She said “I’m looking for things I’ll never see…Release me”….

I probably COULD go out and help them at the front desk.  I couldn’t actually do anything online for them or really do anything but “bitch work.”  I really could help.  I’m extremely capable with a copy machine and I’m honestly not doing anything back here at my desk besides shopping on Etsy and wondering why the hell Michael Jackson and Eric Church are the only two things my iPod wants to play on shuffle.  At the essential base of it all, I *COULD* help.

But I won’t.  And they know it.

Jessica came and went this weekend.  We had such a great time in San Antonio and Austin (and Gruene!)… it was really hard to see it all come to an end.  We spent two and a half days walking around in Texas’s blistering summer heat enjoying a culture that can only exist right here in central Texas.

We did a Segway tour first thing Saturday morning.  I have to admit, it was what I was the most excited about out of all of my plans.  Our tour guide was a little quirky (”I’m keeping things PG-13!” when asked about his interests.  Seriously, dude… are you into 70’s food fetish porn?  Brown chicken, brown cow!) but extremely knowledgeable in all things historical about San Antonio.  We did 13 mph through the King William district, bounced around on some stone streets, attempted to balance while photographing huge buildings… it was incredible.

We ventured through a huge junk shop on SoCo that was filled with oddities and old pictures.  It was actually large enough that you are overwhelmed with the sheer amount of random crap people can collect.  I want to run down this weekend and try to find some little things for my next art projects.

School will be starting in just about three weeks.  The nervousness surrounding having to deal with technical schooling with an artistic mind has almost completely dissipated.  My plan is to balance the math/technology based thinking with learning some new things artistically.  I’ve emailed the local community college to try to get into their evening photography class.  I’ve found some local classes on throwing pottery.  There are dancing classes, drawing classes…. and I might even try to find someone to teach me how to play a few new instruments like the violin or banjo.  Either way, my aim is to keep both sides of my head working.

Albert will be here the day after my class orientation.  In true form, my boss has yet to give me a “yes” or “no” on my proposed schedule for the two weeks he’s here.  Part of me really considers doing what she does and just no show up.  I’m sure that would get me in a lot of trouble, but she wouldn’t be here to find out since she… you know…never shows up.

Another one of my friends is leaving this week to go on their last little round of leave before they go to Germany.  Between my visitors and hers, we haven’t had much time to get together.  With her departure and then Albert’s to go back to work, I will essentially be back to square one here in Texas.  Hopefully school will afford me the pleasure of meeting some like-minded individuals.

Visiting Austin and being able to immerse myself into the culture down there really makes me want to move there.  Not actually *IN* Austin since I can’t stand large crowds or traffic, but I would like to live somewhere on the outskirts.  I had hopes to possibly transfer down there within the same department I’m in, but since I’m going on four months working and not being trained… I doubt I’m transferrable.  Sucks, doesn’t it?

Well, I’m off to find something to eat.  I hope you are all having a beautiful summer so far.

 

Hey boy, won’t you take me out tonight?…I get excited when I think of crawling into your arms…

I am writing from the comfortable confines of my bed tonight. In a recent perusal through my blog I realized that I haven’t updated in a long time.

The trip to Boston was a blast. I received some beautiful permanent artwork from Holly and followed the footsteps of the American Revolution just a few short days apart. I even became an honorary Red Sox fan for the day and visited Fenway Park. It felt good to travel again. I haven’t been able to do it much since I settled here in Texas.

Jessica comes down in just about two weeks. I went down to Austin today to look over a few places I wanted to take her and see how busy they get on the weekends. I ventured around the Texas State History Museum and was slightly disappointed that I didn’t get to the capitol buildings. I also realized that I’ve never even ventured to the North Carolina capitol buildings even after living there for 13 years. That’s just kind of something you have to do when you live in a state… you have to see what its capitol is made of.

Exactly one month after Jessica comes, Albert comes through for his mom’s graduation. I’m really excited to finally get to meet him face-to-face.

