their litter is used up completely, there's nothing left to stop that glorious scent from permeating the entire bedroom and laundry room. If I want pizza badly enough, I'll get a frozen pizza and give the proverbial finger to all of the pizza places out here.
I find the title of this post highly ironic, as whenever I want peace and quiet, it never happens...and yet when I don't, everything is silent.
Case in point: this morning.
It was 63 degrees outside and cloudy/windy. It felt wonderful. I know this because at 6AM, I walked down to the mailbox to mail out my Amazon credit card bill. It was a Saturday morning, there wasn't a soul out and about in the neighborhood, and it was really, really beautiful. I appreciate this kind of weather -- it's good sleeping weather. Not as good as say, ten degrees cooler with misting rain, but it's good. I liked it.
I talked to Daisy a bit after she got off work this morning, around 8AM, before getting ready to go back to bed myself. Again, my sleeping schedule is weird during the summer. Both of the past two days I've been awake before 7AM, and that hasn't happened since I was still in school. A month ago. It's because I've been going to bed at weird hours, but whatever. This morning it was nice, it was cool, and I wanted to go back to sleep because I was tired.
Just as I was getting ready to go back downstairs around 9AM or so, I heard a rumbling. Well, really, it was a droning noise more than anything else. I turned off my fans and it was a very clear drone of an engine idling. Really close to my back window, as if someone had landed a plane in my back yard or pulled a Mack truck up to my back porch.
I looked out and my landlord is out there, on a full-size tractor with a full scoop of soil in it, and he is driving around the back yard on my neighbors' side.
...what the fuck, man?
It was 9AM on a Saturday morning.
9AM on a Saturday morning is similar, to me, as to 8AM on a Sunday morning -- nobody in their right mind is awake at 9AM on a Saturday morning. Not since the late 80s/early 90s has there been a reason to be awake on a Saturday morning, and even then it was only for the cartoons.
So there I was, eyes bloodshot and awake, with my landlord doing something loudly involving a tractor and dirt to the back patio of my neighbors on the other side of my duplex.
I should probably mention here that over the past year or so, my neighbors -- a man, his wife, and his teenage son, who all work at Walmart -- have asked me when they occasionally see me if there are any cracks in the walls or foundation of the house on my side, since their side is developing a lot of those issues. My side is fine; aside from the normal hairline crack or two in the cement of the foundation at the back of the garage (which is normal, to be expected, and isn't new -- I've been living here for four years now), nothing's happening on my side. My house isn't settling, my house isn't cracking or creaking, nothing. I'm here almost 24/7, and there's literally nothing like that going on in my place.
Looking for something to do to kill some time, because I couldn't fall asleep with the landlord back there being loud with the tractor, I went downstairs and brought up all of my folded laundry and put it away. While I was doing so, I heard the two men talking on the back patio; my landlord was saying something about how that should fix the problem, and that he'd come back at some point later to trim the tree in the backyard that was hanging waaaay far over the fence line into our grass. He loaded the tractor onto a trailer attached to his truck (which was parked outside, directly in front of my mailbox) and then...disappeared.
Okay. I don't know where he went or what he was doing, but the truck/tractor were still parked outside, which meant he was still working on the neighbors' place somewhere. Mind you, my landlord and his wife both adore me; I've been praised numerous times for always paying my rent early and always contacting them ASAP if there's something that needed to be done, and aside from those aforementioned neighbors on the other side of me, I'm probably the quietest, most mild-mannered person he rents to, one who is very rarely seen outside of the house. Yet I always get apprehensive when the landlord is around. He's a good guy, but after one incident where I woke up in my bed and he was standing five feet behind me working on the air conditioner in my basement (he didn't think anyone was home), I'm always a bit apprehensive that I'm going to wake up and find him in my house working on something.
Granted, that wasn't his fault, really, but still. This was like three years ago, when my ex had gone to visit her parents for the weekend, and before I had my own car, so it appeared that the house was empty at the time. Still traumatized me a bit, though.
Anyway. His truck sat outside for another hour. I didn't want to go to sleep in case he came knocking on my door for something as soon as I actually drifted off, so I got dressed and planned my trip over to the discount grocery store. It was Saturday morning, it was early, so I figured if I was going to be awake, I might as well get that out of the way. When I left, he was back behind the house again for something involving the dirt he'd dumped/shoveled in to fill, and in the beautiful morning weather, I took the car over to the discount grocery store.
I ended up spending a whopping $15 there. They didn't have a lot I was interested in this time around; that place is usually pretty hit or miss. When they have a lot, I've been known to spend about $100 there. I got some snack-like stuff, including some beef sticks (5 for $1, and they gave me some awful heartburn), some cherry Kool-Aid, and some tempura batter mix, amongst a few other small things, and to kill a little more time, I smoked a cigarette in the car in the parking lot when I left. While I was out, I could've gotten gas in the car, but I forgot to take the mower's gas can with me, which meant I would have to make another explicit trip for that eventually as well -- so I chose against it, even though I have the money to do so. The card I use to get gas with is the one I paid off this morning. I drove back home, narrowly missing getting held up in traffic waiting for a train to pass through town, and pulled back into my driveway. The landlord's truck was still there. I pulled up as close as I could to the garage door because of the storms predicted to hit this evening and in the overnight hours, and did it incredibly precisely -- I left about an inch of space between my bumper and the garage door. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it that close without actually bumping up against the garage door (something I've done on more than one occasion). I took the groceries inside and put them away, and ten minutes later glanced out the window to see that my landlord had left. I didn't see him come back for the rest of the day.
Finally, I thought, I can sleep.
I went downstairs to sleep, where it was cool and quiet. By this time it was after noon, and it took me a bit to fall asleep, but I finally did around 2 or so.
Whatever happened throughout the rest of the day, I didn't know about it; I was dead to the world from then until nightfall, when I was oh-so-rudely awakened by an incredibly loud rolling boom of thunder, one that was so sudden and so loud that it scared the cats off the bed. It was 8:30PM, though it may as well have been 2AM due to how dark it was. I looked out the front window when I got up to pee, and it was pouring rain. Good, I thought. Hopefully that will keep the weather cool. I went back to bed, but the thunder and lightning was loud and frequent -- I could not fall back asleep. Pete kept headbutting me in the face, as if he was trying to get me to get up and make the noise stop. Finally, after drifting in and out of half-sleep for another hour or so, I got up and came upstairs....and the storm promptly stopped when I did.
Seriously?
It was as if the storm had fired up to wake me up and for no other purpose whatsoever. As soon as I was awake, it was gone. I looked at the radar and all of it had moved off to the east. Wow, so that's what that big "severe storms" threat was? A normal, fairly weak thunderstorm that lasted an hour? Hoo boy. There would be a little more thunder and lightning a bit later, but nothing that would last for more than another five minutes or so.
Flash forward to Sunday afternoon, and I can now tell the rest of the story.
I was still not feeling that well (fucking beef sticks), so I told Daisy, who was at work, that I was going to try to play a game for a bit and then see if I could go back to sleep and get some more rest. I'd only slept for a few hours before the storms rolled in. I did this, of course, and was still not feeling well. I talked to Daisy off and on for a bit before starting this post, abandoning it about halfway through, and tried to go back to bed -- which, finally, I was successfully able to do. I didn't wake up until 2PM, and then felt much worse than I did before.
I don't know exactly what's wrong with me; I thought it was the heartburn caused by the beef sticks I ate, but I'm not sure that's what it is. I just feel all weak and ill, and my allergies are killing me (it's 85 outside and somewhat muggy, and there's barely a breeze going, which makes my allergies awful after it's stormed the night before). I know it's a stomach thing, because the thought of eating anything makes me feel queasy. Couple that with the heat and allergies, and it's a recipe for feeling awful.
