It was an honor just being nominated.
I turned down Not!GradSchool today. It sucked, but when I explained what I was going to do instead, they were actually pretty cool about the fact that yes, I will need to take a couple of prep courses & to sit & determine the best way to do that there, which is nice. So next week when they have the fall schedule done, I’ll go in & figure out which course I should take this quarter, and go from there. :shrug: Such is life – or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Moments of technological commentary:
Talking to someone about being a valet & saying, “I pretty much get paid to play automotive Tetris – OH MY GOD, I never even thought of it, but there’s probably an iPhone app for Tetris!” :fist of triumph!:
Oh yeah. My valet time just got way awesomer.
Every time I get a set of keys that doesn’t have a clicker, I’m always like, “Daaaaamit, now I have to actually look for the car…” oh technology, how did anyone valet before you?
Yeah, I could play here.
Went over to Blankspaces on Tuesday & tried it out for a couple hours. It’s not bad – just basically office space. It’s more the gesture of going somewhere specifically to work instead of trying to do things at home & thinking, “I could work after my nap” or “Polgaradid leave the Supernatural s. 1 DVDs… I could put them in & work at the same time!” (Is work done? yes. Is a productive amount of work done? eh… not so much, no.)
I have a free week to try out that begins on Saturday, so I’m going to remand my puppy to the care of her playmates next door (and, you know their human that pays the bills) and basically spend the time that I would normally be valeting for Dolls or Prem!Co working on trying to churn out the backlog of work that I have.
This is what Chuck feels like, isn’t it? Or, it would be if Chuck were a real guy.
So I haven’t gotten a check from EDD since oh… May. They keep effin’ up my claims. The good news is that by the time I get caught up to now on the forms, I won’t need to continue filing for checks, but having the last, oh, two months’ worth of checks would greatly help me do things like… get caught up on my rent. With that in mind, I went down to the office on Crenshaw to achieve an actual conversation with an actual California state employee. (I know, Cali residents! It’s rare & exciting – I feel like I should have a button that says, “I’m an EDD Slayer, ask me how!”)
In the course of talking to the gentleman on the phone (you don’t see people in actual person, you just get to use the direct line to call them) and when he found out that I’m a web designer, he began talking to me about how he had someone making a website for him, but before they’d do anything, he had to get “the PayPals” in order to send the deposit, and while he didn’t mind, he was a 58 year old guy who’d been through two wars & just didn’t understand this whole technology thing.
This resulted in me explaining PayPal & how it works to him, and why it is that they need to make small deposits into his bank account in order to verify that it actually exists. In return, he did… something to make sure my first check was expedited to me, set it up so I’ll get all the back claims at once instead of having to wait a week inbetween, & strongly urged me to go to the CA state jobs website since according to him, “We could use some nice smart girls like you working for us around here.” I dutifully allowed him to instruct me as to where the site is, & took down the url for a friend who could probably use it, but let’s be honest — I just wouldn’t work well as a full time state employee.
In the meantime, the first check showed up yesterday, along with the back claim forms — I kinda can’t wait to get that money in if for no other reason than that my landlord’s gonna be ridiculously happy when I’m suddenly caught up on rent!
(I’ve been in my building for nine years as of January ’11. Since most of us work in creative industries, a couple of us are actually a month or so behind, but in this economy it’s actually easier for my landlord to just let us skate along until we get caught up & keep the solid residents than to try to find new renters. and considering that West Hollywood has rent control, thank god for that.)
—————–
Overall, I feel like I’m making progress, but in the way that you’ve just organized a single bookshelf and still have the entirety of the Louvre to catalog before you’re allowed to take a break to pee. More to do, more to do, and I would just love it if I could put everything on pause & take a nap.
Friday
I keep thinking I need to get one of those Nike watches so that I can clock how far I actually run/walk/traverse in a weekend. Not that it’ll affect anything, just out of curiosity.
HCR is a studio lot – we don’t really valet people’s cars here so much as direct traffic and shfit things around when it gets full enough that parking becomes double-stacked & others are blocked in. Honestly, it’s one of the easier sites I’ve ever worked – I did my first shift yesterday because they needed help this week, & I signed up for another shift next week. Non-tip means that you automatically get $3 more an hour, and the fact that once the call times have passed you’re basically watching a dead parking lot means that I can bring my computer & possibly get some coding done. Add in that it’s only about 1.5 miles from my apartment, and I think I’ve found my new favorite shift.
Friday’s offline project is starting to code the redesign of my portfolio site. it took a while to get something that I didn’t hate, and this I think I can live with for a bit. My present site is woefully behind both in style and in the work that I’ve done since then, so ya know. It’s time.
Best Reason Heard Today of why to let someone park in a spot that lets them keep their keys: “I’ve got a gun in the car.”
:hands up: Hey, man, park away and keep your keys. No worries.
Friday night: Shifting Spiffys – I have to say that I’m awfully disappointed in SpiffV!Hotel. When they first offered me a hotel gig, I was like, “rawk! \m/“. After all, in my time at Spiffy!Hotel, I would pull in $70/night in tips & up — not bad for a valet gig in a town where msot of the server gigs are taken because everyone wants to be in the movies.
SpiffV!Hotel, however, is consistently yielding about $25 as a good tip on Friday and Saturday nights, and honestly I just need to make more than that — I know enough about how this sh*t works to know I should be making more than that. So, on Monday i will be going over to Spiffy!Hotel to see if they have any openings on Friday & Saturday night. Luckily for me, they actually have two locations – West LA & Hollywood, so I’m hoping they’ll have work for me at either one. We’ll see.
I realized on my way over that I forgot to leave my white longsleeve in the car, which means I’ll spend the night reminding myself that cold is good for speeding up the metabolism…
————— Saturday:
You know what car I’m totally digging right now? The BMW 128i. They’ve started showing up more & more the last month or so, and I have to say, if I was going to get a Beemer, I wouldn’t mind one of them. I would pick a BMW over a Benz anyway, just because to me it always feels like the BMW has more heft to it and Mercedes just don’t seem all that stable, but I do like this leetle sporty thing in particular. Nice play, BMW. Nice play.
Malibu
Arrived late to wedding shower because the 101N was s-l-o-w… I’ve got about 2.5, 3 hrs of sleep in me, which has, it would seem, turned me into Britney from Glee. At one point I actually just stopped & went, “Okay, I need to go to my car and get my longsleeve because it breezy and I’m cold so now I’m whiney.” Luckily, the nice thing about working with Dolls is that it’s kind of like our very own little car-parking sorority, so the other three girls I was working with just laughed and told me to shut up. Ah, love – that’s what keeps me coming back here doncha know.
The party that was supposed to get out at 4:30 now wants us to stay until 5:30, thus negating any time I’d have inbetween to get an hour of work in before having to go to my Sat night shift at SpiffV!Hotel. :sigh:LH has to jet, the party that the other girls are going to a mile away as their next shift is starting & she’s got to supervise, so there’s three of us at the end – the Sup, the shuttle, & me as valet to fetch cars. Time to hop to it…
… because we actually didn’t get out until 6pm. The contract had been filled out & signed for 5:30, which means that the company technically gave the client a half an hour of work for free. While I’ll get paid for the half hour I worked, I already know that’s gonna go over great. We finally had to just hand them keys, tell the client the cars were parked nearby & head out – they were an hour & a half over their contract, & we all had other jobs to work. Next time, plan your event better!
Santa Monica
After a slightly frantic dash down PCH, I managed to get to work exaaaactly on time, thank goodness. Unfortunately, tonight was even slower than last night – someone had reserved the pool area for a wedding reception, effectively killing what bar traffic we normally get. Add in that I’m already tired as all hell, & any time I sit for more than five minutes, my head starts to nod. Not. Good.
