Category Archives: Social

Arbitrary Mile Posts

January 4, 2007Finance, Health, Social, WorkMush

In which the mere change of the year does nothing for me. And it is, of course, all about ME.

At the awesome combination wedding reception/New Year’s Eve party I attended, someone wished me “a great 2007.” I replied that I was looking forward to 2007 because it certainly couldn’t be any worse to me than 2006 was.

Open mouth, insert foot.

Today is January 4th. This year so far, I have already had the stomach flu and learned that AmmZon’s landlord — who is also her mother — has evicted us, and that we have to be out of this, our cozy little house on 2nd Street, by February 1st.

Four days, people!

I have no idea how much money I have left, because I spent a more than I intended to over the holiday, and because what remains is all in AmmZon’s checking account. [I, you may recall, no longer have an account of my own because it was garnished, a result of the financial difficulty of the last year or so of my marriage.] I had thought that I had four or five weeks of money left, with which to buckle down and find that job I don’t really want…

— But turns out that, after you spend a few months NOT spending a third of your life dragging your ass to some bullshit job where you perform tasks that really have no meaning, you develop a soul-deep revulsion toward the whole idea. Getting a 40-hour-a-week job of any stripe just grates: getting up, dragging one’s ass through the morning routine, into the car, across town, into a building. To a desk. Push pixels. Rinse and repeat.

— Work as we know it is a bad fucking idea, it really is. We spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that we like it, that it’s fulfilling, that we enjoy it, blah blah blah, but the truth is that it sucks and everyone’s happier when they don’t have to do it.

— Actually, I did think of something I want to do, just this morning, while I was reading the back of a bag of pita chips. But I can’t do it because I don’t have any money. (Or experience in the industry.) See, there used to be a restaurant in town called Hykie’s Falafel. (I love falafel.) Later it was sold and became Baba’s Falafel. The last guy to own it — Richard, I think his name was (and damn was he CUTE) — would roll back in to town, open Baba’s and run it for a year or so, then close it suddenly and leave town again. (Cute FLAKE.) He hasn’t been back for awhile, but I bet all the stuff is in storage around here someplace.

— But see, that’s the kind of job I want these days. Roll in around nine or ten, serve lunch, spend the afternoon cooking and running the business. Serve dinner, close up at nine, go home. Hire some cute kids to help me. Find a morning-oriented kid, some Future Manger of America, to open up for me so I don’t really have to show up until lunch rush starts. I could take afternoon naps at whim. It would use all my skill sets — cooking, running a business, hiring, firing, being nice to customers — and plus, I love falafel.

— But I don’t know how to get a food service license, I don’t have the recipes, I don’t have any Middle Eastern food service contacts, and above all I don’t have the money to rent and renovate a store front. And since most of the marriage’s bills were in my name and haven’t been paid since June, well, it’s not like I’ll be getting any loans in the next four years. Oh well. Nix the restauranteur idea. Even though I do have all the skills and I really love falafel.

…Now. What the hell was I saying?

Oh, yeah: I thought I had more than a month left to get a job, and that everything was pretty mellow, that this shiny new ’07 was gonna be my year… how could it not be, after last year? But now I have to get a job immediately and a place to live, and I was just puking the day before yesterday so it all seems rather abrupt and cruel.

Change is good, right?

Right?

Mobile Bachelorette Party!

December 31, 2006Love & Marriage, SocialMush

In which I party myself into the ground! (Eh, like THAT’S news.)

This morning I emailed a bunch of cell phone pics to my Flickr account, only discover that one cannot send an email to Flickr with more than one image attached. Ergo, each of the six images that actually made it to the target web site represents four to six more that did not make it. What a pain in the arse it is, to get one’s photos off of one’s cell phone!

The party was fun. A bunch of women stood around in the high school parking lot introducing themselves to one another until the bus arrived. (AmmZon had to speak with the driver three times before he found us. Eek.)

We all piled onto the bus, decorated it with blown-up copies of the bride’s yearbook pictures, and started drinking immediately. (The hostess had put mixed drinks into water bottles, and brought coolers full of them. Brilliant!)

