i am not a freak. i am a scientist.

interestingly enough, today is wednesday and i actually have an answer to the full-time work question.  (things rarely work out as i envision them, obviously.)  that answer is i'm full-time again, which is super awesome.  i'm a little sad that the sleeping in i'd envisioned for tomorrow morning and friday won't be happening, but honestly, getting up at 5 am is far less brutal than wondering how i'm gonna pay the bills, so i'll handle it.

tomorrow, i'm starting my "maceration project" in advanced osteology, which means i will essentially be cutting apart a mummified barn owl and boiling its bones in baking soda until they sparkle.  that makes me sound like a psychopath, i understand, but it's actually the merging of two very important parts of my life; namely, learning how to process skeletons and doing things for the tar pits, as the animals we're working on are going to be part of the page museum's comparative collection.  see?  museums do this stuff all the time, guys, so i'm not a freak.  i'm a scientist.

a friend of mine just had an adorable baby girl, so there has been much baby-crafting going on around here lately (and by "much" i mean "when i find the time" - it's taken me two and a half weeks to applique three burp cloths, which is not only shameful but also very sad).  there has also been much talk about not sleeping at night.  my friend doesn't sleep at night because she has a human baby.  i don't sleep at night because i have a dog that snores and a gluttonous cat (i say this with love) who can no longer wait for dawn to get his breakfast and instead spends the hours of 4 am and 5 am swatting me in the face until i throw him off the bed in a rage, feed him and then feel guilty about my said rage for the entire day.

also, as luke and i were eating breakfast this morning, we were talking about countering bethenny frankel's "skinnygirl" empire with something called "fattygirl," which would promote eating what you want and not obsessing about being a shadowy stick figure when all you really want is a margarita.  then, luke said, "and you could be the spokesperson."

i nearly choked to death on my poorly microwaved oatmeal.

ocho de mayo

i guess i'm feeling better than i have been.  i guess.  there are some irons in the job fire, but i think that until i can land a stable adult job after graduation (read: probably in 2013), i won't be totally ok with how my financial life is playing out.  i should know by the beginning of next week whether or not i can work full-time again, so i will either be in a super fab mood come next wednesday or a super horrible one - which i suppose is sorta the story of this blog recently, right?

on thursday night, luke and i hosted a cinco de mayo pot luck at the house for my forensic peeps, in an effort to help us all blow off steam by chugging margaritas and punching pinatas (and yes, pinatas were punched).  it was a really fun time and even i approved, which is rare because i almost always feel like i could have done something better or been a better hostess or handled things less awkwardly.  all the significant others got along, there was much tequila and i wore a sombrero fascinator that i made with my mom, so pretty much everything was right up my alley.

tomorrow is our first wedding anniversary, which is blowing my mind.  a) i can't possibly be old enough to be married in the first place and b) it's already been a year?!?  i can't believe it!  well, actually, i can.  this year has definitely been a doozy, what with the moving and the starting school and the business starting and the no stable jobs for either of us and the dog and OMG NO STABLE JOBS FOR EITHER OF US.  i think, as cheesy and horrible as this sounds, all the insanity of the past year has truly brought luke and i closer together.  we lived together for years without making significant progress on how to reliably split up housework or accurately manage our time together and now, in the span of about nine months, we have legitimately worked through most of our b.s. and actually grown.  as people and as a couple.  granted, i could have lived with reaching this point without freaking out constantly about having zero dollars for practically my entire first year of grad school, but honestly, i'm very, very happy that this maturity hit us, however it happened.

i've had a fabulous weekend thus far, full of studying and family and friends and parks and foods and royal weddings.  things have been good.

another thing this weekend has been full of thus far is job applications.  full to the brim.  and this leads me to part two of "why i've been a (more) miserable bitch for two weeks."  drumroll please: my odor patrolling hours were cut from full-time to two days a week.  this was due to no fault of my own (i assume), because they hired several more people despite only opening up six more shifts per week and in order to accommodate all the new peeps, my schedule needed to be pruned.  got it.  my issue is this: i am really, really tired of looking for stable work.  i mean, at this point, i'm obviously willing to do anything (as i was getting up at 5 am monday through friday to walk six miles through neighborhoods trying to catch smells). and even that apparently isn't enough dedication to secure me more than two months of reasonable paychecks.