Thankfully, when J asked if I wanted the choice between taking a lunch or going home early, I was awake enough to call dibs on going home early, and I jetted out around midnight instead of 2am. No additional shift on Sunday meant I pretty much just crashed out & slept after rowing, so I woke up around 5pm, which is… awesomely unproductive.
My big problem right now is just focus. I feel like I can’t keep my brain on any task for longer than ten minutes. Part of it is stuff that’s going on in my life – I had some sh*t go down on Monday morning that made me upset for the rest of the day, and that pretty much shot my productivity. I called a timeout on that aspect of my life, which unfortunately required using official channels to put up a 60-day barrier against someone. And while I know it hurt them, their damage was hurting me and I don’t have a support structure to take care of me, so after almost a year & a half of trying to be kind about their emotional issues, I drew a boundary to ensure I would be insulated from being used as someone’s designated punching bag.
Granted, this morning it seemed to have gained me a 6’7″ thundercloud shadow who’s trying to figure out how to get around the restrictions I put up & fix things so he doesn’t have to answer questions later, but at least it was something I could row away from for a while, and I didn’t go home in tears, which is progress from my state on Monday so in terms of me paying my rent… well I got more work done Tuesday than I did the day before.
I’m looking into BlankSpaces. While I don’t particularly like the idea of heading into KTown to work every day, the truth of the matter is that home is too conducive to taking a nap, and coffee shops are too distracting. While I don’t want to work for a company, the truth is that I need at least the semblance of office structure to feel motivated to get things done. They have a free day this coming Tuesday, and I signed up for free week trial, so we’ll see – if I’m lucky, I can get enough done in my free unlimited week to justify paying the $200 for 3 mos use of the place. My real worry is parking costs – Hopefully they have either free parking or a reasonable setup with a place that doesn’t cost more than $5/day. We’ll see. It can’t hurt.
Pandora.com helps alot, I will say that. Also, I need to not let the TV run while working – I get a little too involved in how Michael & Fiona are blowing things up instead of concentrating on the structure of my css.
As usual, no matter how hard I try, I seem to be far more productive after the 9 o’clock hour, which is good in what gets done (like this blog entry) but bad in terms of me getting sleep before my workout each morning – especially when Ian’s structuring everything within heart rate zones, so whether or not I get rest has an affect on how fast I’m allowed to row.
There’s a balance here. I know there is. I just need to find it. Hell, I can sit at the catch in a single with oars off the water, you gotta figure eventually I’ll be able to manage this. I hope.
You know what, you’re right, this is totally my bad – I forgot to factor in that you’re an asshole.
Chat with Sylvie, part deux.
So in the other part of the conversation that I had with Sylvie, I was reminded that no matter how smart you are, or how much you’ve experienced, sometimes you really just need another person to tell you what you already know before you’re ready to accept it as fact and move on. One of the most notable incidences of that in my life was when my b-i-l looked at me & said, “That’s because your mom is a drunk, honey.” We all knew it, we’d all grown up with it, but that was the first time anyone I knew had had the chutzpah to actually say it out loud. And once it was said, & it was out there, I suddenly had the ability to accept it, factor that in as a reality, & move on with my life.
Same thing happened when talking to Sylvie last week. I was scheduled for an appointment on that Friday morning for something & I was seeking her advice on how to approach it. Her response?
“You need to stop worrying about these people – they don’t give a shit about you. If they did, none of this would have happened in the first place. Don’t worry about being nice, don’t consider them in your plans. They don’t give a shit about you, and they never will because they’re children. Be like a man with the town whore – use them for what they’re good for, then leave.”
I know, right? I laughed at that one too, prudish American that I am.
And intellectually, I already knew everything that she was saying – I’d been saying it to myself for a long time now. But hearing someone else confirm what I thought was just me being a b*tch in the comfort of my own head… there was something about hearing it from an outside party that allowed me to emotionally accept it, if that makes sense. And now, I’ve found that I can look at people & think, “You don’t actually give a damn about me. No matter what you say, or how you act, or how hurt you pretend to be by all this, the truth of the matter is that if you cared, none of this would have happened.”
It’s kind of odd, really – after months of being tossed around like buoy in a storm, I walked in & there was just… nothing. I just classified them in the same cubby as my parents, & it made things way better – you’re here, I have to deal with you, but at any second if given half a chance & left the slightest bit unsupervised, you’ll f*ck me over in a heartbeat & act like it’s my fault.
I just need to remember what I was told by the lawyer I met with that Friday morning: “Before we discuss anything, I need to just say – I can do alot, but I can’t fix stupid.”
Can’t Fix Stupid. Check. Lesson learned, let’s move on.
Congratuations! You’re in charge!
On Saturday, I worked a Doll gig by Griffith Park. Saturday shifts are hard, because I get out of SpiffV!Hotel at 2am, then I crash in the boathouse parking lot until 7am, row, and then have a couple hours until I have a day shift, after which I go back to SpiffV!Hotel in Santa Monica for my Sat night shift of 7/8 – 2am, after which I usually head down to the boathouse at Long Beach so that I can do a coached practice, get there about 3 am (4 if I went home to get Zoey) & crash in my car in that parking lot until about 6:15am.
So working during the on Saturday? kind of a stretch.
Anyway, so I show up at this gig – I’m already 15 min late because of traffic, and LB says to me, “Oh, great, you’re here – what do you want to do?”
Being the Foursquare Mayor of States the Obviousville, I replied, “I thought I’d be parking cars. why?”
“Well, G called & said we’re training you to supervise today, so until SD gets here, you’re in charge.”
ooooooooooooookay. Me in charge.
This should be good.
Now, it’s not like I can’t Team Captain [TC] – I’ve been working on & off as a Doll for six years, I’ve stepped in when needed, I’ve been a trainer, and in a pinch I’ve TC-ed a couple small parties before. It just takes a certain amount of energy to do so that I hadn’t been prepared to expend that day, so when I found that out, I was like, “effin’ ay – really? I don’t wanna!” But, ya know, G & I had talked a bit back about me becoming a TC, so it’s not like this was happening against my will, just not on my expected timeframe.
So there I am, writing tickets, doing my thing, and SD stops me & goes, “You need to stop saying that.”
“Saying what?”
“Have a great time.”
Now, let me pause to explain a reality here – half the time, when I give some situationally-prompted pleasantry reply, I don’t even know I’ve said it. I’ve been working in customer service for different stretches since the day I turned 16, so for me the sheer habit of smiling and being cheerful to people is so ingrained that I can’t help it. I once had a friend point out to me that when I walk up to a cashier, I’m the first one to initiate the question, “Hi, how are you today?” (Which in my world, comes out as “Hey, how ya doin’?”) I could be in the worst mood ever, and I will smile and be pleasant to strangers because that’s the way I’ve been trained – Pavlovian Politeness, we’ve taken to calling it. The point being that I hadn’t even realized I was saying that. However, it did leave a question, which led me to ask…
“why wouldn’t I tell them to have a good time?”
“They’re here for a wake*.”
:pause for moment: “Oh… right. Okay. Well who know, right? it could be an Irish wake.”
*In hospitality, or maybe it’s just a California thing, they don’t call such events a wake. They refer to them as a “celebration of life”. Yah. True story. While I think that’s actually a better way to approach it, this has cause confusion on the part of a couple of girls who thought “celebration”=”actual party”.
