So living here is becoming increasingly difficult. School has started and I have ten hour days consisting of classes and work with little breaks. That isn't the hard part though.
I wake up every morning at six and am at school by 7:30, for the chilling, below zero, three quarter mile, up hill hike to campus from the student parking lot. Classes or work start at 8 and I don't really stop going until 6 each night. By the time I get home, all I want to do is eat my dinner, get my reading and homework done and get back in bed. But unfortunately the time I have at night hasn’t been getting completely filled and I finish my homework, I finish my reading and then there is the nothingness that seems to perpetually haunt me.
I knew it would be hard, moving to a town where I didn’t know anyone, but it’s so much harder than I thought it would be. I don’t even need someone to fill the silence, I just want someone to sit in it with me. It’s hard being so far away from everyone that knows me. And it’s just weird on campus, I feel eons older than the other students on campus. They walk around with their spandex pants tucked into their ug boots. They tuck their pants into their boots for fashion, I do it for practical reasons, and my boots are rubber bottomed, mens muck boots from target, even if I was trying I couldn’t make a fashion statement with them. The girls walk around with their thongs haning out and words splashed across the but of their pants. Today I saw a girl in furry stilletto boots (I live in the mountains, how very practical right?) with pajama pants with the word “delicious” written across her ass and as she bent over to get something out of her book bag her thong popped out and a piece of bedazzled jewelry reading “love” was attached to the top of her underwear. The kids on campus were born in the 90’s, which means they dress like it’s 1987. They couldn’t care less about anything of importance like the fact that we were just part of history, watching Obama be inaugurated. Sarcasm is a dead art form. All they want to do is get drunk, party and make asses out of themselves. How am I supposed to find commonalities? I’m just overwhelmed…there is so much empty time and so little to fill it with.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
i never thought i could hate a dog so much
The woman who moved into the apartment above me brought along a dog she claimed was a chihuahua, though I have never actually seen the dog, I'm pretty sure she is a liar liar pants on fire. Her apartment, from what I gather has a wood floor, and from the clatter of paws slapping the floor this dog she claims to be so tiny weighs at least 45 pounds. It runs back and forth in the apartment all night long, and at 5:10 this morning when she was getting ready, to do god knows what, the dog decided it wanted to run back and forth above my bedroom and bark on and off for the next hour.
When I decided that sleep was no longer an option I pondered the idea of going up and banging on the door and telling her if she didn’t shut that thing up I would shut it up permanently, but I thought that might be a little harsh. Though if it continues at this rate I might just be forced to do something most decent people would regret.
When I decided that sleep was no longer an option I pondered the idea of going up and banging on the door and telling her if she didn’t shut that thing up I would shut it up permanently, but I thought that might be a little harsh. Though if it continues at this rate I might just be forced to do something most decent people would regret.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
church hunt
This morning as I was getting ready to check out yet another church put on John Coltrane and Duke Ellington’s “Big Nick” and drank my coffee. Coltrane always puts me into a contemplative mood. As I sat with my coffee I thought about all the bad church experiences I have had. And I have had a LOT, let me tell you. Most of them actually being here.
I was recently on the phone with my sister dicussing the idea of church and she gave me these sage words. If you aren’t out in an hour, they are doing something wrong. If they are yelling Hallelujah and Praise You Jesus while singing, they are too in touch with the ‘Holy Spirit’ (AKA probably drank too much of the communion wine before church). If the pasto’s wife is wearing a dress with shoulder pads, they take themselves too seriously. If there are more people on stage singing and doing other musical related things, they have no sense of what good music really is. As I thought this morning about my church experiences here in Delhi, and compared them to the things I had talked about with my sister, I realized the one thing that I want, I won’t ever have again. I FREAKING MISS ARTISAN. It was, and always will be the best church that I have ever gone to. There was this harmonious balance of reality and religion all in one. There was no bull shit. The pastos give it to you like it really is. And the fact that there are four pastors makes such sense. If you split the perfect pastor into four sections, we will call these A, B, C and D for lack of proper terms, then parts a-d would be the four areas a pastor should be “fluent in” (also for lack of a better term). It’s nearly, if not completely impossible to find one person who excells in all four areas, and Artisan was smart enough to recognize that, so instead of searching for the perfect pastor, four men came together, each excelling in one of the four areas, and combined they made a great team, because they each possessed a skill that they other’s were not fluent in.
So having been to such a well rounded church, one that fit my style, one that worked perfectly for me, it is hard to find another. Some people say you only get one great love of your life. What if you only get one great church?
The first church I went to had seven people on stage doing, what I can only call, sound. I refuse to refer to what they tried to do as music. One drummer, on guitar player (with a mic also), one piano player, and four people making noises into microphones. One woman was singing in a completely different key as the rest of the people on stage, The guitar player did a lot of “praising you jesus” into the mic, instead of singing. Needless to say it was atrocious! So I left. I only stayed for about ten minutes, but once I got to my car I realized that I forgot my sunglasses, there was no way in hell that I was going back for them though. I would rather spend the $10 to buy another pair! I went to another church I had on my list, luckily it was right down the road and didn’t start until 10:30, so I had some time.