I had stressful dreams while I slept; they're generally the closest things I have to nightmares that aren't actual nightmares. I had stressful dreams about finding jobs, about being forced to pay back my student loans, about the car breaking down, etc. All of these things linger in my subconscious, apparently, until I go to sleep -- yet while I am awake it is incredibly hard to force myself to deal with them...any of them. I can't do anything about them anyway, of course -- if the car breaks down, it breaks down, and I don't have the money to repair it. I have to live on the money I have now, and there's no "extra funds" in that for car repairs. I also can't force a company to hire me, and I can't magically win the lottery and pay back all of the student loans at once. All I can do is to keep getting up every day and keep trying to move forward and be productive, or at least do something that seems to be somewhat productive. Some days I'm successful at this, other days I'm not. Really, it heavily depends on the day and how I'm feeling. Some days it's an accomplishment just to eat something and take a shower.
Of course, in saying this, I will acknowledge that I haven't showered since Friday.
The neighbors had a new air conditioner installed a few weeks ago. I know this because the one they have now is different than the one they had before (logic, nurrrr) and they've been running it nearly nonstop for the past month. They're not smokers, and they rarely have their windows open. I have yet to turn mine on, and dread doing so. I've mentioned before that the summer is expensive, and a lot of that expense comes from two things: my car insurance bill and the need to run the air conditioner if I don't want to cook. It's supposed to be 95 tomorrow and 97 on Tuesday. Could I seal up the house tomorrow morning and run the air conditioner for a few hours to cool it down in here? Yes, yes I could, if I wanted to immediately add $15 or so to my electric bill for little real coolness (it would maybe take the house temperature down ten degrees at most, and only for a short time). I've ran the air conditioner for 12 hours straight before, and it was still 90 upstairs in the living room (I have a wall thermometer). Most of the time it's really not worth it.
It has gone up in temperature by four degrees in my room over the past three hours.
It figures that a month ago it was snowing and I was wearing layers shortly before finals week because otherwise I would freeze. Again, proof that there's no such thing as "spring" in Kansas -- it goes directly from nut-numbing winter to "everything's on fire" summer.
I got an email from my dad this morning, thanking me for his early Father's Day gift, which was this. I'm glad he liked it. Being a nerd myself, I definitely know how to shop for fellow nerds. This is partially why, at times, it is so frustrating to shop for Daisy; she is not nerdy at all. But it is also why I know it will be extremely easy to shop for our children, because they will be. Our anniversary is coming up, as well as her birthday, and I really have no clue what to get or do for her. She mentioned before that she may go to Kansas City for her birthday with her best friend (whom I know, of course).
"Have fun with that trip," I said, before she could invite me. "I have no desire to set foot in the state of Missouri ever again."
This is true; I have nothing but horrible, bitter memories of that state and of living there for three years. I'm not a fan of Kansas, either, but I have many more reasons for my hate of Missouri, reasons that will likely persist until I die.
So, I don't know if we'll have any plans or not. I know that she wants us to be together on July 4th, and has told me as much (I'd wanted us to be together on the 4th anyhow), but we don't yet know what that will entail. I told her if possible, that would be a good few days to go to Omaha again, so that I can avoid the redneck deluge of illegal fireworks every white-trash neighbor and their brother lights off in my neighborhood for six to eight hours straight, despite city ordinances forbidding them to do so. If I'm stuck here at the house over the 4th and have to deal with that again, I might call the police to do a drive-through of the neighborhood to shut it down. I'm so not kidding about that, especially when these people tend to light off the big, booming professional fireworks that rain down sparks and fire, and their kids shoot roman candles at cars. Fuck those people, seriously. Actually, I almost want to be able to be home on the 4th so that I can do that.
Again, I'm not a crotchety old man. I like living here because of the peace and quiet I had until all of these white-trash neighbors moved in all around me, each of them with at least two loud, uncontrollable screaming kids. Granted, one group of them has since moved out, but that's totally not enough. It was always so quiet before. I hate commotion, I hate noise, but more than that I hate people. Especially uncultured, loud people.
I wanted to order pizza, as mentioned before, and got the incentive to do so yesterday -- Papa John's sent out an emailed code that will give you 50% off your order. Okay, I thought, combined with what I usually get, that should cut the cost of a massive order of pizza about $40 or so down to $20. That's a good deal. So I applied the code and found that it doesn't work with any of their "special offers," like their 3 medium 3-toppings for $21. It only applies to stuff purchased at full price, and even if you're getting other stuff at full price, it won't cut the cost of those in half. Yeah, sorry, the code is worthless to me then. Your large pizzas are $15 or more, Papa John's. Screw that. I could get three large pizzas at Little Caesar's for $15, and I don't have to wait on delivery people or tip those guys. So, once more, I decided against getting any pizza.
I have to go out either tonight or tomorrow night anyway; the cats are (again) almost out of litter, and while I have food, coffee, and cigarettes for the time being, they do need their litter -- that's not something I can put off unless I want the entire downstairs of the house to smell like cat pee, since once their litter is used up completely, there's nothing left to stop that glorious scent from permeating the entire bedroom and laundry room. If I want pizza badly enough, I'll get a frozen pizza and give the proverbial finger to all of the pizza places out here.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Thunderstruck, Part II
Daisy left for Omaha on Thursday afternoon around 3, after we both slept in a long time that morning. I didn't get up until 11, and I let her sleep until after noon. We both needed the rest; I didn't fall asleep until after dawn, and she had a long day's drive ahead of her. I ended up going back to bed around 9:30 or so last night, as she'd gotten home safely and was going out dancing with friends.
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:
...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.
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.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Thunderstruck, Part I
It's 3:45 AM. Daisy has been in bed downstairs for well over an hour, and I can't sleep. Like, at all.
I'm tired, of course; I almost always am at this time of night. But I'm not the kind of tired where I could go lay down and fall asleep easily. It is because of this that I come here and attempt to blog about the events of the past two days or so.
Daisy got here around 11:30 on Tuesday night and hadn't yet eaten, which is unusual for her. She'll usually stop at the Subway in York on her way down here and get a veggie sub, and because I knew she would be getting here later than usual (she did contact me shortly after I finished my last post here on Tuesday) I hadn't planned anything for last night's dinner. Daisy, being vegan, requires an extensive amount of planning for meals for her, since I myself am not vegan and don't generally think about that sort of stuff. I'd gotten spaghetti and sauce, along with the elements for a good garlic bread, several nights ago when I'd gone to Walmart, as I figured the only really "big" meal I'd have to plan for would be on Wednesday night -- what would become our "dinner and movie date night." While I do keep a lot of stuff in the house which is vegetarian, outright vegan stuff you almost have to look for and plan for, because many things that you wouldn't immediately think about have animal products in them.
For example, most potato chips that have any sort of seasoning or flavoring on them whatsoever usually contain milk. No, that's not a joke. Go look at the labels in the snack aisle the next time you're at the store. Special care has to be given in selecting breads and pastas as well, to be sure that they don't contain any milk and/or eggs, and so on and so forth. I've gotten pretty good at this "spotting non-vegan" stuff from a mile away at this point, since Daisy and I have been together almost a year now. I know what to look for even in the complicated ingredients listed on a food label, and I know what to avoid. She's trained me well. Shopping/eating vegan is a challenge for the uninitiated, but again, after planning meals for Daisy for the past year or so of visits, I've pretty much got the hang of it now. I have my "go-to" dishes and foods I can prepare that are either inherently vegan or can be easily veganized, and we do well -- Daisy never goes hungry when she's here, just like I never go hungry when I visit her family in Omaha.
Anyway, because she hadn't eaten anything, once she'd settled in and had been able to relax and get off the road for a while, her empty stomach necessitated a trip to Walmart. At 3AM. Which, of course, I was fine with; that's my normal shopping time, as you know.