But yah – upshot is that it looks like I’ll be doing more gigs for the Dolls where I’m actually in charge of sh*t, which also means I’ve finally got to get around to cleaning out my car so I can fit the sign in the back. :sigh: Mo’ money, mo problems – so friggin’ true.
——————–
I am both a PC & a Mac!
One of the items on The List is for me to acquire an iPhone for myself. This is less because I want an iPhone, & more because of work. To get work for Prem!Co, they send out a pdf of the upcoming week’s schedule, and then you email which shifts you want. Shifts are filled on a first come, first serve basis, so the quicker you respond, the better your chances.
Two weeks ago, I was working SpffV!Hotel on a Friday night when I saw the email for the schedule for Prem!Co come across my phone. Well, I can’t see the pdf on my present phone which I really only got because I fell in the damn marina last March – I got out of the marina, my phone… still down there. (sorry phone!)
Anyway, the schedule came out at 6:30, so I stopped at a 24 hour Kinko’s on my way out of work at 1:30am & filed my shift requests… and they were already filled up. Ugh. Thus, I need to get an iPhone so I can see anything on the internet in order to be able to get work. I’m finally caving.
However, since my contract with AT&T doesn’t re-up until January, I decided to investigate alternate means. I got an offer from my neighbor for his unlocked 1G, which was tempting, but for only $40 more, I was able to win the bid on eBay for a 6-mo old 8GB 3G whose owner has already upgraded to a 4th Gen.
:fist of triumph!:
On the one hand my fear in this situation is that I shall never actually get off the internet. On the other hand, in 3-5 days of shipping time, I’ll totally be able to download the free app that lets you play your iPod like a flute!
Note to self: next lifetime, be less clever
I’m having one of those days where I spent a lot of time trying to prove to myself that something wouldn’t work, and I shouldn’t even think about doing it, because it will in no way look better & thus by proving it won’t work, I’ll save myself hours of work having to apply my brilliant idea to the other four pages of massive text-heavy content.
Sadly, I was unsuccessful, because it looks way better in the more labor-intensive way. :sigh:
On a bright note, this client pays by the hour.
——————–
Somebody grab the blue facepaint, I feel the need to yell “Freedom!”
Scored a part-time retail gig on Friday – little boutique shop in Brentwood that caters to products created by women & donates a portion of the profits to womens’ charities. And because it’s Brentwood, the hourly wage is priced to match. (Transl. for non-Californians: more than most pay) I’ve got two days a week there, and since her site is a big hot mess (the owner called me back because she liked the idea of one-stop shopping for a clerk and a designer) I’ll get an ecommerce site credit off it.
The result?
If this works, then in a bit I’ll be able to kiss the State of CA’s unemployment goodbye, which would be just… lovely. Plus, if I don’t have to keep track of things to make sure that I continue my claim, I can simply work like a little b*tch as much as I want wherever I want and work on paying off everything and banking the rest.
of course, it turns out I may need that cash to put down a first and last…
——————–
So. San Diego. That might work.
I’ve hit a point lately where I’m just… tired of Los Angeles. I feel like all that ever happens here is people fighting with one another, and I’m exhausted from it. I mentioned this to Shook the other day, asking if she knew of any assist coaching jobs down by her, and she replied, “Sure. You want mine?”
Seems she’s doing a lateral move at her Rowing!College! and the job’s open for applications. Since everyone who’s left the LA rowing circle for San Diego seems to be a hell of a lot happier than those of us still up in Hell-lay, I figure it can’t hurt to look around.
——————–
Especially since now it looks like I’ll have plenty of time to survey the area…
Since I wrote that passage above two days ago, they have since shut down the rowing team that I used to run. I can’t say as I’m surprised – we were working under the radar, & the guy in charge decided he didn’t like something someone said & narc-ed us out to his superiors, so ta-da, we’re kaput.
On the one hand, there’s the part of me that’s pissed – two years of work on my part are gone, just :snap!: like that. I feel sad for the rowers who are now homeless and the people who had wanted to join up & now have nowhere to go. It was a good thing, my team – we weren’t particularly flashy or fast, but we were there, and there were people who wanted us to continue.
On the other hand, on a purely selfish level… my life just got way the hell simpler. No more organizing things, no more having to jump hoops to keep people happy… no more decisions to make other than the ones that will effect me.
I am, at this moment, oddly… free.
Well, free, and chock-a-block full of rowing domain names that I won’t need anymore & am thinking of putting up for sale. Think UCLA will want to buy uclarowing.com now that I don’t need it for anything? Or USC want USCrowing.com? Oh, LMU, do you want LMUrowing.com & lionsrowingclub.com?
So yes… free, but let’s be honest – still totally me.
Oh, Los Angeles, don’t worry – I’m taking the hint that you don’t like me right now.
This morning, Zoey & I were running along the path from the boathouse that runs down to Dockweiler, and out of nowhere, this boxer-type dog (sorry Closet, this was no CoCo!) came running up from behind us and bodychecks my dog!
I was like, “What the f*ck!” and the owner is about 500m away, going, “Honey, come back…”
Meanwhile the other dog who’d hit Zoey is standing there, looking at us, like I’m gonna be all, “sure, stay & play!” I looked at that little f*cker, pointed towards its owner & sternly ordered, “go home!” and it ran away.
So then I have my dog, who really won’t hurt a flea unless you utterly push her buttons, is looking at me like, “Mommy, wha’ ha’pen’d?”
(Much like her mother, Zoey will bounce around and be full of energy & noise a-plenty, there’s nothing malicious about her. She doesn’t lose her sh*t often so when she does, it’s spectacularly effective)
I got her back to the boathouse, & we later found that the other dog had managed to slice open the fold of her ear riiiiight on the edge of it – basically, a place where there was no way to put a bandage on it, we just had to keep putting cold paper towels on it until it stopped bleeding. Poor Zoey dog.
I pointed out to Lesley later that it was kind of a metaphor for my life – there we were, running along, perfectly happy entertaining ourselves, and some @sshole decides that since they’re bored or angry or just feel like it, they’re gonna come start sh*t, so I get blindsided from behind & am still lookin’ around going, “Huh?” and wondering why my ear is bleeding ’cause the coward’s already run back to the hole they came from.
Seriously, Universe? you had to hurt the dog to teach me that? So mean, man. So mean.
Zoey had a hard day
——————–
Result of all this = cross between an elephant & a rhino.
Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing.
In anticipation of saving money to either a) move b) go to Not!Grad!School, or c) just save money
I’m also looking at moving out of my apt & moving in with a roommate. This is a particularly interesting proposition since I have a dog & we have lived alone for almost 9 years now.
I’m hesitant because I don’t know where I’m going to be by Sept, but on the other hand, there’s this part of me that just wants to … ditch stuff. Clean out my life, get rid of everything I don’t really need.
I remember back in the day when DarkLady was moving from LA to OH, she’d just left her apt., sold her car, & had two days left at Polgara’s apt. before she got on a plane. She posted in her LJ something about how she could take the suitcase she had and just… leave. And no one would ever know where she’d gone.
I’m not quite there yet, but I will admit to feeling oddly unencumbered.
——————–
Of course, the reality is that I have what could kindly be referred to as a sh*t-ton of little piddly jobs to do, a couple of invoices to collect on, and a client whose website is about to get yanked for non-payment, so I sadly do not get to just chuck it all & move on.
…but I am thinking about selling my couches. You can’t avoid work by spending time on something that’s not there, right? Totally.
I’m gonna miss not watching the difference between a Mac & a PC.
“…I’m crying myself to sleep mode.” hee!
because I’m messed up, that’s why
I have a couple of things to do for work this week, and you know what I’m jazzing on? Not the steady, paying gig that’s boring but stable work. No no, I’m excited about the combat-landing-esque site that I need to bring live by Saturday for a client who called me because they lost their old company (no for real) and now need to start over… now.