The second I walked in I was already regretting it, but I decided to give it a chance. The first problem occurred when I walked in the door, I couldn’t find the sanctuary, and it was dead silent, so there was no way I could listen for people. When I finally found the sanctuary I crept in the back and everyone was just sitting inside in silence. Creepy. Finally someone came up to the front and prayed and went back to his seat, a little confused I decided to give them five more minutes! So someone starts singing and I hear a guitar pick up. When I say someone started singing, it was weird. Someone stood up, then everyone else stood up, in the congregation that is, and then this one random person starts singing a song. The girl working the overhead projector rummages through a box of overheads looking for the song that the random person started singing, and she finds it. Meanwhile in the back of the room, yes the back corner, the band starts following the song. And it proceeded like this for an HOUR. A whole hour of someone starting a song and everyone else following. After the LONGEST hour of my life someone finally came up to teach, for fifteen minutes. After he was done I bolted.
I was recently on the phone with my sister dicussing the idea of church and she gave me these sage words. If you aren’t out in an hour, they are doing something wrong. If they are yelling Hallelujah and Praise You Jesus while singing, they are too in touch with the ‘Holy Spirit’ (AKA probably drank too much of the communion wine before church). If the pasto’s wife is wearing a dress with shoulder pads, they take themselves too seriously. If there are more people on stage singing and doing other musical related things, they have no sense of what good music really is. As I thought this morning about my church experiences here in Delhi, and compared them to the things I had talked about with my sister, I realized the one thing that I want, I won’t ever have again. I FREAKING MISS ARTISAN. It was, and always will be the best church that I have ever gone to. There was this harmonious balance of reality and religion all in one. There was no bull shit. The pastos give it to you like it really is. And the fact that there are four pastors makes such sense. If you split the perfect pastor into four sections, we will call these A, B, C and D for lack of proper terms, then parts a-d would be the four areas a pastor should be “fluent in” (also for lack of a better term). It’s nearly, if not completely impossible to find one person who excells in all four areas, and Artisan was smart enough to recognize that, so instead of searching for the perfect pastor, four men came together, each excelling in one of the four areas, and combined they made a great team, because they each possessed a skill that they other’s were not fluent in.
So having been to such a well rounded church, one that fit my style, one that worked perfectly for me, it is hard to find another. Some people say you only get one great love of your life. What if you only get one great church?
The first church I went to had seven people on stage doing, what I can only call, sound. I refuse to refer to what they tried to do as music. One drummer, on guitar player (with a mic also), one piano player, and four people making noises into microphones. One woman was singing in a completely different key as the rest of the people on stage, The guitar player did a lot of “praising you jesus” into the mic, instead of singing. Needless to say it was atrocious! So I left. I only stayed for about ten minutes, but once I got to my car I realized that I forgot my sunglasses, there was no way in hell that I was going back for them though. I would rather spend the $10 to buy another pair! I went to another church I had on my list, luckily it was right down the road and didn’t start until 10:30, so I had some time.
The second I walked in I was already regretting it, but I decided to give it a chance. The first problem occurred when I walked in the door, I couldn’t find the sanctuary, and it was dead silent, so there was no way I could listen for people. When I finally found the sanctuary I crept in the back and everyone was just sitting inside in silence. Creepy. Finally someone came up to the front and prayed and went back to his seat, a little confused I decided to give them five more minutes! So someone starts singing and I hear a guitar pick up. When I say someone started singing, it was weird. Someone stood up, then everyone else stood up, in the congregation that is, and then this one random person starts singing a song. The girl working the overhead projector rummages through a box of overheads looking for the song that the random person started singing, and she finds it. Meanwhile in the back of the room, yes the back corner, the band starts following the song. And it proceeded like this for an HOUR. A whole hour of someone starting a song and everyone else following. After the LONGEST hour of my life someone finally came up to teach, for fifteen minutes. After he was done I bolted.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
my sister
What you feel means nothing. People don’t care how you feel. It’s what you do to the people you love that means something. How you treat them, what they see, that’s what really matters. I guess you could call what I have been going through a quarter life crisis, if I live to be 96 that is. If you have been keeping up with my blog then you will surely know that I am crazy, and a little bit of a bitch too, but mostly I’ve been taking stock of how I ended up here
My sister is very blunt, she doesn’t possess the sympathy gene either, nor does she even try to fake it. My sister is a lot like me in the sense that she says exactly what she is thinking without regard for other people’s feelings. With me, she doesn’t care if the truth will hurt my feelings, she feels it is her job as an older sister to say “I told you so” as often as possible! So as we were saying goodbye she left me with this nugget of wisdom.
“Good luck at school. Don’t fuck it up, the least you could do is not drop out the first semester. Mom and dad will be too far away to come bail your ass out!”
Let me translate that for you… “Good luck at school, I know you’ll do great!” Now I’m sure you’re thinking that what actually happened was she said the latter and I interpreted the former, but in reality, my sister said those very words to me. Little nuggets of wisdom by Rebecca Mesh McCaffery.
I love my sister because she is always honest with me. She is always the first to say I told you so, and the first to tell me how much I crapped all over my life, she was the first person to tell me how fucked up I am, and suggest therapy, but because she is my sister I rarely take her advice. But looking back I’m pretty sure if I had taken EVERY piece of advice she had given me in the last six years I would be a much different person, with a lot less heart ache and screw ups in my past. It’s taken me 24 years to realize just how right she is.
If Bec has taught me one thing in my life, it’s to laugh. Laugh at myself, and laugh at my mistakes. She has taught me to not take life so seriously, or I will never get out alive (can anyone name the movie I just quoted???). If I can laugh at my mistakes then I can learn from them. No one in the world can make me laugh as hard as my sister, and no one has taught me as much as my sister has.
So my quarter life crisis went as such. I realized what a loser I was, and then I remembered to laugh at myself, and could finally recognize and appreciate that it’s ok to be a loser. As long as you know it! There is no one I love more in the world than my sister because she has taught me my most important life lessons. Adam, her husband, once told me that one of the things he loves most about Becca is her ability to laugh at herself. She taught me that among a million other things and for that I will always be grateful.