I thought Daisy would want something quick and easy, something we could make in a few minutes, eat it, and go to bed. I had forgotten that Daisy basically keeps the same sleeping schedule as I do now, which is "stay up most of the night, if not all night, and then go to sleep in the morning." She's used to being awake all night now because of her job. I, on the other hand, am usually in bed before 4AM on most nights, even though I really don't have to be anymore.
When all was said and done, Daisy had gotten a lot of stuff, and I had as well. I made sure to get some broccoli and some lettuces for salads and sandwiches, and Daisy got frozen Arby's curly fries (which, surprisingly enough, are vegan), tortillas, vegan hot dogs, turnips and turnip greens, blackberries, and a decent selection of other small items. She wanted us to cook when we got home. In the middle of the night.
Look, I'm all for cooking, of course, but the middle of the night isn't usually the time I do it. I got slightly miffed at that, but quickly got over it; again, Daisy operates on a different schedule than I do, so if she wanted us to cook in the night, it was fine by me. So, we purchased our stuff and went out to the car. We both got a few items that weren't food items; I found a dress shirt for $1, for example, and she got a swimsuit top that is just plain adorable. And bright red. Red is a good color on her.
Last night, there were storms raging about the area -- there was a large line of them that spanned the height of the entire state of Kansas, slowly, slowly moving across the state. We didn't know when they'd hit; they were half a state away when Daisy got here at 11:30, and I summarily stopped watching the weather at that point. Daisy later told me that she drove through a few small, nasty storms on the way out of Nebraska to get down here, but they didn't last long. Anyway, these storms decided to hit juuuuuuust as we were exiting Walmart. At 4AM. With a shitload of groceries. We barely got home and got them all in the house before the torrential rains and loud thunder/bright lightning started. It lasted until long after we'd gone to bed around 5:30.
She ended up having some of the turnips/turnip greens and some of the broccoli I got, and I had vegan Boca Burgers left in the freezer from her graduation trip down here, so that's what we made. I wouldn't make the fries/hot dogs for her until this afternoon for a late lunch.
Daisy is really curious and worried about my eating habits. Not what I eat (though she does tend to be worried about that too), but the frequency. I've mentioned before that I usually only eat one meal a day, with a snack or two thrown in there somewhere. This is true; I barely eat at all, and when I do, I eat a somewhat large meal and then usually go to sleep shortly thereafter (which, yes, I know, is apparently horrible for my metabolism). I've eaten this way for almost as long as I remember -- since long before high school, even. If I eat more, I tend to crash and/or get sick to my stomach. I can't do a whole lot about that, really. Trying to eat several small meals a day isn't how my body works. I can't eat when I'm not hungry (part of what makes me sick to my stomach -- it feels forced) and I'm just not that hungry, really. Ever. When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm not, I don't. I subsist so much on coffee and cigarettes anyway that my appetite and metabolism at this point has probably been permanently altered. No, that's not necessarily a good thing, of course, but it is what it is. At least it keeps my grocery bills relatively low. I spend more money on cat food and litter than I spend on actual food for myself -- on the whole, anyway.
I have a well-stocked pantry and fridge/freezer; a few nights ago, for example, I took a big ziploc bag of frozen soup out of the freezer and made a big bowl of it for dinner. I save stuff when I can. There's a bunch of pasta and frozen vegetables in there as well, stuff that I will slowly work through over the summer months to save money. I have stuff to eat. I just eat it very slowly.
Anyway.
Daisy's visit has been delightful; I finally have someone to talk to and interact with in person again aside from the cats. And, on the plus side, when she's here I actually have motivation to get up, leave the house, and do something on a regular basis. For example, since we went to Walmart last night, I was able to get stamps. We went to the Dollar Tree this afternoon before going to see Iron Man 3 (which I'll get to in a bit). We tried to go over to the discount grocery store after the movie, but they'd already closed for the night. When Daisy's here, I tend to have a bit more energy and vigor in my daily tasks than I normally do.
As mentioned, we did go see Iron Man 3 this afternoon. Afterwards, Daisy took this picture of us with her phone outside the theater:
Note: there appears to be grey in my beard and my mustache. There's not. It's the glare from the outside lighting. I think it's a great picture of the two of us.
"Your beard is just epic," she would later tell me as we were cooling off from the mugginess outside after we got home.
"It's coming off in another week or two," I replied. "I have to start looking respectable in case I get some job interviews soon."
I love my beard. I don't want to take it off; I look like I'm twelve when I do, and if my hair is still long (which, as you can see, it is), I look even worse. It also takes a few months to grow back out to its former glory once I do shave it. Still, there's not a whole lot else I can do to make myself appear somewhat professional.
As for Iron Man 3? I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. I went into the film with no real expectations -- my expectations were high for Iron Man 2, and most of them got dashed upon seeing that film, as it was a mostly terrible picture. I was also let down a lot by The Avengers, as it didn't live up to nearly the amount of hype it had (at least not in my eyes, anyhow). Iron Man 3 takes a few maaaaaajor liberties with two of its main characters, including the movie's "villain," but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. As I told my mother, I liked it a lot more than I liked Star Trek Into Darkness. I could write a dissertation on all of the things wrong with that movie.
As an aside, I think I should write a book full of these sorts of dissertations -- dissecting good, as well as bad, films in much the same vein as Chuck Klosterman dissects pop culture. I bet I could make a shitload of money from a book or three like that.
Ahem. Anyway. It's a decent film, and it wraps up the trilogy of Iron Man pictures pretty well. Up next, of course, is Man of Steel, which not only opens next week but will be a movie that more than likely I will see alone -- I'm not going to wait a month to see it, nor will Daisy be here when it opens. I went to see Superman Returns on opening day, and was glad I did (despite all of the flaws with that picture as well). I asked Parker if he'd be game to organize some sort of dinner/watching party up here in Newton with me, as the theater here is much cheaper than the ones in Wichita (the Newton theater has shows that are basically $5 or so at all times), but he's going to see it at the 3D IMAX theater down there. Looks like I'll be nerding out to Superman all by my lonesome.
So that's what's been going on since Daisy arrived. In the morning or early afternoon, she will set off for Omaha once more, as she has evening plans with two friends (both of whom I met/know), and the house will return to quietness again. I should probably go to bed now, actually, in order to get my last few hours of sleep with her for what will probably be several weeks.
Fare thee well, my friends.
I'm tired, of course; I almost always am at this time of night. But I'm not the kind of tired where I could go lay down and fall asleep easily. It is because of this that I come here and attempt to blog about the events of the past two days or so.
Daisy got here around 11:30 on Tuesday night and hadn't yet eaten, which is unusual for her. She'll usually stop at the Subway in York on her way down here and get a veggie sub, and because I knew she would be getting here later than usual (she did contact me shortly after I finished my last post here on Tuesday) I hadn't planned anything for last night's dinner. Daisy, being vegan, requires an extensive amount of planning for meals for her, since I myself am not vegan and don't generally think about that sort of stuff. I'd gotten spaghetti and sauce, along with the elements for a good garlic bread, several nights ago when I'd gone to Walmart, as I figured the only really "big" meal I'd have to plan for would be on Wednesday night -- what would become our "dinner and movie date night." While I do keep a lot of stuff in the house which is vegetarian, outright vegan stuff you almost have to look for and plan for, because many things that you wouldn't immediately think about have animal products in them.