(I know, right? But as long as they’re paying, the reasons for the work really aren’t a problem for me – check cashes the same no matter what, my friend.)
And it’s in this that I’ve come to the realization of why I’ve hated my job so much, and really, it’s the same thing that bothers most designers – I’m tired of dealing with people who say they want one thing, & then utterly eff up what I give them. I’ve got one right now – building what will be a fairly complex site – no stylesheet, conflicting directions from the marketing manager & the developer, and I’m just… I literally just don’t even want to do work for them. I procrastinate on it. Horribly. And what I give them isn’t my best work, because when I do that they just rip it up, so I’m totally in this space of, “Whatever, take this.” and gods know that’s not a good point to work from. :sigh:
So instead, I’m having fun with a smaller, emergency site that I’ll get paid way less to do but will have complete creative freedom over – hell, I’ve even re-written most of her copy, which is such a relief to be able to do, considering some of the horrendous English I’m occasionally instructed to post on the internet. (I’m sorry Internet, really I am.)
Kate & I were talking at San Diego two weekends ago, and she confided that she was thinking of leaving her PhD program because she just… didn’t like it. As she pointed out, she could make the same amount of money working at Starbucks & enjoying her life a hell of a lot more than she does as a grad student. And I’m thinking… maybe that’s not a bad idea. I may walk into the Gap I used to work at today or tomorrow & grab an application – I’m pretty sure at least two of my old managers are still there, they’d probably be willing to hook me up with 20 hours a week or so – not much, but something so I at least feel like I’m getting something steady and can relax a bit instead of constantly feeling like I have to take every client because I need the cash.
I dunno. I think I’m just tired of always having to think. I have at least one side project for the summer, and I’ve done my part thus far, but it hasn’t been made an official go yet, and honestly, I don’t feel that I can completely trust the people involved on a business level — the programs are good, the money would be solid, and I’ve already got clients lined up to participate, but that last step hasn’t been done, and based on some behavior that I’ve seen over the last year, I don’t feel secure that someone isn’t going to turn on me & have everything fall through. I’m going to work on getting everything in writing beforehand, but even then I still don’t entirely have faith that I’ll get paid. And I can’t live like that any more, so yes. I think applying to the Gap it may be.
——————-
More than anything, I just feel like I’m not… getting anywhere. I’ve got this whole “shouting at the rain” thing right now. The worst thing about having an idea of what’s coming is the part where you have to wait for it to get here, and carry on with life in the interim. I’m kind of crap at that part.
Note: I just got an email offering me a brand new website for my portfolio site from some spam company. Wow, Universe, thanks so much for that obvious reminder. It’s on the list.
Okay. enough with the kvetching. Back to the salt mines… fun project first, dammit.
So last week just… sucked. Big giant monkey balls kinda sucked. To start with, I was sick. Now, I’m not normally sick, and for the most part when I am, I can muddle through. I’ll be annoyed & surly, but things still get done.
This time? Not so freakin’ much. As I used to joke about the end of a 2k test, “My body just made an obscene gesture at me & died.”
The pinnacle of this being when I was coaching a Sculling I on Thursday morning, turned to say something to a student on the wrong side of the dock and… fell off the dock.
Yes. Totally. Fell off the dock. Fully clothed. In layers. In jeans. With sneakers on.
With my cell phone.
:pause for a moment of mourning:
Oh yeah. and it’s not even like the phone got fried, but I could transfer the SIM to another unit. No. I came out of the water, the phone didn’t. For all I know, it’s still down there next to the dock, watching the boats come by until its little battery gives out. Which reminds me:
Dear environment:
I’m sorry I accidentally disposed of electronic waste in an irresponsible manner.
My bad,
Me.
—————————-
I kinda liked my old phone, man. I really did. Thankfully I’d just gotten a freelance check so it didn’t break me economically, but there’s $250 I didn’t get to put towards tuition, ya know?
Due to the fact that I’m not due to upgrade until Jan of next year, my new phone is not as awesome as my old one. it’s all right, but I liked the old one better.
It also means that I have to reconstruct my entire address book, which is both a pain in the ass & also kind of freeing.
Pain in the ass: having to email people (including clients) and ask for their numbers Freeing: deciding that I don’t need to keep certain people’s numbers anymore, even just in case.
Because yeah – if I get caught no longer having people’s numbers, I can now just say, “Oh my god, I must’ve lost it that time I fell in the marina! I’m so sorry.” In some cases this will be sincere. In some cases, a polite excuse. How can you know the difference? I’m not telling.
I actually brought the first phone I used back & traded it for another, because the first didn’t have conversation view for the texts, and having each twitter come across individually was driving me freakin’ beserk. That’s when I learned the spiffy thing at AT&T where the minute you walk out of the door, there’s a $35 restocking fee – even if you have the phone for less than a day. What? Since when is that cool? For realsies? However, my $35 got credited off my bill, mostly due to the fact that I think I scared the salesguy with the power of my raised eyebrow and quiet inquiry of, “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” Note: When I’m upset or annoyed, I’m kinda noisy. When I hit actual anger & am just freakin’ done — that’s when I get very quiet & either stop talking to you altogether, or speak to you very quietly & calmly. I have been informed this is scarier than any yelling ever could be, so should you ever find yourself in this position, I suggest you run.
Bright spot of that, since I refuse to get an iPhone & there’s no internet usage on my account, I only pay about $50/mo for my cell, so now I don’t have to pay my bill this month. Yay no bill-paying!
My new phone also came with Tetris already built in. This is fantastic for me, as Tetris is one of the few things I require in my phone since I use it as a time-waster galore and general method of calming myself before job interviews. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little Tetris-obsessed. However, based on today’s comic, it seems the guys at xkcd feel the same way:
special thanks to Drew Barrymore – while using her an an ongoing illustration wasn’t my intent, it’s nifty that things turned out that way.
So I’ve made several references to Kevin Smith v. Southwest Airlines since Prez Day weekend when it happened. Why? Because I kinda love this story. In truth, I’ve been a fan of Smith since the day I spent 8 hours in high school running Blue Light Specials at a KMart in suburban NH, and went home to find my sister had rented this new movie called Clerks. Other than the obvious gender issue, I grew up in much the same way as Kev – blue collar (in my case, closer to the “poor” end of the spectrum), creative in a factory-worker world, annoyed by the fuckers who thought they were awesome ’cause they had more money, and working in a crap job because that was the only way to survive in the hopes of one day getting out.
Plus, much like Kev, I also grew up fat.
There is, you see, a great difference between growing up fat and becoming heavy later on in life. Growing up fat means that you are literally raised to be a little ashamed of yourself. You hear things like, “You would be lovely if you just lost a little weight, dear” or “You know, your sister does track and she’s in very nice shape. Maybe you should try that.”
Bad enough for guys, but when you’re a girl… well, first step is that you’re put on fad diets. Trust me, as the overweight daughter of an overweight mother, I did most of them before the age of 18. Let’s run a couple:
T-Fal Diet? Been there. (it was so fad, I couldn’t even find a link for it.)
Jenny Craig, whatever the cover diet was in Womens’ World Magazine – gods, you name it, and I think my metabolism got bounced through it when I was a kid. But quietly, because no one was supposed to know. Hell, I remember at one point my brother-in-law startled my older sister by referring to a conversation he & I had once where I mentioned that my mom had me going to Weight Watchers when I was in high school — Chris asked Pat what the hell he was talking about, since she’d been away at college & had no idea that had even happened.