Texas has been one huge learning experience so far. Things I’ve been fortunate enough to learn in the past six months (holy hell has it been that long already??) were lessons I think I was far too gone to learn in North Carolina. Things just seem to be a lot easier here. Granted, all the friends I have made here are moving away to distant lands and I’ll be back in square one again just in time to start school…

Things are easier.

well, it is after midnight and I am falling asleep typing. I’ll update again before a month is out this time.

 

And it’s way way way it’s way to cold…To be at home…And I am what I am, yes I am what I am…It ain’t that bad…

Today is a gorgeous, rainy Saturday. The rain even cooled it off enough that I can have the windows open and be comfortable for once.

For the past few days we’ve had the windows open because the rat who resided with us passed away in the wall. He was sure to make sure his presence was known even in death. Apparently his pissed-off screeches every time I turned on the oven or rearranged the food on my shelves in the utility room weren’t enough for him. He had to make my apartment virtually impossible to live in for two whole days.

The next few months are going to be a whirlwind of activity. My job has finally decided to train me, but the training dates have yet to be determined. It can happen sometime within the next six months. Its amazing that you can work a job for almost a year and still not be fully trained. Maybe I’m just from another school of thought that dictates that training is an important aspect of the first few days of a worker’s responsibility.

On top of potential training, I’ve been denied almost all of my leave. I was able to con a few days in June to go and get tattooed. I’m going to go see Holly in Boston and have her make me even more beautiful than I already am.

Speaking of Holly, I was in a tattoo magazine in March! It was my arm and my bra strap, and I’m pretty sure that I would never get “recognized” off of it. I’m hoping to have her finish some more work to see if I can get a couple more shots in one. But, the most awesome part of that is that I satisfied one of my “before 30″ criteria without even trying! I was published! Big ol’ check on that one.

I have visitors coming to see me all through the next few months. Most importantly is Jess. I can’t wait to see her…It will be nice to experience places with someone who knows me well. I’ve started my laundry list of places I need to take her. Congress Avenue and the bats… Maybe hit up San Antonio for the River Walk and McNay Art Museum. Plus, who can come to TX and not see the Alamo??

School starts in August with an orientation session. I’m trying hard to prepare for the unknown by studying some of the things I heard my advisor mention. Namely, statistics. I bought a statistics book and had planned on studying that hard for the next few months. I’ve been too involved in other things to look at it much. Maybe I should be doing that instead of blogging.

The rain has subsided enough that I think I can make it to the store. I hope you are all having a wonderful day!

 

Under your stars tonight…we live and breathe this dream…

It always seems no matter how much free time I get (i.e. three months off with no job and no job prospects coming through) that I never get done what I think I should. I basically did not work at all from Christmas until last week. That’s a long freaking time. And what do I have to show for it? Well, I’m a level 60 on my Alliance character and almost a 40 on my Horde. I have two chapters of my novel written and have gotten stuck. I’ve moved once across country and once across parking lot. And honestly, that is just about it.

On the other hand, I can honestly say it has been the happiest few months of my life. Being here, so far from everything I’ve known, has helped me to let go of something things that I’ve been struggling with. It has helped me forget hate, wrongdoings, self-worth issues. I’m not faced with the high school that made me so introverted and self-loathing. I’m not faced with the people who had been so fake to me for so long. I no longer have to face the people who cut me the deepest or betrayed me. I can finally let it rest because I know I can go to Wal-Mart and not have to worry about someone whispering behind my back. I can go to the mall and shop and not run into someone who knows the entire history of my past. To these people, I’m just some blonde chick with tattoos going into EB Games. Nothing out of the ordinary… nothing strange. I love the feeling of starting over.

I’m honestly surprised I didn’t do it. There were many points in time where I had thought about it. I had even started the whole process just to freak at the last second or allow myself to give in to that first month of intense homesickness.

So I’m here. I’m finally happy. I’m finally feeling settled and able to actually live. I’ve found a job. I’ve found a purpose. It feels great to finally be somewhere I can be free.