For example, most potato chips that have any sort of seasoning or flavoring on them whatsoever usually contain milk. No, that's not a joke. Go look at the labels in the snack aisle the next time you're at the store. Special care has to be given in selecting breads and pastas as well, to be sure that they don't contain any milk and/or eggs, and so on and so forth. I've gotten pretty good at this "spotting non-vegan" stuff from a mile away at this point, since Daisy and I have been together almost a year now. I know what to look for even in the complicated ingredients listed on a food label, and I know what to avoid. She's trained me well. Shopping/eating vegan is a challenge for the uninitiated, but again, after planning meals for Daisy for the past year or so of visits, I've pretty much got the hang of it now. I have my "go-to" dishes and foods I can prepare that are either inherently vegan or can be easily veganized, and we do well -- Daisy never goes hungry when she's here, just like I never go hungry when I visit her family in Omaha.
Anyway, because she hadn't eaten anything, once she'd settled in and had been able to relax and get off the road for a while, her empty stomach necessitated a trip to Walmart. At 3AM. Which, of course, I was fine with; that's my normal shopping time, as you know.
I thought Daisy would want something quick and easy, something we could make in a few minutes, eat it, and go to bed. I had forgotten that Daisy basically keeps the same sleeping schedule as I do now, which is "stay up most of the night, if not all night, and then go to sleep in the morning." She's used to being awake all night now because of her job. I, on the other hand, am usually in bed before 4AM on most nights, even though I really don't have to be anymore.
When all was said and done, Daisy had gotten a lot of stuff, and I had as well. I made sure to get some broccoli and some lettuces for salads and sandwiches, and Daisy got frozen Arby's curly fries (which, surprisingly enough, are vegan), tortillas, vegan hot dogs, turnips and turnip greens, blackberries, and a decent selection of other small items. She wanted us to cook when we got home. In the middle of the night.
Look, I'm all for cooking, of course, but the middle of the night isn't usually the time I do it. I got slightly miffed at that, but quickly got over it; again, Daisy operates on a different schedule than I do, so if she wanted us to cook in the night, it was fine by me. So, we purchased our stuff and went out to the car. We both got a few items that weren't food items; I found a dress shirt for $1, for example, and she got a swimsuit top that is just plain adorable. And bright red. Red is a good color on her.
Last night, there were storms raging about the area -- there was a large line of them that spanned the height of the entire state of Kansas, slowly, slowly moving across the state. We didn't know when they'd hit; they were half a state away when Daisy got here at 11:30, and I summarily stopped watching the weather at that point. Daisy later told me that she drove through a few small, nasty storms on the way out of Nebraska to get down here, but they didn't last long. Anyway, these storms decided to hit juuuuuuust as we were exiting Walmart. At 4AM. With a shitload of groceries. We barely got home and got them all in the house before the torrential rains and loud thunder/bright lightning started. It lasted until long after we'd gone to bed around 5:30.
She ended up having some of the turnips/turnip greens and some of the broccoli I got, and I had vegan Boca Burgers left in the freezer from her graduation trip down here, so that's what we made. I wouldn't make the fries/hot dogs for her until this afternoon for a late lunch.
Daisy is really curious and worried about my eating habits. Not what I eat (though she does tend to be worried about that too), but the frequency. I've mentioned before that I usually only eat one meal a day, with a snack or two thrown in there somewhere. This is true; I barely eat at all, and when I do, I eat a somewhat large meal and then usually go to sleep shortly thereafter (which, yes, I know, is apparently horrible for my metabolism). I've eaten this way for almost as long as I remember -- since long before high school, even. If I eat more, I tend to crash and/or get sick to my stomach. I can't do a whole lot about that, really. Trying to eat several small meals a day isn't how my body works. I can't eat when I'm not hungry (part of what makes me sick to my stomach -- it feels forced) and I'm just not that hungry, really. Ever. When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm not, I don't. I subsist so much on coffee and cigarettes anyway that my appetite and metabolism at this point has probably been permanently altered. No, that's not necessarily a good thing, of course, but it is what it is. At least it keeps my grocery bills relatively low. I spend more money on cat food and litter than I spend on actual food for myself -- on the whole, anyway.
I have a well-stocked pantry and fridge/freezer; a few nights ago, for example, I took a big ziploc bag of frozen soup out of the freezer and made a big bowl of it for dinner. I save stuff when I can. There's a bunch of pasta and frozen vegetables in there as well, stuff that I will slowly work through over the summer months to save money. I have stuff to eat. I just eat it very slowly.
Anyway.
Daisy's visit has been delightful; I finally have someone to talk to and interact with in person again aside from the cats. And, on the plus side, when she's here I actually have motivation to get up, leave the house, and do something on a regular basis. For example, since we went to Walmart last night, I was able to get stamps. We went to the Dollar Tree this afternoon before going to see Iron Man 3 (which I'll get to in a bit). We tried to go over to the discount grocery store after the movie, but they'd already closed for the night. When Daisy's here, I tend to have a bit more energy and vigor in my daily tasks than I normally do.
As mentioned, we did go see Iron Man 3 this afternoon. Afterwards, Daisy took this picture of us with her phone outside the theater:
Note: there appears to be grey in my beard and my mustache. There's not. It's the glare from the outside lighting. I think it's a great picture of the two of us.
"Your beard is just epic," she would later tell me as we were cooling off from the mugginess outside after we got home.
"It's coming off in another week or two," I replied. "I have to start looking respectable in case I get some job interviews soon."
I love my beard. I don't want to take it off; I look like I'm twelve when I do, and if my hair is still long (which, as you can see, it is), I look even worse. It also takes a few months to grow back out to its former glory once I do shave it. Still, there's not a whole lot else I can do to make myself appear somewhat professional.
As for Iron Man 3? I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. I went into the film with no real expectations -- my expectations were high for Iron Man 2, and most of them got dashed upon seeing that film, as it was a mostly terrible picture. I was also let down a lot by The Avengers, as it didn't live up to nearly the amount of hype it had (at least not in my eyes, anyhow). Iron Man 3 takes a few maaaaaajor liberties with two of its main characters, including the movie's "villain," but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. As I told my mother, I liked it a lot more than I liked Star Trek Into Darkness. I could write a dissertation on all of the things wrong with that movie.
As an aside, I think I should write a book full of these sorts of dissertations -- dissecting good, as well as bad, films in much the same vein as Chuck Klosterman dissects pop culture. I bet I could make a shitload of money from a book or three like that.
Ahem. Anyway. It's a decent film, and it wraps up the trilogy of Iron Man pictures pretty well. Up next, of course, is Man of Steel, which not only opens next week but will be a movie that more than likely I will see alone -- I'm not going to wait a month to see it, nor will Daisy be here when it opens. I went to see Superman Returns on opening day, and was glad I did (despite all of the flaws with that picture as well). I asked Parker if he'd be game to organize some sort of dinner/watching party up here in Newton with me, as the theater here is much cheaper than the ones in Wichita (the Newton theater has shows that are basically $5 or so at all times), but he's going to see it at the 3D IMAX theater down there. Looks like I'll be nerding out to Superman all by my lonesome.
So that's what's been going on since Daisy arrived. In the morning or early afternoon, she will set off for Omaha once more, as she has evening plans with two friends (both of whom I met/know), and the house will return to quietness again. I should probably go to bed now, actually, in order to get my last few hours of sleep with her for what will probably be several weeks.
Fare thee well, my friends.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Truckin' Along
I applied for two new positions last night, both of them composition instructor positions at ITT Technical Institute in Omaha. Mama referred me to ITT when I was in Omaha as a viable employment opportunity. Why not? I thought.
The pre-employment screening questionnaires, however, took almost an hour to complete. Ugh. You're kidding me, right?
It's something, though, y'know? I can actually say I did something productive.
I know most of these applications will probably be all for nought, but it's worth a try, at least. I need to start shooting off applications for teaching positions left and right, several a day if possible -- there's no reason not to. Florida? Fuck it, let's apply in Florida.
"How would you feel about living in Wyoming?" Daisy asked me a few nights ago.
"It's beautiful there," I replied, "but it has much the same problem as say, West Virginia does -- there's nothing there. And they don't really like the gays. They're also a redder state than Kansas is, and that's saying something."