We picked the bride up at her house, then went on a tour of her life. Some of the girls put on wigs and did skits at various locations — one skit involved the bride’s sister in the role of the bride and Amazon Blonde [the original one, not my roommate] as herself, reenacting their meeting, which apparently occurred while the bride lay on the sidewalk in front of Wolfgang’s place, drunk, and said to the approaching Amazon, “Hey, I know you! We fucked the same guy.” After that vignette we piled back on the bus. We stopped at the hotel bar and more women joined us. We visited various landmarks important in the bride’s formative years, including: a couple of fields, Wal*Mart, the golf club, that huge ugly mansion with the bowling lanes downstairs and the caves over the pool, and the street in front of a few houses her boyfriends used to live in. The bride got properly shit faced. A fabulous time was had by all, and I remember remarking several times that the bride has KILLER friends, and also that there were a lot of really nice boobs on the bus. (Seriously. The majority of her friends have remarkable racks. Go figure — her own are freakin’ gravity-proof themselves.) Continue reading Mobile Bachelorette Party! →

If you were jobless, you could be this irresponsible too!

August 1, 2006Social, WorkMush

In which I party with the girls.

After my last post, hubby and I went out for a drink. Well, several drinks. I sat with a couple of women and talked and drank, and Bread went off with an old friend for awhile to go look at something somewhere — some boy thing. When he came back, we had another round then went for dinner at the Dead Cock with AmmZon and BoSe.

Raybo and Gorgeous showed up. After awhile, Bread and BoSe left. Bread gave me his cash to pay the dinner check. The girls started buying shots. I drank them.

Around 10:30 or so Bread called me from BoSe’s. He was ready to go home. I was drunk, and of course not ready to go home. I walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the bar with my phone to my ear, hemming and hawing. I didn’t want to get in a fight with him, but I didn’t want to go home either. Either he disconnected, or the call was dropped. He didn’t call me back. I didn’t call him back. I went back into the bar and Gorgeous bought another round of shots. I drank mine.

An hour later, Raybo and Gorgeous and I went to Gorgeous’ house and sat in her basement and talked. Later, Raybo and I crashed in Gorgeous’ living room. I woke up twice during the night, concerned that I’d drool all over the pillow I was using. I dislike drooling on other people’s pillows.

This morning Gorgeous took us to Raybo’s car and headed to her day job. I stayed at Raybo’s house while she went to her new job. I texted Bread.

NLW called. God, I’m an asshole. I was supposed to accompany her to Des Moines today, but I’d totally forgotten! And since Bread’s leaving town tomorrow I figured he and I had a bunch of stuff to do (like hit the bank and get the jeep some tires so I’ll have a car while he’s gone) so I took a rain check. I apologized profusely to her; I should have remembered about our plans and called her yesterday to cancel. We hung up and I texted Bread again.

At 11:30, I texted him again then took a shower. I went and got coffee, cigarettes. I went to the employment office for awhile. I went to the bank. I paid the mortgage. It was hot as fuck, walking around town all over the place. I hung out at the job services office a little longer than necessary because they had their A/C set at, like, 72 degrees or something. It was winter in there, and felt awesome.

I called Bread from Mi-T-Mart. He didn’t pick up so I left a message. I sat on a curb and smoked a cigarette and watched heat radiate off of the pavement.

I walked back to Raybo’s house, and I’m sitting in her basement using the computer–

–Bread just called. BoSe is heading out to let his dogs run around the farm, and I’m gonna go catch a ride…

Later: I’m home now. Bread’s doing laundry. I’m applying for jobs through iowajobs.org.

I found one, an office position at a music company, that looks pretty interesting. The ad doesn’t say, but it appears to be a sheet music company. They encourage people with musical backgrounds to apply. Sounds like a fun place to work, too.

It’s hot as hell:

A HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM CDT THIS EVENING.

TEMPERATURES RISING INTO THE MIDDLE 90S TO AROUND 100 DEGREES WILL COMBINE WITH HIGH HUMIDITY LEVELS TO CREATE HEAT INDEX READINGS OF 105 TO 110 DEGREES THIS AFTERNOON. THE HEAT ADVISORY MAY BE EXTENDED FOR PORTIONS OF THE AREA DEPENDING ON THE PROGRESS OF AN APPROACHING COLD FRONT.

THE POTENTIAL EXISTS THAT THE HEAT ADVISORY MAY HAVE TO BE EXTENDED INTO WEDNESDAY FOR PARTS OF THE AREA.

A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY WILL COMBINE TO CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE LIKELY IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS… STAY IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM…STAY OUT OF THE SUN…AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS.