 

And I know tonight might seem like dinner and a movie….But to me, it means much, much more …Cause I’m bettin’ my whole heart that you’re gonna love me…And I’ve never took that kinda chance before…

Today has been an interesting day.  Nothing too extraordinary happened… well… events that is.  I finally have decided on a “local” shop for tattoos.  I’m going to go to True Blue Tattoos in Austin.  Having found a female artist that I love, I started thinking about the projects I have started.  I’d really like to get my right arm (Mom’s) finished.  Dad’s arm (my left) finally has been planned out.  I’ve finally decided to do my video game motif on my leg!  So with the important decisions made, I’ve started listing my favorite games so I can make sure they are represented accurately.  I don’t want it to just be “list the random games” since most of my tattoos already have so much meaning, this one won’t be any different.  So far I have:

-Altered Beast (my brother used to play this game with me)
-After Burner (the game my brother and I played right after Mom’s death)
-Raving Rabbids (spending time playing video games with some friends… long story)
-Mario in the raccoon suit (Super Mario Brothers 3 was the game that Cindy, Pam, and I would always play)
-Lolo from Adventures of Lolo (game my brother picked out for me)
-Druid symbol from WoW (reminds me that everyone has a little nerd in them)
-Laughing dog from Duck Hunt (reminds me that you can get as close to the TV as possible… you still might miss a duck or two) 

Still working on my list.

 

Cause Blue Eyes…You’re the secret I keep…Cause Blue Eyes…I just wanna sing a song with you…

I realize it has been a while since I’ve updated.   Things have been happening here at a pretty fast pace.   I have moved again.  I’m still in the same town I was in, just a bigger, better apartment.  I’ve finally landed a job… with the state of Texas working in their Health and Human Services department with the Outsourcing Manager.  All-in-all, things have been going well.  I do plan on updating you more in depth very soon, but I have laundry that is waiting on me and a pizza that needs to be baked.

 

Dont go down, blue…Cause that wood box…It weren’t made for you

The past week or so has been pretty interesting around the homestead.  I wanted to make sure it was water under the bridge before I truly blogged about it.  I have a tendency to make light of situations that I honestly shouldn’t.  As Elbert Hubbard said, “Don’t take life too seriously.  You’ll never get out of it alive.”

Friday I received two calls from potential employers.  The first call was from Tarleton University, where they told me they wanted me to seriously consider becoming a Student Recruiter, but as for the position I applied for… they filled it.  He went into this elaborate plan to put me into a data entry position so I could make some money until Texas A&M took over in March and then I could move over to be a recruiter at a local community college.  First and foremost, I suck at selling things.  If it wasn’t for a pretty face and an overabundance of military personnel ready to spend every penny they were just paid, I never would have sold any replacement plans at my first retail job.  It was easy to sell stuff at the restaurant because people WANTED what I was selling.  Who doesn’t want a fishbowl full of alcohol?  (And again, it helped with military payday and such…)  When I’m presented with trying to push something on someone who didn’t come to me in the first place about what I had to sell, I fail miserably.  Hence, the student recruiting position sounds a lot like my own personal slice of Hell.  Thanks, but no thanks.

The job I’ve been working on getting since December, that I’ve gone to countless interviews with little or no warning and have even changed travel plans several times over because of… I get an email telling me that I wasn’t selected.  Now, from a personal standpoint, if I was very well aware that a potential employee had changed travel plans (very COSTLY changes), I would have given them the courtesy of a phone call.  And even still, if I had brought them in for no less than five interviews ranging from 15 minutes to 2 hours in length… a phone call would be the right thing to do.  Obviously they deem it otherwise.  I received a nice little form letter from Human Resources telling me to “continue to pursue other employment opportunities!”  On Sunday night I rattled off a nice little email that mildly stressed my annoyance with such an impersonal send-off and asked for advice on how I could improve my presentation of myself in order to “score” a decent job.  (To her benefit, she called me personally today and discussed why I was not selected.  Turns out the woman they picked has a lot of experience in places I don’t.  Personally, I think she just put out or something.

So, I had two pretty big blows just before another weekend of waiting.  Nana almost lost her mind worrying about me, which of course drove me up a wall.  She called hourly Friday night until after midnight my time.  Just before I went to sleep she left me with a request in a wavering, unsteady voice:  ”Don’t do anything to hurt yourself.”