Daisy and I are both very liberal -- though she's much more so than I am. I am quite conservative on the death penalty and the second amendment, for example, while Daisy basically wants to abolish both. We do, however, both have a multitude of gay friends, and are both staunch supporters of marriage equality and the like.
"Hm. Not a good idea, then," she said. "And please tell me you said 'the gays' that way on purpose, otherwise you'd sound like a redneck."
"Duh, love."
I have made the house about as clean as it's going to get before Daisy's arrival tomorrow, which could happen any time between the early afternoon hours and the evening depending on when she leaves the house and/or if she naps after work. I've told her that whatever she wants to do is fine by me; it's not like I'm going anywhere. I've considered going back out to Walmart tonight for sugar and the stamps I forgot last night, but that'll depend on how I feel in another two hours or so, and if I want to leave the house.
I'm glad I waited an extra few days to see if anyone sent me anything else for graduation -- my aunt and uncle sent me a card with a $30 check inside it yesterday, which was very sweet of them. I'll have to prepare another thank-you note over the next few days, but, again, I need to get stamps first. This "only being awake at night" thing really throws off those occasionally necessary post office visits, though I do more often than not get stamps from Walmart now.
I haven't eaten much since yesterday; granted, part of that is because I was asleep all day, but a bigger part of it is that I'm trying to use my groceries sparingly. When I spend the days/nights alone and never leave the house, I tend to eat more because, well, I can. It's not like I plan it, I just do. I actually have the ability to eat and then fall asleep if I want to (as I almost always get tired after I eat) -- which I couldn't do when I would spend an inordinate amount of time in my office on campus every week.
Daisy will be here at some point today, though right now I don't know when that will be. She told me that she was going to come home from work this morning and either take a nap for a while before her drive or come straight down. As she hasn't messaged me to tell me she's leaving, she's either sleeping or will arrive here any minute -- I don't know one way or the other. I told her it was up to her on what she wanted to do; there's no hurry either way, since it's not like I have anything pressing to do in my schedule. That's part of the beauty of summer "vacation" (read: unemployment.)
It thundered for a while here earlier, and dropped a little rain, but has since moved off. There's a threat of storms later this afternoon and overnight, but I'm not really concerned. If anything big was going to happen, the weather people would make a bigger deal out of it other than saying "oh, a few storms here and there," which is basically what they've been saying.
As an aside, several friends have told me that they greatly miss my daily "weather reports" since the semester has ended and since I/we've graduated and moved on with our lives. We graduated less than three weeks ago. Granted, for the past three weeks the weather has been pretty shitty at times, but still. Apparently I've had a larger influence on people than I originally thought.
In not knowing when Daisy will arrive, I also don't know when I should shower and de-stink the house (loosely speaking, anyhow). I haven't showered in about three days. Before you think that's disgusting, I'll remind you that it's not like I have anyone to impress, and it's not like I leave the house on a regular basis. It's also about conserving water to a certain extent, as well. Performing a "de-stink" of the house is pretty simple -- air freshener, open windows, and running the furnace fan to circulate air for a while, along with a usual cleaning of the cat box.. While I don't smoke anywhere but in my Man Cave upstairs, thus making the rest of the house smell relatively normal, Daisy can still smell the smoke that's lingered around the house, since she's not a smoker herself and still has a sense of smell. Because of this, before she comes I try to do an airing-out of the house, and most of the time when she's here I try to smoke outside on my balcony. Most. The smell of smoke, coffee, and incense will be forever burned into my Man Cave until I repaint the room and steam-clean the carpets when I prepare to move out...whenever that may be.
I ordered my dad a Father's Day gift today from Amazon; I have a feeling that it's something he'll enjoy. It's not scheduled to ship until the weekend, though it should arrive well before Father's Day. I have to do something for Daisy's father as well; I don't yet know what that will be. The gift for my own dad was $25 or so with shipping, so I perhaps will find something to get while Daisy is here and send it back with her.
My car insurance bill came in the mail yesterday. As you folks may know, my car insurance is due on June 30 and December 30, twice a year. It's usually about $300 or so each time (I haven't opened the bill yet, as I always pay it online with my Citi card anyway). In tallying my expenses and needs, as well as bills, I'm more than okay finances-wise probably through close to the end of the year even with that, and will more than likely have found a teaching position or another job by then anyhow, whether that be adjuncting at my university or otherwise. This is really strange for me, stepping back for a moment, to actually be somewhat financially stable for months on end -- especially in summer -- without having to stress and worry every single day about finding work or finding a way to pay my bills. I paid my water bill this morning, for example, and it was a drop in the proverbial bucket. This time last year I was fucking panicking like crazy because my summer teaching position wouldn't pay me until the end of June.
Again, what a difference a year makes, right? A year ago at this time, I was basically resigned to moving back home to West Virginia to live with my parents after graduation; I didn't yet have Daisy, and I was seriously floundering. Now, mind you, I'm still floundering a bit, but I'm so, so much more stable both mentally and financially than I was then. I see this summer as a "vacation" of sorts where I spend my time looking for work and planning my future at my own pace instead of frantically scraping by, searching couch cushions and crevices for spare change just to be able to eat and to put gas in the car between teaching sessions. And this time around, I've got my companion-for-life in Daisy, who is supportive and loving of me in everything I do (or choose not to do). That woman is my rock, and a lot of the time I feel like I take her for granted, but she claims I don't. I never want to; I am eternally grateful that she is in my life and I do everything I can to show her that.
My Amazon card bill should be coming soon too, but there's not a lot on it; there's maybe one tank of gas on it and about $40 of purchases via Amazon, mostly little things (like the spider traps and the $3 PlayStation games I ordered). I try to use it sparingly and then pay it off completely every month in order to help build my credit (and also hopefully, eventually, increase my credit limit on that card, which is currently only $400). I'll fill Daisy's car with gas again when we go out tomorrow and will put that on said card too, since gas gets me Amazon points, and also since she'll need more gas. My car has about thirty miles or so to go before it needs a fill-up again. I've decided that when I do fill it, I'll need to get more gas in the tank for the mower as well -- especially if it's going to keep raining every other day, requiring me to mow the grass on a weekly basis.
Remember, last summer it was 105 degrees every day, minimum, and it rained for about two hours total over the course of three and a half months. Kansas almost became the dust bowl again, thus meaning that, really, the grass didn't grow at all. I went out into the front yard with scissors and cut down the ten or so weeds that were growing high up to my knee, but I think I mowed the grass maybe twice the entire summer. I don't remember because it was all mostly brown and dead everywhere.
To put that into perspective, I've moved the grass three times already since finals week. Which was about a month ago now.
I got a reply from my mother saying that if we'll be able to make a trip to West Virginia this summer, it won't be until after mid-July or so, as everyone in my parents' offices have scheduled their vacations basically back-to-back, and when I come in my parents always take several days off in order to spend time with me and/or do other functions like lunches and dinner parties and the like. I told her this was fine, and to keep me posted on available days/weeks for when we might be able to fly out there, as Daisy needs some advance notice to give work for when she'll be gone.
This does throw a bit of a wrench into a few small things, however; I have to pick up my diploma from campus in mid-July (after the 18th) and need to be on campus at some point to drop off my office keys around that time as well, not to mention ask some questions about the budget and about the state of the Engineering English program/adjuncting for the fall if necessary. This shouldn't be a problem one way or the other, but I'd prefer not to leave the state for any length of time until that stuff is taken care of (unless there's a window to do it beforehand). If I get hired on at one of the places I've applied to in Omaha, I'd also be moving shortly thereafter if I would be teaching starting in August, so a lot of busy stuff may be crammed together all at once. As always, however, I have to wait to see what happens -- part of why I told my mother to keep me posted on possible dates and times for the trip. This is also a big part of why I've been relaxing and sleeping as much as I can right now -- I don't know how long this trend will continue, and I want to be able to enjoy it while it lasts.