The incredible heat has caused BoSe’s lawn to spawn a strange, fast-growing mushroom. I took pictures of it but my cell phone’s decided it doesn’t want to send pictures any more. The thing was doughnut-shaped on Sunday, and yesterday — less than twelve hours later — it had grown even more huge, and flattened out into a fungusy satellite dish. BoSe thinks it’s contacting the aliens, so keep an eye out for the Mothership, y’all.

Vuboq Totally Rocks

July 27, 2006Social, Spiritual, WishlistsMush

In which Internet friends are just as good as meatspace friends! Seriously! Dude.

Yesterday I had class until 4:30, then Bread picked me up and we went out to the farm. We made dinner together, with chicken from his mom’s freezer and veggies from AmmZon’s garden. Basically, everything save the tomato and the garbanzo beans in the salad came from someone else — —

— the world, it seems, is calculated at moments to make a girl feel all abjectly grateful and shit. I’ve never been so broke in my life, but dinner last night was wonderful, and all made up of gifts.

If that weren’t enough, after the dishes were done I walked down to the mailbox to grab the Netflix vid I knew was waiting there (it turned out to totally suck) and there was a box from amazon.com, too! And since I hadn’t ordered anything it had to be a present! A PRESENT!

I waddled back up the driveway with my prizes and sat on the bed — the bedroom has A/C — and opened the amazon.com box. Two books off of my Wishlist from Vuboq!

The first item in the box was Bags: A Knitter’s Dozen. I love to knit with wool, and I love to felt wool, and I’ve been searching for The Perfect Bag for about 15 years now. Perhaps after knitting a couple-few of the cute bags in this book, I will feel compelled to design, knit, and felt myself the bag of my dreams.

And then I’ll make it in a few colorways so I’ll always have one that matches my outfit. (Because if you know me in person, you know how important matching is to me.) (Which is, like, not at all. No, I mean, I like it when my stuff matches, but not enough to really go out of my way to be sure that it all does.) (Snort!)

The second book was Get A Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties And Thirties. The karmic grinder that has been my life of late has me thinking that a little self-education, particularly in the area of personal goddamned finance, wouldn’t be a bad idea.

To wit: I’m a few years shy of 40 and yet when I woke up this morning I had no savings, a bunch of debt, and an IRA that wouldn’t if cashed out even buy me a decent car (even before taxes). This strikes me as being less than ideal, particularly since I’m supposed to be a grown-up of some stripe, hence this book’s presence on the wishlist.

Anyway, the POINT is, friends rock! First, dinner courtesy of friends and family, and then a random present in the mailbox. This new theme of gratitude is a nice one; I much prefer it to the ‘everything sucks and this is really fucking hard’ theme.

The past few months have been — and are continuing to be — difficult on a lot of levels. It’s definitely an ego-grinding process; after you’ve spent a certain amount of time feeling like you’re the doer, that you’re the one who makes certain things happen, I guess the universe then conspires to teach you otherwise. In other words, at the foundation, all the things you do that make you feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to, can just… go away. It’s ultimately out of your control; you really could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Not long ago, I was going to work and doing my chores and paying my bills, and all that made me feel like I was in control. Today, I’m not really doing any of those things but by some miracle I’m still eating. I guess the lesson is some combination of surrender, gratitude, and I-am-not-really-the-doer.

I guess I’m past the oh-fuck-this-sucks-and-I’m-frustrated-and-angry phase and have now ground off enough ego that I’m settling into the oh-this-sucks-but-not-my-will-but-Thine phase. Which is a much sweeter space to be in.

I do sort of wish I could be learning this lesson without being quite so desperately on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy broke, but I do have a rather thick head so it’s likely I’ve missed the lesson the past few times it was offered me.

Class has turned out to be pretty fun. I haven’t really learned much that I’ll actually use about the software, but I certainly will be able to pass the test. And that’s pretty much the point. The people have been really nice, and I like the instructor/s in particular. Too bad the next course I need is so many weeks away.

Hopefully I’ll get a job next week. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Saturdays Are For Recovering

June 3, 2006Finance, Love & Marriage, SocialMush

In which I learn a valuable lesson about stress and partnership, and a Friday that goes all the way into Saturday morning!

After work last night, I went and had that nice cold cocktail. Yum. Then I jumped into the BBT and drove myself home, windows down, NPR on the radio. Friday! The weekend! Yes!

I decided to go through the mail immediately when I walked in the door. I’d been intending to do it for two weeks, and there was a massive pile of it on the laundry table that I’d been studiously ignoring. I figured if I left it, it would continue to not get done.