It has to be so debilitating to constantly worry about whether or not your child/grandchild is going to take their own life.  Especially when that child is an adult and lives 1200 miles away from you and is going through (as Karev from Grey’s Anatomy calls it) a “rough patch.” 

In all honesty, there was a time.  There were a lot of times a long time ago.  Those ended a little over four years ago.  It doesn’t even occur to me anymore because… well, who would take care of Lucky?  Who could give him the quality of life that I can?  It sounds so strange, but I really had nothing holding me here until him.  We’re all driven by certain motivators.  Many people have the family motivation… they don’t want to let their mother/father/sisters/brothers/nieces/nephews/etc down.  They have a support system.  They have someone they want to stay here to be with.  Until four years ago, everyone I wanted to be with was already dead.  Everyone I felt that I should have been depending on for support were clinically depressed as well. 

As may be expected, the news of my epic failure on the one job that I had been so excited about the opportunities and experiences it would give me… sent my grandparents into a panic.  But I went another route… I went the creative road.

I spend most of Saturday in a craft store getting some cheap supplies for crafts.  I’m picking my 365 back up.  I’m going to do a creative journal.  I’m going to continue making APC’s and maybe get involved in some swaps.  I might finally open that Etsy shop I’ve been talking about for the past year.  I’m working on my novel.  I’m going to keep hoping that one of these jobs comes through for me and its more than I ever dreamed it could be.

 

I’m finding my way back to sanity again…Though I don’t really know what…I’m going to do when I get there…

I’ve been reading… a lot.  There really hasn’t been much else for me to do here.  I decided not to get cable when my satellite didn’t work out.  I have a PS2 and a membership at NetFlix, 30 days on Warcraft, and the internet.  Books are where I go to be with people and to escape the walls  of my apartment.  I can go and meet up with some people who have been with me through everything:  Vonnegut, Picoult, Hornby… and even some people who I just met:  Card, Hosseini, Weiner (don’t laugh). 

Attempting to write my novel has made me go back through everything I’ve read and try to figure out why I like it.  Why does High Fidelity always remain in my “Top 5 Books of All Time”?  Why did I absolutely devour A Thousand Splendid Suns and Kite Runner?  What did Hosseini do that was so different than Steinbeck?  Even though I don’t really identify with her characters, why do I read Jennifer Weiner’s books?  How does she keep me coming back for more?  What is it about Abby in You Suck that made me laugh out loud and smile every time she came into the picture?  Why do I hate Shakespeare?  What is it about early British lit that makes me come back for more?

I can come up with a myriad of reasons why.  She had hope for a better life when her husband was making her chew on rocks.  She could make herself feel empowered and important after her exboyfriend told the world about their lovelife (and her weight problems) in a newspaper column.  A little boy was a vehicle for something bigger than himself and didn’t realize it… and when he didn’t agree with it, he decided to change it.  He didn’t let it define him.

I can see myself in the lists of High Fidelity.  I make them myself.  I have three notebooks in three different areas of my 600 square foot apartment that have pages of lists.  (I even wrote down everything I have to do tomorrow before I leave for my interview with Tarleton University.)  I have playlists on my computer that remind me of people and places, times in my life that have passed years ago… people that are and are not in my life anymore for one reason or another.  The love of my life did not die in my arms, like in Love is a Mixtape.  I’m glad that I don’t have stacks of tapes as my one vehicle back to someone who changed my life forever.  But, if I ever want to re-live my senior year of high school at Pinecrest driving around in my white 1990 Buick LeSabre Custom… I have just the playlist to do that. 

Creating believable characters is incredibly difficult.  It forces you to go inside of yourself and find things that you may not have wanted to find.  It makes you bare the things about you that make you human and put them on display for everyone to read.  The gift of that is… in the raw humanity of it all… pouring everything you have onto that paper makes some lonely 20-something in an apartment with no one around to talk to… feel a little more human too.

 

You’re a big girl now… you’ve got your big girl shoes… running around with your big girl blues…

I’m sitting in my new apartment 1200 miles from everything I’ve known for the past 13 years with the material hints of a life on the East Coast spilling out of boxes all around me.  I signed my lease on a wing and a prayer that my (hopefully) final interview at Baylor will go the way I want it to.  I’m already in a pot full of risky choices and undetonated bombs (that could possibly be duds). 