My sister is very blunt, she doesn’t possess the sympathy gene either, nor does she even try to fake it. My sister is a lot like me in the sense that she says exactly what she is thinking without regard for other people’s feelings. With me, she doesn’t care if the truth will hurt my feelings, she feels it is her job as an older sister to say “I told you so” as often as possible! So as we were saying goodbye she left me with this nugget of wisdom.
“Good luck at school. Don’t fuck it up, the least you could do is not drop out the first semester. Mom and dad will be too far away to come bail your ass out!”
Let me translate that for you… “Good luck at school, I know you’ll do great!” Now I’m sure you’re thinking that what actually happened was she said the latter and I interpreted the former, but in reality, my sister said those very words to me. Little nuggets of wisdom by Rebecca Mesh McCaffery.
I love my sister because she is always honest with me. She is always the first to say I told you so, and the first to tell me how much I crapped all over my life, she was the first person to tell me how fucked up I am, and suggest therapy, but because she is my sister I rarely take her advice. But looking back I’m pretty sure if I had taken EVERY piece of advice she had given me in the last six years I would be a much different person, with a lot less heart ache and screw ups in my past. It’s taken me 24 years to realize just how right she is.
If Bec has taught me one thing in my life, it’s to laugh. Laugh at myself, and laugh at my mistakes. She has taught me to not take life so seriously, or I will never get out alive (can anyone name the movie I just quoted???). If I can laugh at my mistakes then I can learn from them. No one in the world can make me laugh as hard as my sister, and no one has taught me as much as my sister has.
So my quarter life crisis went as such. I realized what a loser I was, and then I remembered to laugh at myself, and could finally recognize and appreciate that it’s ok to be a loser. As long as you know it! There is no one I love more in the world than my sister because she has taught me my most important life lessons. Adam, her husband, once told me that one of the things he loves most about Becca is her ability to laugh at herself. She taught me that among a million other things and for that I will always be grateful.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Finally done!
I finally finished my apartment, I just unpacked the last trinket and threw away the final box!!! It only took me a week and a half but that’s ok, it gave me something to do while I was alone here. Though what I will do for the next four days until orientation, I have no idea, but I finally feel like I live here. Pictures are on the walls and everything I look at reminds me of someone or someplace that I love!
Jack the Cat
There’s a stray cat that lives outside my building. And the past couple of nights it’s been below zero and I’m so terrified that she is going to freeze in the middle night. She’s a stranger danger cat, meaning she is pretty scared of me at this point. I went to the grocery store to buy kitty food and treats to charm her, and thus far it is working. While she was out exploring yesterday I set up a bed in the open faced shed in my backyard. I took a box left over from moving and set an old bathmat inside and made a bed out of some raggety towels my mom sent for me to use as rags. I left some treats in the bed so she would get inside and test it out. This morning when I left to run errands she was sitting inside the bed and she looked relatively content! When I came back she was still in her bed so I ran inside and got some more treats and slowly crouched down and layed them on the ground in front of me. It took her a couple of minutes to warm up to me, at first she would take a treat and run away and eat it, then come back for another, but after a while she slowly approached and stayed there to eat the rest. I think it will take her a while to get used to me, but I hope that she does, she is pretty adorable!
As soon as she does get used to me I want to take her to the animal shelter, apparently Heidi's daughter works there, random, but cool and very convenient! So I'm hoping to take Jack, that's what I've taken to calling her, to make sure she is healthy, and get her shots etc. I really hope this works out, I could use a friend!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Hide your crazy...
So I’m driving today and I look out the window because a huge sign in the center of a compound of double wides has caught my attention. First let me paint you a picture of what I was looking at. Five double wides, set in a semi circle, half dozen four wheelers, at least three cars on blocks without plates, and on one side of the sign a huge cross with Jesus hanging on it, and on the other side two deer, taught and strung up by their hind feet, with slits down their center and blood dripping from their insides. So this, what can only be described as magnificant, sign says in big black letters “Jesus or Hell, you choose. He don’t take Homos, Terrorists, Jews, Muslims, or Sinners” Only Hell was written in red and it was circled and had flames around it.
Where do I begin? I like that they specified sinners at the end, as if, in the case of born again christians, everyone isn’t considered a sinner. Now I’m wondering what posses people to put stupid crap like that in their front yard. Hide your crazy people. People don’t want to see that shit, it just pisses them off. I mean come on, seriously. But I guess I do live in the deep back woods of the mountains, I’m talking like white supremacist territory. Where you don’t let people know you are Jewish or Muslim or Gay or an Obama supporter or really anything but a God fearin', Bush lovin', gun tottin' Republican, sell your stocks, cash in your social security and stock up on canned food folks a negro has been elected president the world is coming to an end.
Where is the peace, love and acceptance that the bible teaches? Clearly not down in the mountains?
Where do I begin? I like that they specified sinners at the end, as if, in the case of born again christians, everyone isn’t considered a sinner. Now I’m wondering what posses people to put stupid crap like that in their front yard. Hide your crazy people. People don’t want to see that shit, it just pisses them off. I mean come on, seriously. But I guess I do live in the deep back woods of the mountains, I’m talking like white supremacist territory. Where you don’t let people know you are Jewish or Muslim or Gay or an Obama supporter or really anything but a God fearin', Bush lovin', gun tottin' Republican, sell your stocks, cash in your social security and stock up on canned food folks a negro has been elected president the world is coming to an end.