I live my life fat & I have to navigate through a thin person’s world all the time – Kevin Smith
You see, you’re not supposed to make a fuss when you’re a fat kid. That’s what you get taught. You smile, and you take it, and you pretend everything is fine, no matter what is happening. After all, you are fat. You are not pretty, you are not desirable, you are fat. And everything in our society teaches us that no one wants fat. So the best thing you can do is to smile, and be pleasant, and get along with everyone, and fly under the radar as much as possible. You don’t wear prints. There are no ruffles. Dark colors. Tailored. Plain.
And when it comes to romance… well, you’re better off concentrating on doing other things rather than getting your hopes up in that arena — after all, no one wants a fat girl. Who and what you are is not socially acceptable, and it’s best to simply try to stay out of everyone’s way, do a good job at whatever your job is and be happy with that.
Then, I graduated high school and this nifty thing happened – the weight started to go away. I got one job working 40 hours a week instead of the two or three I’d juggled in high school for the same amount of hours. I had a year off before I went to college, and decided to join a gym, where before I ever touched an oar or contemplated rowing, I discovered that years of being treated like crap as a pudgy kid could be channeled into a fantastic talent for beating the living shit out of people. And slowly, over the last decade or so, I went from 225 lbs to my present 160 – 165 (depending on time of the month).
(Before anyone asks how I did it, along with the normal diet & exercise changes, a good portion of that last part also came from moving 3,000 miles away from my mother. Depending on your family, you may have to explore different techniques.)
While interventions by several female friends over the years (combined with working at the Gap in West Hollywood with a trove of fabulousFIDM boys) means that I no longer roam about in the jeans, tank top & untucked size XL men’s button up shirts that I used to skulk about wearing through high school and college in an attempt to hide what I was always taught to think of as my less-than-desirable figure, the truth is that I still dress according to fat girl rules – no frills, no prints, no overly bright colors. Hell, a small Nike swoosh is normally the biggest logo on anything I own – after all, you can’t wear logos, because if they stretch out of shape, it just emphasizes that you’re not tiny.
Because everybody wants tiny. In a girl, anyway — if you can’t be thin, you’d damned well better at least be short. And if you’re neither of those things… you’re screwed. Thus when it comes to guys, you will at best be a friend, but never a girlfriend.
Least, that’s what I was always taught. And, really, it’s how I lived, because much like the dietary habits that made me heavy in the first place, I had never encountered anything to show me what I had been taught might not be the only way things could be done.
Where other kids did… whatever it is everyone does in high school… I worked. At one point during my junior year, I had three jobs. It’s just the way it was. In college, I had to pay my own tuition, so once again… I worked.
I worked, and I went to school, and because I was raised as a fat kid, I didn’t even consider romance a viable possibility in my life because… it just wasn’t. I went to my senior prom, sure – and I found out later that the guy I went with didn’t actually get sick after, he dropped me at my house & then went to party with his friends because I wasn’t cool enough. I didn’t get my first kiss until I was 21. I didn’t go on my first date until I was 22.
And much like my clothing, while the outward appearance is a bit more streamlined, the basic operating principles have remained the same. While I am no longer completely ignorant as when I first moved to LA, I’m still no female Casanova. In a twist of irony, I once inadvertently crashed an organization when the head of it decided she was going to make stuff up about my sex life, and it never occurred to her to check and make sure I had a sex life. So ya know – in that case it kinda worked in my favor, but for the rest of my life… not so much.
I’m great at being friends with guys. This is because, for the most part, there’s really no sub to my text. More than one male of our species has remarked that talking to me is like talking to a guy, which makes sense because I was basically taught to think of myself on that level – after all, fat girls have no gender. We are asexual. Romance is for tiny pretty girls. So when the time came that I began to be “acceptable”, I really didn’t know what to do. And to a point, I still don’t know. There are girls who can walk into a room and seduce a man with no shame and utter confidence. I am so totally not her. You give me a factory floor to run, within a week I can turn out a significantly higher output yield like :snap: that. You leave me in situation requiring the basic romantic skill & knowledge contained in the brain of most 17 year olds… yeah, I got nothin’. After years of observing the game, I’m great at seeing what’s going on with everybody else — I can often spot that sh*t for others a mile away. But for me to actually do it myself? Well, to borrow from Willow Rosenberg, “I can usually make a few vowel sounds. And then I have to go away.”
The result is that to get my attention you basically have to walk up & say, “Hi, I’m going to hit on you now.” Unfortunately in Los Angeles, this means that I don’t get asked out much – instead I get propositioned by a lot of guys looking to have affairs. Nice to know that if I was ever willing to go the Ashley Madison route, I could totally clean that shit up.
So the habit of assuming myself to be ineligible combined with a shyness borne of ignorance has over the years combined to a reflex of simply assuming that I would always lose out to the tiny pretty girl, because that’s the way its always been. And what I felt didn’t matter, because trying to break out of that shell would just end in heartbreak and public humiliation.
Incidentally, several of us former high school rejects would like to strenuously protest that there was no warning label for this scene in Never Been Kissed:
Because that’s what we’re all afraid of. That in an honest attempt to try to not be alone anymore, you will end up in the situational equivalent of hiding in the bushes from your mom because you don’t want to admit that everyone you have to see on Monday morning will have been laughing at your humiliation, but you have to walk in and pretend nothing’s wrong and carry on business as usual in the hopes that if you don’t show you were hurt, this will all be over sooner.
God knows enough of us have been there – why do you think there are so many books for women on how to avoid getting hurt? Let’s run through a couple:
The reason I know about these books is because when you don’t have a man, well-intentioned friends tend to give them to you. Once your status has been outed, you become a joke, and receive things like, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating and Sex as gifts, because they figure maybe if you’re more educated, something will happen. However, while books such as Sex Tips For Straight Women from a Gay Man are interesting, according to The Rules, that’s not something I should even consider until at least the third date, so I gotta work on that part first.
Then there are always the friends who simply think the best way to get you in gear is casual sex, and upon your email joking that you signed up to be an affiliate for a site called OnlineBootyCall.com just because it exists, they write back to you & say, “Have you considered trying it?” Which is just… well, I didn’t reply to that email.
Because out of all of this – the gifted books, the occasional raucous conversation, the well-meaning advice, and many, many a joke at my expense, I have to say that the most valuable lesson I was reminded of lately came not from any of these, but instead from an odd business interaction with a guy who will never know he did it, and an old friend – Jane Austen. Or rather, one of Jane’s students.
Here’s the thing – we as girls are taught to look for the knight in shining armor. He will come sweeping in and solve everything. Even those of us who are ridiculously independent and teach ourselves that such things will never happen… at heart, there’s a part of us that gets tired & every so often thinks that it would be really nice not to do it all on our own. But we’re still expecting them to do all the work.
My biggest problem with what I often see in many relationships is that so much of it is simply an arrangement – financial, sexual, social, circumstantial – whatevz. A lot of people aren’t with the people they’re with because they feel for them. They’re there because it’s easy. Because they fit the parameters that we’ve all been taught we should fit into. Even me – by being alone, I’m continuing to live within the structure that I was told I’m supposed to.
Why do we do this? Because to do something different is…scary. We could get hurt. We could get an egg in thrown at our face as the limo drives by. And nobody wants that. So we each sit back, and wait for the other side to make the great gesture. Women look to men to add the flourish and do all the work. A lot of the time, we expect them to take all the risks. We expect to be rescued.
One of my favorite fairy tales is Cinderella. But not the Disney version with singing birdies. My favorite is Ever After – because really, what’s better than Cinderella with a sword?
