Save me!

Chivalry is....dead? No, but I used to wish it was. I hated that guys would hold open doors or let me off the elevator first because I was a girl. As if I'd get trapped in the elevator if the guy didn't let me go out the door first or something. I have realized though that there's a difference in the random elevator guy and a boyfriend holding a door open. A boyfriend does it (I hope) because he cares about you, while the random guy just feels obligated. Random men - you are not obligated to me! I think it's sweet to have a door opened or your ice cream paid for by your beau - especially a new guy who should be trying to impress you. I mean, I don't NEED to be taken care - I'm getting my masters to ensure that I will always be able to take care of myself, but the fact is that I like it when a guy WANTS to take care of me. That's totally different. Intention and action are different. If you're trying to date me and you don't even seem like you care if a door slams in my face or I get lost walking around a salsa festival then you aren't really the guy for me. Because I'm curious and I wander. I guess I'm probably a lot like my dog. She doesn't care if I buy her fancy Natural Balance food or the Nutro desserts or the fancy $15 treats - she likes it, but she really just wants to be scratched, walked, loved, and played with. Really, I'm sort of the same. If you surprise me every now and then with a Snickers bar I'd be excited - I don't need a Ferrari or something. If you want to spend time with me doing silly things or even something like running I'd love it. I really don't care as long as I get that you care. When you take those personality tests I'm the person that wants to take care of people and help people, and while that's great it doesn't mean that I don't want to feel like there's some special guy out there watching out for me and making sure that I get a hug every now and then too. The only guy who's saved me lately is the guy at AutoZone today who put in my new headlight bulb for me!!

Life in the fast lane, oh wait...

There's definitely no fast lane here, but I'm not going to complain. I'm starting to get the hang of this staying at home thing, and Saffy definitely loves it. She's been getting to sit out on the porch in the mornings while it's still cool, although I think she likes having me around to play with too. I've been cleaning up a storm. I can feel a slow and steady reorganization of everything coming on. I started classes and I think my fear was not knowing anyone in the day classes, but I actually knew a couple people. I applied for a job at Old Navy. I own all of their clothes so I might as well get a discount right? Except there was this online quiz about stealing. Now everyone knows that I'm a total goody-two-shoes but the way they ask questions in there made it hard to sound like you weren't totally just making it up. Like it would ask a question, and then the next one would be "I never lie"...agh! OK, I don't lie about work. I don't know that I'd say I all out lie about anything but if you answer all the questions like you're an angel they aren't going to believe you are they? Their well intentioned quiz about stealing could use a little revamp. Anyhow, I haven't figured out a good schedule yet and this whole sleep thing is out of whack, but I'm working on it. But since I haven't gotten it down yet I'm going to go take a nap.

Life begins at 40

I'm really glad that I ended up having my little retirement party. One interesting piece of knowledge was that 40's aren't sold in a lot of places. I actually asked a liquor store man and he said "You have to go to the gh...east side of town." Which, is sort of funny, but also really kind of mean. Anyhow, so that's what I did. I was totally shocked to find that after drinking two 40's I wasn't really that bad off. Not the kind of drunk where you puke at least. I didn't even fall over. Or wait, I think I did. But only once. Barbara and Sarah even brought me presents! I'm wearing Barbara's in the photo. The thing that freaks me out now is that I don't have anywhere to get up and go to tomorrow. This might reaffirm the thought that I might go crazy if I were a housewife some day. It's the weirdest thing. Maybe once classes start it won't be quite as bad, but I feel like I should go to bed early and get up and run still, and generally just keep myself on some sort of schedule. I want a part time job of course, but I'm not sure what I want to do so I'm having a little break before the search begins. This probably means I'll be writing a lot more blogs that are basically about nothing, so if it starts to get really boring just let me know. It's 1am and I think my dog wants to go to bed, not that we have any reason to get up or anything, but I think that's what we're gonna do.

Beyond the cubicle wall

I sort of feel like I'm in a trance. I just stare around and don't focus on anything. I'm stressed out that I'm going to forget to tell someone something about work, or forget to put some important something on a server somewhere, or forget to delete all of my recipes from Charlie Gibson that I have on my computer, or something else. I am in a constant state of feeling like I'm forgetting something, or should be doing something that I can't remember. This is what it must feel like to be old. Next I'll start going bald. I'm almost certain I'll just skip the gray stage and go right on to bald. I'll be at work for 5 hours tomorrow, in which I have to back up 4 years of work. And tell vendors and developers and whoever else that I'm leaving. It's all so....final. I see why people stay at their jobs for 30+ years at a time now. Because the unknown...whatever is beyond the cubicle wall...is so much scarier than the elevators that drop a teeny bit when they stop, or the germs that have accumulated on my keyboard over the years, or the thought of what might happen if IT really IS reading all of my emails. Anything could happen, and with all of the positive that could be out there, there's equal amounts of negative possibilities. I try to think glass half full, but in this case I just want to be able to get a hold of the glass. Life is going by like the things that flip through the video tape everyone watches in The Ring. I know there's nothing I can really do about whatever happens after 1pm tomorrow. Except drink some margaritas.