Where is the peace, love and acceptance that the bible teaches? Clearly not down in the mountains?
Saturday, January 10, 2009
What a small world!
So I'm standing in the clothing section of the bookstore on campus yesterday trying to figure out which hideous outfit that I need to have for my cooking lab this semester when someone walks over to see if I need any help. I make some sort of sarcastic remark about how hot I'm going to look in this get up and then say that at least the cooks at Wegmans didn't have to wear these retard poofy hats. Cooks got to wear skull caps. And this kid asks me which Wegmans I worked at, and I said "Oh, I'm from Rochester." As if that's a response to his question.
"I'm from Rochester too, well outside Rochester, I'm from Hilton."
You've got to be kidding me, what are the chances that two people from such a small town would end up at such a small college? So of course I respond with excitment "I'm totally from Hilton too!" as if I have always loved Hilton and am so proud to hail from the small town. I'm pretty sure in my whole life that the only thing I'm ever proud of, when it comes to Hilton, is the apple fest. But we were talking about high school, and I was showing enthusiasm, it's probably just because it had been a couple days since I had socialized with anyone! So he asks me my name and what year I graduated, and it turns out that he is only one year behind me, but no shock here, he has NO IDEA who I am! And now I have to explain to him what a loser I was in high school and that I spent most of my time in the band room with my three friends! And that I am in now way shocked or offended that he doesn't remember me.
So we continue with our banter for another couple of minutes and then run out of things to say, and per my usual, I make it awkward and decide that it's time to leave before I put my foot in my mouth any further. All in all it was relatively productive day. I got my chef's outfit (which I look absolutely ridiculous in...pictures to come!) and I got my knife set. (I know what you are thinking, me and knives...not good, but I assure you that they will teach us how to properly use them, and I'm not like my brother so I wont be cutting any digits off!)
"I'm from Rochester too, well outside Rochester, I'm from Hilton."
You've got to be kidding me, what are the chances that two people from such a small town would end up at such a small college? So of course I respond with excitment "I'm totally from Hilton too!" as if I have always loved Hilton and am so proud to hail from the small town. I'm pretty sure in my whole life that the only thing I'm ever proud of, when it comes to Hilton, is the apple fest. But we were talking about high school, and I was showing enthusiasm, it's probably just because it had been a couple days since I had socialized with anyone! So he asks me my name and what year I graduated, and it turns out that he is only one year behind me, but no shock here, he has NO IDEA who I am! And now I have to explain to him what a loser I was in high school and that I spent most of my time in the band room with my three friends! And that I am in now way shocked or offended that he doesn't remember me.
So we continue with our banter for another couple of minutes and then run out of things to say, and per my usual, I make it awkward and decide that it's time to leave before I put my foot in my mouth any further. All in all it was relatively productive day. I got my chef's outfit (which I look absolutely ridiculous in...pictures to come!) and I got my knife set. (I know what you are thinking, me and knives...not good, but I assure you that they will teach us how to properly use them, and I'm not like my brother so I wont be cutting any digits off!)
Friday, January 9, 2009
back to the present
So finally, enough prefacing, time for the post office story. I was informed by the super in my building that there is no mailbox key, and she has to contact my landlord about finding it. So I think, maybe if I go to the post office they might be able to just get me a spare key. I don’t know much about mailboxes apparently because they don’t just give out keys. I walk into the post office at 1:57, and I see the lady behind the window chatting away, not serving me, and so naturally I decide to be obnoxious.
“Excuse me?” I try to take the bitchy edge of the tone I would normally use in this type of situation.
“We’re not open until 2:oo.” She doesn’t even look at me when she says this.
“Then why are you’re doors unlocked?”
“We’re on lunch, you’ll have to wait until 2:00.” She isn’t eating anything, she’s just leaning against the open window, chatting with someone I can’t even see, and at this point it’s 1:59.
“Ok, what can I do for you?”
I explain to her that I’m new in town, that I just moved here three days ago and then I continue with my question about the mailbox key.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that, it’s not our problem” she barks.
“Um what? How is the mail not your problem, this is the post office isn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to handle the mail? I just need a key, or if you can stop forwarding the mail to my apartment and I can just pick it up here?”
“No, like I said it’s not my problem, you’ll have to talk to the landlord about the key.”
“He doesn’t have one, that’s why I came here.”
“Well what do you want me to do about it?” She may have rolled here eyes at this point but I stopped paying attention as I was trying not jump over the counter and rip her throat out. Not one person all day had been able to help me with any of my questions and this lady was the straw that broke the camel’s back, if the straw were a bitchy middle aged postal worker.
With a calm and straight face I say something to the effect of “Listen lady, I’m sorry that you hate your life, if I were stuck in a lowsy paying public servants position I would hate my life too, but what I need from you right now is not for you to be a bitch, but simply to answer my questions as if you remotely cared about where you next pay check came from. So stop telling me that it’s not your problem because this is a post office, and you work here so I’m pretty sure it is your problem when I’m not getting my mail, because that’s your job. What I want you to do about it is to see how we can fix the missing key situation. Can you handle that?”
(I'm sure what I said wasn't exactly that mean, but if you have ever seen You've Got Mail then you would understand my lack of appropriate zingers. But this time I was on fire)
She walked away, everyone, well all three people, in the post office were staring, another lady came to the window. “Ma’am, is there a problem?”
“I just want to know how to I get a knew mailbox key?”
“You’re landlord has to find it, and if he doesn’t have it he’ll have to pay to have a new box put in.”
