Out of Season

:: 2009 21 July :: 4.19pm

Lots has happened since I last wrote here. Nathan and I have both graduated and are now living with our respective parents, about 70 miles apart (which is still pretty convenient). Nathan's dad joked to a friend the other day that our new apartment is half in Richmond, in Nathan's room, and half in Sacramento, in mine.

I've been looking for work but so far haven't heard back from anyone. In the meantime, I'm keeping myself busy by doing chores around the house, watching anime, preparing for a substitute organist job in August, and taking care of a quarter horse called Ruby that lives at the same barn where Sadie keeps her pony. Tomorrow I'm going to start taking yoga and pilates classes at the new West Sac rec center, which was conveniently built right near our house.

I don't really know where I'm headed at present. Nathan and I are intent upon living together again, but it's going to have to wait until we have more money, and who knows how long that could take. In any event, I've committed to staying in Sacramento until at least November.

:: 2009 19 June :: 11.15pm
:: Mood: complacent
:: Music: Raven's Land - Voltair

Me oh my it has been awhile, hmm?

I'm single. I'm back to working. Some days I do great, others I want to cry my eyes out from pain.
Some days I walk awesomely, others I limp around like my grandmother. I hate walking from the back to the front of the store, and back again. When people see me limping, I always think that they think I'm mocking someone, so I feel bad. Therefore I work really hard on not limping. Sometimes it's rather impossible.

I signed up for classes again.
I decided to get another degree, besides my business one, in psychology. I think I want to teach. But I think I want to like... do businessishy things.
The decisions kill me!

I had a recent surgery on my knee, marking the fifth. A wire had broken and was doing bad things to my tendons, but like... they took it out. And it's still doing the same thing that we had the surgery to fix.
So my surgeon/doctor gave me a shot of cortisone in my knee [which hurt far too bad to want that to make things better, for I want no more. ever.]
We're giving that a month to work. If not, we're going to see what else we can take out and rearrange. Joyous.

Ashley and Lacey ran away to South Dakota. Lacey met this guy off of Speeddate on Facebook. They hit it off rather well, I guess. They had known each other for a week, maybe two, and he came down. Now it's her turn to go up. He put his two weeks in last friday, and then he's moving down as soon as he gets things together. I guess he's probably moving in here, though our house is far too little for four people.
If he gets a job around here, he'll stay. If not, he and Lacey are moving away.
If he stays, I'm moving out with Jacob. If he and she move, Jacob is moving in here. I'm pretty excited, either way.

I found out today I get a forty cent raise, starting August fifth =]
That's exciting; I was happy.
I got "far exceeds expectations" on my evaluation papers. Because I'm awesome like that.

Hmm. Dusty and I dated for like... less than a month. That just... was weird. It was all new and exciting at first, but then I was like, "Dusty... meh." He was very much my friend, as opposed to my boyfriend. It hit awkward land really fast.
So... been single since April 30th. (Yes. We broke up the day after my birthday. It was sad.)
I have definitely hit the tired-of-being-alone status.
/shrug.

2 | <3

:: 2009 10 June :: 10.31pm

I got well rejected by a bunch of my friends tonight. I had planned a little bonfire party at the beach, and despite everyone I invited having said that it sounded like fun and they'd be there, nobody showed. I waited for over an hour, burned what I'd brought to burn, and then went home.

Nathan was there, so at least I wasn't completely alone, but I'm having some trouble not taking it personally. This is the third or fourth time this has happened to me this year.

3 | <3

:: 2009 6 June :: 10.43pm
:: Music: 'Ode To My Family' --The Cranberries

Stages
Yesterday, I walked up onto a stage, shook hands with the Dean of the Humanities, and received a certificate acknowledging me as a Dean's Award winner. I won it for an essay I wrote about the old English text of Beowulf while I was studying in Berlin.

A week from today, I will walk across another stage and probably shake another hand; but this stage will be outside and the hand I shake will probably belong to the provost of my college. When it's over, I'll have a B.A. in world literature and only a few tenuous ideas of how to proceed as a graduated and fully accountable member of society.