Bread came in and we had our usual ‘how was your day?’ conversation. He helped me sort the actual mail from the garbage. [We get mail by the metric ton these days, I swear to God. I even opted out a few years ago, but someone seems to have bought us subscriptions to Consumer Reports and Atlantic Monthly magazines and now we’re back on all the lists. It’s a nasty waste, all that paper.] When I found the bills, I opened them up and added the couple I’d missed to my spreadsheet and showed it to Bread.

“So what’s this?” he asked, reading.

“The bills. The money we need.”

“Hrm. Well, here’s a start,” he said, and handed me a hundred dollar bill. “The mortgage is paid?”

“Yup. This list is just bills, though, no food or gas or smokes or anything!”

“Uh, yeah, I see that.” He grinned at me. “Quit stressing! It’s not even as bad as I’d thought. I’ll handle it. Now, wanna go have a cocktail at the Hideaway?”

And that was it. Gorgeous was right. She’d told me the day before to share the burden with my partner, that that’s what they’re for. So I did, and he said he’d handle it, and he will because that’s what he does. And now I’m not freaked about it any more.

The man actually laughed at me. I’d gotten myself all worked up about it, had been mulling it over for days and days… you see, I do all the bookkeeping: I open the mail, I write all the checks, I pay all the bills. Naturally I have something of a running total in my head, and so I start stressing much earlier than necessary… I think the man actually found it amusing that I’d gotten into a funk about money.

Bastard. (This is the man who has said to me on more than one occasion, “If you’re worried about money, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You can always get more money.”)

Then we went right back to town. We parked at BoSe’s house, walked through the incredibly packed ‘downtown’ area of Fairfield. (It was Art Walk with some kind of Italian Days theme. The square was SRO and there was no parking anywhere.) We had drinks at the Hideaway and started passing out invitations to the barn party. Bread spoke with BoSe a couple of times. Eventually we were tipsy and hungry so we went in search of food.

Every restaurant on the square was SRO. I decided I wanted Los Portales, so we walked over. They were closed. At 8:31 on a Friday night. I was starving and hot and pissed off and nagged Bread into walking two more blocks to University Amoco, which has a new Mexican restaurant called Guadelejara in it. ALSO CLOSED. By then I was hot, pissed off, and my feet hurt ’cause I wasn’t wearing walking shoes. I monstered on Bread a little. He asked me why the hell I was taking my shit out on him, and I said, “What the fuck! You do it to me all the time!” and started marching back up Second street.

We ended up at Torino’s. They’ve updated their menu, so I had ‘manicotti’ and a side salad. It wasn’t brilliant, but it wasn’t pizza either. After that, I felt so much better.

We went next door to the Dead Cock and stayed there partying until one in the morning. Well, Bread left at one — we had a fight in the parking lot first, of course — I stayed and closed the bar. Ray had a little after-hours at her house; we left the bar right after last call and did a whirlwind tidying-up at her place. (It wasn’t dirty. She’d said it was a sty, but basically all we did was tidy things up, take out the trash, and light incense!) It was a fairly small after-hours; bigger than she’d wanted or expected, but not huge. I tried to crash a couple of times but both times she came and found me and asked me what I was doing!

Around four, she told the few remaining stragglers that she was going to bed and threw them out. Then she and I settled for some girl talk, but I basically fell asleep on one of her kids’ bunkbeds. I can’t do that all night shit very well any more.

She woke me up at eight. (Groan.) I sat in her kitchen trying to wake up while she chatted cheerfully about her kids and family and sucked down three cups of black coffee in less that eight minutes. (Ray is so fucking cool.) Then we hopped in her new car — she traded in that monstrous grocery getter for a late 90’s Saab — made a deposit at my bank and headed out of town.

She dropped me off at home before nine, then headed for Ottumwa to pick her man up. I fed the dogs, grabbed the Frapuccinos I’d bought and a glass of ice and headed for the bedroom. My man was sleeping, so I stripped and got in with him. He woke up, we, ah, ‘greeted’ each other, nudge nudge wink wink, then he got up and I went to sleep.

I got up at two, put on a bikini, made tostadas, lounged on the porch in the sun. Ray threatened to swing back by on her way back from Ottumwa tonight. Other than that, no plans. Maybe clean the barn. Go swimming. Eh. It’s Saturday, I don’t have to do shit if I don’t want to! Yay!