“Thank you that’s all I wanted to know.”
As I walked out I heard an older lady mumbling that I must be from the city. Maybe I should move to NYC, because than people wouldn’t think I was socially retarded, and people wouldn’t notice that I don’t have a filter, they would just think I were normal!
Needless to say I won't be frequenting the post office in town anymore. I'm sure they have a pencil sketch of my on the wall prohibiting my admittance anyway!
“Excuse me?” I try to take the bitchy edge of the tone I would normally use in this type of situation.
“We’re not open until 2:oo.” She doesn’t even look at me when she says this.
“Then why are you’re doors unlocked?”
“We’re on lunch, you’ll have to wait until 2:00.” She isn’t eating anything, she’s just leaning against the open window, chatting with someone I can’t even see, and at this point it’s 1:59.
“Ok, what can I do for you?”
I explain to her that I’m new in town, that I just moved here three days ago and then I continue with my question about the mailbox key.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that, it’s not our problem” she barks.
“Um what? How is the mail not your problem, this is the post office isn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to handle the mail? I just need a key, or if you can stop forwarding the mail to my apartment and I can just pick it up here?”
“No, like I said it’s not my problem, you’ll have to talk to the landlord about the key.”
“He doesn’t have one, that’s why I came here.”
“Well what do you want me to do about it?” She may have rolled here eyes at this point but I stopped paying attention as I was trying not jump over the counter and rip her throat out. Not one person all day had been able to help me with any of my questions and this lady was the straw that broke the camel’s back, if the straw were a bitchy middle aged postal worker.
With a calm and straight face I say something to the effect of “Listen lady, I’m sorry that you hate your life, if I were stuck in a lowsy paying public servants position I would hate my life too, but what I need from you right now is not for you to be a bitch, but simply to answer my questions as if you remotely cared about where you next pay check came from. So stop telling me that it’s not your problem because this is a post office, and you work here so I’m pretty sure it is your problem when I’m not getting my mail, because that’s your job. What I want you to do about it is to see how we can fix the missing key situation. Can you handle that?”
(I'm sure what I said wasn't exactly that mean, but if you have ever seen You've Got Mail then you would understand my lack of appropriate zingers. But this time I was on fire)
She walked away, everyone, well all three people, in the post office were staring, another lady came to the window. “Ma’am, is there a problem?”
“I just want to know how to I get a knew mailbox key?”
“You’re landlord has to find it, and if he doesn’t have it he’ll have to pay to have a new box put in.”
“Thank you that’s all I wanted to know.”
As I walked out I heard an older lady mumbling that I must be from the city. Maybe I should move to NYC, because than people wouldn’t think I was socially retarded, and people wouldn’t notice that I don’t have a filter, they would just think I were normal!
Needless to say I won't be frequenting the post office in town anymore. I'm sure they have a pencil sketch of my on the wall prohibiting my admittance anyway!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
done with the back story!
Ok, so now that we got that background out of the way we can continue with this idea of a third option. Moving would have been a total disaster, and staying would have been weird, seeing as though I would be homeless so I looked into this idea of a third option. Something else you should know about me is that almost every major decision I make in my life is pretty much on impulse. I never really think things through, because I know myself, and if I start thinking about something I won’t end up doing it. So on a whim I applied to yet another college, assuming that once they looked at my transcripts they would reject me. I could just picture it, the admissions office receiving transcript after transcript from all the 5 colleges I have dropped out of in the past 6 years, all standing around the fax machine or the water cooler, do people actually do that? Anyway, all standing around some piece of office equipment laughing at this idiot who thinks she is going to get into yet another colleges, as if she hasn’t waisted enough of parents money, and then it hits them. “She won’t last, we might as well take her money, with her track record she drops out after it’s too late for a refund!”
I actually got in, we were all shocked, my mom most of all. So we started packing up all the shit I had accumulated over the past 24 years, and holy cow do I have a lot of shit.
Finally, moving day. My dad woke us up at 5:00 in the morning. We were on the road but quarter to six and I swear to god it was dark for the first two hours of our drive. Everything went pretty seamlessly. The van was unpacked and everything I owned was squeezed into my little apartment by 12:30. It was time to say goodbyes.
So something else you should know about me, is that I am really bad at expressing any emotion besides sarcasm, if you can even count sarcasm as an emotion. Actually, my whole family pretty much sucks at that. Everyone but my dad that is, who seems to be the most emotional person I know.
So my brother hugs me goodbye, my dad, and then it’s my mom’s turn. And at this point she is a wreck. Basically crying as if someone died. I hugged her quickly and pushed everyone out the door. And I was on to the task of unpacking my existence. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff you accumulate in a lifetime. Things I can’t even remember purchasing were falling out of boxes I didn’t remember packing. It took almost 48 hours of cleaning before I was really ready to unpack anything though. I mean seriously, I didn’t know one apartment could be that dirty. It’s as if the previous tenant never cleaned the apartment the entire time he lived here. Dust centimeters deep lined the tops of things. Cob web’s coverd the doorways, light fixtures and connected walls where corners used to be. But finally it was clean (I won’t be eating off the kitchen fllor anytime soon though). And the daunting task of unpacking about a million and three boxes was still ahead of me, I pushed forward, blaring the music and dancing around the apartment like I was a teen at a sleepover hyped up on caffeine.
I actually got in, we were all shocked, my mom most of all. So we started packing up all the shit I had accumulated over the past 24 years, and holy cow do I have a lot of shit.