2 | <3

:: 2009 1 June :: 11.05pm

I'm lying on the couch with my computer on my lap, watching Inu Yasha with the headphones in because Nathan is working on the 10-page paper he has due on Thursday. I feel like I should have something to do other than watching anime and being a lazy bum, but I don't, really, other than reading articles in preparation for my politics final coming up at the end of the week, which I'm going to start tomorrow.

On Saturday I went to the art supply store downtown and bought a scrapbook-type album with black pages and grey fabric covers, held together by a blue-grey ribbon. I'm using it to display my band-aid collection. I've stuck one of each type of band-aid I've horded over the past decade or so in, and then with a white pen wrote in the name of the band-aids (if they have one; if not, a description), the brand, and where and when I got them. I need to beef up the collection now. The book isn't even half-full yet.

It's less than two weeks now until I graduate, and that's only just beginning to sink in. Recently I've been cruising the interblag looking for jobs or internships I can do over the summer, and I've learned 3 rather trying things about the editing field:

1) every job and its mother is located in New York City, which I very much do not want to live or work in
2) those offering internships hate graduates, probably because they can't be offered school credit instead of money
3) those offering jobs hate graduates, probably because they don't know enough yet

It's a paradox that everyone wants experienced employees, and so no-one is willing to give new employees any experience.

:: 2009 14 May :: 9.04pm

There are often eggs smashed on the sidewalks of our apartment complex. I wonder about this sometimes, at it is a strange thing to be happening over and over again.

:: 2009 11 May :: 6.04pm

When I was on the bus the other day from yoga to work, a girl got on at the last on-campus stop and started talking to the bus driver in Spanish -- he very fluently, she less so. He handed her a silver cylinder with ribbed sides and a long slender thing that looked like a skinny, angular tuning fork with a few extra tines. Turns out it was a percussion instrument used for mariachi music, and he spent a while explaining to her the different ways it could be played to accompany different styles of music. She noodled around with it for a while, with him coaching. A few stops before mine she struck up a pretty solid rhythm and the bus driver started singing La Bamba. When he got to the chorus he shouted "Everybody now!" and everyone else on the bus started singing La Bamba too.

Just before I got off they finished La Bamba and launched into Twist and Shout; I could still hear the singing as the bus pulled away and I walked in to work with a smile on my face.

:: 2009 20 April :: 8.31pm

There are cockroaches in our house, which is grossing me out a LOT. We found two of them today, which is apparently a bad sign because you're not supposed to see them during the day. Strangely, they are in the closet, and not the kitchen, where I'd expect them.

Time to call the landlord.

:: 2009 27 March :: 12.38pm

Spring break
As the title implies, I'm enjoying a week of freedom before my final quarter at university. For the first bit I was really worried that, due to a mix-up over the submission of my final paper, I was going to fail my senior seminar. That would have been fixable, because since I've got one quarter remaining I could have taken another, but it would have been really unpleasant.

Grades came out yesterday though and I found that I had passed. I was so relieved.

So now I'm at home, watching altogether too much Bleach and occasionally going out on the town with my mom. Yesterday we went to the Capital Nursery and bought plants. Mine is called an anthurium, and it looks like this:

I'm going to make our apartment look like the rainforest.

:: 2009 25 March :: 9.27pm

I seem to like... always fuck shit up. I don't mean too, but I guess I'm just too good at it to quit??
I thought I was ready... I thought I wanted this. It felt so right... but then that feeling faded and my stomach was churning and my heart ached. It was as if it was saying, "seriously? you're putting me through this pain and struggle yet again?"
So I listened to it and backed out.
I didn't want to hurt him if I did... I just need to get my shit straight.
And I'm hesitant to start something again with me here and him there. But moving would be ridiculous. And I'm not going to move. For the first time in a really long time I'm happy with my friends and my family... I couldn't make myself move, ever.
That's just the way it is.
And I'm sorry for that.
Honestly.