Two weeks ago I was supposed to head back to North Carolina to gather my belongings and thoughts about this whole process.  I was going to take the time to say my good-byes and do a few last minute visits to places that I’ve held dear.  Baylor called and my plans changed.  Then, they called again and my plans changed.  I was going to be on a plane last Friday in my idealistic little world, but they called one more time for me.  I mean… where else could I work where they pay a college student to take a bear out for a walk on a leash?  I mean, seriously? 

Now I’m here.  Most of my belongings are here.  I’ve realized I have these romantic ideas that I could live very comfortably in a one bedroom apartment.  I’m one person and I really couldn’t even begin to fill up a four bedroom, two story house.  One bedroom apartments sound about the right fit, right?  Somehow I forgot I had a piano.  And a dining room set.  And a desk.  And a love of video games.  And I realized (albeit too late) that a two bedroom probably would have been the best fit.  Such is the stuff of life, though.  Its comfortable.  Once I figure out how to shove everything into its little nook and cranny, I’ll be just fine. 

Its hard to believe I’m here.  I used to sit and wish and pray for time off.  Just a few weeks where I didn’t have cleaning and laundry and yard and grandparent and errands and papers and essays and class and money to worry about.  I had these grandiose ideas that I was going to sit and read for hours.  I would play PS2 and computer games until I’m cross-eyed.  I would exercise and work on my novel and actually get PUBLISHED for once.

I’m here.  I have two job prospects (the other one I’m not so sure I could really do…) and all the time in the world.  I go to the gym, I clean, I drive around and get lost.  I talk to people in Target and at the grocery store.  I actually sat in Target in the cosmetics section and talked to a 40-ish lady for almost an hour about my skin care regime.  (The fun in that statement is the fact that I know nothing about skin care.  Hence why I officially have a friggin sunburn on my upper lip in the middle of January.)  She wasn’t selling anything and I really wouldn’t have bought anything if she had been… I just needed social interaction that badly. 

Finally getting a moment to check my email, I can’t help but feel like maybe I should just go home.  Maybe I should just go back to North Carolina and let this lease go… go back to the house and figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.  Tuck my tail and accept defeat.  I know I’m talking about defeat a bit early, but I interviewed with the Assistant Vice President of Student Financial Services and she had her arms crossed at one point in the interview.  I saw that and got so desperate I actually think I sounded a lot like an encyclopedia salesman trying to sell books to the library.  One of her questions was actually “why would you move away from such a beautiful place?”  Well, lady…sometimes you have to step away to realize how good you really had it.

I ran today.  For the first time since the last time I was really skinny.  Softball doesn’t count as running.  You can feign that you thought the ball was being passed and stop at second.  Or you could hit it straight to the first baseman like I did 95% of my “at-bats.”  Then you don’t even have to run at all.  So, anyway.  Softball aside (since we have proven it doesn’t count), I ran.  I made it a half of a mile at a 1.5 incline (which is supposed to be really close to the amount of force you would need to exert to run on a flat road according to Runner’s World) at 5.0 mph.  I gave up, more like it.  I stopped running at a half a mile.  My face was red, I was dripping sweat all over the treadmill and I wasn’t exactly sure if I needed to antibacterialize the belt if I was dripping sweat on it.  At about .7 miles I decided I was pretty much a pansy and started running again.  I figured I could make it .2 miles and feel good about my progress.  So I ran the last .2 at 6.0 mph.  I got off the treadmill and almost hit the ground.  I caught myself.  Someday I’m going to create a pill that helps with post-treadmill-exercise-spaghetti-leg. 

Well, it appears that the little gnomes that usually unpack boxes for the unwilling movers were left somewhere along the venture.  Guess I’m stuck doing it, huh?  I miss you all so much.  Please do a “hope Krys gets the Baylor job” dance.  I could use it!

 

So to hell with Holiday romantics…December is for cynics…

February can’t come fast enough…..