Finally, moving day. My dad woke us up at 5:00 in the morning. We were on the road but quarter to six and I swear to god it was dark for the first two hours of our drive. Everything went pretty seamlessly. The van was unpacked and everything I owned was squeezed into my little apartment by 12:30. It was time to say goodbyes.
So something else you should know about me, is that I am really bad at expressing any emotion besides sarcasm, if you can even count sarcasm as an emotion. Actually, my whole family pretty much sucks at that. Everyone but my dad that is, who seems to be the most emotional person I know.
So my brother hugs me goodbye, my dad, and then it’s my mom’s turn. And at this point she is a wreck. Basically crying as if someone died. I hugged her quickly and pushed everyone out the door. And I was on to the task of unpacking my existence. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff you accumulate in a lifetime. Things I can’t even remember purchasing were falling out of boxes I didn’t remember packing. It took almost 48 hours of cleaning before I was really ready to unpack anything though. I mean seriously, I didn’t know one apartment could be that dirty. It’s as if the previous tenant never cleaned the apartment the entire time he lived here. Dust centimeters deep lined the tops of things. Cob web’s coverd the doorways, light fixtures and connected walls where corners used to be. But finally it was clean (I won’t be eating off the kitchen fllor anytime soon though). And the daunting task of unpacking about a million and three boxes was still ahead of me, I pushed forward, blaring the music and dancing around the apartment like I was a teen at a sleepover hyped up on caffeine.
more to come...
This came as quite shock. My parents were moving, and in less than three weeks. Something you should know about me is that I’m pretty much a dead beat. I’m 24 years old, I have dropped out of multiple colleges and I work part-time at a grocery store, oh yeah, and I live with my parents who pay for my every expense. You can’t get more pathetic than my current situation. So to hear that my cushioned lifestyle was about to become non-existent, sent me almost catatonic. Oh yeah, and there is one more thing I forgot to add. My sister was getting married that coming Saturday and my mom and dad didn’t want her “special day” to be ruined by anything, so I had to keep this huge news a secret. This move was shockingly unexpected. We grew up in Rochester, my mom and dad moved six times 14 years, and finally settled in Rochester, where we have lived for the past 20 years, it is actually the longest either of my parents have ever lived anywhere, so to find out that they were abruptly ending the life they had created here broke my heart. And then I realized I didn’t fit into this equation.
“Shit, what the hell am I supposed to do now. Move to North Carolina where I don’t know anyone, yeah that will go over really well. Hanging out with my mom and dad all day, I’ll go insane!” I purged my thoughts to my best friend, who was the only one who could truly understand because just 10 months ago she had uprooted her whole life to move 2,000 miles away with her husband. I knew she would understand on multiple levels, she understood because she too lost her family when she moved (not in the “they died” kind of way, but in the “there’s 2,000 miles separating us and we are too cheap and poor to visit” kind of way). And she didn’t know anyone where she moved to, accept her husband, but how much time can you really spend with the same person before you get sick of them. Clearly I’m not meant to be married.
And now I’m faced with the dilemma of staying or going. If I go I can continue to mooch of my parents until I grow up and figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, or I can stay and be forced to figure it out, or just get a full time job that I will inevitably hate and in the long term become more jaded than I already am because I made such poor choices in my youth. And then there was the hidden third option, start caring enough about my life to make something of it.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that along with being a pathetic, mooching, college drop out I am also socially and emotionally retarded. Heavy medication helps me to have somewhat normal functioning relationships, but still leaves me socially awkward and totally inept. All my friends are just weird as I am, well most of them; which is why we get along so well. And they have tolerance for my stupidity and complete lack of awareness of other people’s feelings. I had a team of therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists because I am so fucked up, Therapist, that’s what I called her because I never cared enough to learn anyone’s name, says that I don’t have a filter. Meaning I am the type of person who will say exactly what I am thinking with no regard for how other people will perceive me or react to what I’m saying. Pyschologist says I have no regard for my own life, which means I don’t care, literally I don’t possess the emotion of caring. I think that Psychologist is wrong because last year I got a cat, Kitty, and I loved Kitty, a lot, well sometimes. I had to give Kitty awaym, and that was sad, which shows that I care about stuff but Pyschologist says that I don't care about the right things.
“Shit, what the hell am I supposed to do now. Move to North Carolina where I don’t know anyone, yeah that will go over really well. Hanging out with my mom and dad all day, I’ll go insane!” I purged my thoughts to my best friend, who was the only one who could truly understand because just 10 months ago she had uprooted her whole life to move 2,000 miles away with her husband. I knew she would understand on multiple levels, she understood because she too lost her family when she moved (not in the “they died” kind of way, but in the “there’s 2,000 miles separating us and we are too cheap and poor to visit” kind of way). And she didn’t know anyone where she moved to, accept her husband, but how much time can you really spend with the same person before you get sick of them. Clearly I’m not meant to be married.
And now I’m faced with the dilemma of staying or going. If I go I can continue to mooch of my parents until I grow up and figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, or I can stay and be forced to figure it out, or just get a full time job that I will inevitably hate and in the long term become more jaded than I already am because I made such poor choices in my youth. And then there was the hidden third option, start caring enough about my life to make something of it.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that along with being a pathetic, mooching, college drop out I am also socially and emotionally retarded. Heavy medication helps me to have somewhat normal functioning relationships, but still leaves me socially awkward and totally inept. All my friends are just weird as I am, well most of them; which is why we get along so well. And they have tolerance for my stupidity and complete lack of awareness of other people’s feelings. I had a team of therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists because I am so fucked up, Therapist, that’s what I called her because I never cared enough to learn anyone’s name, says that I don’t have a filter. Meaning I am the type of person who will say exactly what I am thinking with no regard for how other people will perceive me or react to what I’m saying. Pyschologist says I have no regard for my own life, which means I don’t care, literally I don’t possess the emotion of caring. I think that Psychologist is wrong because last year I got a cat, Kitty, and I loved Kitty, a lot, well sometimes. I had to give Kitty awaym, and that was sad, which shows that I care about stuff but Pyschologist says that I don't care about the right things.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
to be continued...