:: 2009 14 March :: 12.32am
:: Music: Hand In My Pocket - Alanis Morissette

I'm brave, but I'm chickenshit.
Tuesday.
10:45.

:: 2009 12 March :: 3.10am

More fun surgery >.<'
To defy my therapist [because I'm badass like that] I fucking snapped the metal plate screwed to my ulna in half.
He said it couldn't be done, so take that, I showed you bitch.

Actually, the only reason it broke is because the other shit that needs healed [Read: everything] is taking precedence over the two breaks in the forearm for some reason. Like, the ulna is snapped in half and the two ends don't even touch. Add lots of use and pressure... this makes the plate screwed over the gaping hole bow. And it finally gave out.

Soo... surgery on Tuesday. They will remove the broken plate and replace it with an even larger plate with more screws holding it in.
To make this shit not happen again, I increase my calcium dosage and they give me a device to wear on my arm at night that sends signals to the bone cells, making them work harder and faster to form new bone.

The End.
(I pray)

3 | <3

:: 2009 9 March :: 1.38pm
:: Music: Straightjacket - Alanis Morissette

Mt. Dew + Pepsi = Delicious.
So I fucked up my left arm. No idea how, but it hurts super bad and I have an appointment with my surgeon wednesday at 2:45. I have to keep my arm in a sling and not use it "at all." Really not looking forward to that. I might have to have surgery on it again... fail.
Fuck my life.

2 | <3

:: 2009 7 March :: 11.13am
:: Music: Tuesday's Gone - Metallica

The way things are now kind of just confuses me even more.
He says he does, but doesn't always act like it.
I hope I confuse him just as much... just so we're even. heh

:: 2009 3 March :: 10.15pm

oooooooooooooo
mmmmmmmmmmmmmm
gggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg

space cow.

4 | <3

:: 2009 3 March :: 2.19pm

I get e-mailed "breaking news alerts" from the Sacramento Bee. I like to keep aprised of what's going on in my hometown. For the past few weeks, all I've been getting are things like this:

CALIFORNIA DROUGHT CRISIS
GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER TO DECLARE DROUGHT STATE OF EMERGENCY
WATER SUPPLY TO LOCAL FARMERS CUT OFF DUE TO DROUGHT

and today, I get this:
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ISSUES FLOOD WARNING IN SACRAMENTO

When it rains it pours, I guess -- for real!

:: 2009 28 February :: 12.48am
:: Music: second chance - shinedown

Tonight was nice
However...

I'm scared of it bringing back feelings I've worked so hard to subdue.
I already feel them surfacing.
/sigh

:: 2009 22 February :: 4.12pm
:: Music: NCIS soundtrack

Academic woes
Although I'm apprehensive about my prospects in finding a fulfilling and lucrative career after graduation (I don't feel that I have any particularly specialized or honed skills to offer, nor that I even can find a field that I'm both qualified for and interested in...but this is all a story for a different day), lately I've been feeling that it can't come soon enough. Maybe it's that senior year is exponentially harder than all the rest; maybe it's that I picked the wrong major, and so the literature-intensive courses I'm taking aren't well suited to my abilities or interests; either way, week after week I feel less like I belong at university and I wonder more and more what I'm doing there and why I've been wasting my time. It's honestly like pulling teeth. It seems like everyone I have class with gets something that I just don't get. I try to convince myself it's that literary criticism is a bunch of bullshit, but more often I end up blaming my own naivete or lack of intelligence.

Of course, I've never had confidence in the intelligence other people tell me I've got, which contributes in large part to my growing disillusionment with academia as a whole.

Perhaps it's just been so long since high school that I don't remember what senioritis feels like. In any case, the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't seem to be getting much closer much faster, and it's ironic to me that I should feel closer to giving up now, when I'm almost at the end, than I ever have in the past.

I decided that, since I've almost completely finished the requirements for my major already, in spring quarter I'm going to stay as far away from literature classes as I possibly can. I'll be taking global politics, to satisfy one last gen ed, and evolution of the universe, because I've always had more interest in the sky than in foundationless analysis of hidden themes in book that the authors never intended in the first place.