Here’s the thing that trailer doesn’t show – at the ball, when she shows up all spiffed out with the pretty wings & it’s just the most romantic thing on earth, do you know what happens?
Prince Charming fucks up.
Something happens that he didn’t expect, that’s outside of his comfort zone, and in a moment when he’s in a situation that he can’t control and scares him… he abandons her. He betrays her publicly, she loses what little she has, and he goes off to try to live his life with the 17th century royalty version of the tiny pretty girl – in this case, a Spanish princess whose willingness to conform turns out to be hilariously worse than his.
Dear Internet: why do you not a clip of the Spanish Princess for me to link to? Bad Internet! FAIL Internet!
In the meantime, what is Cinderella doing? With the aid of a sword & some bad-assery, she’s busy saving herself. Because sometimes, that’s what a girl’s gotta do. In fact, by the time Prince Charming comes to his senses, there’s no grand gesture left for him to execute, and it is in admittance of his own fallibility that he regains the heart of the girl.
The point being that in our worry to defend ourselves, in our want for the other person to just make everything all right, the thing that we often forget is that if you’re scared, there’s a good chance he is too. If your feelings can get hurt, so can his. If you have huge insecurities, he probably does too. And if you can fuck up, so can he. And if you’d like a chance to be forgiven for your fuckups… he probably would too.
Life is not run by rules. You don’t always have to be what you were taught you’re supposed to be. You have a right to be happy, even if inside you’re still the little fat kid. But never forget to recognize that you feel that way – because for all you know, the other person might be a fat kid too.
oh, cosmic muffin – now you’re just makin’ sh*t up.
My goal for the weekend was simple – finish Hotel!Client‘s site and get things uploaded to a test server so that I could upload to their server early in the week.
Unfortunately, the universe had a different idea, as my laptop decided it no longer wanted to recognize my passport that I use as an external hard drive. Granted, this is completely my own fault — the part where you should “safely remove” a device when you take it out of your computer? In the migrant style of work that I have, I am admittedly rather pants at taking the time to do that instead of just pulling the cord & moving on to my next destination. This is doubly sad because as a former IT drudge, I know that the reason you’re not supposed to do that is that it sends a small electrical shock through the device each time, & eventually, it stops working. (As I said to ZenMistressE today, “Really, can you blame it? I mean, if I kept electrocuting you two or three times a day, you’d probably decide to stop working for me too.” :shrug:)
So yesterday & today was spent backing up the files on that over to my WD Book that I use as my backup. However, in the philosophy of trying to roll with what the universe gives me, I can’t help but think that this was a preventative measure on the cosmic muffin’s part, since when I went to Target today to find 4BG flash drive for a ridiculously low price. Considering that I remember when a 1 GB drive was fantastically huge file capacity & we thought it a great deal at $30, I’m totally willing to cop to having had a “uphill in the snow both ways” moment in technology when buying the 4GB.
However, the files are transferred, so there’s work to be doing when I get home from tonight’s Doll gig. After all, sleep is for the weak, right? *snerk*
Whistle while you do it, damn you!
Doll work is ramping up again as people start to poke their heads out from the party hangover of the holidays. Tonight’s my 3rd gig in four nights, & I just got another notice for one tomorrow afternoon, which sadly meant I had to cancel on seeing Avatar with RocketScienceGuy. I tried to reschedule for Monday night, but haven’t heard back from him, so we’ll see if it’s off to the ArcLight for a 3-D in IMAX I go.
I’m still plugging my way through my backlog of work – one site put to bed & ready to be billed this weekend, hopefully soon the Hotel!Client to follow.
I keep putting off starting work for Utah!Co because I feel like I don’t have time while I have all of these other projects, and I need to get in the groove of doing work for them – if nothing else, my one year on unemployment is March 20th, & while the fact that I’ve been partially working for the last year means I should be able to get another extension without any problem, I really just don’t want to have to do that. And to accomplish that, I need to create a steady stream of work to supplement the fact that most of my clients work on a project basis & thus are not chronologically dependable income. However, on the note of trying to set manageable goals for myself, this upcoming week’s benchmark is to complete their tutorials and just complete one or two simple jobs from their task board to use as test cases of their system & billing procedures. Here goes nothin’.
Discovered last night why Fitness!Client hasn’t answered my emails in regards to them not paying their bill — seems that someone else has taken over the company. Not quite sure what happened there, but have sent the new manager (who I’ve met a couple times) an email asking for a meeting to bring them up to date on the site. Even if all I do is hand over files & get paid the balance of the account, that works for me. I’d rather finish their site & launch it, ’cause it’s a good site, but eh :shrug: sometimes you take what you can get.
Let there be light
One thing that’s going forward is fixing things in my apartment. Over the last few months, the lights have slowly been failing – it’s an old building, and I think the ceiling fans might be only slightly younger than… me. My landlord will reimburse me off my rent of course, but he’s a bit cheap, so I can’t just go out & arbitrarily buy whatever, else he’ll insist on fixtures of his choosing, which would just be… bad. So I’ve been shopping for fixtures the way I’d shop if I owned the place – stuff that’s on sale & doesn’t suck. IKEA won the battle for ceiling lights & a wall sconce, but failed for ceiling fans on an epic scale.
After looking at Home Depot, Osh, & a bunch of other hardware places & deciding I didn’t like any of them, I found fans that I liked which weren’t going to cost my firsborn… in the hardware store across the street from my apartment. (Next time, need to look there first. Go team me.) Finally having the cash, I ordered them on Thursday & was lucky enough that they came in on Friday. As a bonus, when I picked them up this morning, I discovered they were actually $10 cheaper than the price listed in the catalog, which should make my landlord happy as well.
The upshot of this being that next Saturday I shall take the day off Dollwork to stay home while an electrician comes in & changes out all of the lights in my apartment. I’m also hoping that we’ll be able to get a plasterer in – last fall’s rain revealed a leak in the apartment above me, so I have two walls that need to be fixed due to water damage. I’m borrowing ZenMistressE‘s steam cleaner, since I figure at that point I’m going to have to move my bed & the couches so the guys can work, so I might as well just kill a crapload of birds in unison & also steam clean my mattress & couches at the same time. (I have hardwood floors with no rugs, so that’s one less thing.)
Good timing on all that as well, since there are a small cadre of Bronzers coming to town President’s Day Weekend. For me, having Bronzers about is the internet equivalent of a high school reunion, and since Polgara & I are pretty much the designated places to crash, much like any high school reunion I can’t help but want my apartment to look decent as part of showing that the years haven’t touched me a bit.
Holy schneikes, where did you all come from?
Somehow, over the last few weeks, I’ve turned around to discover I have a crapload of rowers on my team. They just bloody well fell out of the sky, it would appear. Crew Classic is fast approaching, and thankfully it’s beginning to look like I won’t have to double up races – I mean, just because I can do two 2k races in one day that Sunday doesn’t mean I want to. I called a meeting with my coaches for tomorrow since it’s all happened rather fast & I think right now I’m the only one that actually knows what’s going on — as I said to the others, “I think that the knowledge should be somewhere other than in my head, since let’s face it – my head doesn’t always work!”
Okies. Time to go meander my way up Laurel Canyon for a bit. 20 cars with a shuttle, a TC & 3 valets — in Dollspeak, that means “Small party with unavoidably messed up semantics”… oy. Hopefully, they tip well.
…I am angry all of the time, and deeply confused, because a lot of people in my life have let me down recently – one of them was me. It’s devastating, but not completely because it turns out I like sleeping crosswise in the bed & not having to shave my legs.