So now you understand a little bit about my dad. Moving along, my dad hated his job, he had to drive 58 miles to work every day. Eventually, like after the third day, you get sick of the drive and start wondering why you took the job in the first place. My dad is an engineering genius, his business cards read Super, computer-fixing company-saving engineer extraordinaire. Well that isn’t entirely true, but they should say that. I guess they something more along the lines of Quality and Safety Engineer, I digress, my dad drives 58 miles to work every day to a job that he doesn’t really hate, he tolerates it, mostly because he makes a crap-ton of money for something that comes so easily to him. It would be like you or me making but loads of money for breathing, or peeing. Ok so my dad had finally, after 7 years of driving 116 miles every day decided to search for a new job. He interviewed at a bunch of places around Rochester, and things were looking up.
You are probably wondering what all this has to do with me moving, well trust me; this is all very crucial information as to why I am currently so miserable. It was one week until my sister’s wedding and my mom and dad come into the living room, my mom take the remote out of my hand and shuts the TV. off and says the dreaded four words that no person ever wants to hear… ‘we need to talk”. I’m thinking shit, what did I do? Raking my brain for something that could lead to her using the phrase that should never be uttered, I come up empty. The last time I heard that sentence it was 10 years ago when my parents told us that my dad had cancer. Now I’m starting to freak out, a week before my sister gets married my parents think it’s a good idea to tell me, the most emotional of all my siblings that my dad is dying.
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that I have a very active imagination, and that I am a bitter cynical pessimist who always assumes the worst…things to keep in mind. I’m already crying when my mom says “Oh god, you know” which in my mind solidifies my rightness and now I’m a wreck.
“You can come with us” my dad adds, and of course now I’m thinking, what is this, is he actually proposing a murder suicide?
Shocked, appalled and yet a little flattered, I ask “How long?”
“The 20th”
The 20th is just less than three weeks away. And now I’m thinking, wow modern medicine has really advanced, they can predict up to the exact day of death, that’s impressive, oh wait I’m supposed to be freaking out right now.
My dad adds, “Well I start the 20th, so probably the day before.”
Start? Since when do you start heaven? Isn’t it always happening, don’t you just walking in when you die? Or do you appear? I wonder how heaven works? Wow, ok so maybe I have a little ADD.
“What the hell are you talking?” I finally decide to ask, because I’m not a complete moron and I know that what they are talking about doesn’t exactly make sense if my dad were in fact dying.
“I got a job!”
“Holy crap, I’m retarded, congratulations!” I’m retarded; this is how I get myself into trouble, by always assuming the worst. And it’s nothing, actually it’s great, my dad won’t be so grumpy all the time now that he won’t be in the car for two hours of his day. Maybe I should ask him about his job so he thinks I actually care about what he does for a living. “So what is it?”
“Retarded, what? What are you talking about? Uh anyway, it’s at a company called Honeywell, they make……” Blah blah blah, I stop listening because I don’t actually care, but I add in an appropriately timed hmm, interesting and sounds cool dad! I have been faking it for 24 years; I’m basically a pro at pretending to care about stuff! Anyway he rambles on about stuff that I don’t care about, but mostly I don’t understand what he is talking about. My dad is too smart for his own good. He explains things as if the person listening to them is also an engineer, and then when, actually I should say if, he realizes they don’t understand he dumbs it down so that even a five year old could understand, and then they feel like he is treating them like they are stupid, well I shouldn’t generalize, I’m pretty much just talking about myself. Seeing as though both my siblings and their spouses are smart enough, in that specific area, to understand. So to compensate for the fact that I never understand a word my dad says when he is talking about his job, and to keep him from treating me like I’m an idiot five year old, I pretend to care and understand, when in reality I’m not actually even listening. But this time I should have really been paying attention because the next things I heard were moving and North Carolina.
more to come...
You are probably wondering what all this has to do with me moving, well trust me; this is all very crucial information as to why I am currently so miserable. It was one week until my sister’s wedding and my mom and dad come into the living room, my mom take the remote out of my hand and shuts the TV. off and says the dreaded four words that no person ever wants to hear… ‘we need to talk”. I’m thinking shit, what did I do? Raking my brain for something that could lead to her using the phrase that should never be uttered, I come up empty. The last time I heard that sentence it was 10 years ago when my parents told us that my dad had cancer. Now I’m starting to freak out, a week before my sister gets married my parents think it’s a good idea to tell me, the most emotional of all my siblings that my dad is dying.
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that I have a very active imagination, and that I am a bitter cynical pessimist who always assumes the worst…things to keep in mind. I’m already crying when my mom says “Oh god, you know” which in my mind solidifies my rightness and now I’m a wreck.
“You can come with us” my dad adds, and of course now I’m thinking, what is this, is he actually proposing a murder suicide?
Shocked, appalled and yet a little flattered, I ask “How long?”
“The 20th”
The 20th is just less than three weeks away. And now I’m thinking, wow modern medicine has really advanced, they can predict up to the exact day of death, that’s impressive, oh wait I’m supposed to be freaking out right now.