On that note, it's getting a bit warm and muggy now, so I shall retreat to the shower and de-stink the house in preparation for Daisy's arrival...whenever that may be, since I have still not heard from her.
Daisy will be here at some point today, though right now I don't know when that will be. She told me that she was going to come home from work this morning and either take a nap for a while before her drive or come straight down. As she hasn't messaged me to tell me she's leaving, she's either sleeping or will arrive here any minute -- I don't know one way or the other. I told her it was up to her on what she wanted to do; there's no hurry either way, since it's not like I have anything pressing to do in my schedule. That's part of the beauty of summer "vacation" (read: unemployment.)
It thundered for a while here earlier, and dropped a little rain, but has since moved off. There's a threat of storms later this afternoon and overnight, but I'm not really concerned. If anything big was going to happen, the weather people would make a bigger deal out of it other than saying "oh, a few storms here and there," which is basically what they've been saying.
As an aside, several friends have told me that they greatly miss my daily "weather reports" since the semester has ended and since I/we've graduated and moved on with our lives. We graduated less than three weeks ago. Granted, for the past three weeks the weather has been pretty shitty at times, but still. Apparently I've had a larger influence on people than I originally thought.
In not knowing when Daisy will arrive, I also don't know when I should shower and de-stink the house (loosely speaking, anyhow). I haven't showered in about three days. Before you think that's disgusting, I'll remind you that it's not like I have anyone to impress, and it's not like I leave the house on a regular basis. It's also about conserving water to a certain extent, as well. Performing a "de-stink" of the house is pretty simple -- air freshener, open windows, and running the furnace fan to circulate air for a while, along with a usual cleaning of the cat box.. While I don't smoke anywhere but in my Man Cave upstairs, thus making the rest of the house smell relatively normal, Daisy can still smell the smoke that's lingered around the house, since she's not a smoker herself and still has a sense of smell. Because of this, before she comes I try to do an airing-out of the house, and most of the time when she's here I try to smoke outside on my balcony. Most. The smell of smoke, coffee, and incense will be forever burned into my Man Cave until I repaint the room and steam-clean the carpets when I prepare to move out...whenever that may be.
I ordered my dad a Father's Day gift today from Amazon; I have a feeling that it's something he'll enjoy. It's not scheduled to ship until the weekend, though it should arrive well before Father's Day. I have to do something for Daisy's father as well; I don't yet know what that will be. The gift for my own dad was $25 or so with shipping, so I perhaps will find something to get while Daisy is here and send it back with her.
My car insurance bill came in the mail yesterday. As you folks may know, my car insurance is due on June 30 and December 30, twice a year. It's usually about $300 or so each time (I haven't opened the bill yet, as I always pay it online with my Citi card anyway). In tallying my expenses and needs, as well as bills, I'm more than okay finances-wise probably through close to the end of the year even with that, and will more than likely have found a teaching position or another job by then anyhow, whether that be adjuncting at my university or otherwise. This is really strange for me, stepping back for a moment, to actually be somewhat financially stable for months on end -- especially in summer -- without having to stress and worry every single day about finding work or finding a way to pay my bills. I paid my water bill this morning, for example, and it was a drop in the proverbial bucket. This time last year I was fucking panicking like crazy because my summer teaching position wouldn't pay me until the end of June.
Again, what a difference a year makes, right? A year ago at this time, I was basically resigned to moving back home to West Virginia to live with my parents after graduation; I didn't yet have Daisy, and I was seriously floundering. Now, mind you, I'm still floundering a bit, but I'm so, so much more stable both mentally and financially than I was then. I see this summer as a "vacation" of sorts where I spend my time looking for work and planning my future at my own pace instead of frantically scraping by, searching couch cushions and crevices for spare change just to be able to eat and to put gas in the car between teaching sessions. And this time around, I've got my companion-for-life in Daisy, who is supportive and loving of me in everything I do (or choose not to do). That woman is my rock, and a lot of the time I feel like I take her for granted, but she claims I don't. I never want to; I am eternally grateful that she is in my life and I do everything I can to show her that.
My Amazon card bill should be coming soon too, but there's not a lot on it; there's maybe one tank of gas on it and about $40 of purchases via Amazon, mostly little things (like the spider traps and the $3 PlayStation games I ordered). I try to use it sparingly and then pay it off completely every month in order to help build my credit (and also hopefully, eventually, increase my credit limit on that card, which is currently only $400). I'll fill Daisy's car with gas again when we go out tomorrow and will put that on said card too, since gas gets me Amazon points, and also since she'll need more gas. My car has about thirty miles or so to go before it needs a fill-up again. I've decided that when I do fill it, I'll need to get more gas in the tank for the mower as well -- especially if it's going to keep raining every other day, requiring me to mow the grass on a weekly basis.
Remember, last summer it was 105 degrees every day, minimum, and it rained for about two hours total over the course of three and a half months. Kansas almost became the dust bowl again, thus meaning that, really, the grass didn't grow at all. I went out into the front yard with scissors and cut down the ten or so weeds that were growing high up to my knee, but I think I mowed the grass maybe twice the entire summer. I don't remember because it was all mostly brown and dead everywhere.
To put that into perspective, I've moved the grass three times already since finals week. Which was about a month ago now.
I got a reply from my mother saying that if we'll be able to make a trip to West Virginia this summer, it won't be until after mid-July or so, as everyone in my parents' offices have scheduled their vacations basically back-to-back, and when I come in my parents always take several days off in order to spend time with me and/or do other functions like lunches and dinner parties and the like. I told her this was fine, and to keep me posted on available days/weeks for when we might be able to fly out there, as Daisy needs some advance notice to give work for when she'll be gone.
This does throw a bit of a wrench into a few small things, however; I have to pick up my diploma from campus in mid-July (after the 18th) and need to be on campus at some point to drop off my office keys around that time as well, not to mention ask some questions about the budget and about the state of the Engineering English program/adjuncting for the fall if necessary. This shouldn't be a problem one way or the other, but I'd prefer not to leave the state for any length of time until that stuff is taken care of (unless there's a window to do it beforehand). If I get hired on at one of the places I've applied to in Omaha, I'd also be moving shortly thereafter if I would be teaching starting in August, so a lot of busy stuff may be crammed together all at once. As always, however, I have to wait to see what happens -- part of why I told my mother to keep me posted on possible dates and times for the trip. This is also a big part of why I've been relaxing and sleeping as much as I can right now -- I don't know how long this trend will continue, and I want to be able to enjoy it while it lasts.
On that note, it's getting a bit warm and muggy now, so I shall retreat to the shower and de-stink the house in preparation for Daisy's arrival...whenever that may be, since I have still not heard from her.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Plans and Followthroughs
I went to Walmart at 3AM to get groceries. It was the first time I'd left the house in a week, and I decided to do it under the cover of darkness during the quietest overnight of any given week -- Sunday night.
There are/were things I needed around the house that I was rapidly running out of. I needed cat litter, for example, as I sort of can't go without that for an incredibly long time with my three lovely little furballs.
There are/were things I needed around the house that I was rapidly running out of. I needed cat litter, for example, as I sort of can't go without that for an incredibly long time with my three lovely little furballs.
Pete, pictured above, has decided that his favorite sleeping spot in the house in the middle of the night is to climb into the bathroom sink to snooze. I took this picture several nights ago while I was awake and writing, just by sitting the camera on the sink and pressing the button. This is, however, only when he doesn't want to lay across my shoulders like a parrot (which he's doing now as I type this).
Sadie prefers the tub. This was my sight a few nights ago when I went to the bathroom to pee:
Tell me that's not unsettling to a certain extent. At least Maggie crawls under the couch and passes out when she's tired.