Free Fallin'

I feel like I should be getting so much stuff done but I feel a little bit like I'm paralyzed. Quitting my job is well...it's like jumping out of an airplane and hoping the parachute opens. I mean, I know that technically I could un-do this all if I wanted, but that sort of feels like post-poning a wedding or something. I mean, I should embrace my future. Everyone keeps saying they're proud and asking if I'm excited and I want to tell them that I'm silently screaming because I'm terrified. Working where I work is all I've known since college. And everyone knows that I got depressed after college. I don't deal well with change. I'm like the opossum baby hanging on for dear life to the momma as it runs across the street. I'm trying to pry my fingers off of the momma, which in this case is my job. At least now I notice when I start to hermit and I'm trying to stop myself from doing that. Even if it's just going out to the pool for a little bit - getting out is good. Last weekend all my friends were good enough to go out on a girls night with me to curb the hermitage that I was starting to go into. That hermitage was due to the fact that well...I don't have a boyfriend anymore because he decided to just stop talking to me. Which technically you shouldn't do after 3 months, but if you're adding up the amount of time we spent together it's sort of like dating for a month or less. OK, and honestly...it's not like things were perfect. Although I don't think I've had that happen to me since like, uhhh...never. I mean, when you're in school it's hard to get by without talking to someone again and in the adult world people don't do stuff like that. Anyhow, we went to Guero's, Hotel San Jose where we had what Ebony calls the Angel Belly wine, went to watch her get a tattoo, and then downtown for lots of free drinks and weird men. I would say that the night was a success. Anyhow, so...I've just got to keep myself going until i can get into a new holding pattern. If you find me quietly freaking out, please just nudge me along.

Report Card

Since it's back to school time for all of my teacher friends, and well, many other friends whose lives are in some way related to school worlds, I thought I would give you my report card for my summer trimester (of school, not pregnancy-I'm not pregnant just to be clear). You will all be proud to know that I got A's in BOTH of my summer classes. Even the one where the professor constantly threatened me with a B if I didn't talk more. Seriously, even on the last day of class he told me that I better have a big part in the presentation or I was getting a B. He sent an email to the class and made it sound like some people did get low grades for not participating, but apparently he felt that he tortured enough speech out of me. So, my GPA remains a 4.0. Aren't I just the smartest grad student you know? OK, now everyone knock on wood because I'm sure I'll fail something now that I announced my gpa to the world. Anyhow, I made it through the roughest time, and now I just have to make it through the scariest time - quitting the job.

Drop Dead

I haven't written a blog in a while. Does that mean I'm just too busy? No. Just too boring? Maybe. So today as I sit here and ponder life while crunching on baby carrots I decided to write something. Anything. I was going to write a blog about how all of my friends should chip-in and get a car to share for group trips and stuff. That was inspired by my car actually being in the shop and me having to bum rides for 2 days. To highlight it, Barbara took me to work, my sister took me home, Jay took me to work the next day (at 6:50 AM!) and then Nicole took me to the doctor, picked me up from the doctor (she's so nice!) and dropped me off at the car shop. So, 5 rides and $84 later the car still isn't done being fixed. I've got to take it in Friday, but I have the day off so I can sit and wait while she sees the doctor. Besides that, I have finals this week. One final presentation down and one essay final to go. I haven't studied for it, but - oh well. The teacher didn't really teach it either so I figure we're about even. I'm stressed out and all scatter brained because well, with the car being sick and impending joblessness I worry about money, and then I'm worried about school. I guess when I get stressed out I hold it in and it makes my back hurt. I keep trying to get Saffy to walk around on it like a mini-massage but she just stands there like she's Queen of the Hill (which she is) and tells me I have to pay her 60 dogbones an hour for a massage. Anyhow, to sum it all up, at work we have what we call a "drop dead date" which is basically the last day before the project is due to be completely done. If you aren't done by deadline legend has it that you drop dead. We've never seen it happen since we always make our deadline. If life had a drop dead date for the ultimate last day of stress that I could deal with it would be today. So if I'm dead tomorrow you'll know that I didn't make the deadline.

Reciprocity is the new black

I’m sitting here eating raisins pondering humanity on another slow Wednesday afternoon. My first pondering is this: why do we all have blogs if no one ever comments? I feel like it should be reciprocal so I try to comment when I can think of something witty or when my work internet doesn’t just vanish my comment into thin air. Danielle comments a lot, which I appreciate. Sometimes people email me with blog comments. But it’s sort of like, if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a noise? If you write something and no one comments was it just blathering insanity that everyone rolled their eyes at and clicked onto the next link? Do you know me better for reading my blog? Maybe I’m just too boring? Even when I ask if you guys would still be my friends if (fill in the blank) happened, no one comments to say yes, which is slightly un-nerving. Maybe I'm too high maintenance or maybe you're phasing me out? Am I invisible? I’m hopping around waving my hands in the air right now – do you see me? OK, I’m still eating raisins, not hopping around, but you get the idea. :o)

Pretty Freakin' Exciting!

OK, this probably won't matter to anyone but me, but I am SOOO excited that I just have to share with everyone. I can't intern until the spring because I don't have enough hours, but I got TWO volunteer positions - at places that I really really wanted to volunteer at. Maybe you'll think that it isn't hard to get a volunteer position, but it will help me figure out if I really want to work with kids, give me experience, and a foot in the door when I'm about 1 of 300 students trying to get one position in the spring. This is one of the reasons that quitting my job is seeming more and more like the smart thing to have done. Yay!!!

By the way - spellcheck tried to change freakin' in the title to foreskin. ha!