- Miranda Bailey, Grey’s Anatomy
—————————————————————————-
For my 16th birthday, my mom suggested that we go to Boston & do something. The library had passes to most of the local museums, so it wouldn’t cost much for me to pick from the list & we could go down & have like, a family day or whatever — I’m guessing that’s what normal families call it, right? Bonding or whatever that crap is.
As the middle child, this seemed a rare event – after all, my sister got to do everything first*, and my brother was the baby and more-important male child, so his benchmarks were met with a tear of nostalgia as it being “the last time we’ll do this”. My life was one less worthy of notice – except of course, for when there was rent short or the electric bill due. Then I (in the form of my small bank account) was something to be praised.
*the one exception being a college degree – I did manage to beat her to the finish there.
So to have a day that was for me — that was something special in my world. It’s been a long-standing joke in my family that my birthday was either disastrous or skipped. The plot of Sixteen Candles seems a bit farfetched – everyone skips your birthday? Yeah. I get that. Except there’s never been a Prince Charming at the end to make up for it.
That in mind, I chose the Boston MFA. I’d never been – even by that time, I already had two jobs, and my weekends were spent either raising someone else’s child or contributing to people’s KMart shopping experience. I had no car of my own, and a 40 hour work week while in high school doesn’ exactly make one a social magnet of popularity, so there were very few friends to catch rides with. To me, to be able to just go be an artist for a day seemed like a finally decent birthday for myself.
My family couldn’t understand why I didn’t enjoy the Museum of Science.
After all, as my mother pointed out, the rest of the family would be bored at the art museum, so we’d be better off going somewhere that my siblings would like as well.
———–
Last October, my grandmother died. I flew back to NH for the funeral, staying almost exactly 48 hours. I crashed in a hotel with my sister & brother-in-law, and accidentally brought about a revelation for my sister in the process.
We got back to the hotel after the wake, and my b-i-l was ripsh*t. Pissed off. b-i-l has long had a rather…cotentious opinion of my parents – in truth, my move to California was prompted because one day, after hearing my sister joke about the fact that I’d been the one walking around the house locking up each night since the age of 12, he sat me down & said, “You can stay here until September 1st. Then I want you gone. And it’s not because I don’t love you – you’re like my own sister. But you need to leave here, or you won’t have a life of your own. It’s not your job to take care of them – they were supposed to have taken care of you. Go take care of you.” And he was right. Three months after that, I packed up a U-Haul trailer in the rain, and I pulled out of their driveway. No one was there to say goodbye – they all had to be at work, & couldn’t take time off, so I finished things up, drove cross-country alone, and started over again three thousand miles away.
Nine years later, my b-i-l stormed into a hotel room in NH, cursing my mother’s name up & down. My sister couldn’t understand what he was so upset about.
My mother, you see, didn’t have my grandmother’s wake as a testament to my grandmother’s life so much as it was to how great a daughter my mother had been. And as my mom introduced her children on parade to my grandmother’s friends, the speech went thusly:
“…This is my oldest daughter OlderSister. She lives in NC with her husband and my grandson, FirstSpawn. This is my son, YoungerBrother. Yes, he’s just left the military and came out from California – he’s moving back here in a few weeks, we’re all looking forward to it… and this is my other daughter, Claris.”
After three hours of hearing me mentioned as an afterthought, my b-i-l was less than pleased. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more upset, and I merely shrugged & explained, “It’s been that way for 29 years, man. Why should anything change now?”
Once enlightened to the event, my sister’s reaction: “Oh my god, she totally does that – I just… stopped noticing.” I found out later that when OlderSister brought it up to him, YoungerBrother shared that sentiment almost verbatim.
———–
I have spent my life being… disposable. The minute there’s trouble, the second I’m not pleasing or convenient, I am no longer of use. Years of customer service really were the best thing that could have happened to me – whether in jobs, in life, or at the boathouse, I gained the ability to walk right past rudeness, stupidity and other insults without blinking an eye, because the moment I stand up for myself or expect to be treated fairly, I am too much trouble. I am too difficult. I will be cast aside so that other people won’t have to deal with the fact that they may have fucked up themselves. No matter what proof I have, no matter that I was not treated fairly, even the fact that the person who did it now knows they erred – that doesn’t matter. Making things right so that I don’t have to live with things hanging over my head – I’m not worth that effort. To anyone, it would seem. I have in fact been told flat out that my personal feelings don’t matter. That I am blacklisted, and that I will forever be on thin ice because of it.
Because at the end of the day, I am what I have always been.
Disposable.
I learned long ago – if I cry, I will cry alone. No one will hug me, no one will make it better. I need to be logical, businesslike. Pleasing. I need to take care of myself, because no matter what people say or how nice they are, when the chips are down… well I’m not the girl that people are willing to stand up for. Not when it would matter. In the end, it really is my own fault – I learned three years ago these were not people who do the right thing, I shouldn’t be all that surprised to find out 7 is actually worse than 8 – at least that one was ignorant when he erred — this one knows it’s wrong & is choosing to leave things be.
So now I am faced with a choice – I can stay, and give up any hope of doing something that I loved. Something that I was, if we’re going to be immodestly honest, pretty f*ckin’ good at. I wouldn’t say I knew everything there was to know, but I know I didn’t suck. I could work, maybe go to art school, but do so knowing that I’m giving up that part of me.
Or I can leave to try to do it somewhere else. I can pick up and leave what little home I’ve managed to create for myself over the last nine years. Leave the team I’d created, what bit of a life I’ve carved out for myself, and start all over again somewhere else – to get away from this, I would probably have to go out of state, as ours is what can be kindly called a niche industry & thus everyone knows everyone else.
This is not a decision to be made definitively tonight – I have several life semantics to be settled before I can safely throw my weight either way so that whichever way I decide, it is on my terms – I will at least ensure myself that dignity.
For now I have to continue on, even with this over my head – I have to pretend that I’m fine, even though I feel like I spend way too much time crying. I have to smile, despite the fact that I haven’t figured out how to fix the hole in my back tooth that I got when this all started in the fall & I discovered that when you have a tendency to throw up when upset & it carries on for an extended period of time, eventually the acidic nature of vomit will cause your fillings to fall out. I have a team that’s looking to me to lead them, even though the last thing I want to do on god’s good green earth is a 2k erg sprint on Sunday.
So I’m going to go to bed for two & a half hours, and then Kate will wake me up at 4:45am. Then I’ll get in a single and do 10k @ heart rate. Then I will shower. I will take my 5-HTP in the hopes that the extra seratonin will push me through doing a couple hours’ work at Starbucks before going back to the boathouse to hit up 4x500m to make sure that my hip won’t crap out on me on a sprint this weekend. Then I will shower again, hit up another dose, eat an apple so that my stomach doesn’t rebel against me for taking pills on an empty stomach, go home, pack my bag for tomorrow, & start over again.
This is life. This is how it works. My personal feelings don’t matter. I need to pick myself up, & give up anything I might feel for others. I have to leave them to their pitfalls & stumbles. I cannot afford the luxury of compassion, for any time I have shown humanity or mercy to these people, I have gotten nothing but kicked in the teeth for my effort, and I have quite enough literal dental work at this point, there’s no need to add any more metaphorical items to the list.
So I’m going to listen to the advice that my b-i-l gave me all those years ago. I’m going to look out for me. I need to make sure that I’m okay. Because no one else is going to do that. As has always been the case, there’s someone that other people deem more important, and I am expected to make way for them. After all, to them, I’m expendable. I’m collateral damage. Disposable.
—————————————————————————- It is not what we say or what we feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do.