My dad adds, “Well I start the 20th, so probably the day before.”
Start? Since when do you start heaven? Isn’t it always happening, don’t you just walking in when you die? Or do you appear? I wonder how heaven works? Wow, ok so maybe I have a little ADD.
“What the hell are you talking?” I finally decide to ask, because I’m not a complete moron and I know that what they are talking about doesn’t exactly make sense if my dad were in fact dying.
“I got a job!”
“Holy crap, I’m retarded, congratulations!” I’m retarded; this is how I get myself into trouble, by always assuming the worst. And it’s nothing, actually it’s great, my dad won’t be so grumpy all the time now that he won’t be in the car for two hours of his day. Maybe I should ask him about his job so he thinks I actually care about what he does for a living. “So what is it?”
“Retarded, what? What are you talking about? Uh anyway, it’s at a company called Honeywell, they make……” Blah blah blah, I stop listening because I don’t actually care, but I add in an appropriately timed hmm, interesting and sounds cool dad! I have been faking it for 24 years; I’m basically a pro at pretending to care about stuff! Anyway he rambles on about stuff that I don’t care about, but mostly I don’t understand what he is talking about. My dad is too smart for his own good. He explains things as if the person listening to them is also an engineer, and then when, actually I should say if, he realizes they don’t understand he dumbs it down so that even a five year old could understand, and then they feel like he is treating them like they are stupid, well I shouldn’t generalize, I’m pretty much just talking about myself. Seeing as though both my siblings and their spouses are smart enough, in that specific area, to understand. So to compensate for the fact that I never understand a word my dad says when he is talking about his job, and to keep him from treating me like I’m an idiot five year old, I pretend to care and understand, when in reality I’m not actually even listening. But this time I should have really been paying attention because the next things I heard were moving and North Carolina.
more to come...
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
the back story
After the tattoo incident, that’s what I refer to these so called calculatingly spontaneous events as, “incidents”, mostly because they end up in some sort of wild display of my father’s wealth. The tattoo was small in comparison to the incidents that occurred over the next several years. Talk of a motorcycle started popping up in conversation my sophomore year in college. I had always known my parents to be wild in their youth; smoking pot and drinking garbage pail punch and doing crazy things like jumping off a silo into a huge snow drift. I knew my dad had owned a motorcycle when he was younger and through college. My mom always used to say that they finally had to sell the motorcycle when my brother was a baby because he would cry every time my dad started it; but I think that it was my parents finally coming to their senses and realizing that you can’t put a car seat on a motorcycle. But the man I know today as my father is a loser. I mean, I don’t mean to be harsh but he is a computer fixing, mustache growing, science fiction loving engineer. I guess he isn’t a loser, definitely a dork or a nerd though. When you look up the definition of nerd in the dictionary, well you’ll get the definition for nerd, but that is what my father is. So when he started talking about wanting a motorcycle again we all thought he was just going through a mid life crisis, it was actually more joking than talking, he never sounded serious. I mean he was in his mid fifties, it made sense for him to be nostalgic for his youth, one dad in our neighborhood got his ear pierced, another dad but a red convertible, so we thought he had it out of his system when he got the tattoo. He joked for a while about getting another on his back of a heart with Debbie ’69 inside of it; claiming that it was not a double ontandre but merely the year they had met. But one day he just up and did it. I came home from school and a brand new Honda Victory was sitting in my garage, for those of you who aren’t motorcycle enthusiasts that is like a BMW of motorcycles, not quite a Bentley but still really nice. Not even a year had passed and he was buying another, as if they were match box bikes and not real, very expensive bikes. This time he went for the bigger, flashier, Bentley of motorcycles, a fire engine red Harley Davidson with chrome piping. So when he started joking about buying a plane we took him more seriously. Though he never did it, every time he ever mentioned, even in passing wanting a new toy we cataloged it in our minds so that we weren’t surprised to see it in the house, or in the drive way, or around my mom’s neck in the form of a $20,000 diamond necklace. All these things, the tattoo, the motorcycles, the jewelry had all been meticulously planned out, he even kept binders full of all the research he had done before making his purchases, but no one knew about them but my dad, so to everyone else they seemed like spontaneous acts.
to be continued...
to be continued...
Monday, January 5, 2009
public servants should serve!
I verbally bitch slapped a public servant today; needless to say it was not my finest hour. But she totally deserved it, she was a wretched bitch. Ugh, moving to a new town is miserable. I know that probably sounds ridiculous and you are wondering why I moved? Well that question can’t really be answered with a simple or short answer. It all started when out of nowhere my dad drops this bombshell on me. But something you first should understand about my dad is that he is calculatingly spontaneous. If you can understand that than you can understand my dad. For those of you who have no idea what that means, allow me to elaborate. When I was 18 years old I got a tattoo on my right shoulder blade. I was getting out of the shower one day and my dad noticed this huge black “blob”, as he referred to it, on my shoulder. He then threw what I refer to as the adult temper tantrum. He started screaming at me about tattoo’s being permanent, as if I was unaware of this fact, and how when I died I could no longer be buried in a Jewish cemetery, as if that was something I was looking forward to in death! He said that I would never be able to get a job with a tattoo, because apparently when you interview for jobs your potential employer, along with reading over your resume, inspects your body for tattoos. Six months later my dad was wearing a short sleeved shirt and I noticed a colorful “blob” on his arm. Needless to say, he had gotten a tattoo. All I said to him was “You know you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery now.” According to my father this had been something he had been thinking about for a long time and finally decided to do, so who was I to judge his decisions.
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