Anyway. So I went to Walmart with some goals in mind tonight -- I didn't want to spend a ton of money, I meant to get stamps and cat litter and sugar (amongst other things I needed) and I just wanted to come back home to take care of my other household stuff in the overnight hours and go back to bed.
Well, I accomplished one of those goals. I forgot to get sugar and stamps, but I did get cat litter. Figures.
Daisy is coming down tomorrow afternoon. I needed to get food for us to eat on Wednesday night for dinner, so I purchased pasta made with carrots, tomatoes, and spinach (it's slightly orange in color) and bought a jar of vegan tomato, onion, and garlic pasta sauce. Add to this some homemade garlic bread (from ingredients I already had) and vegan parmesan cheese, and the total cost of our dinner was something like $3.70. Not bad, right?
We're planning to go see Iron Man 3 on Wednesday when she's here (finally); it's only going to be playing up here until Thursday, and I suppose I've waited long enough to see it. It was her idea, actually, which shocked me -- she wanted to see both that and Star Trek Into Darkness back to back on the same day when we were in Omaha, originally.
My first thought was you want to see a comic book movie, love? You? But I kept it to myself. I at least knew she was humoring me for Star Trek. When the word "star" enters a sentence and it is followed by either "trek" or "wars," she knows that I must be humored without question, and given a wide berth in that humoring.
I should try to write that into our marriage vows somehow.
Thou shalt fully humor and support Brandon in his unabashed nerdiness...
Ahem.
It doesn't look like we'll have much time to go anywhere or do anything else, really. She has to be back in Omaha by Thursday afternoon; again, it's a short trip, but I'm glad we have some plans for while she's here.
So, anyway, I made the trip to Walmart and came home. The car was running/acting just fine. I left her outside; it's not supposed to do anything substantial weather-wise for the foreseeable future. We may get some storms tomorrow night, but even that is fairly iffy at the moment. And iffiness isn't enough for me to go to the hassle of putting the car in the garage in the middle of the night when I can barely see to even get the groceries in the house. As I forgot stamps and sugar, I might as well leave it out in case I'm motivated to go back out to get that stuff over the next few days anyhow.
Yesterday I got up early -- much earlier than I wanted to. My very white trash neighbor across the street (who would positively blast music at all hours of the day and night throughout the neighborhood and would frequently get into cops-in-driveway screaming matches with the mother of his child) finally moved out last week, leaving a massive pile of trash at the end of the driveway/yard. This means that three houses on the street are now unoccupied, which means that someone has to mow the grass for them. My landlord owns all of these homes, so when they're unoccupied, he hires a crew to come mow the lawns of these places about twice a month, and they do them all at the same time. Well, this time around, they started doing it at 8AM on a fucking Sunday morning.
Nobody in their right mind is awake at 8AM on a Sunday morning unless they haven't gone to bed yet from Saturday night. No one. I will go as far to say that if you're awake at 8AM on a Sunday morning you should probably schedule a trip to your friendly local psychiatrist, because there's more than likely something wrong with your mental state.
"But Brandon," some of you will say, "what about those of us who are religious and go to church?"
I rest my case.
So the mowing started at fucking eight in the morning, and didn't finish until noon or so. You know how I say I can sleep through almost anything when I'm tired? Well, usually I can, as long as that anything isn't someone jackhammering the back patio or the constant, incredibly loud and annoying drone of not one or two, but three high-powered riding mowers mowing basically the entire unoccupied part of the neighborhood all at the same time. I wanted to scream and start throwing things. By the time they left, I was not only furious, but I was wide awake and could not go back to sleep. Eventually, I made something to eat and talked to Daisy for a while before she went to work this evening, but the day was ruined -- I ended up going back to bed at 6:30PM to catch up on my lost sleep, and slept until around 1 or so. Another day wasted with nothing to show for it, and my sleep schedule completely screwed up -- something which will require effort to turn back around.
I told Daisy, at a little after 6AM, that I was going back to bed, because I was tired -- and I was. At the time. Then I laid there on the bed staring at the ceiling for an hour.
Really, Brandon? I thought to myself. Now you can't sleep?
I finally sat up, achy and physically tired, but with a wide-awake mind, and stripped the bed. Daisy's coming down tomorrow, and I needed to wash the sheets. I put the sheets in the washer and cleaned the cat room. I flipped the mattress for the first time in over two years. I came back upstairs and added more info on the classes I taught to my CV, and then tried to update my Monster.com account...only to find that the password I had for it apparently expired long, long ago, and the new temporary password they sent me to reactivate said account doesn't work. I am, apparently, locked out of my Monster account for no reason.
I sat down again after taking care of the laundry and realized my ass hurt. Surprise, hemorrhoid. After not having one in about six years.
Clearly, I thought, the universe is just fucking with me now, isn't it?
I took four fiber pills and refilled my bottle of water, because those are the only things that help me when I get a hemorrhoid. They usually go away in a few days, but really? I guess it's better than having to deal with one while I had a busy schedule every day.
I am attempting to wear myself out as much as possible this morning, in order to be able to get some rest when I actually do go to sleep. I checked my Amazon shipments, and the earliest one (my new keyboard) isn't supposed to arrive until tomorrow, so I should be able to get some rest today without UPS banging on my door. I didn't bother messaging Daisy when I came back upstairs either; her rest today is critical as she'll be working tonight, coming home in the morning, and then more than likely driving straight down here before she goes to bed again. That means I need to let her sleep as much as possible -- I can't do much about this, it's just the way her work schedule is.
Plus, if I get a lot of rest today, perhaps my hemorrhoid will shrink and fade away. That could only be a good thing, you know.
The weather forecast has been updated now; apparently there's a risk of severe storms tonight and tomorrow for my area. A small risk, but a risk enough. I might put the car in the garage again before Daisy gets here so that she can pull up under the balcony (and therefore spare any more damage her car may get if there's hail involved).
I have not heard anything back yet from the position I applied for at Vatterott in Omaha, nor have I heard anything from the university about adjuncting or any continuation of the Engineering English program. I am of two minds right now about applying for different positions all over the place -- one mind says things like you are going to run out of money if you don't get your ass in gear and find something, while the other says you're kidding, right? You can find and do anything you want to do. Get back to writing and trying to get published in different places. And really, both of them can go shove it for the next few days -- I'm tired. My sleep schedule is badly off. Daisy is coming down tomorrow. I miss my friends, most of whom have either left town for the summer or have left Kansas permanently. I've got myself, my car, my house, and the cats, day in and day out.
As you can see, I'm sort of out of sorts.
Maybe sleep will fix this. G'night, folks.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Floridians, Visits, and Weddings
"Of 350 English teaching jobs available on higheredjobs.com," I told Daisy, "26 of them are in Florida."
"Go for it, baby," she said in response. "And wherever else you might desire. I trust you."
The question, however, that remains is...do I trust myself?
I don't really know what that means, actually.
26/350 is something like 7.4%. That's a huge percentage of English jobs available in one solitary location, especially for a site that puts up postings both nationally and internationally.
DAYTONAAAAAA....
Ahem.
I generally have a distaste for most Floridians I've met, to be honest with you. Mind you, I know many people who lived there for a time (including, well, Daisy and her whole family, and my friends April and Damon) and they turned out okay, but the people I've known who were born and raised there, and who lived there for their entire lives? Christ, they've been some damaged people. There may be an exception or two over the years, of course, but damn.
Mind you, I'm not slamming all Floridians here, just the ones I've known. I'm sure there are perfectly normal people living in Florida. Good luck finding them.
Anyway.
I've also written here in the past that there was a very real possibility that I could have relocated to Florida as a child; my mother interviewed for a job down there when I was six or seven, but didn't take it. Now it seems, twenty-four years later, that in order for me to be able to get a job someplace, I may have to start applying and interviewing for jobs down there as well.