it has been outrageously stressful to be riding a seemingly never-ending wave of excitement about new jobs followed by horror and despair when they are either eliminated or downsized or otherwise rendered moot.  it has made me sick (as in, actually).  compound my consta-anxiety with the collective delusion of the entire world that my "being in school" somehow serves as a barrier against needing to work to finance my life and you have me not wanting to go anywhere or see anyone or do anything that is not explicitly required of me either in my current job description or my master's program.  (this delusion is perhaps perpetuated by the lucky few who get stipends when attending graduate school.  suffice to say, i'm not at one of those schools.  if we use lab disposables, we need to replace them personally.)

i'm so frustrated by how difficult it has been for me to find a job i can rely on and even more so by the fact that i always seem to be just on the verge of getting on top of things (such as paying off credit cards, planning trips/events/backyard makeovers, etc) when i suddenly find myself without funds.  blarg.  for realz.

wowzers

i haven't posted in a while almost entirely because i've been a little miserable lately and despite trying to convey that in several entries over the last two weeks, i just couldn't feel good about blasting the internet with all the venom and crazy i've been feeling lately.  i'm not as much of a sadcloud now, having spent the last few mornings potting plants like a zen master and hanging a hammock in the backyard with luke and plotting out my summer vegetable garden/backyard bench plan.

here's the issue: i feel like i've been very selfish lately.  i used to be someone who did and did and did for other people, usually at my own expense.  it never mattered because i had the time and the energy and the general get-up-and-go to be for other people what i never could for myself; namely, a support system, a beaming, bouncing enthusiastic crazy who showed up to every event, dried every tear and was forever willing to go out of my way for my friends.  in the last year or so (possibly more), i've had to shut a lot of that part of me down.  i don't like it and i'm not excited about it, but i think i needed it.  thus, i have mixed feelings.  i've been passive about friendships and people i adore and have made a genuine second career out of bailing on plans and this makes me feel horrible, considering how much i love the people in my life and how terrible i know i've been to them.  on the flip side, since last year, i've gotten married, moved into a house (in an area that effectively puts me millions of miles away from any group of friends i've got), gotten a puppy (holy cannoli, if i'd only known...), been unable to find anyone willing to hire me, and, most insane of all, started grad school, which has kicked my ass all over town since september.  all these things have been a drain on my physical ability to do other things, as i'm always in my car driving the length of the city or at school studying and getting my ass handed to me by anatomy tests or at home eating milk chocolate and almond candy bars trying not to die from stress.  my inability to handle any more than what's on my plate at the moment is a bad thing.  i don't like being so consumed with things outside myself that i can't be a functioning member of my own life.

however, the last year has been incredible for me as a person.  i feel like i am more unapologetically myself than i ever have been.  for better or worse, i can now say whatever the hell is on my mind and if people think i'm out of my gourd, so be it.  i realized at a family party recently that there are units of my own extended family who have no idea what to make of me, and that's totally fine.  i rarely feel uncomfortable in my own skin these days and that is remarkable in itself considering i spent most of my formative years feeling like a hideous mutant that belonged up in a bell tower.

therefore, as insane as this year has been, as horrible as i've been at making plans and sticking to them, i know that ultimately, this is all good.  i have had time to do things for myself (although not necessarily by myself) and have had experiences that challenged me in ways i've never been challenged before.  i've learned to stick up for myself and my beliefs and i know now that regardless of any outside influence, i know who i am and what i stand for and i would gladly do this whole breathless, crazy year over again if it meant getting this much clarity about my life.

to sum: i apologize to everyone i haven't seen in ages.  just know that while i've been an absentee friend, i've also been a whirling dervish.

b of s

i'm currently on hold with bank of america, practically holding my breath to keep from screaming.

as kids, my grandparents would buy us stock for our birthdays (among other things, obviously).  when i turned 18, my grandpa gave me the choice to keep the money in the market or remove it, and since i'm too much of a money grubber to be a gambler, i opted to take it all out of the stock market and place it in a countrywide savings account.  i promptly forgot about it for years and years while in college, until bank of america bought out countrywide and i started getting statements detailing crazy monthly maintenance fees being removed from my account.  i don't bank with b of a and taking care of it wasn't a super high priority for me, until last november, when i realized a) i could actually use the money and b) i didn't want to come back to the account in 2012 to find it had all been eaten by fees (as i wasn't putting any money into it).

so, i walked into a branch, closed the account and ran off with my monies.