~ Sense & Sensibility
Had dinner the other night with a guy who’d mentioned on Facebook that he’d re-learned a life lesson. Personally, I’d guessed “Never get into a land war in Asia“, but it turns out that through the surprising ease of a telephone call, the universe had once again proved that things really aren’t nearly as bad as you think they’re going to be.
I had that yesterday. I was walking into a client meeting that afternoon that I was not looking forward to — I was certain that what I’d produced was horrid, and in no way what they’d want. I expected to lose the account, and simply be paid off so I could shuffle away, rejected again. Instead, I was surprised to find that not only were they pleased with what I’d done & wanted to continue, but there was a small group of employees who actually had a second project with a small side company outside of their employer which they wanted to retain me for. I’d walked in thinking I was going to be dismissed, and instead drove away a bit startled at having somehow gained another client with no extraneous effort on my part.
This morning, after a bit of Tetris regarding the contents of my car wherein I removed all the accoutrement for valet-ing which I’m temporarily in possession of & replaced them with an erg which I’d borrowed for Thanksgiving & needed to return to the boathouse, I came to the rather distressing discovery that my battery was indeed dead beyond the jumping of it. Since Zoom-Zoom was double-parked at the time (which was about 5:45am), I was only able to toss her into neutral and roll down the hill until I was close enough to the first stretch of curb & park until a decent hour when I could call a tow truck. (Note to self: ask Santa for AAA for Christmas)
At the time, I didn’t know what precisely the problem was, so in the process of moving the two halves of the erg back up the block to my apartment (really, I should have unloaded the car again, then moved it, however I was more worried about a ticket for double parking), I reflected that really, it hasn’t exactly been a stellar year in general, the last three months in particular. After all, as I mentioned in that self-same dinner conversation, nothing is better than having an administrator at a major university say without actually using the words that you’re a psychotic whore as you discover exactly what people you’d been foolish enough to trust had been lying to others about you.
So you have that moment where you stand in your apartment with the detritus of your life strewn about the living room where you’ve shoved it in an effort to clear your car because you don’t know how long it’s going to be gone after that tow truck takes it away, and you take a moment to take a deep breath as you think about your car possibly needing costly repairs, you think about people who hurt you, you think about being tired of having to scrap for everything in your life, you think about why you bother to try to be anything more than the unfortunate lack of awareness that others seem to prefer, and wonder why it seems like nastiness and lying are all it takes to get what one wants, since those seem to be the people who get to win.
Then perchance you see the keys in your hand. You look at the fact that there are two keys for the front door instead of one, because the last time you were stupid & trusted the wrong person to do the right thing, someone else was sent to physically attack you, and it warranted changing the locks on your apartment. You smile a little at how much that hurt – him. (Trying to take on a former kickboxing instructor wasn’t the smartest path to physical victory on an aggressor’s part.) You remember the last time people whispered that you were crazy, that you’d once before survived whispers behind your back, lived through watching as each person found out and either stopped talking to you or just stared at you funny.
Then you remind yourself how it turned out for that bunch in the end. You remember that when life shook out, you were okay. That liars don’t last, and that this time, you are not alone — you remind yourself that you have people to take care of, and a responsibility to protect them. You give yourself the same chat you had with a newly minted coach a bit earlier — that those who refuse to sit and face those they have accused are at best hiding something, at worst flat out lying, and much like the lesson regarding arguing with Sicilians when death is on the line, history has repeatedly proven they will eventually be shown for what they truly are.
You take another deep breath, admonish yourself that if one looks at the calendar this is most likely being amplified by those annoying hormones whose monthly upsurge has inconveniently increased over the last few years, and pick up the book you bought yesterday. You walk back down to your car to read for an hour or so until you could call the mechanic, since the only available curb space you’d been able to slide into had sported a stylish but municipally unfortunate shade of red.
And there, in your car, you read your new book, and discover a girl named Alexia. You laugh out loud in the happy reminder that not all of the urban fantasy genre has been run over by twitards. Once the tow truck comes and your car has been successfully ensconced at the mechanic’s, you possibly blow off work for the morning to finish the story, feeling so much better by the end. After this, the news from Tito that it’s not a starter, alternator or electrical short but instead needing a new battery which might be covered under dealer warranty is like a lovely lemon glaze on the shortbread you were considering making this weekend.
You get up, you shower, you get your car. You do dishes, and laundry, and talk to neighbors while a small pack of medium to almost ignominiously large dogs run around, the smallest of which is yours & the largest of which has decided your dog is his new girlfriend, causing great canine confusion, since much like her mother, Zoey had resigned herself to being on the shelf quite some time ago and doesn’t know how to handle such attention when the odd occurrence… occurs.
You get the mail & discover a client has paid a long-due bill. The phone rings, and you’re asked to spec out a quote on a job you don’t even remember applying for. Goat cheese pizza from Trader Joe’s & Peach Passion tea heavily laced with sugar make the outlook even better, as does the promise offered by the twenty new recipes acquired yesterday for this weekend’s cookie bake-stravaganza with friends.
And even though you haven’t done a scrap of work for the day, it’s not that bad. There’s a happy dog, a few basketfulls of clean warm laundry, including towels that are soft and smell lovely, plenty of tea left to be had, and life that while it does look to continue its historically solitary trend in the area of romance, does contain the comfort of friends and the vague promise of art school this summer, since at least the aforementioned dinner conversation meant you’ll be able to put the first month’s tuition in the bank – while two and a half months’ tuition would have been the fair price, you learned from last time that it’s better to smile, be agreeable, and make oneself free and clear as soon as possible. You remind yourself that it’s best to cut ties, to distance oneself from what’s coming, even if as often seems to be your lot in this life, you’re the only one who can see it on the horizon.
For you have also learned your own personal lesson again – you cannot always prevent the storm. No matter how one might try, one must discern when it’s best to leave others to their drenching.
After all, there are cookies to make, and websites to create, and stories to be spun, and paintings which have gone unfinished for far too long – as any artist can tell you, once you decide to do so, it’s actually quite simple to draw a line.
To borrow from Alexia’s philosophy, my parasol is admittedly a bit odd. However I find that when in use, it has the odd effect of accomplishing the most astonishing things.
. Other than the obvious gender issue, I grew up in much the same way as Kev – blue collar (in my case, closer to the “poor” end of the spectrum), creative in a factory-worker world, annoyed by the fuckers who thought they were awesome ’cause they had more money, and working in a crap job because that was the only way to survive in the hopes of one day getting out.
as gifts, because they figure maybe if you’re more educated, something will happen. However, while books such as 
are interesting, according to 
. Granted, this is completely my own fault — the part where you should “safely remove” a device when you take it out of your computer? In the migrant style of work that I have, I am admittedly rather pants at taking the time to do that instead of just pulling the cord & moving on to my next destination. This is doubly sad because as a former IT drudge, I know that the reason you’re not supposed to do that is that it sends a small electrical shock through the device each time, & eventually, it stops working. (As I said to ZenMistressE today, “Really, can you blame it? I mean, if I kept electrocuting you two or three times a day, you’d probably decide to stop working for me too.” :shrug:)
. However, in the philosophy of trying to roll with what the universe gives me, I can’t help but think that this was a preventative measure on the cosmic muffin’s part, since when I went to Target today to find 
. Considering that I remember when a 1 GB drive was fantastically huge file capacity & we thought it a great deal at $30, I’m totally willing to cop to having had a “uphill in the snow both ways” moment in technology when buying the 4GB.
“, but it turns out that through the surprising ease of a telephone call, the universe had once again proved that things really aren’t nearly as bad as you think they’re going to be.
. You laugh out loud in the happy reminder that not all of the urban fantasy genre has been run over by 