Oy. Really?
I don't know. I'd rather exhaust my options in the Wichita/Omaha areas first.
I have done relatively little constructive work today; I vacuumed the house and ate cereal and waffles for dinner. No, seriously, that's what I did all day. Oh, and I took a shower, too. Woo. I meant for today to be a productive day of revamping resumes and applying for more positions in different places, but that didn't happen. I'm still in my "laze phase," which basically means I don't want to do anything I don't have to, and/or will procrastinate on everything for as long as I can. Couple this with a serious case of "I can't stay awake for more than twelve hours at a time" and I'm basically a sloth.
There are things I need to do outside of the house in the coming days; since Daisy is coming down next week, I need to go out and get some food and other groceries to be able to cook while she's here, and I need to get some things for around the house that I've been putting off, such as more stamps and some fuel system cleaner for the car. I should probably run the car through the car wash too, and get some gas in her. I'd like to take my car over to Hutchinson next week if we go over there while Daisy is here, especially since my car hasn't been driven much since before graduation and because Daisy's car gets enough of a workout when she drives down here. Hopefully that'll also knock some of the kinks out of her system as well, especially if she's still sputtering at me. Who knows, though; she's such a fickle landboat when she wants to be.
"If you want to go over to Hutch while you're here, we can," I said. "Do some shopping, spend some time together, or there's the movie theater here in Newton--"
"Or we can just lay in bed and you can cuddle me," Daisy replied.
"Or we can go out and do something because I desperately need to get out of this house," I countered.
This is true; aside from those two quick shopping trips last week, I have been outside of my home only to get the mail and to mow the grass ever since returning from Omaha. While I do like the solitude and peace that comes with not needing to go anywhere or do anything on a daily basis, as you know, too much of it has me crawling up the walls with a desperate need to get out and go do something just to be able to say I got out of the house for a little while.
"Well, you could come back up to Omaha with me," she said.
"And do what, babe? You have to go to work as soon as you get back. That would be four nights of me alone once again while you're off at work, in a quiet house, and I wouldn't even have cats to keep me company or the ability to smoke inside," I said.
This is true; Daisy's parents go to bed very early because they both get up really early for work; I am generally on the exact opposite of that sleeping schedule, especially in the summer. So, I'd be awake while they were asleep and while Daisy was at work, and vice versa. I'd have nothing to do there, and I wouldn't have my car or an ability to find something to do in the middle of the night. Usually, if I can't sleep in the middle of the night here, I start cleaning things or doing laundry, or I (ahem) spend hours writing here in my blog or playing a video game. I couldn't do any of that stuff there -- both of my laptops, old and new, are too slow to run any of my games, and I can't stand typing blog entries on my laptops' keyboards. So...yeah. I'd feel sort of trapped and listless. And I'd be worried about my cats to boot, since I always worry about them on some level when I'm away from home.
"Plus," I added, "that would cause you to make an extra, unnecessary trip back and forth to bring me home."
This is another reason why Daisy's work schedule sucks -- it eliminates any real possibilities of a social life. As much as I am a night owl myself, everyone else isn't. I learned the hard way working night shifts in a grocery store for three years back in Missouri that working full-time, at night, will very quickly ensure that you cannot really do anything but work. Ever. If you do, you'll screw up your sleep schedule on your days off and/or you'll end up losing valuable sleep on your working days that you'll need to be able to properly do your job. I can't tell you how many times me and my ex had to go do our grocery shopping at 6AM (after I got off work) or at 2AM (on a night I was off). There was simply no other time to do it when I worked night shifts.
Daisy can't stick around that long when she comes down this time, though -- which, I imagine, is why she floated the idea of me coming back with her again. She'll get into town sometime on Tuesday and will have to leave on Thursday morning/early afternoon, because I think she has something to do on Thursday night (I can't remember what she told me). Basically, this gives us about a day and a half together, some time of which we'll need to be sleeping, obviously. I told her that whatever she wants to do is fine; I don't want to make her spend a ton of gas money coming down here for a short trip if she can't afford it (which is why I always try to fill her gas tank for her at least once when she's here, and/or take my car to go out places, or both). I love driving Daisy's car to different places, but it gets a workout on every trip down here and back. I made sure, though, to tell her that if she can't afford to come down this week, or doesn't think we'll get enough time together if she does, it can wait; we've got the rest of our lives to spend together, and for the moment, my summer schedule is pretty damned open. She is, however, planning to come down, even if it's for a short time. I love her so.
Since I've gotten the PlayStation up and running again in the basement, I've been spending a lot more of my downtime down there. Today I also purchased two used older Star Wars games for it from Amazon. Because I do have a few dollars of disposable cash I can use, of course, and they were $3 each. The one game I once had for it and desperately want again, I can't find used for less than $30 or $40: Rival Schools. Oh well. I would imagine I'll be spending a fair amount of time cooling off in the basement if it gets really hot this summer again; at least I'll have something to do while I'm down there.
In other news, my wedding is less than a year away now, which should give you folks some idea of our unofficial "date." This is how Daisy has claimed she's prepping for the actual wedding itself, quoted verbatim from her about what she's going to be doing over the next year:
...prepping for my future life with my fiancé, which includes, but not limited to:
buying serving dishes -- a girl must be prepared to entertain.
figuring out finances so that we'll be a financially stable couple.
avoiding wedding planning, while toying with the idea of a courthouse quicky.
readying my body for future babies and mentally prepping for a parental role that my hubby-to-be is so giddy for.
God damn. Where's my hope chest?
I couldn't make this up. I also find it hilarious and endearing.
The "avoiding wedding planning" thing is accurate; again, we've not yet made any plans whatsoever. I told her I'm basically fine with whatever she wants to do as long as we can afford it, and have left most of it up to her. She can invite whoever she wants, she can pick her bridal party and deal with the dresses and everything that entails -- I'll be inviting my close family and about ten close friends, and will be letting Parker dress me. That's basically the extent of my involvement thus far, aside from adding some stuff to the wedding registry. I don't even know what the hell getting a marriage license entails, really. I'm in the dark about this sort of stuff -- it's not like I've been married before, after all.
Wait, I've had friends who were married before. Perhaps I should ask them.
Oh, and the wedding ring I'd picked out for myself on Amazon is completely out of stock, so I either have to wait for it to come back in stock or I'll have to pick another one. No biggie.
A lot of the planning can't really be done until I find out where I/we will end up anyhow. While the wedding will more than likely take place in Omaha, we may not be living there when it occurs. Again, who knows where I'll be in six months, much less a year from now. All of this career stuff of mine is totally up in the air until I start getting responses for job postings I've applied for and the like. And yes, some of those applications may be in Florida.
I've not yet heard anything from my parents about a possible trip out to West Virginia this summer, and I've also not received anything else graduation-wise in the mail from anyone. The only thing I've gotten, actually, is some junk mail and the water bill, which I'll pay and mail out on Monday just to be done with it (another reason I need to get stamps soon). I don't like to have bills sitting around once I get them; I tend to pay them quickly and be done with them. I will also have my credit card bill coming soon, as well as my car insurance coming due at the end of this month -- as always, I have to take care of the bills first before anything else. I also tend to put the car insurance on my other credit card and pay it off slowly so that I don't have a $300 chunk coming out of my bank account all at once, but in increments. Whatever works, you know?
On that note, I'm heading to bed. It's very late, and it's 55 degrees outside now -- excellent sleeping weather, especially because it'll be very cool downstairs in the bedroom. I do have a number of other posts coming in the next few days -- remember how I said I made a list of things I learned while grading my students' final papers last month? I have that, and a few other things, to write about in the coming days and weeks. For now, though, it's time to sleep.
Fare thee well, friends.
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