cut to: last week, when my mother started getting calls from collections agencies in my name.  turns out that despite my physically closing the account (and withdrawing all the funds), the account had been reopened without my knowledge due to a few cents interest that had accrued before i shut it down.  because the account had been conveniently reopened, the bank could continue charging me maintenance fees and because there was no money in the account and i assumed (incorrectly, i guess) that i was done with bank of america, eventually the unpaid, delinquent fees had been sent to collections.

um, what?  it was only $57 and i could have easily just paid it to the collections agency or to the bank and gotten it taken care of, but i am my mother's daughter and am very concerned with "the principle of the thing," so i'm on the phone with a third person from the bank, who just told me that i'd have to handle it with the collections agency, despite the fact that i've already talked to them and they referred me to the bank.

i hate the world.

good news, though.  apparently, she took care of it.  in fact, she was so eager to get me off the phone, this is how the conversation went:

her: "ok, i'm gonna let you hang up now."
me: "sooooo, has there been resolution?"
her: "yes."
me: "ok, can you tell me how?  did you send an electronic message to the collections agency?  are you going to mail it?"
her: "it's on the computer."
me: "right.  so if i call the agency tomorrow, it should all be worked out?"
her: "yes."

the end.  i'm tired of this for right now, so i'm going to trust her, but i have a feeling i'll be doing all this shit again tomorrow.

say no to drugs

i spent today doing exactly what i did yesterday; namely, blowing my nose, watching tv and wallowing in my misery.  i am by far the worst sick person/patient in the universe (and am at my all-time most obnoxious when i'm getting my teeth cleaned, as my grandpa is my dentist and i therefore have zero annoyance filter.  all of his assistants probably despise me).  this is how horrible i am at being under the weather: as a kid and a teenager, i only had a few recurrent dreams and the one that was the most devastating was also the one that from the outside appears to be the most innocuous.  each and every time i was sick, for every single night of said illness, i would dream that my mom had come into my room to put a giant glass of water on my nightstand.  then, i would wake up in the middle of the night, parched and dying of thirst, and so thrilled that i had water waiting for me.  it was only then that i realized, every time, that the water wasn't there.  it was always a crushing blow.  and yes, this happened every time and no, i never thought ahead and got water before i went to sleep, and yes, i slept downstairs in a room right off the kitchen and was perfectly capable of getting a glass when i woke up panic-stricken in the middle of the night.  i offer no explanations - only the truth.  it was terrible.

as an adult, i haven't gotten any better.  as i've mentioned, luke had this first and while he was at his sickest, he steam-cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen and took the dog for walks and dressed himself like a normal human being.*  i, on the other hand, completely dropped off the face of the earth this weekend and did nothing but fantasize about the food i was eating and wished i could taste.  i am insufferable.

so, all day, i have been bonded to the couch, water glass at hand!, wearing the same pajamas i've been wearing since friday night (pajamas i took off yesterday to shower and then put right back on - i am not ashamed), watching countless hours of the tube and trying to get through "the girl who kicked the hornet's nest" on netflix.  (for some reason, despite reading all the books and loving the first two swedish films, i just cannot get into this third one, even now, when i have no energy for doing anything but getting into movies.)  and, because i haven't exerted myself at all, i'm starting to feel better.  however, i'm still so congested i feel like i've been punched in the face and i'm still pretty into mouth-breathing.  in fact, i called out of work tomorrow (despite feeling ok and wanting to get the hell out of the house already), because the crux of my job is detecting smells and that is just not happening right now.  i just ate leftover indian food with luke, and while he was having his mouth blown off by spiciness, i was chowing down, tasting nothing.  i'm sure my tongue is really pleased about that.

side note: my aunt and uncle run a surplus warehouse that handles lots of household products and occasionally, they'll give luke and i a huge box full of paper towels, toilet paper and kleenex.  the most recent gift was so enormous, i had no idea when we were going to get through all of it.  mystery solved! in two days, i've gone through two and a half rectangular boxes of kleenex.  i'm on my last box and i'm scared.


*granted, luke and i handle sickness differently.  he loads up on dayquil and nyquil and is essentially medicated the entire time.  if i can handle it, like this weekend, when i didn't have work or school, i stay far away from meds because i was told in my tenth grade biology class that those medications, in lowering fevers and slowing down mucus, actually lengthen your illness, as they slow your body's defense.  saying no to drugs works for me in two ways: 1) it makes me think i'll get better faster and 2) it legitimizes my whining, as i really do feel horrible.  i'd say that's a win win.